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There’s a heap of humbug too in the Liberal claim that the Harper government’s lack of enthusiasm for UN peacekeeping operations could not have come at a worse time because the demand for blue helmets had “never been greater.” You don’t have to be a too-avid student of history to be aware that what the UN wanted most from Canada during the Harper decade was hard-headed fighting troops in Afghanistan, where blue helmets had no purpose to serve.

According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, the UN’s “number one” problem with peacekeeping at the moment involves the impunity demanded by Congolese, Pakistani and Nigerian generals when their blue-helmeted heroes are found to be raping and murdering the people they’re supposed to be protecting in the Central African Republic, Haiti, Mali and other such hellholes.

What threatens the United Nations more than anything else, as has been most obscenely evident in the Syrian tragedy, is that the UN Charter assigns responsibility for international peace and security to the 15-member UN Security Council. Five UNSC members — the primary victors from the death heaps of the Second World War — hold veto power over UNSC decisions. Britain, the United States and France are democracies, but Russia and China are not. They are police states.

Even though Russia has approved UNSC resolutions prohibiting the mass murder of civilians in Syria, for instance, Vladimir Putin has only turned around to join in the slaughter. Russian warplanes have killed at least 600 Syrian civilians since Putin’s bombs started falling in September.

Efforts to reform the UNSC — to break the minority veto power, and to make the council more effectively representative of the world’s peoples, among other things — have been ongoing since the early 1990s. If Prime Minister Trudeau would want Canada to make a genuine contribution to the UN, then whining about the absence of the Maple Leaf as a UNSC table ornament won’t do.

Canada should set its sights on reform, working with other democracies, most obviously India, on that agenda. If we really want to “punch above our weight,” we should start there, at the top.

Terry Glavin is a Victoria writer.