Saudi Arabia
 

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I think that's about right. Nevertheless, Saudi does seem to be over reacting somewhat.

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I heard on the news Sweden went down this road a couple of years ago and got burnt. The CBC asked the Swedes to comment and none was forthcoming! The silence from other countries is deafening. If you are going to take on the Saudis, a oil rich arms buying power on human rights you need more than one voice, otherwise leave well alone. As Canadians say, just gonna have to suck it up!

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I'm guessing in a week or two Trudeau will be putting on a Lawrence of Arabia costume and playing make up with the Saudis.

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Canada's policy on human rights violations is what it is, and it won't be changed because Salman had a tantrum. The only countries siding with him are his tame Arab states and they can't change it either. We protested to Iran when their secret police tortured a Canadian journalist to death, we protested China's treatment of Tibetan activists, but somehow failed to protest Israeli snipers shooting protesters in Gaza or several sieges involving bombing civillian neighbourhoods, even after the UN warned they were bordering on committing war crimes. Too bad for the Saudi citizens living here whose travel is disrupted and the students and patients being punished, but that's Salman's doing. Even if the LAV deal falls through Trudeau has made and will probably continue to make political points for this, and if need be the government can buy the vehicles and add them to our NATO expenditures.

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With whom?

Who's going to change their vote because Trudeau says bad things about Saudi Arabia?

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Unhelpfully silly and juvenile vocabulary from Magnum aside, there are some interesting ramifications of the Canada-KSA spat.

First of all, of course, it wasn't "PM selfie" who kicked it all off, but foreign minister Chrystia Freeland. What she actually said in her tweet really wasn't all that inflammatory, and I'm quite certain the same sentiments would already have been expressed to the Saudi government through regular diplomatic channels. Her tweet reads, in full: "Very alarmed to learn that Samar Badawi, Raif Badawi’s sister, has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. Canada stands together with the Badawi family in this difficult time, and we continue to strongly call for the release of both Raif and Samar Badawi."

In response to what is a pretty mild rebuke ("we... strongly call" is hardly in the lexicon of undiplomatic language), the Saudi Crown Prince has thrown all his toys out of the pram - a massive overreaction in the expectation that Canada would back down in the same way that the German, US and British governments have done in the past when the Saudis take umbrage at some public comment. Frankly, I'm impressed that the Canadian government has taken a strong stand in refusing to withdraw the criticism, despite the ridiculousness of the Saudi response.

It is, of course, almost completely for the domestic audience that Mohammad bin Salman put on such a show of retaliation. For all that he has been the figurehead of liberalization when facing the West, internally there is still a regime of complete intolerance towards opposition or protest of any kind, under the Crown Prince's leadership.

The situation will hurt Saudi Arabia much more than it will hurt Canada. For example, two thirds of all medical doctors in KSA received their training in Canada. There are around 1,000 residents and fellows in Canadian teaching hospitals today who will probably have to start again somewhere else in order to qualify, and in whom their government has invested rather a lot of money. While that will create a short-term shift coverage problem for some Canadian hospitals, it will also open additional residency placements for some of those (many foreign-trained and looking to re-qualify) queuing up to take them.

Equally, the instruction to divest from Canadian businesses is a little bit of an empty threat. The Saudis will take a loss, other investors will pick up a bargain, and everything will likely be back where it was in terms of stock markets etc in a couple of days. The Saudi government jointly owns the holding company that bought up what was the Wheat Board, but even selling that is unlikely to make much of a difference for Canadian prairie farmers. Not as much as the previous Federal government's dismantling/selling off the Wheat Board in the first place, anyway.

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Not just Justin but some of the other Libs love dressing up, looking forward to seeing that lol

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Ah. So we're in Martin Niemoeller territory again.

First they came for the human rights activists, but I did not speak out, because I am not a human rights activist....

That's a remarkably selfish, if not nihilistic, view to take of world affairs. I disagree completely and wholeheartedly with your approach; I'm happy that the current (and, for that matter, previous) Canadian government is closer to my perspective than yours.

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I strongly suspect (confidence up well in to the 90s percent) that diplomatic representations were made, and only when they were rebuffed did Global Affairs and Chrystia Freeland put their tweets out.

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I don't doubt that that was the case but one has to question why they believed that, if the "official channels" had not worked, how using social media would.

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I thought that was the sort of thing you liked about Trump ;)

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Perhaps Freelander was (by using Twitter) playing to the domestic crowd?

I think if Canada or the UK really wanted to put their money where there mouth is they would halt military equipment sales to Saudi.

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Canada's made a mess of the certification for General Dynamics' LAV 6 sales, and tried to cover it up under "commercial confidentiality" clauses. It is pretty clear that, despite end-user certificate assurances (or whatever the equivalent is for armoured vehicles) to the contrary, they have been and are being used for suppression of civilian protest. If this has been Canada's way of ensuring that the contract is broken (presumably at the Saudis' expense) then so be it.

The previous government, of course, green-lighted the contract for over 900 vehicles, including over 100 with 105mm main armament, another batch of over 100 as "direct fire support" vehicles with 30mm cannon, as well as over 350 in personnel-carrier configuration and a bunch more ambulances, command vehicles and so on https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/can...deal-1.4579772 Trudeau's government has approved individual export shipping permits for the first batches of vehicles off the production line, starting in early 2017.

I'm not aware of any other significant arms or armaments deal between Canada and Saudi Arabia. I don't imagine there will be new ones in the offing any time soon. So in effect Canada has done exactly what you suggest...

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The LAV sale that's on now doesn't pass the Bill C-47 smell test for end use. Our government could cancel it and claim it was in violation of our law and nothing to do with this dispute, but the Saudis would just buy them from elsewhere. The old balance of power between Saudi Arabia and Iran and Israel and all the countries with civil wars courtesy of green revolutions is being re-drawn, and despite steps improving human rights for some, the regimes that keep any troublemakers chained to the wall are the ones with the firmest grip on power. Even evil pricks like Assad and Erdogan can honestly win elections by promising a degree of stability by using unsavoury tactics. What might we gain out of this? Maybe a shot at getting back on the UNSC in 2021. A lot of people were outraged at Saudi Arabia getting the chair of a 5 nation UNHRC panel a few years ago when they should really be getting sanctioned by that organisation.

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I agree with your views but the way you express them is very Saudi-ish :D

Although it was nice to see that somebody had to guts to speak up about human rights.

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Although they are now starting to move in the right direction. That's the irony in this story.

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This wasn't the result of a temper tantrum. The Saudis would have had a lot of frustrations with the Government and been planning to do this for some time, and this particular flare-up just gave them an excuse to use now as the timing. The Saudi Government exists on tribal alliances etc and the Saudis who get to study overseas would be ones with family/tribal ties and loyalties to the government in some way. It isn't just a random collection of Saudis who happened to be in Canadian universities. Displacing them wasn't done because of a tantrum and without forethought or an idea of what to do with them afterwards. This is also a good clue that the spat won't be resolved by lunchtime.

For all its proffering about how worldly they think they are, the Trudeau Government seems to have enormous difficulty when forced to think outside of Western conceptual frameworks and how their actions will play out and be interpreted beyond a few Green-Left enclaves in Toronto and Vancouver. The Government's reaction indicates they were caught surprised and flat-footed by the Saudi escalation - and now they have asked the UK and UAE to mediate? Do they really think the UAE is going to pressure the Saudis to come down, especially on this particular issue? If so - they are delusional. The UAE has no interest whatsoever in seeing a precedent where Western countries can influence Gulf Arab domestic affairs, and what benefit would it be to the UK get dragged into this? Canada has no particular influence in the Middle East. Trudeau's best play is to try and get the Americans involved, but they will see it as Trudeau stepping in his own poo, and won't mind seeing him get whacked on the nose after once again overreaching to wag his finger at the world.

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Not sure how you know all this? There seem to be thousands of Saudi's impacted in Canada alone, which suggests there are tens of thousands of 'international Saudi's' studying overseas. It must be more a random collection than a family/loyalist collection? Perhaps Freeland's tweet was inappropriate, and the focus should have remained governmental diplomatic channels, but without a doubt the reaction has been disproportionate. Pulling diplomats and citizens in protest to an off-the cuff tweet?! It's purely a temper tantrum in my view, and a signal from the new leadership that Saudi does not welcome foreign criticism in the public domain.

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Most policies on both left and right were developed during the post-WWII era, one of the easiest periods of human history, where there was enough ruin left in the system that you could afford a lot of crazy or self-destructive acts and still survive. If Trudeau had been elected even ten years ago, he would have had any easy job.

Now the system has been ruined by decades of those crazy and self-destructive acts and we're heading into one of the most dangerous periods of human history. And they have no idea what to do.

However, if Trudeau asks Trump for help, I'm sure Trump will be willing to make a deal. It just won't be one that Trudeau will like.

Edit: As for Saudi specifically, they're well aware that the oil is going to run out before long, and that is going to result in a radical change of alliances and interests. Pretty much no-one in the West will care about the country once the oil is gone, so they have little incentive to care about the West any more.

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The title says wheat, but it's really about the barley. Given the deep pockets of the Saudis they will no doubt manage to feed all their livestock anyway, but probably at a big cost.
Why boycotting Canadian wheat is likely to backfire for Saudi Arabia CBC News
Now the EU Foreign Affairs rep puts out some feelers on human rights:
https://ca.reuters.com/article/domes...BN1KW0JX-OCADN

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No idea what you're talking about. For most of "human history" (ten's of thousands of years) life has been nasty, brutish and short.

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This is largely complete tosh.

Saudi Arabia's tantrum will harm KSA much more than it harms Canada, which is after all a partner in a fairly insignificant trading relationship on both sides. While other more significant Western allies are being noncommittal on the surface, they're happy that a player without much to lose (beyond sales of a few tons of grain and a few hundred armoured vehicles) is pushing KSA into this drama.

The last thing Canada wants - or is seeking - is help from the US. The Trump administration - through Kushner's personal friendship with Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) - has kowtowed to Saudi requests at every turn, from backing out of the Iran agreement, to isolating Qatar, to pulling out of the Paris Accord. Trump and MbS have made it abundantly clear that they don't give a shit about anything but themselves.

Canada's best play here, of course, is to stand firm. The country will lose no friends over this spat. It will, however, likely gain support in the Middle East among nations opposed to Wahhabist sectarianism. It will potentially be enough to gain Canada a place on the UN Security Council in 2021, thus regaining some of the ground lost by the Harper government's succession of foreign policy faux pas which led to the embarrassment of not getting enough international votes a decade ago.

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I don't see how this will assist with the release of the people that were at the centre of the tweets and, of course, if the government really wished to send a message to KSA, they would cease all imports of oil from KSA. It won't, of course, just like it won't cease its imports of oil from the US. The current administration appears to want to lose the jobs it could obtain by allowing energy east and become more energy dependent all while maintaining that it wishes to "help the middle class."

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Strange that you should bring Energy East to this discussion. As I understand it, the cancellation of Energy East by TransCanada - a purely commercial decision by a private-sector business - was prompted by two primary considerations: first, the long-term decline in oil prices from $90+/bbl to well under $50/bbl put a significant dent in the financial viability forecasts for both Alberta and Bakken oil. This combined with increased pipeline development in Dakota led to production forecasts dropping for Alberta oil. Secondly, the resurrection by President Trump of the Keystone XL project, which had been blocked by President Obama, gave rise to a potentially more lucrative route to tidewater and already-existing port and refinery infrastructure on the Gulf coast.

I'm not sure that there's anything more the Federal government could reasonably do (aside from nationalizing the whole project, as they did with the Trans Mountain pipeline) to make TransCanada build its pipeline. The fact that the NEB seems to have grown a pair probably doesn't help, but that organization is at least nominally independent of Government, so that's no more in Trudeau's remit to persuade one way than it was in Harper's to persuade the other.

Of course, I don't live in Alberta, so I'm probably sadly misinformed about all this. I just read the news and listen to commentary from people who purport to know what they're talking about...

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Fred drift somewhat.

IIRC it went through the application process with success. Following the last election, the new administration messed around with the process such that, not only was the downstream environmental impact considered, but also the upstream impact (i.e., how the end users use of the oil would impact the environment), as a result of which it was canned.

I simply don't understand how anyone could justify importing oil from another country when there is lots that could be used in this country.

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Comparative advantage.

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How does that benefit the Canadian Government and, ultimately, the Canadian taxpayer?

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If their Emirates Airlines ends up securing those long awaited landing slots at Canadian airports then UAE has a lot to gain by mediating in this case :D

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And how do you think Trudeau (or, indeed, pretty much any modern politician) would cope in a world where life was 'nasty, brutish and short?'

Since WWII, we've lived through an economic summer, where the West was pretty much unopposed economically, half of the population of the planet was enslaved under communism, keeping them out of the workforce, and governments could promise anything to buy votes, then fund it with borrowed money. Even when those promises were actively harmful to their society--as most of them were, by their very nature--our ancestors spent centuries building social capital which the politicians could squander.

So most modern politicians grew up the equivalent of happy, fluffy bunnies on a nice, sunny day eating in a field of fresh grass with a big fence to keep the wolves away. Over time, the days might get shorter, the grass might start to turn brown, the fence might rust, the wolves might stick their jaws through the broken strands in the wire, but the bunnies were fat and happy, so why should they care?

Now economic winter is coming as the free money and social capital dry up. And it may turn out more like an economic Ice Age, since AI and automation will be taking away many of the jobs at the same time.

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In Saskatoon winter is always coming.

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Hmmm. We're on the same page re AI and automation, but none the wiser with all the other metaphors. There is still plenty of economic opportunity in the developed world.