Until yesterday, I suspect very few Canadian outside of the airlines industry actually knew that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the UN organization which promotes regulation of international air travel, had its headquarters in Montreal. Some more Canadians probably know it is today, and, as you probably know, the Harper government is trying to make it a cause celebre in their campaign to discredit the “international community” and, increasingly, to isolate Canada from the outside world.
This is a bit of a tempest in a teapot. It’s very unlikely that ICAO will actually relocate to Qatar, which has put forward a bid. Outside of the purported Arab bloc which is forming in support of the Qatari bid, ICAO will need to win support from countries that don’t really have a stake in this one way or the other. Bureaucracies — even international bureaucracies — hate change more than practically anything else. Qatar will have to sweeten the pot by subsidizing the bureaucracy to a large enough extent to make an expensive, tedious, and awkward international relocation feasible. And the Qataris don’t necessarily have that much of a stake in this either.
All of that said, we must recognize that if it emerges that ICAO’s Montreal headquarters really is in serious trouble, then that is a direct consequence of the Harper government’s self-declared “muscular” foreign policy, and that doubling down on muscular foreign policy now by declaring that Canada’s “principled” foreign policy holds that Montreal is the ICAO’s “rightful host” is not going to help matters.
Now, you might think that it would be self-evidence to any politician with a brain in their head that a small country with modest economic clout cannot throw its weight around on the international stage. For reasons about which I dare not speculate, the Conservatives have never agreed with that notion. Instead, they have swaggered around the international stage for years now, walking away from treaties, sneering at diplomatic protocol, and brashly declaring Canada’s shift away from neutrality on the Palestine question. A few days ago, Harper literally appointed his personal bodyguard to be ambassador to Jordan. Jordan probably doesn’t mind that much, because they probably don’t care about Canada that much, but it’s the sort of move which demonstrates a calculated contempt towards the Arab nations, and there have been many of these moves recently. So, is it any wonder that the Arab nations are seizing upon a cheap and simple opportunity to hit back?
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The Sixth Estate » ICAO Won’t Relocate, But Not Because of Harper Government Diplomacy
This is a bit of a tempest in a teapot. It’s very unlikely that ICAO will actually relocate to Qatar, which has put forward a bid. Outside of the purported Arab bloc which is forming in support of the Qatari bid, ICAO will need to win support from countries that don’t really have a stake in this one way or the other. Bureaucracies — even international bureaucracies — hate change more than practically anything else. Qatar will have to sweeten the pot by subsidizing the bureaucracy to a large enough extent to make an expensive, tedious, and awkward international relocation feasible. And the Qataris don’t necessarily have that much of a stake in this either.
All of that said, we must recognize that if it emerges that ICAO’s Montreal headquarters really is in serious trouble, then that is a direct consequence of the Harper government’s self-declared “muscular” foreign policy, and that doubling down on muscular foreign policy now by declaring that Canada’s “principled” foreign policy holds that Montreal is the ICAO’s “rightful host” is not going to help matters.
Now, you might think that it would be self-evidence to any politician with a brain in their head that a small country with modest economic clout cannot throw its weight around on the international stage. For reasons about which I dare not speculate, the Conservatives have never agreed with that notion. Instead, they have swaggered around the international stage for years now, walking away from treaties, sneering at diplomatic protocol, and brashly declaring Canada’s shift away from neutrality on the Palestine question. A few days ago, Harper literally appointed his personal bodyguard to be ambassador to Jordan. Jordan probably doesn’t mind that much, because they probably don’t care about Canada that much, but it’s the sort of move which demonstrates a calculated contempt towards the Arab nations, and there have been many of these moves recently. So, is it any wonder that the Arab nations are seizing upon a cheap and simple opportunity to hit back?
more
The Sixth Estate » ICAO Won’t Relocate, But Not Because of Harper Government Diplomacy