How Canada lost the respect of the world

Canada once carried real weight abroad. A decade of Liberal foreign policy failures stripped that away

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Most experts agree that Canadian foreign policy experienced a golden age a few generations ago. Today, it’s probably fair to say that its golden hue has turned to pewter.

Why did our country experience this fall from grace? The last two Liberal governments, in particular, are largely to blame.

Let’s go back a few steps.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland suggested that middle powers like Canada should work together to create a counterbalance to “great powers” in dealing with the “rupture in the world order.” Some Canadians appreciated this remark, but they shouldn’t have. It’s actually a far cry from the position that Canada once held on the international stage.

“While this notion of middle powerdom may seem like a novel approach in an era dominated by two superpowers,” the National Post’s Simon Tuck wrote on Jan. 27, “it’s in fact an echo from more than a couple of generations ago, an era that many international affairs specialists refer to as ‘the golden era of Canadian foreign policy.’” That’s often depicted as a “two-decade stretch from the end of the Second World War to roughly the mid-1960s” and is “nostalgic for many Canadians who were around at the time, or have studied foreign policy from that period.” North America was often viewed as the “envy of the world” due to significant prosperity, high quality of life and the strong leadership from our closest friend and ally, the U.S.

Tuck also pointed out that the golden era “reached a zenith in 1957 when then foreign affairs minister Lester B. Pearson won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in preventing war during the Suez Crisis a year earlier and in creating the first United Nations peacekeeping force.” Indeed, that was a high point for this country. It enhanced Canada’s stature, relevance and voice among most western democracies for several decades.

Alas, that moment in time has disappeared. Why? The dissolution of our relationship with the U.S. “The golden age was very different,” Fen Osler Hampson, a foreign affairs specialist and co-chair of the Expert Group on Canada-U.S. Relations at Carleton University, told Tuck. “We’re not in the middle — we’re on the menu.”

That’s a very good way of putting it.

Two Conservative prime ministers worked hard and succeeded in building up our foreign policy. Brian Mulroney fought to end apartheid in South Africa opposed anti-semitism and defended Israel’s right to self-preservation, became the first country to recognize an independent Ukraine, and took immediate action to provide aid to Ethiopia during its terrible famine. Stephen Harper also strongly supported Israel and opposed anti-semitism, but he went even further and turned Canada into a foreign policy leader when it came to our involvement in Afghanistan, Libya’s civil war, military assault in Syria, criticizing Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine-and more.

Foreign policy during the Jean Chretien and Paul Martin tenures were a mixed bag. The former refused to join the War in Iraq, supported NATO’s bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, treated China with kids’ gloves and had a tenuous relationship with the U.S. at certain stages. The latter repaired a bit of the damage that his predecessor had left behind with the U.S., and focused on Sudan, Haiti and the Middle East in terms of safety and security. Both Liberal Prime Ministers may have had imperfect foreign policy agendas, but they would have been more desirable than what we’ve experienced in recent years.

Trudeau had a litany of foreign policy mistakes and blunders, including: icy relations with two U.S. presidents, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, enormous problems with China (Meng Wanzhou affair, Two Michaels, Chinese election interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections), disintegration of relations with India, and tense relations with Saudi Arabia. Carney followed suit with his significant role (along with Trump) in the disintegration of Canada-U.S. relations, increasing trade with China, an unreliable trade partner at the best of times, supporting an arms embargo in Israel during the Gaza War and recognizing the Palestinian state. He’s also established closer ties with Europe and improved relations with India-which are both better than anything Trudeau did, but the negatives still far outweigh the positives.

Carney and Trudeau have destroyed the foreign policy achievements of their predecessors and shattered our country’s legacy on the international scene in roughly eleven years. They’ve shifted Canada from a “golden era” into a “pewter era,” and it will be difficult to ever regain its former lustre. That’s nothing to be proud of.

Michael Taube is a political commentator, Troy Media syndicated columnist and former speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He holds a master’s degree in comparative politics from the London School of Economics, lending academic rigour to his political insights.