Steve Speaks at the UN

Which world issue impacts the relevance of the UN the most these days? Well, if you're Steve Harper, it's the mission in Afghanistan - which he spent half of his time speechifying about on Thursday. Considering the fact that there's genocide going on in Sudan as we speak, I think the people in Darfur would strongly disagree with that belief but they, the Haitians, and the residents of the Middle East were just worthy of footnotes in his speech.

Harper's quick, bland, Bush Lite speech (video) to the UN could have been an opportunity for this new prime minister to actually have an impact beyond the 30 second soundbites he'll now receive in the global press. Instead, he played it safe and puppeted Bush and John Bolton.

Canada has had a unique reputation on the world stage when past leaders who spoke with passion about our Canadian values addressed the UN in such a way that the world community actually cared enough to listen. Harper is about as exciting as melba toast and if he expects anyone to pay attention to him, he needs to step out of his boring comfort zone. Take a look at how he suggested UN reforms:

Harper also challenged the pace of change at the UN and said it needs to become more accountable -- pointing to his own government's steps to improve accountability as a good example for the body to follow.

Yeah...good example...the Cons are so dedicated to secrecy, invasion of privacy and outright arrogance, evidenced by the fact that Steve seems to believe that other world leaders are actually paying attention to what his government is doing in Canada, that he thinks making such a comparison would serve as some sort of inspiration to the UN? Not bloody likely. And frankly, if they do follow Canada's current example of governance not much will actually change at the UN as it is.