Mark Kersten, professor of criminal justice, University of the Fraser Valley: I think that our world—for lots of different reasons—is full of double standards.
But I think there’s just this huge gap between the way that Canada presents itself as fighting against that and the fact that on so many occasions, it actually furthers those double standards.
And I think there’s two egregious examples of that.
Palestine is one, Israel-Palestine, the fact that Canada has never supported an investigation by the ICC, and in fact, attacked the International Criminal Court previously for its investigations in Palestine.
And its now meandering, non-committal support of the International Court of Justice.
So that’s one, and I think it just evokes a clear set of double standards when Canada is doing the exact opposite in relation to Ukraine, and indeed, in Myanmar.
In the Myanmar case over alleged genocide against the Rohingya, Canada actually said a lot of really interesting and important things.
It said, for example, that genocide is not just the killing of people. It’s not just this pageantry of mass murder, it is also starvation.
And so a lot of people have said, “Look, if you wanted to, you could just copy and paste that and put it into a case supporting South Africa,” if indeed Canada wanted to, because the point that South Africa is making is the same.
Yes, there are killings, there’s a horrific number of people dead. But I think if you read their filing, the real core central issue is this structural, systemic violence through the siege, through the blockade, and so on and so forth, that has led to people dying through things like starvation, or otherwise things that they would survive from: clean water, etc. They just don’t have it.
Obviously, the second thing that I think exposes Canada’s double standards—and it’s for another conversation some other time—is of course, that we have yet to address or remedy the genocide that Canada has committed here against Indigenous peoples.
When I went to journalism school 10 years ago, my parents thought that they would eventually read my articles in The Montreal Gazette. Today, that newspaper is a husk of its former self. But I get to explain that I’m working towards critical, independent, and sustainable journalism.
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