Canada's Foreign Policy Blunder Dooms Those It Meant to Help

Nobody in the mainstream media will say it but Canada's momentous blunder, an ill-thought-out tweet calling out Saudi Arabia on human rights issues will turn out disastrously for those it meant to help.
If Donald Trump has taught us anything, it is that Twitter is just about the worst tool that politicians can use to communicate government policy.

Why Canada's mainstream media is shying away from reproducing the Tweet, I don't know, but try searching for the tweet yourself and you'll not find the original on the CBC, CTV or mainstream newspapers.
It seems the tweet is as toxic as the Danish cartoons of the profit Mohammed that had the Muslim world in an uproar and led to the murder of several journalists.

I am publishing the original so that readers can see what is arguably the tweet with the worst negative consequences in the history of the platform.

Worst of all, the tweet and this tweet by Canada's Foreign Minister has all but condemned those whom it was trying to free.

Samar Badawi and Raif Badawi can take little comfort in the Canadian government's stupid attempt to pressure the Kingdom and can now look forward to their situation getting much, much worse.
And in Saudi Arabia, much, much worse is really much, much worse.

How Canada's foreign affairs department can so badly under-estimate the reaction to their tweet is a testament to the amateurs who run foreign affairs who believe that lecturing and hectoring dictatorships can effectively cough up positive results.

Saudi Arabia is the Beverly Hillbillies of nations, a country of autocratic religious yahoos who inherited a fortune à la Jed Clampett.

 Do Canada's idiots at foreign affairs actually believe their lectures about human rights will sway a country that has no shame in putting up a sign like this which underlines its policy that non-Muslims are actually barred from the country's 'holy' cities of Mecca and Medina?

We must have the dumbest foreign affairs department in the world, filled with dough-headed liberal dilettantes who believe that Canadian liberal values apply to the entire world and that their inflated self-importance will have a significant influence.
Canada's allies are laughing their asses off at our utter stupidity and amateurness. They have told us in no uncertain terms that they won't back Canada's play in condemning the Saudi government over human rights. None of them wants to bet on such a losing hand, so don't expect any statements of support from our allies.

Instead of attempting the impossible task of lecturing a dogmatic, ultra-religious and anti-democratic country like Saudi Arabia into changing, perhaps we should better spend our capital on warning Canadians that travel to the Kingdom is hazardous to those who want to embarrass the government.
It's like a bear-trap, better to avoid than to extricate from.

At any rate, I'm happy about the whole fiasco because it is another huge embarrassment for the Trudeau liberals who can be rightfully humiliated for making a bad situation infinitely worse.
I do feel bad for the detained, they are sadly collateral damage caused by the Liberal government incompetence.

As for Saudi Arabia's reaction, restricting trade between our countries, calling back students and hospital patients and cancelling flights to Toronto, we should shrug off the moves as utterly unimportant.

Canada's trade with Saudi Arabia is negligible and the one huge contract for military vehicles now in place was not cancelled by the Saudis because of its importance to them.

The media may be aghast over the announced reprisals but the truth is that these measures hurt them worse than us.
The threat to stop buying grain from Canada is hollow because they haven't bought any in a long time, replacing us with a cheaper alternative from China.

The announcement that flights by its national airline to Toronto are being cancelled is also a ho-hum measure because none of the flights were nonstop and if you have to make a stop anyway, you can pick a flight there from anywhere in Europe.

At any rate, flying on Saudia is a bit off-putting with the slogan 'God Bless You' plastered on the nose of the aircraft, knowing the Kingdom's opinion of infidels.


As for the situation whereby medical doctors from Saudi Arabia get their training here and then work as indentured servants as residents, it is repugnant.
If Canada cannot train and pay its own doctors we are truly losers of the first magnitude.
The 4,000 places held by Saudis over the years in medical schools rob Canadians of the opportunity to become doctors and even with the inflated tuition rates the Saudis pay, we still underwrite their education in exchange for a couple of years of meagre-paid service in our hospitals. It is a deal with the devil.
The same goes for Saudi patients using our hospital facilities. No matter what they pay it isn't enough. They come here for treatment because it is cheaper than in the USA.  Good riddance.

As for the 15,000 Saudi university students studying in Canada who are paying full tuition, Canadian taxpayers still underwrite their education.
Let's do a little math for those claiming foreign students are a benefit to our universities.
McGill University has an annual operating budget of $1.3 billion dollars. Split among its 40,000 students, it comes out to about $30,000 spent on each student. Saudi undergraduate students pay about $20,000 for tuition and Saudi post-graduate students pay about $10,000 in tuition.
By the way, these fees include full Medicare coverage.
The foreign students also have the benefit of the infrastructure paid for and built up over the years by Canadian taxpayers and the benefit of the billion dollar endowment fund.
We lose $10,000 to $15,000 for every foreign student enrolled, so good riddance.

As for selling off Canadian assets by the Saudi treasury, it is again no big deal. They own little.

Perhaps the silver lining in all this is oil, which the Saudis have not said they will stop shipping.
If they do, it will demonstrate Canada's vulnerability and hasten the construction of the pipeline to eastern Canada.
One can only hope!