Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland made a splash in her recent speech to the Brooking Institution. She called on democracies to rethink the global geopolitical order and to unite economically to resist autocratic regimes, led by China and Russia.
Our journalist Marie Vastel confirms in an analysis what observers of international politics already suspected. The Minister of Finance left her usual perimeter to deliver this speech, without consulting the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, and her colleagues in the ministerial caucus. Some wonder if this is Canada’s new foreign policy statement. Others quip that Justin Trudeau’s post-national Canada didn’t really have a foreign policy anyway, only ill-advised intentions.
That in itself is a problem. The elected government may well change the foreign policy of the country, but the exercise should be accompanied at least by a far-sighted debate in the Commons. We should not be placed before the current ambiguity and ask ourselves who, of Mme Freeland, from M.me Joly or Prime Minister Trudeau dictates Canada’s foreign policy.
Minister Freeland’s speech draws on the concept of ” friendshoring developed by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The proposal assumes that democracies would do better to strengthen their ties and strengthen their respective supply chains by freeing themselves from the influence of authoritarian regimes. The doctrine, full of idealism, does not prevent cooperation with despotic states on issues such as the fight against climate change, security and stability in the world.
There is still a good deal of otherworldliness and a risk of isolation for Canada in this doctrine, which will “build new walls”, as stated in our Ideas section by Jocelyn Coulon, researcher at the Center for research from the University of Montreal. The Liberals are good at lecturing and expressing values, but they do not provide themselves with the economic, military and diplomatic means to exercise real influence on the international scene.
What is more, the democratic square is under pressure in the world, and democratic regimes do not always act according to the values dear to liberals, whether in terms of environmental protection, the rights of minorities and women, reconciliation with indigenous peoples. At the UN, in an unsuccessful vote to exclude Russia from the Human Rights Council, several democracies or “semi-democracies” abstained, including Brazil, India, Mexico and Russia. ‘South Africa.
In short, M.me Freeland offers a diet multilateralism, geared towards the converging interests of democracies that are not paragons of uniform virtue. We find it hard to see how a country with limited influence like Canada can succeed in this gamble without inflicting on itself a certain form of isolationism, and without using its natural resources (hydrocarbons and minerals) to support its new allies, if we push the proposed logic of economic interdependence to the extreme.
Chrystia Freeland is lucid in her analysis of the erosion of Western powers, but by putting Canadian ideals ahead of her foreign policy interests, she leads the country down a risky path that far exceeds her prerogatives.