How to Lose Friends and Alienate Emirates

Why Stephen Harper should be nicer to the UAE.

Last week the National Post ran an editorial condemning Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae for criticizing the Conservatives’ handling of the diplomatic dispute with the United Arab Emirates over landing rights. Curiously, the Post’s main beef with Rae is not that he criticized the government (clearly his right as an opposition MP) but that he did so in an email he sent to a journalist while in the UAE. According to the Post, this violates a long-standing protocol of opposition members not bad-mouthing the government while overseas. The argument that Rae undermined his own government doesn’t hold much weight for us at The Mark Newsroom though, because we assume someone in the UAE has the internet and read about how Harper’s own defence minister beat Rae to the punch. In any case, Rae responded to the editorial, and his back-and-forth with the paper makes for some good reading.

Rae isn’t the only one displeased about the UAE spat, which resulted in Dubai kicking Canadian Forces out of the desert airbase we intended to use to withdraw from Afghanistan. As the Halifax Chronicle-Herald’s Scott Taylor points out, instead of rent, all the UAE was asking for was a few more landing spots at Canadian airports for its airlines. Taylor argues this wasn’t a lot to ask, considering that it was politically risky in the first place for a Muslim country like the UAE to host Canada because of our involvement in NATO and Harper’s vocal support of Israel. “Canadians truly concerned about our nation’s international image could only be embarrassed by the stupidity of [Harper’s statements on the issue]” writes Taylor.

The Toronto Star’s Haroon Siddiqui says Harper clearly doesn’t know how to care for an ally, reminding us that the UAE has treated 100 wounded Canadian soldiers, and helped rescue Canadian hostages James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden from Iraq in 2005. Such facts aren’t relevant for Harper, Siddiqui suggests, writing, “When you question Stephen Harper’s foreign policy, he attacks your patriotism. When he makes a mistake, he won’t acknowledge it. When he’s losing a debate, he recasts it as cultural warfare between good and evil, and lashes out at critics with little or no regard for facts.”