The Hamilton Coalition Against The War condemns Prime Minister Trudeau’s astonishing about-face on Syria. Less than 48 hours after publicly calling for an impartial international investigation into the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, Trudeau suddenly turned 180 degrees and endorsed the illegal and warlike US attack on Sharyat Airbase. This flip-flop was not only the wrong move according to international law but it could lead to a widening of the war to inflame the whole region or even the whole world.

On top of all that, Canada’s Minister for Global Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, widened Canada’s unilateral economic sanctions against Syria to include 27 top-level Syrian government officials. This too was a belligerent, illegal, and unhelpful move.

Trudeau’s flip-flop is only Canada’s latest foreign policy error on Syria. It’s time that Canada changed gears on Syria and worked for a political solution to the crisis there rather than prolonging the war by belonging to the US-led military coalition in Syria and Iraq. Canada should quit that coalition and bring all of our troops and support aircraft home! Canada should resign as the leader of the Economic Sanctions Subcommittee of the so-called Friends of Syria Group of Countries (FSG). In that capacity, Canada, under Harper, helped in Ottawa, in June 2013, to bring in a broad regime of illegal, international economic sanctions against Syria which turned hundreds of thousands of ordinary Syrians into refugees, even though these sanctions did NOT have the approval of the UN Security Council. Trudeau should drop all these economic sanctions immediately! The Canadian government could assist the UN diplomatic effort to restore peace in Syria by re-establishing diplomatic relations with Damascus. Finally, we Canadians could stop being drawn into all the wars of the US Empire if Canada dropped out of NATO! We urge all Canadians to go onto social media and to raise these ideas to MP’s and in all possible forums to bring an end to war in Syria as quickly as possible.