Another story making news today; the United Arab Emirates is evicting Canada from Camp Mirage and according to Mike Ignatieff, this is a story about the incompetence of our government. What's at the heart of the story is that Dubai and Abu Dhabi have purchased hundreds of large commercial passenger jets and are seeking expanded landing rights at airports across the world. Evidently they are not satisfied with the status quo and are using the only real leverage they have to extract a better deal. So should we be allowing more UAE jets to land in Canada in exchange for being allowed to rent Camp Mirage? I'm sure that if we are there, we are already paying them some form of benefit.
There are plenty of NATO bases around the world that we can use to stage our withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011. We don't need to use that base and I don't think we should respond with concessions to them refusing to allow our Minister of Defense and top General to land at a base where there were Canadian troops. I think Canadian airspace should be closed to "Air Dubai", as direct flights to and from the UAE is not something that Canadians need. For those who want to travel there, you can catch a connecting flight from Europe, no big deal. Once a country decides to refuse our military leadership to land at a base where there are Canadian soldiers and personnel in order to get better landing rights for their fleet of commercial airliners, we should withdraw from the base immediately.
We have a trading relationship at 1.5 billion annually the best in the middle east.
ReplyDeleteThe UAE has been trying to secure extra landing rights regarding commercial travel. The timing by UAE leverage is to affect our planned draw down of our forces in Afghanistan.
The UAE were running out of options in negotiating an expansion of commercial and this will result in extra cost/time for Canada.
Again opposition piling on ignoring the extra costs and impact to Canada. It appears Liberals will accept foreign investment if it can be used against the government.
I don't know enough about the negotiations of expanded air travel competition for our carriers. As a person in favour of open markets I don't know the benefits of blocking another carrier and allowing our domestic companiers to keep the profitable routes exclusive.
I think the Camp Mirage issue makes more sense if you view it through the lens of the jihad and balancing international and domestic UAE opinions and policies.
ReplyDeleteIf Dubai is the largest banking centre in the Arab / Muslim world then the Taliban are going to use it as a transit point for the financial support of their operations.
Also - the three countries that recognized the Taliban's 1996-2001 "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" were Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
In this context, it appears to me that the federal government of the UAE has decided that domestic concerns outweigh foreign ones.
I voted in your poll. Obviously you're quite persuasive about playing hard ball with the UAE.
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