Toronto Star columnist Thomas Walkom, for example, wrote that the new emphasis on economic diplomacy was, in fact, “not new” because it echoed Pierre Trudeau’s 1968 pledge to make Canada’s foreign policy better reflect domestic interests, including economic ones.
Retired Canadian diplomat John Noble went a step further, arguing that economic objectives had been key foreign policy priorities not only for Trudeau, but for all of the post-Second World War prime ministers.
Both commentators are correct that other governments have prioritized trade, but they nevertheless reach the wrong conclusion because their analysis neglects to consider the context in which the Global Markets strategy was announced.
Unlike prior governments since the Second World War, all of which pursued broad-based foreign policies including in multilateral forums, the Stephen Harper Conservatives have allowed many areas of Canadian foreign policy – other than trade – to atrophy.
Canada is no longer a leader in arms control. It is a laggard in efforts to address climate change. It has repeatedly snubbed the United Nations. It has hinted that it might pull its funding from the Commonwealth. It ham-fistedly withdrew from the United Nations Convention on Desertification. It has even been criticized by NATO for its diminished interest in the alliance – a criticism that I heard from several officials when I visited NATO headquarters in early 2013.
Canadian foreign policy has been reduced to a “boutique” of narrow issues – including religious freedom, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Israel, Iran, gun ownership rights, and maternal and child health (but not reproductive rights) – that have been placed in a showcase largely for the appreciation of domestic constituencies.
Beyond these and a few other issues, the Conservatives have shown very little interest in foreign policy since they entered office in 2006.
But trade has been a different matter: the Harper government, including the prime minister himself, poured itself into the negotiation of new free trade and investment agreements with all manner of countries, large and small. This strategy finally began to pay off in a big way when Ottawa announced an agreement in principle with the European Union in 2013.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this emphasis on international trade; on the contrary, since economic growth in Canada and in other older established markets has slowed, expanding commercial links with faster-growing emerging markets is imperative.
The point, rather, is that international trade policy has loomed over the rest of Canada’s foreign policy, and it did so long before the announcement of the Global Markets strategy in November.
Any doubt about the Conservatives’ relative lack of interest in non-trade foreign policy should have been put to rest by the government’s throne speech of October 2013, just weeks before the Global Markets strategy was released. The speech, which ran over 7,000 words and took a full hour to deliver, contained only a few brief paragraphs on foreign policy.
In fact, it would be misleading to suggest that the throne speech addressed “foreign policy” per se – if that term connotes the government’s broad approach to international affairs. Rather than a foreign policy, there were passing references near the end of the speech to a few of the “boutique” issues mentioned above.
In short, economic diplomacy is supreme today, but not only because trade is a priority for the Harper government, as the Global Markets strategy makes clear. Just as importantly, it is supreme because the other elements of Canada’s foreign policy are so weak – to a degree that is unprecedented among recent Canadian governments.
Original Article
Source: canada.com/
Author: Postmedia News
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