Why Are We Still a Member of the UN?

Media coverage suggests that many Canadians feel that the UN is no longer credible, yet no one seems to want to leave it. And for good reason.

Canada’s failure to win a seat on the UN’s Security Council continues to make waves in the op-ed pages today, ten days after the fact. A popular reaction has been that Canada shouldn’t mind being snubbed by the UN, because despite its lofty goals, thanks to its largely anti-Semitic, authoritarian membership it’s no longer a credible organization. Which begs the question, why are we still a member?

As noted in an earlier Deep Dive, even the UN's most severe critics aren't suggesting we withdraw from the international body. So while the Edmonton Sun’s Ian Robinson slams the UN's stance on climate change as delusional, calls the General Assembly a “bigoted parliament of whores,” and describes it’s membership as “a bunch of sleazy, corrupt, tin-pot dictators whose countries stone women to death for adultery, practise female genital mutilation, and force women to wear barbecue tarps,” nowhere in his column does he come close to suggesting we should part ways with the organization he clearly sees as morally bankrupt. The implication of his argument (echoed today by the Telegraph-Journal’s Charles W. Moore) is that we should remain a part of the UN, but simply not engage with the countries we disagree with, which is to say, most of them.

Robinson, Moore and others argue that Canada’s loss was a result of Stephen Harper's principled refusal to cater to the lower ethical standards the General Assembly. But in a particularly insightful column in the Ottawa Citizen, Kate Heartfield makes a point that any op-ed writer knows first-hand: you can have all the grand principles you want and shout them from the rooftops, but unless you can convince anyone else to act on them, they won’t do much good. “If you're going to throw your weight around on behalf of principles, you've got to have some weight to throw around,” she writes. And as the UN snub and our recent spat with the UAE demonstrates, “We simply don't have much international clout these days. Whether you're an aid advocate or a security hawk, that's bad news."