Canada will seek to regain a seat on the UN Security Council in 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday in an announcement at the organization’s headquarters in NY.
Advertisement
Canada has held a seat on the prestigious 15-member council six times but not since 2000.
Trudeau, who assumed his role as Prime Minister last November, will deliver his first Budget on 22 March.
At the end of February, the Canadian government reached its goal of accepting 25,000 Syrian refugees.
The council decides when and where a United Nations peacekeeping operation is deployed.
“Protecting vulnerable populations, leading on the world’s stage and engaging on some of this era’s greatest challenges – this is the Canada of today, this is how we build the world of tomorrow”, Trudeau told reporters and diplomats during a visit to the United Nations in NY.
“For my generation and younger, it’s all sort of a “duh”, said Trudeau.
The former prime minister told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that year the country’s aging population may “undermine” economic growth without reforms to the country’s pension systems.
The 193 members of the U.N. General Assembly won’t vote on the seat Canada is pursuing until the fall of 2020. The interviewer pressed him – what possible common ground could the Canadian progressive find with an American Republican talking about walls and ripping up trade deals and banning Muslim visitors to the U.S.?
United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said late Wednesday that the initial statement was an early draft sent by mistake “that did not properly reflect” the discussion between Trudeau and Ban.
Terms last two years and the country withdrew a bid in 2010 when it became clear that there was not enough support to regain a spot.
The 44-year old Liberal leader says that calling himself a feminist simply means “I believe in the equality of men and women”.
Advertisement
He says he and his government are working to make Parliament more family friendly, saying it’s time to update an institution that he says was designed for old, white guys.
