Canadian Policy towards the United Nations

Alistair D. Edgar, Executive Director, ACUNS and Associate Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada

The presentation examines Canada’s current policy towards the UN, set against the historical context of Canadian engagement in UN activities. It argues that Canada is not, in fact, a “boy scout” or an altruistic “helpful fixer” in its approach to the United Nations; instead, Canadian policy has been informed throughout by pragmatic self interest. However, I also argue that this does not mean that Canadian policy has been detrimental to the UN or to multilateralism, nor that Canada should be criticized for pursuing self-interested and pragmatic policies.

The first section examines Canada’s historical engagement with the world body, under the leadership of Prime Ministers Pearson, Diefenbaker, and Trudeau. The second section considers Canadian policy initiatives in the 1990s – the human security agenda (landmines, the ICC, child soldiers, the ‘Ottawa process’); Canada and Kosovo; and the decline of Canada as a UN peacekeeper. The last section deals with Canadian policy as it appears in the recent International Policy Statement – the ‘Model Citizen’ approach.

Canada and the UN: Historical Engagement?

Canadians and internationalist engagement/contributions:

Escott Reid – ICAO establishment; Hume Wrong – NATO founding; John Humphrey – author of first draft Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Lester Pearson – peacekeeping; General E.C.M. Burns – UNEF commander 1956; Louis Rasminsky – intellectual contributor to IMF creation.

However, Canada’s participation in UN activities – notably peacekeeping operations, but also the UN as an international organization – has not been undertaken out of altruism but out of careful self-interest. This need not be a criticism; it is the normal behavior of any state. It is, however, a contrast to the popular notion of Canada’s selfless support of the UN and of multilateralism.

Examples:

1948: Canada has demobilized after WWII. When asked to support the UNTSO operation, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King refused.

1949: the Canadian government reluctantly agrees to provide 4 reserve officers to the UNMOGIP operation.

1950: the Korean War leads Canada to reinvest in military, with defence spending at 7.3% GDP.

1956: Lester B. Pearson suggests interposing a UN force between combatants in the Suez Canal crisis. Marks the ‘formal’ beginning of UN peacekeeping operations. Pearson would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 in recognition of this initiative. However, (a) Pearson always saw the UN (and NATO) as valuable instruments to bind the USA in multilateral systems and organizations, to help manage US power. (b) He also saw institutions giving Canada a voice and role in international affairs that it otherwise would not have. Also, (c) Pearson was criticized strongly inside Canada for what others said was his betrayal of Canada’s historical ties to Britain. Peacekeeping was a divisive initiative, not universally accepted in Canadian politics.

1960s-70s: Both Diefenbaker and Trudeau as Prime Ministers were reluctant supporters of the United Nations in Canadian foreign policy. In the 1971 foreign policy review, Trudeau placed the UN fourth in his list of priorities, and made changes to this only when pressed to do so by western allies.

Professor John Holmes, a highly respected Canadian scholar, observed of Canadian policy during these years:

“there is nothing particularly high-minded or unselfish about a strongly internationalist policy on the part of a country that so obviously cannot protect its people or its interest except in collaboration with others.”

Likewise, Tom Keating noted that the ‘multilateralist tradition’ in Canadian foreign policy has been a by-product of pragmatic self-interest.

Canada and the United Nations in the 1990s

Under the direction of Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, Canada took several significant “human security” policy initiatives in the UN system – the Antipersonnel Land Mines Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court Treaty, opposition to the use of Child Soldiers. More controversially, Canada also was a leading participant in the NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo, undertaken without prior UN Security Council authorization.

While these may be indicators of commitment to the UN, they were (with the exception of Kosovo) low-cost exercises. Actual resources committed to UN peacekeeping, for example, declined dramatically under Prime Minister Jean Chretien as the government substantially reduced defense spending. For the first time since 1956, Canada began to decline to provide troops when requested for UN PKOs (Minister of Defence Marcel Masse, 1989 rejects request re: Angola; and in January 2001, Minister of Foreign Affairs John Manley informs UN that Canada no longer can provide troops for PKOs). Canada dropped to 31^st in ranks of troop contributors to UN (263 troops in 2002), while much larger troop numbers are committed to NATO operations (Bosnia, Afghanistan).

Noted Canadian political scientist K.R. Nossal noted that Canadian policy towards the UN under Chretien was that of a “happy follower”, who sought to participate in just causes for public relations reasons while seeking to avoid making any commitments of money or other resources.

Canada as a “Model Citizen” – the 2005 International Policy Statement

The 2005 International Policy Statement (IPS) provides an integrated vision of Canadian policy on foreign affairs, defence, international trade and development. Authored by Canadian scholar Jennifer Welsh, the foreign affairs component suggests that Canada turn away from the ‘middle power’ idea (or the close relation of ‘niche diplomacy’) as the central organizing concept, and instead advances what it says is the more useful and forward-looking idea of Canada as a ‘Model Citizen’.

Despite the argued differences between this approach and any others, in practice they may have been overstated. Setting aside semantics, it remains to be seen whether a new label will change the motivations and fundamental policy priorities behind Canada’s actions, or the level of resources that the government will provide to support those actions. Already there are reasons to doubt – though it has pushed the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) agenda into the UN reform summit with some success, the Canadian Forces do not have the personnel or the equipment needed to undertake R2P missions around the world. Instead, Canada supplies older model, used military equipment to other forces that are less able (e.g. the African Union). Pressed to increase spending on ODA to meet the 0.7% target advocated decades ago by Lester Pearson, Prime Minister Paul Martin pleaded poverty saying that Canada simply cannot afford to do so. It is difficult to imagine this argument being seen by the least developed and developing countries as supporting Canada’s new self-image as a Model Citizen.

Canada does remain a policy innovator, pressing forward with the R2P agenda in the UN, while also advocating for the establishment of a new ‘Leaders-20’ forum outside of the UN. Whatever the merits of the argument that a L-20 could accomplish movement on major policy issues that have not progressed in the UN system, the idea of circumventing the UN to accomplish international policy objectives is hard to reconcile with Canada exercising credible leadership within the UN system. Looking to achieve quick-win actions on uncontroversial policy questions, as L-20 advocates suggest should be the immediate approach, also gives only limited credence to the proposed informal grouping.

Conclusions

Recall that this is not an attack on Canadian foreign policy towards the UN, or Canadian foreign policy in general. It is intended as a corrective to the belief - held strongly by the general public in Canada, and still felt by many outside although with less conviction as time passes – that Canada has been a ‘helpful fixer’ and altruistic ‘moderate middle power’ in the UN system. In fact Canada has been a normal state, pursuing what Canadian governments have seen as being in Canada’s national interests or, at times, in their own immediate electoral interests. The latter has taken precedence throughout much of the later 1990s and early 2000s under Prime Ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin.

It is possible that other states have had policy goals that coincided with those of Canada, and that they have benefited mutually. The cliché that one can “do some good, while still doing well” is appropriate in this case. Canadian initiatives and leadership on issues such as the landmines and ICC treaties, child soldiers, and the R2P agenda have real value for advocates and defenders of the UN and of the international rule of law. There need not be a contradiction between pragmatism and ‘reasonable behavior’, especially for states that do not have the capability to be seen as a threat to others’ critical security or economic interests. Still, in order to understand Canadian policies towards the United Nations and the notion of ‘good governance’ in international political-security and economic affairs, it is worth recalling that Canada is a normal state; it is self-interested, pragmatic, and calculating in its policies and priorities.

Note by T. Kunugi, moderator of the Workshop on 25 May 2005

After Dr. A. Edgar’s Initial presentation, the following questions were posed and observations made by the participants:

· Canada is a good model of "middle-powermanship" to follow. Should not UK, Japan and Canada be advising US, thereby restraining US unilateralism?

· Whatever the realist interpretation of Canada as chiefly pursuing self-interest through its UN policy in the post-Cold War period, there exists an important image of the legacy of Canada's multilateral diplomacy as exemplified by its contributions in terms of e.g., Suez crisis management and Ottawa Process initiatives and participation in PKO.

· If the image of Canada truly interested in UN and peace was a self-deception, it was not an unhappy one for Canada and the rest of the world.

· Starting around 1996 Canadian Foreign Ministry and CIDA continued to strengthen cooperation with the NGO network CPCC (Canadian Peace-building Coordinating Committee) and CCFPD (Centre for Canadian Foreign Policy Development, established within the Foreign Ministry) made good efforts for foreign policy development jointly with NGOs, research institutes, industries and local autonomies. Doesn't this perhaps explain why Canada could play a leadership role in the Ottawa process and R2P (the responsibility to protect)?

· Is L-20 initiative a Canadian alternative to the possible expansion of the permanent membership in the Security Council?

Dr. Edgar’s written summary of his presentation as reproduced above has incorporated in the summary most of his responses to these questions and observations.