We generally don’t speak ill of the dead. Or of politicians who have the good sense to quit before being thrown out by the electorate. John Baird is being serenaded out, with the opposition joining in tossing petals.
He himself is full of self-serving smugness — how he wrought wonders under the guidance of the Great Leader. Stephen Harper praised him for doing some heavy lifting for the Conservative cause. Both are entitled to mutual self-admiration. Critics are free to take the opposite view.
But it takes shamelessness, a.k.a. unmitigated gall — and/or blind faith in a make-believe world — to claim, as Baird does, that “I have seen the stature of this country grow in the eyes of the world.” Or that “Canada has stood up for the oppressed.” Or that he has taken “Canada’s strength, Canada’s compassion and Canada’s values in every corner of the world.”
The pronouncements are in inverse proportion to reality.
Canada’s status sank so low under Harper that, for the first time in our history, we suffered the ignominy of a loss in a bid for the rotating seat on the UN Security Council. That shameful episode preceded Baird at Foreign Affairs but he became lead spear carrier for the very policies that led to that fiasco, including disdain for the UN, principally because it tries to hold Israel’s feet to the fire of international law.
Canada is still isolated. It was in a minority of nine at the General Assembly when 138 states voted to grant Palestinians “non-member observer state.”
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