Conrad Black: Chasing seat on the dysfunctional UN Security Council is a waste of Canada's time

A vote at the United Nations Security Council in 2017. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

What is clear is that chasing the seat in the dysfunctional UN Security Council is a waste of time for Canada

It should be noted that from any point of view one could say that the great foreign policy effort of the semi-re-elected federal government is to win a two-year term in the United Nations Security Council. Which for some could be established as a useless political objective as it could be devised. Being that, in addition, there are those who think that the UN is a dying and corrupt organization that, instead of providing the first step for world government, is the primary shout therapy for the poorest and most poorly governed and despotic countries in the world.

Thus, it is appropriate to mention that according to the UN figures themselves, 91 of the 192 UN member states have average per capita incomes of less than 10 percent of those in Canada.

Likewise, approximately half of the member states do not seriously comply with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, accession or, at least, the credible ambition to achieve the objectives that are supposedly a criterion for being a member of the UN.

Very interesting question

Certainly, here the interesting political question for Canadians is whether the federal government’s current approach to climate change is a secondary product of its incomprehensible search for two years with a seat on the Security Council or the opposite.

And it is that possibly the best policy would be to reaffirm the desirability of the environmentally safe production and export of oil and natural gas, to declare a goal of not increasing anthropogenic emissions while waiting for some clear indication of whether something unusual is really happening with global temperatures and climate, the end of transport to the world’s least respectable regimes and Canadian leadership in a movement to reform the UN.

It is clear that Canada would make an important contribution to the world if it proposed serious reforms to the UN by calibrating votes, linking voting rights to respect for defined human rights, payments provided to meet the organization’s budget and, in In general, to reform the administration and reward respect for the founding values of the United Nations. This is the way to gain respect and prestige and achieve something valuable for the world, instead of trying to impress a group of poor reputation leaders from underperforming governments, however deserving of the tangible compassion their populations may be.

Source: Conrad Black | National Post