Please Advise! Canada Got Dumped for... Norway?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Canada’s bid for a two-year seat on the UN Security Council has fallen short. Ireland and Norway were selected instead. What does this mean to ordinary Canadians?

Signed,

UNsure

Dear UN,

We can probably assume Justin Trudeau has seen the movie Mean Girls. Thus we can also assume he has been having recurring nightmares for weeks. Every night Rachel McAdams pulls up in a convertible and says, “Get in, loser. We’re going to the UN Security Council.”

But when Trudeau tries to walk, his legs don’t move. Some spunky redhead or strapping blonde grabs the seat and they drive off with a final smirk. He wakes up screaming. But alas, it’s no dream. Canada has been left standing at the curb again.

Oh, those perfidious Irish. They’re going to be the nation that tries to talk sense to the world? Have you ever tried to read Finnegans Wake?

And the Norwegians. Remember their goofy curling pants? We all had a good laugh about those. Little did we realize they were playing the long game, hypnotizing the international community with their dazzling, shifting patterns. Now we are all in thrall to the Norwegian agenda, which will probably include brown cheese on waffles and mandatory screenings of I Remember Mama. No, Canada’s bid for a council seat isn’t really dead — it’s pining for the fjords.

Worst of all for the prime minister are the ghosts of Twitter. All those tweets tut-tutting the ineffectual Stephen Harper for failing to nail down a Security Council seat a decade ago.

In 2010, we lost to Germany and Portugal. Maybe we’d have better luck with the Eurovision Song Contest — at least Celine Dion won that once. Although she was representing Switzerland.

Homer Simpson once told Bart, “You tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”

Trudeau is surely taking that lesson to heart. Canada’s bungled attempt is giving pundits the chance to attribute the failure to Canada’s weak foreign policy, the blackface scandal, the embarrassing India visit, anti-Israel policies, pro-Israel policies, and the decision to allow the Habs into the play-in tournament with such a crap record.

The lesson of Mean Girls — aside from “Don’t try to make ‘fetch’ happen” — was that being part of the “in” group requires a certain amount of moral compromise. It has been strongly suggested that Trudeau did in fact bow and scrape to international bad actors like Tanzania and Kenya (the former condemned by Amnesty International and the latter by Human Rights Watch) in seeking votes.

Presumably the need to schmooze for those votes makes it difficult to turn around and criticize those same nations once on the council (although this does bring to mind Dr. Steve’s all-time favourite political quote, from former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown: “If you can’t take people’s money and then turn around and screw them, you’ve got no business being in politics.”)

And of course, making the cheer squad doesn’t make you head cheerleader. Permanent members of the Security Council include China, the nation that just reaffirmed its blatant, cynical and criminal perversion of justice in charging Canadians Michael Spavor, an entrepreneur, and Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, as part of its vendetta against Canada for the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. It’s not as though a seat on the Security Council would be the equivalent of the muscle-building Charles Atlas program, allowing Canada to go kick sand in that big bully’s face.

There are 15 seats on the council. Five are permanent — the five global prom queens. Ten others are lucky hangers-on who get elected for two-year terms of hotness. Aside from China, the other permanent members of the council are the U.S., Russia, the U.K. and France. Lord only knows what Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will do without Canada’s benign influence. Dr. Steve fears they may get up to no good.

Aside from our lost opportunity to discipline the Great Powers with a stern hand, what are the consequences of our loss? Loss of prestige presumably, but international prestige won’t get you to the front of the Costco lineup any faster. Once upon a time a nation could make itself feel better by conquering somebody, but thanks to COVID-19 we can’t even invade Florida like we used to.

Frankly it is hard to think of a single meaningful consequence of Canada’s failure to land a two-year spot at the adult table. Those of you who have run for student council president or treasurer may recall the difficulty of crafting a platform. A new drink machine in the cafeteria? More dances? Better school spirit?

Perhaps the more naive candidates really believed in their ability to seize that electoral mandate and force the authorities to recognize that the people are rising up to demand more couches and a foosball table. Alas, the Man (in this case gender neutral) never cared. If you won, you did at least get to be student council president or treasurer though. And ultimately wasn’t that what it was all about?

So enjoy it, Ireland and Norway. Canada will be over at the goth table. We’re not even looking at you.