National Post columnist Terry Glavin’s attack against the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute highlights the current standards of right-wing commentary in the country. In “Trudeau combats Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with Operation Photo-Op,” Glavin gets basic facts wrong, including the location, event name and funding wrong for an organization he accuses of promoting the perspective of Washington’s official enemies.
In an effort to link the Trudeau government and military to our recent webinar on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Glavin bemoans, “the grant money the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces’ brass have been doling out to the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute (CFPI) — a peculiar Ottawa think-tank with an overweening interest in telling the other side of the story, as these things are often described — the ‘side’ of the story that Beijing, Tehran and Moscow want you to believe.”
CFPI is based in Montréal, not Ottawa, and we have never received a cent from Canada’s Armed Forces. Unlike most of Canada’s internationally focused think tanks, CFPI is financially independent of DND, Global Affairs, corporate Canada or any rich benefactor. As a result, our resources are limited but we have fewer constraints in raising ideas that challenge power.
Perhaps having difficulty with the copy and paste function, Glavin even gets the simplest detail wrong. The title of the event he complained about was “Cutting Through the Spin: Russia’s invasion, NATO’s provocation and Canada’s complicity,” not “A discussion on Russia’s invasion, NATO’s provocation, the economic interests & Canada’s complicity in escalating the crisis.”
Unfortunately, some believe Glavin’s misinformation. One such individual emailed us and asked, “What is an extreme left, authoritarian hugging, vestige of the glory days of Stalinist/Maoist thought doing being funded by the Canadian government? What right do you have to take hard-earned money from Canadian taxpayers to write love letters to Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, and distribute propaganda supporting their regimes? What right do you have to use Canadian government money to support Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine and to call for Canada to withdraw its support of the Ukraine and withdraw support of NATO. You disgust me, plain and simple.”
For the record, CFPI hasn’t written “love letters” to anyone and believes that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a flagrant violation of international law. Russia’s violence must be condemned, and at the same time the Canadian government’s contribution to this calamitous situation shouldn’t be ignored.
Since the early 1990s, Canada has pushed to expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep despite promises to Soviet officials not to do so. Now 600 Canadian troops lead a semi-permanent NATO mission in Latvia on Russia’s doorstep.
Alongside expanding NATO, the US has stationed aggressive weapon systems in Eastern Europe and maintains nuclear weapons across the continent. After refusing to support a December 2018 UN resolution “Strengthening Russian-United States Compliance with Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty,” Canadian officials blamed Russia when the Donald Trump administration withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which banned an entire class of nuclear weapons.
Most directly, Canada played a role in today’s tensions by contributing to the 2014 overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, which precipitated an eight-year war in the east of the country that’s left 14,000 dead. In fact, the Canadian embassy in Kyiv was used by anti-government protesters, including members of the far right, for a week in the lead up to Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster. Additionally, as The Canadian Press reported, the Canadian embassy’s spokesperson was a leader of the anti-Yanukovych protest movement.
Ottawa has responded to Russia’s criminal invasion by offering up some $100 million in new arms, including anti-tank weapons to Ukraine. Instead of pouring in more weapons, Canada should push to negotiate a way out of the conflict. The alternative is evermore Ukrainians dying and the growing possibility of cataclysmic nuclear war.
During war it takes courage to press for diplomacy. CFPI believes that in addition to condemning Russia’s invasion, Canada should declare its opposition to the expansion of NATO, call on the US to withdraw nuclear weapons from Europe and push for Ukraine to adopt the Minsk agreements to resolve the eight-year conflict in the east of the country. As such, CFPI recently sponsored a letter writing campaign calling on MPs to support these demands instead of further militarization.
During these unsettling times, CFPI will continue to push for peace, diplomacy, demilitarization and de-escalation of war even if it leads to bizarre attacks from National Post columnists whose disregard for plain facts is visible for all to read.
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