 During the French-language leaders' debate, Michael Ignatieff, the leader of Canada's Liberal party, was adamant that he'd let the United Nations Security Council make the final call on whether to send Canadian troops abroad.
"The Canadian army must never be used outside the country without the authorization of the UN," he told his debate partners.
When asked later if he really wanted to give Beijing and Moscow that kind of power over Canadian policy, Ignatieff chuckled and said, "That's a very funny construction to put on my words."
He then admitted there could be exceptions.
| So he had to backtrack after realizing that the 'funny construction' essentially cedes Canadian sovereignty... |
"Canada has always believed as a matter of international law, since the creation of the UN in 1945, that the use of force in international affairs should be authorized by the Security Council of the United Nations. And when you can't get authorization from the Security Council of the United Nations, you'd better have an extremely good case in which you can use force. There have been cases. Let's be perfectly honest, in Kosovo, where international authorization for the use of force was not granted."
| So you're saying that Kosovo was wrong? |
Another example is the intervention in Iraq, an action Ignatieff once supported.
| He was for it before he was against it... |
But the Liberal leader hasn't always been enthusiastic about the UN. In Maclean's magazine he was quoted as saying in June, 2003: "Well, the UN screwed up in Rwanda, it screwed up in Bosnia -- it screws up most of the time. The United Nations is a messy, wasteful, log-rolling organization."
| But let's let them decide when we should go to war... |
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