September 25, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
- "The
Star"-
Middle East and Europe have focused
attention on Canadian foreign policy and on this country’s
decade-long record of diplomatic and multilateral
underperformance.
While unusual for an
electoral campaign, such scrutiny is long overdue.
The inventor of
peacekeeping, long-standing proponent of North-South relations,
and determined promoter of sustainable development — once
universally welcomed as an honest broker, helpful fixer and
provider of good offices and innovative ideas — is today
regarded as an
obstruction to progress, a country with little to bring to
the table.
Canada’s vaunted
foreign service has languished,
marginalized and under-employed by a government uninterested
in professional diplomatic advice or enlightened international
initiative.
Unrecognizable to its
former partners and friends, Canada has become something of an
international pariah — a serial
unachiever, the fossil of the year, the country that others
don’t want in the room. The one-time boy scout has become a
distant outlier in the international system, sometimes
ostracized but more often simply ignored
In a world in which
nothing can be achieved by acting alone, Canadian influence has
become spectral, and the orchestration of action in concert,
through the United Nations and most other international
organizations, next to
impossible.
The Conservative
government has shot Canada in the foot when we are in a race.
From the end of the
Second World War through the mid 1990s, Canada put its shoulder
to the wheel and tried to advance global order issues —
eliminating poverty, feeding the hungry, preventing war,
reforming international organizations. Progressive Conservative
governments led the world in resettling Indochinese refugees,
combating apartheid in Southern Africa, and addressing
environmental challenges ranging from acid rain and ozone layer
depletion to the organization of the Earth Summit.
Later, after it
became clear that Canada could no longer engage in the
really heavy international lifting, Foreign Minister Lloyd
Axworthy excavated a useful diplomatic niche with his Human
Security Agenda. In under five years this country brought in
a treaty banning landmines, helped establish the
International Criminal Court, launched the Responsibility to
Protect doctrine, and moved forward initiatives on small
arms, blood diamonds, and child soldiers and children in
conflict.
All fight, no talk.
Dialogue, negotiation, compromise and knowledge-based
problem-solving have given way to hectoring rhetoric and
debilitating retrogression. Diplomacy and multilateralism
have been written off.
Over the past
decade the warrior nation wannabes in Ottawa preferred to
preside over disastrous years of war in Afghanistan, to help
open a Pandora’s Box of multiple misfortunes by
participating in an illegal regime change exercise in Libya,
and unthinkingly to join in the anti-ISIL bombing of Iraq
and Syria, thus worsening the refugee crisis and exposing
Canadians to a heightened risk of retaliation at home and
abroad.
Other hallmarks of
the past decade?
Spurning progressive diplomatic or
developmental initiatives of any description
Sidelining the public service and
imposing drastic reductions to international capacity
through cuts to DFATD, CIC, science-based departments and
agencies, and international NGOs
Centralizing, controlling and censoring
all international communications, while concentrating
decision-making in the PMO
Failing to win election to the UN
Security Council, while opting for a photo-op at Tim
Horton’s over attending the UN General Assembly
Refusing to attend multilateral meetings,
and rejecting or withdrawing from a variety of international
agreements
Bungling Canada’s relationship with the
Asia-Pacific region, the rising centre of the world
political economy
Adopting a highly skewed set of policy
positions on issues involving, variously, Iran, Israel, the
Palestinians, and issues of Middle East peace
Shuttering the Pearson Peacekeeping
Centre, the Canadian Centre for Human Rights and Democratic
Development, and North-South Institute
Withdrawing Canada from the Kyoto
Protocol, while promoting the tarsands, pipelines, resource
and extractive industries
Pursuing free trade and promoting
commercial and corporate interests at public expense
The Harper
government’s record of contempt for Parliament, due process
(Afghan detainee hearings) and civil liberties (Bill C-51)
is exceeded only by its contempt for diplomacy and
multilateralism.
Delivery of the
government’s ideologically driven, evidence-dismissing
agenda has cost Canada’s reputation and influence dearly.
Through its adulation of the military and attacks on
science, democracy, and internationalism, the Conservatives
have eroded Canadian values and interests, diminished
Canada’s prosperity and security, run down our formerly
admirable soft power, and spoiled the Canadian brand.
Canada’s hard-won
standing as a generous, open, engaged and compassionate
actor has been squandered.
Declarations to the
contrary notwithstanding, religious extremism, political
violence and terrorism are not among the foremost threats
faced by Canadians, which consist instead of a complex and
sprawling range of issues rooted in science and driven by
technology — climate change, reduced biodiversity,
ecological collapse and destruction of the global commons.
In face of the
greatest problems now imperiling the planet, Canadians have
been left vulnerable and exposed.
Unprepared,
ill-equipped and stumbling blind, our defences have been
degraded, our capacity diminished and our resilience
undermined.
Canadians deserve
better.
Former diplomat
Daryl Copeland is an educator, analyst and consultant; the
author of Guerrilla Diplomacy; a research fellow at the
Canadian Global Affairs Institute and a policy fellow at the
University of Montreal’s CERIUM. Follow him on Twitter @GuerrillaDiplo.
