Politics: Canada: Harper confirmed by latest polls on Afghan War, brings La Francophonie back to its senses

.
Not so long ago Chantal Hébert (columnist for both Toronto Star and LeDevoir, Montréal) solemnized "Harper has botched Afghanistan (Sep6,2k6, TS). Tonite, on the TV news, however, reports that the support of Canadians for the country's participation in NATO's Afghanistan Mission, that support keeps climbing. Now, Hébert argues that the low support in Québec could cost the current Prime Minister the next election, and well it mite for all I know (I must look up the comparative statistics for Québec in contrast to the rest of Canada). But, whatever the case in Quebec, the opinion polls presently do indicate the opposite regarding support for his policy on this issue outside la belle probince.

Besides that outfront rise in support generally, Harper has been to Afghanistan to visit the troops, has received Afghan Prez Karzai in Ottawa, and generally comported himself well on foreign policy issues. Of course, he was scored for not being "even-handed" in regard to his non-censuring of Israel in pursuing its enemy in Lebanon. He did go personally to pick up dual-citizenship Canadian Lebanese who like to summer in the heart of the terrorist zone I call Hizbullahland, where the Lebanon govt had refused to govern. At the same time, his move there may have caused him Arab and Muslim votes, an outspoken and noticeable flow of Jews moved and are moving from the Liberal Party to the Conservatives.

Meanwhile, Jack Layton has hitched his New Democrats to the anti-war movement, trying to co-opt it as a vote-farm for the NDP in the next election. And, for good reason, as refWrite previously pointed out: The Green Party had just held its national convention in Toronto, and the candidate who won their Leadership, Elizabeth May, had peddled a radical Green anti-war platform, indeed calling for Canada's complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. That Green move could have siphoned off the anti-war vote, which Layton had not gone out of his way to cultivate. He had already drummed the leading Labour NDPer out of the party, because the Autoworker's Buzz Hargrove had advocated in the previous election that his fellow partymembers support the party only in rdings where the NDP had a real chance of winning ("strategic voting"), otherwise vote Liberal to thwart any possible rise of the Conserves. As the acerbic class-conflict Corvin Russell, Canadian Dimension points out in "The NDP puts on a show in Quebec" (Sep21,2k6):

One of the most remarkable things about [the NDP] convention goes largely unremarked: how little class politics there is in it. Organized labour’s presence is muted. This is the first convention since the Canadian Auto Workers left the party. Some see the departure of the CAW as primarily a story about personality and revenge.

North America > Canada

But it is doubtful that Buzz Hargrove would have been politically able to split from the NDP had the underlying relationship not already been weakened. In turn, the absence of the CAW, a founding affiliate of the party (when it was the United Auto Workers), seems to have dampened the spirits of their longtime rivals, the Steelworkers. The lack of class politics is all the more remarkable when other more cooptable policies are being taken up by Greens and left Liberals [like Lib leadership candidates former NDPer Bob Rae and Ontario Lib former cabmin Gerard Kennedy], threatening the distinctiveness of the NDP’s position in electoral politics. In fact, there is very little talk about the economy at all, except when Layton rebuffs party turncoat Paul Summerville’s attack on “the anti-market rhetoric” of the party base. Layton says the NDP is not anti-market, but merely wants “the economy to be fair.”

So, Layton's stuck with nothing but his attempt to head off the Greens on the anti-war issue. And that's why Layton, appalled at the strong impression Karzai made on the Canadian Parliament, hunted down the Afghani Prez in the hallways (er, corridors) to make an appointment, after which the two did sit down together. Layton got some TV coverage that neither the Greens' May nor Labour's Buzz Hargrove could. But who won the dance contest, after all? Why, it was Stephen Harper whose policy and performance have strengthened at least momentarily the Canadian spine regarding the war in that far off land.

Harper also had the last word, so to speak, in regard to the failed-govt of Lebanon when a resolution memorializing the dead and suffering on both sides of the recent conflict there was presented at the Summit of French-speaking countries in Bucharest, Romania, last week. Canada is a member of La Francophonie, as its called. When the Canadian delegation leaders Stephen Harper, Jean Charest (Liberal PM of Québec) and Bernard Lord (Conserv PM of New Brunswick, which also has a large francophone population) got wind of Egypt's attempt to erase Israel from the memorial resolution, Harper raised an objection and publicly fawt the sly nonsense.

Candian news media seem to have gotten the story wrong in an important detail. English-lang Bucharest Daily News, however, provides the correction. BDN's reporter Andreea Pocotila:

Representatives of francophone states yesterday had fiery debates before approving the Bucharest Declaration of the Organisation International de la Francophonie (OIF) due to a disagreement regarding the conflict in Lebanon.
The approval of the Bucharest Declaration, adopted yesterday during the summit, was a result of prolonged negotiations due to an amendment made by Egypt to the text.
The statement was divided into three parts: the francophonie as a knowledge society, the francophonie's political dimension and the crises in the francophone world.

It was Egypt which attempted to amend the prepared text; Harper stopped the Egypts cold, and eventually was supported by others.

La Francophonie, France's own Jacques Chirac concurring, defeated the Egyptian manoeuvre and the Lebanon govt's vociferous, furious irresponsiblity in shutting out memory of the Israeli dead, many of them Muslims. Nor has Lebanon been accustomed to taking responsibility on the matter of Hizbullah's years of rocketeering into Northern Israel. Harper won the day at the Bucharest Summit of La Francophonie, and has developed a clear foreign policy alternative to all the other parties in Canada's Hosue of Commons, on at least several key issues. Canadians are taking notice, and some like what they see.