August 10, 2018
EDITORIAL – The good fight: paying the price for human rights
WEST SHORE VOICE NEWS EDITORIAL, by Mary P Brooke
This week’s most far-reaching news story has been how Canada is seemingly now in the tight clamp of Saudi Arabia. Economically we’re a small country, figuratively now very publicly twisting and squirming to the delight of a middle-eastern country built strong by the luck of having oil underfoot.
In the 21st century the idea of human rights should not in any way be novel, new or at worst ignored. Yet in Saudi Arabia we see human rights activists and journalists rounded up and jailed — for trying to modify the livability of their country; some of those people are lashed in public, or even publicly executed. It’s an iron fist of a garish kind that an ocean away can seem remote.
It could be debated that the backlash against Canada became a house on fire over a tweet. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland perhaps caught the ‘Trump tweet bug’… last week she used the 280-character social media platform to criticize Saudi Arabia for arresting some civil rights activists. It’s not as if Canada or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau woke up one day and decided to pick a fight with the Saudis. Canada speaks up about human rights wherever and whenever it can.
However, this firestorm bolted down on Canada will come at a price all of us will pay in various ways. And while it might bite some or even all of us, there seems to be an instinctive response in Canadians that we’ll hunker down and take this one. This speaks well of the Canadian collective soul, and Canada is fortunate to have a Prime Minister who will bear up to this.
Directly or indirectly, many of us may feel the pinch through some loss of wheat sales to the Saudis. Also through 8,300 fewer of their students in the university system (they’ve all been told by their country to leave for the USA or UK by September). And in the medical delivery system — foreign students pay much higher tuition rates than Canadian students. In medical schools, Saudi students have been training in large number then serving here a few years at no cost to Canada, but then returning home (to eventually expel foreign doctors from their country).
Challenges to the wheat economy could mean higher baked goods prices. Fewer foreign students hurts university budgets (cramping the post-secondary system at least in the short term). Pulling out free medical services might produce longer wait times for surgeries and advanced medical care. Canada also has seen our ambassador turfed out of Saudi Arabia; that’s dramatic, but has workarounds. New trade with Canada has been banned. Saudi Arabia’s state airline is apparently going to suspend flights in and out of Toronto.
Musing on this, however, we might even be witnessing a covert attempt by Canada to get out of the $15 billion deal that in 2014 (under the Conservative government, through an Ontario-based manufacturer) Canada agreed to for supplying heavy assault vehicles to Saudi Arabia that would be used at least in part to oppress their own people. Maybe, just maybe, this has been a very clever setup to irritate the Saudis enough so Canada can sidestep out that deal.
Kudos to The New Yorker (August 8, 2018) for publishing that Saudi Arabia “is daring to confront Western nations, including countries that are important to Saudi security and economic development”. Quite right, they need us.
Again, we’re not hearing a significant ruckus domestically against Trudeau or the federal government over this. This is Canadians quietly standing their ground.
This article was first published on page 2 in the August 10, 2018 issue of West Shore Voice News
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