International
Can We Finally Talk About United Nations Funding?


David Clinton 
Billions of dollars disappear into the black hole. Not much value comes out the other end
No area touched by government policy should be off-limits for open discussion. It’s our money, after all, and we have the right to wonder how it’s being spent. Nevertheless, there’s no shortage of topics that, well, aren’t appreciated in more polite company. Until quite recently, I somehow assumed that Canada’s commitments to the United Nations and its many humanitarian programs were among those restricted topics. I had my own deep reservations, but I generally kept my thoughts to myself.
Then the Free Press published a debate over US funding for the UN. I know that many subscribers of The Audit also read the Free Press, so this probably isn’t news to most of you. If questioning UN funding was ever off limits, it’s officially open season now.
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The only defense of the organization to emerge from the debate was that America’s spooks need the surveillance access made possible by the UN headquarter’s New York address, and the city needs the billions of dollars gained from hosting the big party. No one, in other words, could come up with a single friendly word of actual support.
For context, Canada doesn’t bill for parking spots around Turtle Bay in Manhattan. And our spies are not up to the task of bugging hospitality suites anywhere nearby.
How much money do Canadian taxpayers spend on the United Nations? According to data from Canada’s Open Government resource, UN-targeted grants cost us at least $3.7 billion between 2019 and 2022. That number could actually be a lot higher since it’s not always easy to identify spending items as specifically UN-related.
Of that $3.7 billion, more than $265 million went to administrative and headquarters operations. Those administrative grants included $209 million directed to the “United Nations Organization” and officially described as “Canada’s assessed contribution to the United Nations Regular Budget”. Membership dues, in other words.
So what do we get for those dues? Arguably, nothing at all. Because the actual work of the UN happens through their specific programs – which were covered by the other $3.5 billion we contributed.
Unfortunately, those contributions are often misspent. Take as an example the eight million or so dollars Canada sends each year to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Since 1978, UNIFIL’s 10,000-strong contingent’s only job has been to:
“confirm Hezbollah demilitarization, support Lebanese army operations against insurgents and weapon smuggling, and confirm Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, in order to ensure that the government of Lebanon would restore its effective authority in the area”.
It’s no secret how splendidly that worked out. Hezbollah cheerfully spent the best part of the past two decades building some of the most robust military infrastructure on earth. And all under the direct supervision of UNIFIL.
Then there’s the disturbing relationship between United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and both Hamas and Hezbollah. As I’ve already written, by their own admission, Global Affairs Canada completely missed (or chose to ignore) that one. UNRWA cost Canadians $55 million between 2019 and 2022.
It’s true that some UN peacekeeping missions from decades back saw success, like operations in Namibia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, East Timor, and El Salvador. But the failures were, to say the least, noticeable. Those included Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Angola, Haiti, and Darfur. And all that’s besides the accusations of widespread, systemic sexual abuse committed by peacekeepers just about anywhere they go. The peacekeeping model’s value proposition is far from proven, but the financial costs are right out there in the open.
Besides their regular happens-to-the-best-of-us failures, the UN has carefully cultivated their own unique brand of corruption. In 2005, Paul Volcker’s Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC), for example, reported on widespread corruption and abuse associated with the UN’s Oil-for-Food program for Iraqi citizens.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has long been associated with corruption, cronyism, and a general lack of financial control. But to be fair, those claims are very much in line with accusations regularly leveled against the UN as a whole.
Most Canadians are agreeable to sharing their collective wealth and expertise with those around the world who are less fortunate. But we’d be far more effective at it by creating our own programs and bypassing the rotting corpse of the United Nations altogether. That is, after all, what Global Affairs Canada is supposed to be doing.
While I’ve still got your attention, there’s one other United Nations-y thing that I’d like to discuss. While researching this post, I accessed official data representing all UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions since 2000. Fascinating stuff, I assure you. But it didn’t turn out the way I’d expected.
You see, for years I’ve been hearing about how UN resolutions are overwhelmingly focused on condemnations of Israel – to the point where Israel takes up the majority of the organization’s time.
In fact, there were far too many spurious and gratuitously hostile anti-Israel resolutions. And I defer to no one in my contempt for each one’s dishonesty and hypocrisy. But unless there’s something very wrong with the official UN data on resolutions, condemnations of Israel take up no more than a small minority of their time.
Specifically, of the 1,594 General Assembly resolutions from the past quarter century, just 60 or so targeted Israel. And the Security Council faced a total of 1,466 resolutions over that time, of which only somewhere in the neighborhood of 55 concerned everyone’s favorite colonial-settler, apartheid, space laser-firing, and weather-controlling oppressor.
The cesspool that is the modern UN is bad enough on its own merits. There’s no need to manufacture fake accusations.
Health
Canada surrenders control of future health crises to WHO with ‘pandemic agreement’: report

From LifeSiteNews
Canada’s top constitutional freedom group warned that government officials have “relinquished” control over “future health crises” by accepting the terms of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) revised International Health Regulations (IHR).
The warning came in a report released by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF). The group said that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s acceptance earlier this year of the WHO’s globalist-minded “pandemic agreement” has “placed Canadian sovereignty on loan to an unelected international body.”
“By accepting the WHO’s revised IHR, the report explains, Canada has relinquished its own control over future health crises and instead has agreed to let the WHO determine when a ‘pandemic emergency’ exists and what Canada must do to respond to it, after which Canada must report back to the WHO,” the JCCF noted.
The report, titled Canada’s Surrender of Sovereignty: New WHO health regulations undermine Canadian democracy and Charter freedoms, was authored by Nigel Hannaford, a veteran journalist and researcher.
The WHO’s IHR amendments, which took effect on September 19, are “binding,” according to the organization.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Canada’s government under Carney signed onto them in May.
Hannaford warned in his report that “(t)he WHO has no legal authority to impose orders on any country, nor does the WHO possess an army, police, or courts to enforce its orders or regulations.”
“Nevertheless, the WHO regards its own regulations as ‘an instrument of international law that is legally binding on 196 countries, including Canada” he wrote.
Hannaford noted that “Surrendering Canada’s sovereignty” to the IHR bodies is itself “contrary to the constitutional principle of democratic accountability, also found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
“Canada’s health policies must reflect the needs, desires, and freedoms of Canadians – not the mandates of distant bureaucrats in Geneva or global elites in Davos. A free and democratic Canada requires vigilance and action on the part of Canadians. The time to act is now” he wrote.
Among the most criticized parts of the agreement is the affirmation that “the World Health Organization is the directing and coordinating authority on international health work, including on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.”
While the agreement claims to uphold “the principle of the sovereignty of States in addressing public health matters,” it also calls for a globally unified response in the event of a pandemic, stating plainly that “(t)he Parties shall promote a One Health approach for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.”
Constitutional lawyer Allison Pejovic noted that “(b)y treating WHO edicts as binding, the federal government has effectively placed Canadian sovereignty on loan to an unelected international body.”
“Such directives, if enforced, would likely violate Canadians’ Charter rights and freedoms,” she added.
Hannaford said that “Canada’s health policies must be made in Canada.”
“No free and democratic nation should outsource its emergency powers to unelected bureaucrats in Geneva,” he wrote.
The report warned that new IHR regulations could mandate that signatory nations impose strict health-related policies, such as vaccine mandates or lockdowns, with no “public accountability.”
“Once the WHO declares a ‘Pandemic Emergency,’ member states are obligated to implement such emergency measures ‘without delay’ for a minimum of three months,” the JCCF said.
“Canada should instead withdraw from the revised IHR, following the example of countries like Germany, Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, and the United States,” the JCCF continued. “The report recommends continued international cooperation without surrendering control over domestic health policies.”
Earlier this year, Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis condemned the Liberal government for accepting the WHO’s IHR.
Digital ID
Thousands protest UK government’s plans to introduce mandatory digital IDs

From LifeSiteNews
Protestors rallied in London in opposition to ‘BritCard’, which would require the personal information of all UK workers
Thousands of protestors gathered in London to voice their opposition to the UK government’s plan to introduce mandatory digital IDs.
Last Saturday, the protestors marched through central London carrying signs that read “No to Digital ID,” “If You Accept Digital ID Today, You’ve Accepted Social Credit Tomorrow,” and “Once Scanned, Never Free.”
The protests came in response to Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer announcing the government’s plan to introduce a mandatory digital ID, called “BritCard,” for everyone who wants to work in the UK. The plan has been met with a strong backlash from the public, including protests in other cities, as reported by LifeSiteNews. Almost three million people have signed a petition opposing the government’s plan to make the “BritCard” mandatory for all workers by 2029. According to the petition, “no one should be forced to register with a state-controlled ID system,” which it describes as a “step towards mass surveillance and digital control.”
Starmer and his government used the problem of illegal immigration, for which they are at least partly responsible, as a pretext to mandate digital ID. However, critics say the real purpose of the scheme is to introduce mass surveillance of British citizens in order to control them.
The globalist NGO of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the “Tony Blair Institute for Global Change,” is one of the premier proponents of the digital ID scheme.
The protest in London was led by former Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who was expelled from the Conservative Party in 2023 over his opposition to the COVID shots.
Silkie Carlo, director of civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, told the Daily Mail that digital ID was “fast becoming a digital permit required to live our everyday lives.”
“Starmer has sold his Orwellian digital ID scheme to the public on the lie that it will only be used to stop illegal working but now the truth, buried in the small print, is becoming clear,” she continued.
“We now know that digital IDs could be the backbone of a surveillance state and used for everything from tax and pensions to banking and education.”
“The prospects of enrolling even children into this sprawling biometric system is sinister, unjustified and prompts the chilling question of just what he thinks the ID will be used for in the future.”
“No one voted for this and millions of people who have signed the petition against it are simply being ignored,” Carlo concluded.
The BritCard would be stored on smartphones and include personal details such as name, date of birth, residency status, nationality, a photograph, and potentially more sensitive personal data. The government is reportedly considering introducing digital IDs for children as young as 13.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said the proposal was a “gimmick that will do nothing to stop the boats,” while the head of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, said he was “firmly opposed” to it.
Farage has vowed to undo any digital ID system rolled out by the Labour government if he becomes UK’s next prime minister.
“It will make no difference to illegal immigration, but it will be used to control and penalize the rest of us,” Farage said regarding the BritCard. “The state should never have this much power.”
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