Canada will boycott UN conference

Canada is the first country to announce it will not attend  a UN conference on racism, known as "Durban III", scheduled to occur in 2011.

“The original Durban conference and its declaration, as well as the non-governmental activities associated with it, proved to be a dangerous platform for racism, including anti-Semitism,”said Canada's Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. “The General Assembly has now chosen to repeat and even augment the mistakes of the past.”

Ottawa conference on combatting anti-Semitism

"Harnessing disparate anti-Semitic, anti-American and anti-Western ideologies, [anti-Semitism] targets the Jewish people by targeting the Jewish homeland, Israel, as the source of injustice and conflict in the world, and uses, perversely, the language of human rights to do so."

Excerpt from a speech by Prime Minister Stephen Harper ... more.