Saying that Canada is going through a diplomatic bad patch is not another one of those sweeping phrases that some critics throw at a government they don’t like. Within a week, relations with India literally collapsed when Justin Trudeau accused New Delhi of involvement in the assassination of a Canadian citizen, and the country was plunged into embarrassment when the world learned that a Ukrainian soldier who received a standing ovation from members of the House had fought with the Nazis.
An accumulation of blunders
If that was all it was. In fact, over the past fifteen years, Canadian governments, conservative and liberal, have been accumulating blunders, humiliations and failures at an astonishing rate. It was under Stephen Harper that Canada, for the first time since 1945, lost an election to a seat on the UN Security Council for having ignored Africa and shocked Muslim countries because of its unqualified alignment on Israel.
The Trudeau government wanted to restore the country’s reputation on the international scene, but it only succeeded in alienating several powers, and not the least: Russia, China, India, Saudi Arabia. The Prime Minister even offended the Italian Prime Minister during the last G7 by criticizing in her presence the attitude of the Italian government towards the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.
During each skirmish, Canada sought solidarity from its allies with no other result than seeing them look elsewhere. His missteps also cost him an election to the Security Council. Other Western countries have difficult relations with China, Russia or other powers, but none find themselves in the same position as Canada.
There are at least two explanations for this state of affairs. During the Cold War, Canada forged an exceptional international identity thanks to its diplomatic, economic and security initiatives. He spoke as much to Mao’s China as to Nixon’s America.
The fall of the Wall changed the landscape. New powers emerge, the West loses its centrality, and geopolitical competition replaces ideological competition. Since their election in 2006, the Conservatives aligned Canada with the international orientations of the American Republican Party, then the Liberals essentially reneged on a large part of their electoral promises in terms of foreign policy and accelerated the construction of a North American fortress. launched by their predecessors, as documented by specialists at Carleton University. Canada has become less indispensable.
The second explanation is internal politics. The propensity of parties to solicit votes from cultural communities confuses the exercise of diplomacy. Canadian politicians end up losing sight of defending the national interest in favor of special interests for short-term gain, with catastrophic results as the incident with India over Sikh terrorism demonstrates. .
Recreate an ideas box
If Canada remains a middle power still admired almost everywhere on the planet, it has lost what allowed it to differentiate itself, its identity: its ideas and its capacity to promote them and have them adopted by the rest of the world. Today, the countries interested in its diplomacy make up an increasingly restricted group as they discover its marginalization and its inability to formulate proposals that bring people together. However, the world is experiencing a time when the ongoing recomposition should be a source of intellectual vitality.
Will the reform launched last year by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, to transform the exercise of diplomacy allow Canada to regain an appreciable place on the international scene? The Implementation Plan published last month outlines a realistic roadmap for achieving this objective. However, the road will be long as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has fallen into the hands of managers and has been transformed by the Prime Minister’s office into an agency for executing the latter’s projects.
Ideators within the ministry, who have in the past made the country’s international reputation, feel “increasingly disadvantaged over time, including in promotion processes, where emphasis has been placed on skills in management rather than expertise,” reveals the survey conducted by the ministry among its employees and which was used to create the Implementation Plan.
The reform wants to turn the tide. It aims to transform the organizational culture of the department to offer Canadian diplomats a modern and welcoming working environment, both in Ottawa and abroad. In short, the ministry is committed to upgrading the profession, the career as they say. The first step will be to map the talent and knowledge within this enormous bureaucracy. As surprising as it may seem, senior leaders have a very partial idea of the skills of their employees, leading to poor use of their talents and the frustrations that ensue.
The second step will be to ensure that “the right people are in the right place, at the right time”. This is a difficult exercise, because here we must ensure a delicate balance between generalists and experts, between knowledge and management skills.
If the reform is really implemented, it should result in recreating the ideas box that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has long been. However, a corps of diplomats suitably trained and installed in command will allow Canada to avoid diplomatic crises, to better defend its interests, to offer solutions and to listen to what other countries have to say ? For this, the political class will need to use this tool intelligently. His behavior over the past fifteen years does not bode well.