What is wrong with Canada’s foreign relations is more than explained by the friendship of India Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Patrick Brown MP. Yes, that is Patrick Brown, the most useless member of the Conservative back bench and the candidate for the leadership of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party. With probably less than 50 people in his electoral district from India, Patrick Brown must have been left among the final MP draftees for a country on the friendship committee.
Brown got India. The air flights there are gruelling. The food there is, well, foreign. You can imagine that India was nobody’s first choice. Pakistan must have been added because nobody wanted it either. You have to admit though that where others see hardship, Brown must have seen lemonade.
With more than 400,000 newcomers to Ontario from the sub-continent, Brown had no problem swamping the Ontario PCs existing membership. It makes him the frontrunner in the current provincial leadership contest.
But what do you think a wily Indian politician such as Prime Minister Modi would want from a nebbish like Patrick Brown? What Brown can be is a direct connection to Canada’s Prime Minister Harper. Modi needed a reliable source of uranium for India’s nuclear energy and weapons program. He was able to get around the concerns and caution of Canada’s diplomatic corps by using the Brown connection.
With more than 1.2 billion people, India is the most populous democracy in the world. It is a country rife with poverty, political corruption, misogynist attitudes, sectarian violence and religious extremism. And Mr. Modi has been of little help in solving these problems as he drives for continued, strong growth in India’s gross domestic product. His right wing attitudes have been read as condoning ongoing religious intolerance and strife.
India is an extremely complex country with many pressures. It requires the careful analysis of people trained in diplomatic skills, not the heavy-handed wants of a nerdy small-town lawyer from Barrie, Ontario. Nor does it need the Prime Minister of India’s blessing the signing up of some 40,000 immigrants from the sub-continent to help Brown win the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leadership.
Of course Prime Minister Harper has no objection. MPs such as Brown are a dime a dozen. All he was ever used for was his vote. What the Ontario Tories will use him for is a very good question.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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