Kent is Canada’s junior minister for foreign affairs. After the holiday lull, he cut his teeth taking a strong position against Hamas during Israel’s attack on Gaza that raged through the first month of January.

But Kent’s real role is as Canada’s free trade attack dog in the Americas. He did a high profile tour of Central America, (which I wrote about here, here, and here) pushing for renewed trade talks with the Isthmus.

Canada’s renewed economic interest engagement in the Americas didn’t start with Peter Kent, but rather, it was put into motion by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

Pressure from mining and oil and gas sectors, the largest Canadian economic interests in the Americas, has finally started to bear fruit.

By last spring, a bilateral Free Trade Agreement between Canada and Peru had been signed. The deal was quietly tabled on January 27th. A deal with Colombia has been signed, but is facing a more concerted resistance because of the egregious human rights violations there.

Peter Kent will most likely spend the next couple of years presiding over trade deal after trade deal between Canada and the leaders of Latin American nations.

His name might not be a household name, but Kent’s go-to role in the Americas will certainly be remembered by economists and activists throughout the hemisphere.

Rumour has it that Obama

Canadian Omar Khadr is the youngest man in the prison. He was a mere teenager when he was locked up. The outcries against his imprisonment in the illegal jail have come from far and wide.

But the fact that Obama wants to shut down Guantánamo is not enough to convince rookie MP and junior foreign affairs minister Peter Kent that it’s a good idea to get Khadr out.

“Serious charges have been laid against Mr. Khadr for what he did at the age of 15. Not all 15-year-olds are ruddy-cheeked cherubs,” Kent said recently in a televised debate.

Kent’s argument boils down to this: Canada supports violations of international law even when the US doesn’t. This is indicative of the overall track of Canadian foreign policy under the government of Stephen Harper. It’s also an argument that doesn’t stand up in the face of a recent poll which shows most Canadians think Khadr should be returned to Canada.

“This man used to be a talking head on television; since he’s been named the minister of state of foreign affairs, he’s been an egghead,” said Zafar Bangash at a protest outside of Kent’s office a few weeks ago.

With moves like this, Kent will likely keep earning his new moniker.

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Kent is now part of the pomp and ceremony, instead of part of the press.

The New York Times carried a story today about journalists who made the jump to work with Barack Obama.

“An unusual number of journalists from prominent, mainstream organizations started new government jobs in January, providing new kindling to the debate over whether Obama is receiving unusually favorable treatment in the news media,” notes the NYT story.

One of the more prominent examples of the journalist to government official phenomenon in the US is that of Jay Carney, Time Magazine’s former bureau chief in Washington. He covered the Obama campaign, and today is in the employ of Vice President Joseph Biden as director of communications.

North of the 49th, Pamela Wallin is probably the most famous journalist gone politico around. After decades as a reporter, she served as a diplomat, and was recently appointed to the senate by PM Harper’s Conservatives.

The phenomenon of journalists going in for a gig in government isn’t new. The Parliament of Canada includes “journalist” in the list of occupations of former Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie.

Peter Kent, who was the first anchor of CBC’s Newsworld, has a career in journalism that spans more than 40 years. It remains to be seen if his career as a capital C Conservative politician will be as successful, even though something does tell me it won’t be as long.

There, he fulfilled a foreign policy agenda that seeks to ensure stability for Canadian investors in El Salvador, while guaranteeing a consistent stream of temporary migrant workers from El Salvador to Canada.

Kent met with representatives from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the body which oversees elections, and underlined the importance of transparent and free elections.

Days after his visit, Salvadorans voted in legislative and municipal elections, with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) taking the majority of legislative seats in what experts consider “an auspicious prelude to the presidential vote,” which is to take place in March.

There is little doubt that the rise of the FMLN in some way mirrors that of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, who now govern Nicaragua.

Kent’s pre-emptive comments about El Salvador’s elections, which came just days after his condemnation of Nicaragua’s elections, indicate a growing emphasis on democracy promotion as a diplomatic tool for ensuring suitable investment climates for Canadian corporations operating abroad.

In El Salvador, trade discussions have a unique dimension, as Canada has a long dormant Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement with the small Central American nation.

The perceived need from corporate Canada to activate the FIPA with El Salvador takes on additional urgency given the recent lawsuit launched by a Canadian mining company under the US-DR-Central America Free Trade Agreement.

Pacific Rim, the corporation launching the Chapter 11 style suit against the Saca government, is doing so through its subsidiary in Nevada. A bilateral or multilateral free trade agreement would allow Canadian companies to take on host governments without the hassle of going through the United States.

Kent also discussed immigration, as many Salvadorans have immigrated to Canada as labourers under the controversial Temporary Foreign Worker program.

Kent participated in a high profile ceremony with President Alvaro Colom, where he announced a $10 million donation from the Canadian International Development Agency destined for rural development in the Sololá region.

Getting down to business, Kent concentrated on expanding Canada’s trade relations with Guatemala, through the Central America Four free trade deal.

Kent allegedly agreed that Canada would loosen some of the terms in the deal, long seen as having been killed by Canada’s refusal to open up the sugar market.

Today, Canadian mining interests are of utmost importance in Guatemala, and it may be politically expedient for Canada to agree to up sugar quotas in order to guarantee that the mining sector has better investment conditions.

Canada’s mining companies have generated serious controversy in Guatemala, both in the gold laden highlands and in the nickel rich tropical lowlands (see video below).

Of concern to Canada’s mining sector is the possibility that the government of Guatemala adjust the country’s mining law to raise taxes. A free trade agreement would protect Canadian businesses from increased taxation, among other benefits.

“Canadian businesses in the region have expressed some frustration that without these agreements, they don’t have that level playing field,” Kent was quoted as saying in a recent blog entry in the Financial Post.

Kent’s gift of $10 million of public money for a development project in Sololá is the kind of gesture that many find hard to criticize. Injecting public monies into a poverty stricken region provides a release valve to avert the risk of social and political crisis. But held against the backdrop of the larger policy goal of improving the investment climate for Canadian companies by guaranteeing that the government of Guatemala will not raise taxes, the donation takes on a familiar dimension: the socialization of risk and the privatization of profits.

Stay tuned as we travel to El Salvador for the next update of Foreign Correspondence, Canada’s only blog dedicated to the exploits of Peter Kent.

Kent started off his week in a meeting with President Daniel Ortega in Managua, Nicaragua.

But he didn’t make the local news until he expressed “serious concern” about “credible evidence” pointing to fraud in municipal elections in the country last November. Among the critics of the fairness of the elections are the opposition, the US, and the Organization of American States.

A youthful Daniel Ortega enjoys a stiff one while admiring the writing on the wall at La Bodeguita del Medio. Photo by -marko CC2.0

OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza said in a press release that the organization was “very concerned” about the “difficulties unfolding in Nicaragua as votes [were] being counted.” The same press release duly noted that “Insulza remarked that since the organization had not been invited to observe any of the latest elections in that country, it is not in a position to comment on them.” Ummm… ¿Perdon?

Although Kent met with Ortega, and stated that Canada will continue to work in Nicaragua, his statements do undermine, at least to some extent, the current Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which is the party that swept the November elections in question.

Kent also met with Canadian investors during his visit to Managua. According to Foreign Affairs Canada, Canadian companies are active in mining, oil and gas, garment manufacturing, financial services and energy generation in Nicaragua. Kent’s mission is in part to try and revive the long dormant negotiation of the Central America Four Free Trade Agreement with Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras.

Finally, there’s the military side of things: since 1991, Canadian soldiers have been in Nicaragua to “provide training” for the Nicaraguan army through a program called the Military Training and Assistance Program. MTAP allows Canada to be “active in direct development of defence and security needs of several countries,” according to George Maclean, researcher and author of Canadian Hemispheric Security Policy: Playing at the Margins. There was no military photo-op that I know of, but posing with Canadian troops stationed abroad as part of a little known defense programme might not be not the best way for Kent to kick off his new career.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Foreign Correspondence, Canada’s only blog dedicated to tracking Peter Kent in his transition from news breaker to news maker.

The vote before the Geneva-based body shows the Stephen Harper government has abandoned a more even-handed approach to the Middle East in favour of unalloyed support of Israel, reads an article in today’s Toronto Star.

Peter Kent, a former anchor with CBC Newsworld and foreign correspondent for NBC, seems to be settling right into his role as Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon’s sidekick in an increasingly reactionary Ottawa. His outspoken condemnation of Hamas has rippled through the news as Israel continues its attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Peter Kent models his capital C Conservative themed tie at a campaign event in his home riding of Thornhill.

“The government of Canada has been very clear since the beginning of this crisis that it believes that the Hamas rocketing was responsible for the initial development of this crisis and for the continuing deepening humanitarian tragedy,” Kent told the CBC little more than a week after Israel began Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

Since the attacks on Gaza began on December 27th, more than 900 Palestinians have been killed and at least 25,000 internally displaced. The number of Israeli dead stands at 13.

But those statistics don’t seem to matter for Kent, who went so far as to blame Hamas for Israel’s recent attack on a United Nations school, where 42 people -including many children- were killed.

The Globe and Mail reported that:

Canada’s junior foreign minister, Peter Kent, said that despite sketchy details on the school strike, it is clear that Hamas “bears the full responsibility for the deepening humanitarian tragedy.

Kent’s snap judgment on Israel’s massacre of Palestinians at the UN school prompted a blogger at Macleans magazine to surmise:

(Oddly enough, in his previous profession, publicly arriving at such a conclusion with an explicit lack of “complete details” would’ve been considered irresponsible.)

Right. So now that Kent’s the second in command of Canada’s foreign policy, he’s got a free pass for speculating. That’s a frightening thought. It’s also fuel for the fire here at Foreign Correspondence, Canada’s only blog dedicated exclusively to the exploits of Peter Kent.