BRUSSELS – The contingent of a half-dozen journalists from Ukraine, myself included, was moderately excited to hear that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would be holding a press conference before tonight’s meeting of the 28 NATO leaders.
Canada! O Canada! Home to 35 million democratic people, at least 3 percent – 1.2 million – of whom are from Ukraine! Ukrainian diaspora capital of the world! Good to see you, brothers and sisters!
Certainly, Trudeau would want to take questions from media from Ukraine, whose nation has been valiantly trying to fend off Russia’s military invasion for more than three years at a cost of 10,000 lives and a huge percentage of the nation’s economic output.
Remember the free trade pact with Ukraine, Justin?
Your visit to Kyiv last summer?
All the selfies Ukrainians took with you?
We’re practically homeboys, right?
After all, all the journalists from Ukraine had the same basic question: Isn’t it time to impose tougher sanctions against Russia – or at least talk about tougher sanctions – to get the Kremlin to back off its war, withdraw from Ukraine and let us live in peace?
No such chance.
It turns out “Pretty Boy” Trudeau has more in common with tinpot dictators than we had imagined.
Some nameless, but not faceless, member of Trudeau’s excessively large traveling contingent took charge. The only way the auditorium could tell that he had some kind of authority is that only he, besides Trudeau, spoke.
(Note to Canadian taxpayers: Here’s an area for cutbacks. It’s your choice of course, but I’m just saying, you don’t need to pay for 20 mute people to stand at attention while the prime minister talks. They have nothing better to do?)
Anyway, this guy, whoever he was, announced at the start of the non-press conference that “the first six questions” would be taken only from the Canadian press corps, strategically located in the first row of Luns Theater – or briefing hall #8 — for this conference.
The first six questions turned out to be the last six questions and the only six questions. So, false advertising – or a lie — started out these wasted hours of my day.
All disturbing enough, but the issues that the six Canadian journalists focused on were bad omens for Ukraine and not good signs that the leaders, when they have dinner tonight starting at 6:45 p.m. Kyiv time, will even utter the word “Ukraine.”
Six Canadian journalists, all allowed to ask at least one follow-up question each, obsessed about all aspects of America – its trade relationship with Canada, whether it leaked intelligence data about the Manchester bombings and whether “Pretty Boy” thought that Donald J. Trump was dissing his country by saying that some NATO allies were not paying their fair share.
Grow up, Canada. This American from Minnesota, right on the Canadian border, loves you, but grow up.
Of course, you’re not paying your fair share of NATO’s collective defense. The fair share is 2 percent of gross domestic product. Canada is a habitual laggard in this area, paying only 1 percent of GDP, speaking loudly but carrying a small stick.
Yet “Pretty Boy” Trudeau expounded effortlessly and impressively, switching from French to English, about what a rock-solid, indispensible, reliable partner Canada is to the defense of the free world.
Yeah, right.
Leaving that disputable defense aside, it was increasingly shocking to some of us in the Ukrainian press corps that not a single Canadian journalist– and we’re talking the heavyweights here, from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to the Toronto Globe & Mail (to which I subscribe) – cared enough about Ukraine to ask a single relevant question.
The press conference might as well have taken place in Ottawa or on the plane to Brussels with Trudeau. I said as much to one of the Canadian journalists in the first row. (I was in the second one, with my hand waving in the air, like an eager schoolboy trying to get attention). The journalist replied that Canadian journalists get better access to Trudeau abroad than they do at home.
Memo to “Pretty Boy” Trudeau:
Don’t hold any more press conferences if you’re not willing to take more questions. If you don’t want to take questions from non-Canadian journalists, stay home. Nobody needs you here. Canada’s defense budget does not meet NATO standards; Ukraine’s does, by the way.
As a side footnote, none of the 1,700 journalists have heard of many press conferences taking place in this summit downgraded to a one-day meeting.
I saw Netherlands’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte holding an impromptu press conference with a gaggle of journalists from his nation.
I saw Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg and her entourage walk past cameras without saying a word, and her press people declining an interview request.
That’s all I have seen in the flesh of the heads of state in Brussels — 3 of 28. The rest of them I am watching on TV – like you, dear readers, can do from the comfort of your homes.
