Angry in the Great White North

It's nice to see Canada taking a leading role.

When Jason Kenney announced that Canada would not lend its considerable credibility to Durban II, the UN was upset:

Canada was the first country to publicly back out of the conference. On January 23, Jason Kenney, Canada’s secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity announced that the so-called Durban II conference “has gone completely off the rails.”

“Our considered judgment, having participated in the preparatory meetings, was that we were set for a replay of Durban I. And Canada has no intention of lending its good name and resources to such a systematic promotion of hatred and bigotry,” he told the Canadian media.

The U.N. declined to comment directly on Canada pulling out of the conference, but U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said “racism is too important an issue for member states not to work out their differences.”

Now the UN will have to work out the "differences" with the United States as well:

In a major blow to an upcoming United Nations anti-racism conference, the United States has decided to not participate, out of concern it would stir up the anti-Israel sentiments that marked the first such conference, the Forward has learned.

“We are concerned about the structure and the development of the follow-up conference,” Richard Grenell, the chief spokesman for the U.S. mission to the U.N., told the Forward on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the NDP is spinning in circles on this:

Two NDP critics released a statement last week saying the same thing. However, the statement from Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar and Human Rights critic Wayne Marston was taken off the party's website soon afterward.

"There's discussions going on within our caucus," Mr. Marston said Monday. "I think that [original] position got moved out a little too quickly."

Mr. Marston said his view is that Canada should work within the UN system to ensure it is pushing its position ahead.

"We should do things on the inside," he said. "When you have a UN functioning organization or program or anything where you have the UN taking a lead, I think it's important for us to sustain the UN and ensure that the process is upfront and not hijacked."

NDP leader Jack Layton said Monday the party is "urging the Canadian government now to try to ensure that an anti-racism under the auspices of the UN actually happens."

Recall that the NDP was quite clear in supporting the government, but then removed the announcement of that support within hours.

But even as that is going on, a post on rabble suggests that the official NDP position is still in support of the government:

I had contacted both my MP Olivia Chow and the national party and got no response. So today I decided to swing by Olivia's constituency office. The answer that I got was that the NDP supports the Government on this issue (and that they hadn't heard anything about the Dewar/Marston statement being removed from the website).

If the attitude of the NDP is anything to go by, I'd say a lot of countries will send delegations to this conference, not out of conviction, but because of confusion.