“It is at times of tension like these,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday, after Iran admitted that one of its missiles had shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752, “that tragedies like this crash can happen.”
Before concluding his prepared remarks, Trudeau also said that Iran must take “full responsibility” for the tragedy.
It’s possible, in a nuanced world, for those ideas to co-exist. But these are difficult days for nuance.
From the moment it became clear that the aircraft had been shot out of the sky, there have been questions about whether U.S. President Donald Trump, in ordering the targeted killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, shares some of the responsibility for the tragedy of PS752. Trudeau has been pursued by those questions.
As tempting as it might be to point fingers, a debate over blame right now might risk obscuring a larger lesson about international conflict.
The most prominent Canadian blaming Trump right now is the chief executive officer of Maple Leaf Foods, Michael McCain. He tweeted on Sunday about the “irresponsible, dangerous, ill-conceived behaviour” of “a narcissist in Washington.” American commentator David Frum had made a similar argument days earlier.
..A narcissist in Washington tears world accomplishments apart; destabilizes region. US now unwelcomed everywhere in the area including Iraq; tensions escalated to feverish pitch. Taking out despicable military leader terrorist? There are a hundred like him, standing next in line
Asked about McCain’s comments on Monday, Trudeau stopped short of explicitly pointing at any specific action or actor.
“I think if there were no tensions, if there was no escalation recently in the region, those Canadians would be right now home with their families,” he told Global National. “This is something that happens when you have conflict and … war. Innocents bear the brunt of it. And it is a reminder why all of us need to work so hard on de-escalation, on moving forward to reduce tensions and find a pathway that doesn’t involve further conflict and killing.”
The prime minister’s reference to recent escalation might sound like a comment on the targeted killing of Soleimani. But Soleimani’s death happened after Iran’s associates had acted to escalate the conflict with the United States — with an airstrike that killed an American contractor in December and with the crowd of protesters who stormed the American embassy in Baghdad.
A crisis with no single catalyst
Trudeau also has pointed out that the conflict in the region is not a recent development. “The reality is there have been significant tensions in that region for a long time,” the prime minister said Saturday.
Politically, it might be difficult for any Western leader to single out the United States for blame. Practically, it also would be difficult to identify an indisputable starting point for the sequence of events that led to the deaths of 57 Canadian citizens last week.
If Soleimani hadn’t been killed by the Americans, Iranian defence forces might not have been primed to shoot a plane out of the sky. But a long chain of actions and reactions in the region, spanning decades, led up to Soleimani’s demise.
“Assigning blame publicly is an extremely political thing,” said Thomas Juneau, a professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa and a former analyst at the Department of National Defence.
Iranians march with a banner bearing an portrait of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Major General Qassem Soleimani during an anti-U.S. demonstration in Tehran on January 3, 2020. (Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)
Had Trump chosen not to order Soleimani’s death, he said, PS752 probably wouldn’t have been shot down. “But why did the U.S. kill Soleimani? Because Iran launched its Shia militias in Iraq to attack the American embassy in Baghdad.
“You could move backwards until 1979 and the [Iranian] revolution. If you really want to have a bunch of academics in the room, they will go back to 1953, when the U.S. supported a coup in Iran. This is a very difficult exercise.”
If you see Trump’s order as rash and reckless, you’re likely all the more tempted to blame him for everything that happened after. If you view Soleimani’s death as justified and ultimately productive, you might be less inclined to connect it with what followed.
While the post-crash investigation may produce details that complicate our understanding of what led to this disaster, it ultimately could be difficult to completely divorce the American action from the wider pattern of regional escalation.
But one thing, at least, is indisputable: an Iranian rocket killed 176 civilians, many of them Canadians. Iran is responsible for that. Iran must account for it. And Iran almost certainly will be called on to provide compensation for the families of those who died.
Part of the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 near the village of Hrabove, Donetsk region, on July 20, 2014. (Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)
Trudeau’s comments about what can happen to non-combatants at a time of heightened political tension and conflict echo the words offered by U.S. President Barack Obama in 2014 after a Russian missile brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) over Ukraine.
“Now is, I think, a sombre and appropriate time for all of us to step back and take a hard look at what has happened,” Obama said, long before anyone had reason to blame Donald Trump for much of anything. “Violence and conflict inevitably lead to unforeseen consequences.”
Ten civilian flights shot down since Second World War
As Stephen Saideman, a professor at Carleton University’s Paterson School of International Affairs, noted last week, PS752 and MH17 are just two of at least ten civilian flights that have been shot down since the end of the Second World War. Most of those disasters, Saideman argued, occurred outside of a climate of open warfare, when tensions between two or more countries were running especially high.
Given how much of the last 80 years nations have spent in one state of armed tension or another, it might be argued that tragedies like PS752 are effectively rare. But the innocent lives lost and damaged by the destruction of PS752 can also be viewed in the wider context of the unforeseen, but inevitable, events that surround any military conflict.
“When conflict comes, when situations escalate, there are collateral victims, there is collateral damage. In this case, remember that most of the collateral damage is innocent Iraqi civilians, innocent Iranian civilians. But in this case, it happened by a string of very unlucky coincides that it included 57 Canadians,” Juneau said.
“When states go to war, academics will tell you that there is a tendency to neglect, in the calculus leading to the decision, the costs of war. And the costs of war are extremely unpredictable. They are unforeseeable in many ways … We should foresee that there will be unforeseen consequences.”
That lesson might risk getting lost in the back-and-forth over Trump’s actions and responsibility.
Speaking at a memorial for victims of PS752 in Edmonton on Sunday, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney — a former Conservative defence minister — offered an assessment that lines up with the words of both Trudeau and Obama.
“Whether their lives were taken by incompetence, by accident, or by design, we know everyone aboard that plane were victims of a chain of actions rooted in the all-too-human failure to resolve conflicts peacefully,” he said.
Among the consequences of this dark moment in Canadian and world history might be a sharper understanding of the risks inherent in any nation’s decision to go to war — and the suffering that inevitably reaches well beyond those who do the actual fighting.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
