Excerpt

Last time we got if I remember correctly about 133 and we won on first ballot against Greece and the Netherlands. The Netherlands came second and I think they won on a second ballot. We run as part of the Western European and others group. The elections are, the nominations are made on a regional basis. The Western European and others group never run clean slates. We’re always contesting with each other and that will be the case this time. We’re running against Germany and Portugal. I’ll come back to that in a moment. Why would people vote for us? We have some advantages, some assets. One is a history of constructive engagement at the UN that goes back a long way. Pearson is one of the names that will come to mind but a lot of other things, for example, there was the Convention on the Rights of the Child when Mr. Mulroney was Prime Minister and Yves was in New York. The whole human security agenda is basically attributed to Canada, a responsibility to protect the land mines treaty of international court, protection of civilians in armed conflict, all of that is relatively recent history. The other thing that I think people don’t realize is that we’re elected also for who we are, not only what we do, the contribution we make.