Bill Kelly: Canada’s complicated peacekeeping role

At first blush, it’s easy to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau‘s commitment to UN peacekeeping, just by the numbers alone.

During the election campaign, Trudeau had promised 600 Canadian soldiers would be allocated to United Nations peacekeeping roles and Wednesday’s announcement of only about 200 falls way short of that promise, although there was a vague reference to getting to the promised 600 troops eventually.

Critics will chalk that up as another failed campaign promise and the government will have to deal with that in the political arena.

But given the history of UN peacekeeping, there may be merit in treading cautiously before Canadian troops don the blue helmets for the UN.

Canadians have headed up peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia and Rwanda and many other missions.

2:59 Dissecting Trudeau’s peacekeeping promises

• Dissecting Trudeau’s peacekeeping promises
• Trudeau says Canada will deploy more women to peacekeeping missions
• Trudeau: Canada must be flexible to meet modern UN peacekeeping needs
• Trudeau: Canada will live up to UN peacekeeping expectations
• Trudeau’s peacekeeping promise offers few specifics

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Have we forgotten how totally frustrated and even angered Canadian troops became because of the bureaucratic red tape and incompetence of the UN leadership?

In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find too many examples of successful UN peacekeeping operations of late.

As the saying goes, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

Maybe it’s time for the UN to take a different and more effective approach to their peacekeeping responsibility.

Downsizing Canada’s troop commitment was wrong, but the proposed deployment strategy may just be the better way for Canada and the UN.

Bill Kelly is the host of Bill Kelly Show on AM 900 CHML and a commentator for Global News