Towards A True Canadian Foreign Policy - Looking For Third Ways

Perhaps the biggest part of that relationship is in foreign policy and it’s in this area is where the relationship can be either very warm or very cold. Canada’s foreign policy seems to be based on how it sees itself within the world around it. Is it America’s partner and ally within NATO - which is certainly the way Mulroney and Harper views the relationship and why Canada dispatched its military forces to the Persian Gulf War of 1991 and to Afghanistan - or is it a country with the resources to carve out its own foreign policy niche which was certainly true during the Trudeau days and true during the Martin government. Like all pendulums, such policies have extremes. Grow to close to the U.S. and you’re nothing more than their poodle, which is what Tony Blair has become. Blair may have thought he could provide some influence on the conduct U.S. policy during the Iraq War but Britain’s weaker standing compared to the U.S.’ simply does not allow for it. In any allied military operation since World War II, it’s the U.S. that calls the shots, period. This has been an illusion that has weakened Britain considerably. On the other hand, a too independent foreign policy away from the U.S. is somewhat silly considering Canada’s weak military and the fact that such a policy is often political posturing and indulging in cheap, leftist rhetoric in an effort to satisfy the coming and going waves of nationalism that sometimes sweep Canada (especially in the aftermath of the Cold War and in response to the Quebec secession crisis of the mid-1990s). Canadians do not perceive themselves to be so diametrically opposed to the U.S. to forge its own alliances outside the Atlantic community, especially with its membership in the Commonwealth. Harper straddles this line between subservience and revanchism as well as anyone and perhaps he is building a third way in between the two poles that can satisfy most Canadians. One the one hand, Canadian troops are in Afghanistan, supporting the NATO effort there concurrent with Canada’s treaty obligations and Harper has worked with the Bush II Administration to resolve ongoing trade disputes that would still have lingered in suspended animation given the hostility between the Martin and Bush II governments. On the other hand, Canada has not joined the “Coalition of the Willing” in Iraq (which would destroy Harper’s government and break-up the Tories once again) and Harper has issued warnings to U.S. submarines operating in the Arctic Ocean not to come too close to Canadian waters. He has also asserted Canada’s sovereignty over Hans Island near Greenland, which Denmark claims as its own. Harper instinctively knows that one of the strikes in Canadian voters’ minds against the Tories for years was their seemingly closeness to U.S. conservatives and Republicans stretching all the way back to the Reagan-Mulroney days and the perception they would erase the border and make Canada the 51st state. Now that the U.S. will require those traveling to Canada to have passports, the border crossings between the two countries will no longer be the speed bump to U.S. visitors that it once was. This may make trade and travel more difficult, but also reinforces the fact that the border does still exist, and that Canada and the U.S. are still two different places, which is a plus for Harper as he tries to make the Tories become legitimate as a party of government. Also helping the Tories this past week was the recent elections to the Quebec National Assembly. The Action Democratique du Quebec (ADQ) is a conservative party, or at least conservative by Quebec standards, and is led by 35-year old political wunderkind Mario Dumont. Yesterday the ADQ shattered Quebec’s current two-party system between the federalist and centrist Liberals and left-wing sovereigntist Parti Quebecois as they won 31% of the vote (up from 18% in 2003) and gained 41 seats (up from five). The Liberals were reduced to 48 seats from 72 and the PQ was utterly routed, being reduced to 36 seats from 45 and dropping to 28 percent of the vote. It’s Quebec’s first minority government since 1878. More than that, the Liberals have basically been reduced to Anglo-speaking Montreal and its surrounding suburbs, the PQ basically to its strongholds while the ADQ won across the breadth of Quebec, both rural, urban and suburban. http://www.americanchronicle.com:80/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=22993 [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on April 20, 2007]

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