Welcome back to This Week in Canada, where “peace, order, and good government” are part of our constitution. We seem to be nailing it on the “government” part—but we’re sliding into chaos and disorder, including recognition of Palestinian statehood and anti-American rants. See what you think!
In July, Prime Minister Mark Carney pledged that Canada would recognize Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly, but with strings attached. The deal was “predicated,” as he put it, on the Palestinian Authority enacting sweeping reforms. The list included cleaning up its governance, holding free elections in 2026 without Hamas, committing itself to demilitarization, including Hamas releasing all October 7 hostages and disarming. None of that has happened.
Yet on Sunday, Canada, the UK, and Australia went ahead and recognized Palestinian statehood anyway, with Carney claiming that the Palestinian Authority has “provided direct commitments to Canada and the international community on much-needed reforms.” This is like giving your car keys to someone who’s crashed it before.
Here’s why. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, in office since 2005, promised long-overdue elections in 2021, only to postpone them indefinitely. The excuse was uncertainty over whether Israel would allow voting in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. Many Palestinians saw that as a smoke screen—an excuse to avoid elections that Abbas’s party, Fatah, was likely to lose to its rival Hamas, just as it did in 2006.
