Trudeau tells UN summit Canada will stand up for human rights at home, abroad

Trudeau is also hoping to reverse a recent trend of being locked out of one of the temporary seats on the UN Security Council.

The Security Council has 15 members: five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — and 10 non-permanent members that are chosen in rotating elections.

With nearly two years to go until the 2021 UN Security Council election vote, there are three candidates: Ireland, Norway and Canada.

Until 2000, Canada had secured a seat on the Security Council in each decade of the UN’s existence, never losing a bid, but that changed when Stephen Harper’s government attempted the feat in 2010.

A pattern of voting

Then, as now, Canada and two European countries (Germany and Portugal) were competing for two spots.

Germany won the necessary two-thirds majority in the first round. During the second round, Portugal was so far ahead of Canada that the Harper government instructed its diplomats to withdraw to avoid a humiliating loss.

The votes Canada cast in support of Israel — sometimes as part of a minority made up of the U.S., Canada, the Jewish state itself and a few tiny Polynesian and Melanesian islands that generally allow the U.S. to dictate their UN votes — alienated a larger bloc of nations.

The Trudeau government has continued that voting pattern.

$20M for infrastructure group

Later in the day, Trudeau announced that Canada would be contributing $20 million to the Global Infrastructure Hub — a move that would establish Toronto as the centre of the organization’s North American operations.

The hub was created by the G20 in 2014 to support public and private investment in infrastructure in both the developing and industrialized world.

With a head office based in Sydney, Australia, the hub will use $5 million of the funding to establish a global centre for infrastructure excellence that will be tasked with making sure investments deliver “sustainable infrastructure that benefits everyone.”

“Our investment will open up new ways to share Canadian expertise, connect large investors to opportunities at home and abroad, and help the GI Hub continue to develop the resilient, sustainable infrastructure that communities need worldwide,” Trudeau said in a statement.

It later emerged that Trudeau would not hold a bilateral meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, despite a number of other world leaders getting such a meeting.

John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, later explained that Trump had many requests for meetings and could not accommodate them all.

“It’s always possible here in New York that they would have time for a pull-aside, as we call it. But there is full and open, complete communication between Prime Minister Trudeau and President Trump. That I can assure you,” Bolton said.