Free Republic

Iran is the "most significant" threat to world peace and security, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday after the US accused Tehran of plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington. "We have no quarrel with the Iranian people, but the regime in Tehran represents probably the most significant threat in the world to global peace and security," Harper said. This week, Canada's Foreign Minister John Baird said Ottawa and its partners were considering "consequences" for Iran over the alleged plot.

Dear Canadian Prime Minister Harper When it comes to the Middle East, too often there’s been an inability to distinguish between the despot and the democrat, the arsonist and the firefighter, among those who should know better. Too often the politics of principle have yielded to expediency, and truth has been thrown to the wind. And too often moral courage has been trumped by moral ambiguity at best, cowardice at worst. Of moral courage, Mark Twain wrote 110 years ago in reply to an inquiring newspaper editor: My Dear Sir, But you are proceeding upon the superstition that Moral Courage...

Monday’s federal election may well turn out to be historic for all kinds of reasons that were not obvious when it was called five weeks ago today. Unless the pollsters have totally misread the mood of the voters, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives look to be heading for another victory. As we said on Friday, that would be bad for the country. The last thing Canada needs is an affirmation of a government obsessed with control, dismissive of critics, and determined to further diminish the role of the state in charting a better future for the country. Voters who believe that Canada...

On the face of things, it would be difficult to find two countries as different from each other as Canada and Israel. Canada is the second largest country in the world and enjoys a wealth of natural resources, while Israel is short on both resources and space. Canada has been living peacefully with its neighbors and has had friendly relations with most of the international community, while Israel is under threats from many fronts. In Canada, minorities have integrated into a quilt of multiculturalism. In Israel, sectoral tensions are only increasing. Canadians are notorious for their politeness, Israelis for their...

The Arab rejection of the Jewish state has been the main obstacle for peace in the region. Canada is right to give Israel our diplomatic support. Perhaps no foreign-policy file, apart from Canada’s bilateral relationship with the United States, stirs more domestic controversy than Ottawa’s role in the Middle East, particularly under the present stewardship of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Critics view the strong public support Harper and his ministers have given Israel since 2006 as undermining Canada’s long-standing balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab conflict. For Harper’s critics, the troubling reality is that Ottawa has abandoned the constructive role of...

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today issued the following statement marking the anniversary of Iran’s 2009 presidential election, which precipitated a serious deterioration in the country’s human rights situation: “One year ago, in the wake of Iran’s presidential elections, the world bore witness to the Iranian regime’s violent repression of its citizens, who were exercising their right to freedom of expression and assembly in protest against the conduct of those elections. “Iran has made absolutely no progress in the last year toward addressing the legitimate aspirations of its people. In fact, its regime has been even more repressive. Iran’s continued, blatant...