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Written by: Aidan Jonah

Marc Garneau, the famous Canadian astronaut and Liberal MP, was named Canada’s new foreign minister on January 12. He replaces previous foreign minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, who continued the long record of Canadian imperialism.

Champagne led the imperialist charge in Venezuela, actively supported the far-right coup government of Jeanine Áñez in Bolivia after overthrowing Evo Morales, continued to support Israeli apartheid, continued arms sales to the Saudi regime, and supported the American pivot to Asia by his complicity in the farcical persecution of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou and blocking of Huawei from Canadian 5G networks.

CTV News revealed that “Champagne's term as foreign minister ended with a diplomatic bang on Tuesday as he joined his British counterpart, Dominic Raab, in announcing measures to prevent the import of goods produced under forced labour from places such as China's Xinjiang province.”

Global Affairs Canada said it will prohibit the import of goods "produced wholly or in part by forced labour" and require Canadian companies to adhere to a "Xinjiang Integrity Declaration".

The false claims of genocide in Xianjing is part of a cold-war smear campaign which William Dere picked apart in a recent article.

Garneau: Who is he?

Marc Garneau was in the Canadian Navy from 1974 to 1989, serving as commander and eventually Navy Captain. Garneau was an astronaut from 1984 onwards, and involved in the Canadian Space Agency until 2005. Notably, Politico explained that Garneau lived in Houston, home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center, for nine years in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2006, Garneau ran federally for the Liberal Party, losing his race. In 2008, Garneau ran again for the federal Liberals, in the riding of Westmount–Ville-Marie, winning the seat, to become a Member of Parliament.

In 2014, Garneau was announced as the Liberals new Foreign Affairs Critic.

During his time in this role, the Liberals supported the 2014 Maidan coup, led by neo-Nazi groups, against the legitimately elected Yanukovich government. These right-wing extremists soon pushed though Verkhovna Rada’s attempt to revoke a bill protecting minority language rights in the Crimea region. On March 17, 2014, the former Crimea region of Ukraine voted almost unanimously, 97 per cent of voters, in favour of seceding from Ukraine, and joining the Russian Federation. Sanctions were soon put on Russia, while Canada refused to accept the overwhelming results of the referendum, with the Liberals giving full approval to this decision.

Garneau spoke gleefully about the harm that economic sanctions were already beginning to have on ordinary Russians:

"Economic sanctions work. Look at Iran, for example. However, we have to be patient and we have to ramp them up over time so that their effect becomes more and more constraining. No amount of bravado on the part of President Putin can disguise the fact that economic sanctions are having a negative effect on Russia. Eventually, it will become hard to hide from the majority of Russian citizens."

Garneau urged the Harper government to slap further sanctions on Russian officials and the country’s economy, which would’ve included sanctions on Igor Sechin, a close confidante of Vladimir Putin.

Garneau praised the NATO mission in Ukraine, and spoke of “the recent decision that the Liberal Party supports of providing training to Ukrainian soldiers at bases in the west of the country over the next two years.”

Garneau dismissed those who were concerned about Canada training neo-Nazis: “Some have raised the issue that Canada could end up providing training to soldiers of questionable loyalty. Having spoken to a DND official recently at the foreign affairs committee on this matter, I am not concerned about that risk.”

This was not a prescient comment.

In June 2014, Ukraine had formally integrated extremist far-right militias including the Aidar, Dnipro, Donbass, and Azov battalions into the National Guard, which is led by Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Azov’s original commander, Andriy Biletsky stated that Ukraine’s mission should be to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade…against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

Multiple Western outlets have confirmed that the militia is a neo-Nazi one: The New York Times called the battalion “openly neo-Nazi,” while USA Today, The Daily Beast, The Telegraph, and Haaretz documented group members’ proclivity for swastikas, salutes, and other Nazi symbols, and individual fighters have also acknowledged being neo-Nazis. The unit has recruited neo-Nazis from Germany, the UK, Brazil, Sweden, and America.

Despite knowledge of these facts, in 2015, the Harper government initiated Operation UNIFIER, a program which saw the Canadian Armed Forces supply the Ukrainian military and paramilitary police units with training and weapons.

While there have been limited attempts by multiple countries to prevent weapons from reaching the militias, the Daily Beast reported that these efforts have miserably failed.

These militias have also been accused of committing war crimes on multiple occasions, while in spring 2018, a lethal wave of anti-Roma pogroms swept through Ukraine, with at least six attacks in two months. The C14 and the National Druzhina, the two gangs behind the attacks, proudly posted pogrom videos on social media. National Druzhina is a part of the Azov Battalion.

Despite this all, neither Freeland nor Champagne, the two previous foreign ministers, canceled the program, and worked to maintain the UNIFIER program until 2022.

It was Garneau’s anti-Russian and pro-sanctions agenda that laid the groundwork for Canada’s support for neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

Former Green Party foreign affairs critic Dimitri Lascaris revealed Garneau’s support for Israeli apartheid:

“In 2014, when Minister Garneau was the foreign affairs critic for Canada’s Liberal Party, he joined Canada’s radically neoconservative Foreign Minister John Baird in a pro-Israel rally while the Israeli military rained bombs down Gaza, which Norman Finkelstein has aptly described as the “world’s largest concentration camp.”

In 2015, when the Liberals won a majority government, Garneau became the Minister of Transportation.

Lascaris detailed how Garneau’s support continued despite a new governmental role:

“In 2018, Minister Garneau concluded a new air transport agreement with Israel which greatly increased commercial airline traffic between the states. At the time, Minister Garneau stated “Canada is a true friend of the State of Israel and we are grateful for their deep support.” Four months later, a sniper of Canada’s “true friend” gunned down Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani as he led a team of medics who were tending to victims of Israel’s carnage in the Great March of Return.

As pro-apartheid lobby group B’nai Brith Canada has highlighted, Minister Garneau has been to the ‘Middle East’s only democracy’ four times. On his last visit, he toured an Israeli drone factory and then told the world how much Israel’s drone technology impressed him.”

He would hold this role until two days ago, on January 12, 2021.

Garneau and the Liberal advisory committee

On December 17, 2014, Garneau was named co-chair of the Liberal Party’s International Affairs Council of Advisors.

Garneau remains the co-chair after his ascension to the foreign ministry. He thereby showed his approval for the Liberals imperialist foreign policy, over the last seven years.

Garneau now promises that the US-Canada relationship is a major priority. We shall see what else he gets up to in his time as Foreign Affairs minister.

Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news site founded in 2019. He has written about Canadian imperialism, federal politics, and left-wing resistance to colonialism across the world. He is a second-year Bachelor of Journalism student at Ryerson University, who was the Head of Communications and Community Engagement for Etobicoke North NDP Candidate Naiima Farah in the 2019 Federal Election.

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