Canada will not participate in events next year at the United Nations commemorating the 2001 Durban Declaration on racism, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced Thursday.
"Our government has lost faith in the Durban process," he told a press conference. "We will not be part of this event, which commemorates an agenda that promotes racism rather than combats it."
"Canada will not participate in this charade any longer," Kenney added.
"The government of Canada will not lend Canada's good name to the organized exercise in scapegoating (Israel) that is the Durban process."
The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to hold a one-day plenary in September 2011 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the first Durban conference in 2001.
Nine governments including Canada, the United States, Australia, Israel, Germany and Britain boycotted last year's Durban II talks because of fears of anti-Semitism.
Kenney claimed that those fears were fulfilled when Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used the conference as a platform to launch a virulent attack on Israel.
Ahmadinejad's speech sparked a temporary walkout by delegates of 23 European states, and overshadowed the core issue of rising racism, discrimination and xenophobia.