Canada will ‘engage’ with Saudi Arabia, won’t change position on human rights: Trudeau
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government wants to improve its relationship with Saudi Arabia, but will not sacrifice Canada’s position on human rights while doing so. Trudeau made the comments a little over a week after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia suspended diplomatic relations with Canada and expelled the Canadian ambassador after a series of tweets from the Canadian government criticizing the arrest of some social activists there. “We continue to engage diplomatically, but as I’ve said, Canada will always be very clear on standing up for human rights,” Trudeau said. “We will make sure that message is clear in public and private. But of course we look to improve relations while remaining firm in our values,” he added. Saudi Arabia has since taken steps to cancel the scholarships of nearly 15,000 Saudi students studying at Canadian colleges and universities, stop the Saudi state airline’s direct flights to and from Canada, block new trade deals with Canadian businesses and ban the import of Canadian wheat. A spokesman for Freeland said, another call from Freeland herself is not scheduled but is not out of the question. The government has, however, remained tight-lipped about former Conservative foreign minister John Baird’s suggestion that Canada was wrong to issue the “hectoring tweets” and that Trudeau should fly to Riyadh to apologize in person “For Canada to treat a friend and ally this way has been tremendously unhelpful and disappointing,” Baird said in an interview on Saudi’s state-owned broadcaster Al Arabiya. If Canada had concerns it should have raised them directly with Saudi Arabia, not in public, he added. “We had respectful discussions face to face, not hectoring tweets,” Baird said of his direct relationship with the government during his tenure at Foreign Affairs. Baird himself was publicly critical of the Saudi Arabian government’s treatment of activist blogger Raif Badawi in 2012, after Badawi was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for promoting secularism and freedom of religion. “This punishment is a violation of human dignity and freedom of expression, and we call for clemency in this case,” Baird said in a statement issued by the government. -PTC News
