“The world needs more Canada” or Canadian common-sense?
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau upon his arrival at Bharat Mandapam convention center for the G20 Summit, in New Delhi, India, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023. Evan Vucci/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo.
By Anuj Krishnan ‘27
The diplomatic salvo over the Indian government’s alleged role in the extrajudicial assassination of Hardeep Nijjar on Canadian soil has again demonstrated Canada’s weakness and increasing isolation on the world stage. In the aftermath, Canada’s historic Five Eyes allies remained tight-lipped despite corroborating the allegations and providing intelligence. The most deafening silence came from the United States, Canada’s closest ally, who failed to publicly raise the issue in a high-level diplomatic meeting despite assurances given to the Canadian government. This silence left Prime Minister Trudeau in a rather isolated position, pleading that “[Canada] [was] not looking to provoke or cause problems” but was standing up for the rules-based order—too tall an order for Canada’s allies. This recent fiasco is indicative of larger shortcomings within the Ministry of Global Affairs (GAC) and Canadian foreign policy: a diplomatic stratagem that lacks foresight and clarity, thereby threatening national security and global interests.
Before jumping to solutions, it is imperative to identify the sources of decline. The country which ushered in the concept of United Nations peacekeeping in the 1960s, and was its largest contributor only 30 years ago, now sits at a 60-year low in its commitments. Trudeau’s 2015 election pledge to renew the country’s peacekeeping commitment was full of promise but fell flat as the government turned down marquee roles to spearhead missions in Mali, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Even when forces were deployed in northern Mali for the MINSUMA mission in 2018, they were meager and within a year Canada began pulling its support. This gap between rhetoric and reality, observed too in Canada’s lagging commitments to NATO, degrades trust among partners and has dirtied their perception of Canada’s role as a “middle power” and a fair arbiter. A degree of strategic independence and the ability to work multilaterally, characteristics of a history of international conflict mediator, have been replaced with blind alignment on American foreign policy, including Canada’s plunge into the War on Terror and the botched reconstruction of Afghanistan. Canada's response to the war in Ukraine—piggybacking off the announcements of its allies days after they are made—highlights this general pattern of behavior, too. Its dependent foreign policy—that even when deviating is ad-hoc and reactive—has compromised Canada’s “middle power” status and led to commonplace embarrassments that weaken foreign states’ trust in the nation to facilitate their conflict and negotiations. The blatant contradiction of rhetoric and reality diminish Canada’s place on the world stage and partly account for the embarrassing second failed bid in 2020 to secure a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Gone, too, is the historic leadership on common-sense initiatives that emphasized security, peace, and international cooperation. Canada can now only look back to being “the leading voice in the world area” behind the 1997 Ottawa Treaty on anti-personnel mines or the state that championed the Right To Protect (R2P) doctrine. The pragmatic diplomacy now pales in contrast to the values-based diplomacy of the last twenty years which has been operated on exporting domestic values under the slogan “the world needs more Canada.” Values-based diplomacy comes from a sense of inebriation, Canada’s “middle power” legacy, a successful immigration program, progressive social norms, and a positive-feedback loop of popular media proclaiming its high quality of life, insulating it from the paradigmatic shifts of the world around it. Hence Canadian bilateralism comes with strings attached: aid tied to public scoldings on human rights (Saudi Arabia in 2018) that alienate potential partners towards China and Russia while our allies themselves have loosened their aid conditions. Canada’s feminist foreign policy, flagship of the values-based foreign policy, is in fact deplored by the United Nations for increasing the cost of aid delivery, reducing resources for core programs, and constraining aid-receiving countries’ agency to address their own priorities.
To be fair, Trudeau’s government recognizes the shortcomings in the foreign policy and personnel and, in June 2023 under Minister Mélanie Joly, released the first constructive discussion paper in over 40 years titled the Future of Diplomacy: Transforming Global Affairs Canada. The paper identifies key areas of improvement including the lack of human capital and specialization. Non-rotational staff make up 74% of GAC’s employees, meaning only 2,777 staff were posted abroad in 2022. The lack of human resources and inflowing field analysis diminishes the comparative advantage and value-added from foreign postings. Yet, it is not as simple as increasing recruitment, as GAC must discard the generalist model if it intends to maximise an enlarged workforce. This model currently ensures that “Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) are treated as indistinguishable and interchangeable…[and] any unique abilities…are ignored and sometimes even dismissed.” The advantage is that FSOs can be readily and quickly deployed into any role but at the cost of specialization and self-improvement.
Generalism undermines the diplomatic corps’ ability to develop an understanding of the “contemporary and historical politics and culture…of their posting…[and] the broader institutional memory housed in their missions.” It is this experience and knowledge that informs reliable diplomatic advice and intervention in everyday affairs, reserving elected officials for situations that require more political heft. The stunted development of personal and diplomatic relationships, predicated on specialization and trust, hinders Canadian diplomats from building political will in bilateral ties. Empowering diplomats could have prevented the failed UNSC bid in which Canadian foreign policy became a series of ad-hoc disconnected political reactions, as the Prime Minister and his team frantically country-hopped and phoned heads of state at the last minute as opposed to trusting their FSOs to secure support.
Apart from changes within GAC, Canada needs foresight and clarity in its foreign policy for the immediate future. The current system of “values-based diplomacy” panders more to a domestic political audience rather than securing Canada’s security and global interests. The feminist foreign policy asks that every decision taken should be examined through its gender dimensions, yet Canada’s current dealings with Saudi Arabia and China demonstrate otherwise. Hypocritical of feminist policy itself, mixing values-based diplomacy with realpolitik unnecessarily complexifies and complicates bilateral relations. While “[Canadians] are convinced of [their] virtue as a force for good in the world, [they] delight in small wins…while completely missing the forest for the trees,” conceding to dangerous encroachments of sovereignty and interests.
Reassessment of regional strategies is a prerequisite, especially in an increasingly multipolar world where Canada must reckon with the gnawing reality that the United States nor Europe can be relied on to protect and forward Canadian interests in the Arctic and Indo-Pacific. Government white papers recognize the pressing situation, the 2022 Canada Indo-Pacific Strategy asserting that the region “will play a critical role in shaping Canada’s future,” implying that every issue that matters to Canadians will depend on the actions the country takes to engage in the region. Simultaneously Canada must heavily invest in the Arctic, whose importance balloons as the effects of climate change open the region for exploration and economic development. To this end, the 2019 Arctic and Northern Policy Framework is a landmark step in the right direction, advocating to restore “Canada’s place as an international Arctic leader” and ensure that its “residents are safe, secure, and well-defended” against competing Russian and Chinese interests. Continued engagement with civilian life, academia, defence, and international partners will help GAC formulate policy that is long-term, pragmatic, and Canada-centric, breaking from a past marred by ad-hoc reactions and unquestioned adherence to major allies. By prioritizing our efforts on the areas with the most potential for collective security and economic growth, GAC will not risk spreading itself too thin.
This is not to say Canada should abandon its values. Canada has the power to do good and is at its best when its values are exercised through the realm of soft power. It has an undoubtedly rich civilian life alongside scientific and technological prowess that should be championed and exported abroad. Its large and varied diasporas—part of its foundational program of multiculturalism—can contribute to strengthening and influencing bilateral ties, leveraging the remittance economy and ethnic/religious/cultural organizations. Canada, above all, must re-embrace what it means for it to be a “middle power” and invoke its historic and founding roles in many of the organizations of the post-1945 world, including the United Nations and La Francophonie, to reclaim an active and constructive international prerogative.
Improvements already seem to be underway, as Trudeau appointed Assistant Deputy Minister Antoine Chevrier to oversee the implementation and benchmarking of the 2023 discussion paper. The success of these changes is yet to be seen but will regardless require a significant budgetary increase, a bureaucratic and cultural transformation, and yes, increased defence spending. Ultimately, failure to execute defense policy—in particular, Canada’s abysmal approach to procurement and replacement of major military hardware including F-35s—hurts collective security and real military capabilities to protect sovereignty and project power. Diplomacy is undermined when it is not backed up by proportional force. Until then, Canada runs the risk of overplaying its hand, as it did with India, in a game where the newcomers are many, and its friends, well, they are at the table chatting them up.