JOHN FELDSTED -- Trudeau continues to believe in UN multilateral institutions, but most Canadians do not
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO
HUFFPOST (May 19th,
2020) -- Canada Will ‘Continue to Support’ WHO Despite Trump
Pressure, Trudeau Says. The U.S. president is threatening to
permanently cut funding to the U.N. agency.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada will “continue to support” the World
Health Organization (WHO) as the agency again finds itself in the crosshairs of
U.S. President Donald Trump over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking to reporters in
Ottawa Tuesday, Trudeau was asked to respond to Trump’s threat, issued in an
open letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and posted
online Monday, to permanently cut U.S. funding to WHO unless the agency commits
to “substantive improvements” in the next 30 days...
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What U.S. President
Trump does is not relevant to our analysis of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Our support has to be based on cost balanced against value.
Why would Canada
continue to support the UN World Health Organization? The WHO has done nothing
to alleviate or mitigate coronavirus spread and suffering. In late January,
February and early March, the WHO was advising against banning international
travel despite knowing the virus was spread by infected travellers.
In mid March, the WHO
advised that coronavirus was a pandemic.
Most of the civilized
world was aware of that weeks earlier.
Then we were advised to
self-isolate and distance from others.
Now the WHO wants us to
test, test, test, test. Why? These fools are going on about a “second wave” of
infections when the first wave fizzled. Infections came nowhere close to “best
case” predictions.
Trudeau continues to
believe in UN multilateral institutions, but most Canadians do not. We need to
choose our friends carefully. Only about 12% of the UN members are true
democracies. Another 20% are hybrids. The remaining 68% want us to sharply
increase our foreign aid.
We should be generous to
those who have less, based on two conditions.
First, our economy must
be robust and our public debt low. Charity begins at home. We take care of our
own first.
Second, our foreign aid
must reach the people it is intended for. Nations where foreign aid falls into
the hands of government officials or bandits (who may be the same people) are
off limits. Our fishes are for the people, not for the sharks who control them.
You may recall that very
recently US President Trump tried to block the 3M company (owned by China) from
filling Canadian orders for medical masks although the pulp used to make the
masks comes from Canada. That, in a nutshell, is the value of multilateral
institutions. They are mostly a venue for world leaders to gather and hobnob at
public expense but useless in a crisis.
The current virus crisis
has shown us that borders will slam shut, our freedoms will be ignored and even
within Canada, different jurisdictions isolate and compete.
The spirits of
collaboration and cooperation in the face of a common enemy are hanging from a
lamp post, twisting in the wind. The veneer of civilization is thin, fragile,
and easily shattered in the face of a threat.
John Feldsted ... is a political commentator, consultant,
and strategist. He makes his home in Winnipeg,
Manitoba
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