Tony Burman, of the Toronto Star, former head of Al Jazeera English, and now a journalism teacher at Ryerson University, says that our government’s “passionate pro-Israeli stance” has damaged Canada’s reputation throughout the Middle East “after decades of being one of the world’s respected ‘honest brokers’ on Mideast issues.”
That phrase “honest broker” seems to me one of the most dubious of Canadian clichés. I have not once in several decades seen it applied to us by a citizen of some other country.
In my experience, it’s one of those compliments many Canadians, and only Canadians, pay to Canada.
Burman expresses nostalgia for an attribute that hasn’t existed, so far as I’m aware, since the 1950s.
