Eli Schuster
The Interim

Canadians who care about life, Christianity, national sovereignty and the future of Western society should breathe a heavy sigh of relief now that fellow citizen Maurice Strong is no longer working for the United Nations.

Strong, an unpaid adviser to Prime Minister Paul Martin, and until recently the UN’s lead negotiator in efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, lost his job amid allegations of nepotism and an involvement in the “oil-for-food” scandal. Strong accepted advice on Korean issues from South Korean businessman Tongsun Park, who was charged by the U.S. attorney’s office in April for allegedly accepting large sums of money from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s government to illegally plead Iraq’s case in America.

Described by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as “a unique and important force in our lives,” Strong temporarily stepped down from his post in April during a probe of his ties to Park. By Strong’s own admission, Park invested cash in a company operated by Strong’s son, although Strong has denied any involvement in the oil-for-food program and has promised to co-operate fully in the investigation. Strong’s employment contract with the organization has not been renewed.

This incident is simply the latest chapter in the story of Strong’s meteoric – and frequently strange – rise to power. Born into a poor Manitoba family in 1929, Strong claimed the Great Depression left him “frankly very radical” in his political views and described himself elsewhere as “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.”

Prior to his initial involvement with the UN in the early 1970s, Strong established himself as a successful businessman in Canada’s oil and utilities industries (an unusual background for a self-described environmentalist who organized the 1992 Rio Earth Summit) and by the age of 35, was president of the Liberal party-friendly Power Corporation holding company. Strong actually gave Paul Martin his first real job at Power Corporation and fired him soon afterward (the two have remained close, nonetheless).

In spite of Strong’s business background, he has long advocated intrusive family planning programs and an anti-free market agenda as a means of warding off predicted environmental doom. He has said: “If we don’t change, our species will not survive. Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.”

Interestingly, Strong has served with the New York-based Temple of Understanding, an officially recognized non-governmental agency (NGO) that promotes worship of the Earth goddess “Gaia.”

Strong has also directed the UN’s Business Council on Sustainable Development, which has advocated policies to reduce the availability of meat products, limit the use of air conditioners, discourage the private ownership of motor vehicles and reduce the number of single-family homes. He has also indicated support for limiting family size.

Given Strong’s radical anti-family and anti-capitalist views, it is ironic he has been brought down – or at least sidelined – by his capitalist “methodology,” rather than his socialist “ideology,” yet Canadians who don’t wish to be governed by an all-powerful UN should view Strong’s departure as a positive sign.