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Fragmented Canadian maple leaf over map of the world
Does Canada have a foreign policy?
Protected by three oceans and the hegemony of the United States, Canadian foreign policy has long been shaped by geographical accident and proximity to power. The trade-off has been that while Canada doesn’t have great power preoccupations it remains stuck within the orbit of its most important ally, the US, which does.
But now, the Canadian government is facing a series of foreign policy challenges that put it in an awkward position. Ottawa suddenly needs to clarify its goals and refine its tactics. Can it?
Earlier this week, after years of mixed-results attempts to get closer with India as part of its Indo-Pacific trade and relationship-building strategy, Canada accused India of playing a part in the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil – Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
While Canada’s closest allies, particularly the United States, denounced the murder and called for India to cooperate in an investigation, neither the U.S., nor the U.K. or Australia seem willing to risk their relationship with India over the affair, particularly as Western powers court New Delhi as a crucial counterweight to China. The episode reveals a lot about the challenges, and weaknesses, of Canada’s foreign policy.
Job One: Staying close to the U.S.
Over the past century, Canada has fought along the US in every major American war except Vietnam and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As an essential security partner in several relationships, including Nato and Norad, Canada has largely kept in step with U.S. geopolitical goals and objectives.
The Trudeau government has also, importantly, sided with the U.S. in Washington’s rivalry with China, even when that has produced major political headaches at home. The 2018 arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver – at Washington’s request – led to Beijing kidnapping two Canadians in China. While the affair was eventually settled, it damaged Sino-Canadian relations.
More recently, after pressure from opposition parties, the Trudeau government launched a full public inquiry into foreign interference in Canada’s democracy, with China, among others, targeted as a major culprit.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Canada has backed Kyiv with cash, training, and arms. In June, Trudeau announced a CAD$500 million fund for military assistance to the country, and this week committed $33 million worth air defenses. All told, Canada has spent $8 billion as part of its pro-Ukrainian efforts. On Friday, Ukrainian president Zelensky will speak to the Canadian Parliament.
Still, despite all of this, Canada’s Nato allies, particularly the U.S., have long complained that Ottawa underspends on its military, coming up short of the alliance’s target of 2 percent of GDP. Canada, for its part, argues the 2 percent target is less important than making critical investments such as the purchase of F-35 jets and investment in NORAD upgrades.
Canada has also, on occasion, found itself decidedly on the outs with its major allies. When the U.S. launched a new security partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom (AUKUS) last year, Canada was sidelined. While Ottawa has expressed interest in playing a role in AUKUS, the White House says there is no plan to invite Canada into the partnership. Ostensibly, Canada has been left out because it has no intention of investing in nuclear submarines, which are a central pillar of the AUKUS strategy.
Under-planned and under-resourced.
What are Canada’s strategic goals, and is there a coherent plan for achieving them? Experts are skeptical.
Graeme Thompson, senior analyst at Eurasia Group says “Canada’s foreign policy seems to be very much disjointed,” which is to say “There isn’t an overarching strategic framework.”
Canada hasn’t published a National Security Strategy, for example, since 2004. Nor has it undertaken a formal Foreign Policy Review. Without a conceptual anchor like that, Canada’s foreign policy is unmoored. The country has lost two separate bids for a rotating seat on the UN Security council over the past 15 years.
That lack of coherent strategy, according to Thompson, is the consequence of two problems. First, Canadian political leaders struggle to prioritize issues and regions, and second, they don’t adequately fund a truly global approach. So, Canada ends up spreading itself too thin to exercise significant influence on the global stage, which leads it to overpromise and under-deliver.
Attempting to cover nearly every region of the globe, he says, Canada is trying to balance trade relationships, embassy and consulate presences, security and defence commitments, development assistance, and leadership on environment, climate change and human rights.
No wonder there isn’t enough money – not to mention time, attention, and human resources – to go around.
Problems coming home to roost.
Years of subpar Canadian foreign policy are now catching up with the Trudeau government. The return of great power rivalries, fresh external meddling in Canada’s diasporas and elections, and some unusual – if small – cracks in the US-Canada alliance are now forcing Ottawa to develop a more robust foreign policy than it is used to having.
Can it manage? Canada may be a middle power, but it shouldn’t have a middling foreign policy.
Canada is "eyes wide open" on China, says defense minister
Whatever happened to China's spy balloons? You might recall that a suspected one was shot down over the Yukon in Canada, although the terrain made it too hard to retrieve the debris.
Regardless, the crisis demonstrates the need for Ottawa to have an Indo-Pacific strategy and to be "eyes wide open" on China, Canada's Defense Minister Anita Anand tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Unfortunately, for Anand that means "we are seeing the world become increasingly dark."
And what about TikTok? Canada has already banned the Chinese app on government devices — and the country's defense minister has done the same for her four kids.
Watch the GZERO World episode: What the US and Canada really want from each other
Women in power — Canada's Chrystia Freeland
Heads of state and government typically dominate the spotlight, but it's the office holders that work for and around them who are responsible for some of the biggest policy decisions that forge their country's place in the world. In 2021, still, women leaders are even more likely to go under the radar than their male counterparts.
This International Women's History Month, we shine a light on a few women around the world who are pulling the levers of power.
Chrystia Freeland — dubbed by POLITICO as "Canada's Minister of Everything" — serves as deputy prime minister, finance minister, and was recently foreign minister and a top trade liaison. What sets her apart from many of her counterparts, and how has her worldview shaped her policymaking?
Negotiator in chief. As Canada's point person on NAFTA renegotiations, Freeland had the mammoth task of overseeing delicate US-Canada relations under the Trump administration in 2018. On the one hand, Ottowa wanted to protect the sometimes fragile relationship with its giant neighbor and top trade partner. On the other, it wanted to ensure that a new deal didn't undermine Canada's long-term economic interests.
Tasked with managing the back-and-forth with an oft-combative Washington — Trump said of Freeland at the time that "we don't like their representative very much" — she played a critical role in getting the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement across the finish line. In the process, she scored a big win for Canada — and a personal political boost — by getting the Trump administration to agree to keep NAFTA's trade dispute settlement mechanisms in place, providing needed protection for a country with much less negotiating leverage than its superpower partner.
Meanwhile, the governing Liberal party has also leveraged Freeland's negotiating skills and connections to communities in energy-rich Alberta, where she grew up, to try and find a middle ground between the provincial leaders who back the oil and gas industry and the Trudeau government, which has put forward an ambitious climate agenda.
The world through a feminist lens. When Freeland, a former financial journalist who entered the political fray in 2013, was tapped to become Canada's foreign minister in 2017, she advocated to adopt a "feminist" approach to international affairs. She pushed hard to persuade skeptics to see feminism not as a dirty word, but rather as an equalizing force that benefits all members of society. Empowering women and girls by allocating resources to expand female participation in the workforce, as well as investing in reproductive healthcare, makes countries more peaceful and prosperous, she said.
As a result, Freeland has helped put Canada at the forefront of a global movement in feminist foreign policy, an approach taking shape in countries as varied as Sweden and Mexico. In practical terms, Canada committed to directing 95 percent of its foreign aid budget toward gender equality programs by 2022 (improving girls' education, investing in reproductive healthcare and boosting women's political representation) — one of the boldest targets set by any country.
And now, as the post-COVID economic cleanup gets underway, Freeland, as finance minister, is pushing for a stimulus package that prioritizes the particular needs of Canadian women, who, like women globally, have been disproportionately impacted by the economic toll of the pandemic and increased demands of domestic life. (Consider that 20,600 Canadian women left the labor force between February and October last year, while nearly 68,000 men joined during that time.)
What does this mean in practical terms? Canada is going big. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has committed to a $79 billion stimulus package that, among other things, will prioritize getting women back into the workforce, while also making a heavier investment in childcare. While skeptics say this could balloon Canada's debt and impede growth, Freeland argues that Canada has more to lose by going too small than too big. Analysts have noted that in appointing Freeland to the finance post during a once-in-a-generation economic crisis, Trudeau is very much banking his political fortunes — and the country's economic comeback — on her leadership.
Progress and the illusion of merit. When Freeland accepted the finance portfolio last summer, critics charged that she wasn't qualified. Much of the discourse ignored the reality that she had a proven leadership track record on a variety of complex issues, and that after leading the way on USMCA, even colleagues across the political divide praised her as the "hardest-working" lawmaker. "They're sending an all-too-familiar message to women seeking high office: No matter what you accomplish, it will never be enough," one Canadian academic said in response.
Freeland's future: The deputy PM has been touted as a future leader of the Liberal party and potential successor to Trudeau. In its history, Canada has had only one female prime minister, who served for less than six months. After the past year has forced many Canadian women to confront the inequality within their own day-to-day lives, many are surely hoping for another one.