Following the May 2011 election, some thought that the longed-for majority would allow Mr. Harper to free foreign policy from its domestic political ties and focus more on the Canadian values of which he so often speaks.
But Conservative foreign policy continues to be driven by a mix of electoral politics, narrow Canadian interests, Stephen Harper’s personal worldview and a desire to rid all things Liberal.
The Harper government’s foreign policy has become little more than an extension of Conservative electoral politics. Between 2006 and 2011, Mr. Harper was looking for ways to push his party to a majority; to do that he needed to preserve his base and reach out to new constituencies.
His “gunslinger” style plays well with his core supporters—Westerners, especially Albertans, the Christian right and other social conservatives—and he has catered to them, flirting with the abortion issue and pumping up the volume on crime and prisons, while coming down hard on women’s rights organizations, the gun registry and environmental “radicals.”
It has also allowed him to reach out to new constituencies such as diaspora communities that may share socially conservative views. Foreign policy has become a useful domestic tool.
The prime minister has threatened to boycott the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka if there isn’t progress in that country on human rights and reconciliation for the Tamil minority. He would throw Canada’s role in the Commonwealth to the wind because of the venue for a meeting.
But count the numbers: In Canada, there are between two and three hundred thousand Tamils, while our Sinhalese-speaking population is about 6000.
Although there are twice as many Muslims as Jews in Canada, the Jewish community is numerically and financially significant in some key ridings. Unreserved support for Israel also plays to the Christian right, whose fundamentalist fringe believes that God promised that land to the Jewish people. Israel, many believe, is a democratic bulwark against what evangelist Pat Robertson called “an eighth-century religion” of “Muslim vandals.”
Canada’s economic interests also drive the Harper government’s foreign policy. The government has given priority to Canada’s extractive industries, making tar sands advocacy a foreign policy priority and demonizing those who oppose it as “foreign-funded radicals.”
The recent CIDA-initiated partnerships with Canadian mining companies signal a closer tying of Canadian aid to the promotion of corporate interests rather than the legally mandated goal of reducing poverty.
The Harper government has taken pains to distance itself from all things Liberal. In doing so, no detail is too small. For example, Foreign Minister John Baird had the name of the Lester B. Pearson Building removed from his business card.
Canada’s new muscular foreign policy with its emphasis on the military, its bellicose tone, and its go-it-alone approach, repudiates the soft-power, multilateralist, humanitarian stance of previous Liberal governments.
A phalanx of ideologically-committed ministerial aides stands between civil servants and their ministers, ensuring that departments deal with what ministers, and especially the prime minister, want, rather than what is right, or even what makes sense.
This is reflected in the dismal state of morale in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and in Canadian embassies abroad, and in the flood of inconsequential press releases issued by Foreign Affairs since the UN Security Council debacle.
Mr. Harper’s view of Canada is pro-monarchy, pro-military and family-focused, with a reduced role for the state and a strong emphasis on the responsibility of the individual. Since the election, he has begun a symbolic rebranding exercise, royalizing the armed forces, decorating embassies and the Pearson building with pictures of the Queen, and expanding the role of the military in citizenship ceremonies.
Last summer Mr. Harper said that global politics is a “struggle between good and bad” and his actions would be guided by “moral clarity.” Whose morals he did not say.
There has also been a harder edge to changes in Canadian political culture—an attack on advocacy groups, especially those concerned with human rights in the Middle East, women’s rights, unions and anyone disagreeing with tar sands and pipeline initiatives.
Public engagement on key policy issues is skewed to groups that back the Conservatives; parliamentary debate is absent; information is tightly controlled; and access by the media limited. Dissenters are accused of undermining Canadian troops abroad, of being anti-Semitic, anti-American or just plain “radical.”
Playing to the gallery at home and finger-wagging abroad may win Mr. Harper short-term votes, but they tend to produce poor policy. University of Ottawa professor Roland Paris writes, “Diplomacy requires the cultivation of influence through relationships. You can’t win political influence in international affairs simply by stating positions and telling other countries that they’re wrong.”
Policy also needs to be grounded in a strong understanding of what is going on in the world and what realistically Canada’s place in world events can be. We cannot expect to rally others to our cause if our foreign policy is based solely on parochial self-interest.
Original Article
Source: embassy
Author: Mark Stiles, Betty Plewes
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