A reasonable guide to Canadian foreign policy
By JEFFREY SIMPSON
Wednesday, April 20, 2005 Page A17
With so many leaks, speeches, decisions and errors already recorded in the Martin government's foreign policy, nothing could have surprised Canadians in yesterday's foreign policy statement.
Unfortunately, the statement did not correct mistakes -- governments being habitually unwilling to admit error. So the splitting of Foreign Affairs and International Trade remains. So does the creation of a Canada Corps inside the foreign aid bureaucracy. The damage done by the ham-fisted method of declining participation in anti-ballistic missile defence can't be undone.
That said, this statement represents a reasonable guide to Canadian foreign policy. It took far too long to prepare, so long that it has become almost irrelevant. It tries to be all things to all people, as these documents usually do. It's overwritten and can't quite bring itself to speak home truths to Canadians.
But it gets one thing absolutely right, and proposes to do something about it -- that Canada's capacity to do foreign policy has declined owing to years of budgetary neglect for defence, foreign aid and diplomacy.
To this government's credit, it acknowledged the problem. "We need to be realistic and frank with ourselves," says Prime Minister Paul Martin in the introduction. "Recent years witnessed a relative decline in the attention Canada paid to its international instruments . . . Our diplomatic network, our foreign aid and trade policy capacity, our defence capabilities, and our commitment to development suffered as a result."
He got that right. Except the Prime Minister probably underestimated the degree of Canada's decline in the world. As a recent report for the Canadian Institute for International Affairs documented, foreigners think benignly, but not often, about Canada. In almost every field, world trends are working against Canada's influence -- the rise of a single superpower, the problems of multilateral institutions, the shrinking Canadian share of foreign investment, the inadequacies of Canadian defence capabilities. Canada has to lean hard against those trends.
Canada had become a moral superpower in its own mind, a state of self-satisfied illusion, even delusion, that warped all aspects of foreign policy and quietly eroded the country's standing abroad. Individual Canadians were doing great things overseas; the government was not doing great things as often as Canadians liked to believe. To the government's credit, Canada will be spending more in every foreign policy area in the next five years. Will that increased spending be enough to satisfy interest groups such as the voluble defence and foreign aid lobbies? Of course not. But the proposed spending increases are sizable, and the policy directions sensible.
To wit: It's been obvious for years -- and pointed out by umpteen commentators -- that Canada's foreign aid was far too widely scattered. Not only was there not enough aid, but Canada sprinkled it hither and yon, often for domestic political reasons or to plant a little Canadian flag in some country. The foreign policy statement says two-thirds of Canada's bilateral aid (up from about 40 per cent) will be redirected by 2010 towards only 25 countries that are among the poorest of the poor but have reasonably efficient governments. Good. It's about time.
To wit: Canada had a very low ratio of diplomats abroad to those at head office in Ottawa. (The same criticism could be made of the Canadian International Development Agency, too.) Why? Because it costs more to post someone overseas; so, for budgetary reasons, too many officers sat in Fort Pearson in Ottawa. Now, more will be sent abroad.
To wit: Canada had closed consulates in the United States, restricting the country's abilities to do public diplomacy, a must down there. Now consulates are being reopened and a new unit created in the Canadian embassy in Washington to do public diplomacy.
The Polaris Institute and the NDP immediately claimed yesterday's statement lined Canada up with U.S. defence policy. Knee-jerk rubbish. The statement usefully orients Canadian foreign policy and defence towards working through the United Nations to help failed or failing states
Foreign Affairs will get money to prepare to assist such states, especially with civil society; Defence will get personnel and equipment to help stabilize dangerous situations. It's part of what the document, in a flight of rhetorical fancy, calls the "new multilateralism."
Big-bang integrationists, the folks who want a headlong leap into a common external tariff and a common security perimeter around North America will be disappointed. That's good, too.
Just think, if have no jobs, then we won't have to work!!!
