“I’ve been to London to see the Queen.”
And that was it. Our fealty assured, Prime Minister Trudeau went on to Downing Street to meet the guy who really runs things in England. These meetings were scheduled ahead of the Malta meeting of the heads of the British Commonwealth of Nations. There is little time there for anything more than a pro forma ‘Hello’ in Malta. There are more important fish to fry in that venue.
The objective is to restore Canada as a leader in not only the Commonwealth but in world politics. Hobnobbing with the Queen in that meeting would be a waste of valuable face time with key United Nations contacts who are also members of the Commonwealth. It is also a good bounce pad to arrive fresh and relaxed at the Paris climate change conference.
And Trudeau is no royalist in any event. As a Quebecer, he is ambivalent to the Queen. On meeting her (he was a lot younger last time they met) he was probably thinking “Nice old lady—so this is today’s British Empire!”
Mind you, she complained mildly when answering the toast he was asked to make to her at a Commonwealth dinner that he was making her seem old. The time has long gone when the monarch could say “Off with his head.”
The facts are that there really has not been a British Empire since Prime Minister David Lloyd George left Whitehall after the First World War. What Winston Churchill had left for the Second World War was mainly bluster. It was the Americans, Canadians and allies who supplied and fed the Brits during that war and joined them in sacrificing their young on the battlefields.
What Prime Minister David Cameron knew when he met with Trudeau in London was that the Canadian had no interest in supporting more bombing of Iraq and Syria. He knew better than to ask Trudeau to keep Canadian planes there to support Old Blighty.
And Trudeau had a plan ready to impress the gathering of Commonwealth members by offering more money towards the fight against global warming. He could then go on to the Paris climate conference with a broad array of Commonwealth countries already in his corner. Justin Trudeau has done more for Canada’s foreign relations in the past month than Stephen Harper could do in nine years.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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