Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird abandoned host-country niceties Monday as he levelled a blistering attack against the human rights records of Iran, Syria and Uganda before 1,400 international parliamentarians gathered for the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Quebec City.
Iranian and Ugandan delegates at the meeting protested Baird's remarks, accusing the minister of meddling in their sovereign affairs at a collegial forum.
Even though the Conservative government has cut diplomatic relations with Iran and Syria, it could do little to stop the presence of legislators from those countries at the international conference, which Canada is hosting this year.
Baird embraced that bit of awkwardness, seizing on the assembly's theme this year: respect for diversity. The parliamentary union's mandate includes the promotion of human rights and democracy, but its members still include nations such as North Korea and Cuba.
"Sadly, there are forces of evil in this world that use our differences as weapons of hate ... that marginalize minorities," Baird said.
"This is where we as free societies, I believe, have a tremendously important role to play."
Baird encouraged the legislators to tell their respective parliaments to support Canada's United Nations resolution each year condemning Iran's human rights record. He cited examples of violence against religious minorities.
"There's a great principle at stake. While Canada prizes engagement and open relations, there can be no engagement with a regime that dishonours its word, repudiates its commitments and threatens to perpetuate crimes against humanity," Baird said of Iran.
The small Iranian delegation held up the sign bearing its country's name during Baird's speech in protest. Iraj Nadimi, chairman of the executive council of Iran's inter-parliamentary group, asked reporters whether Canada would like it if Iran began wading into its domestic affairs, such as Quebec sovereignty.
"This is not the place for that," Nadimi said through an interpreter.
"We are saying that every country has its own regulations for itself, so we cannot receive any interference from any country and we don't interfere in another country's affairs."
"Sometimes the truth hurts," Baird said later.
"I know staying silent is never an option when people stone women, when they hang gays, when they incite genocide, when they say they want to wipe the Jewish people and the Jewish state off the map, when they dishonour their UN obligations, when they spread hateful and racist rhetoric."
Baird took on the Ugandan government for its treatment of gays and lesbians, mentioning the case of a young activist who was recently beaten to death.
"If homosexuality is a value for the Canadian people, that's not a problem for us ... but one shouldn't force Ugandans to accept homosexuality because we're not Canadian citizens," said the speaker of the Ugandan Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga to applause from the floor.
