Reviews/Comptes rendus
Diplomatic Departures: The Conservative Era
in Canadian Foreign Policy, 1984–93
edited by Nelson Michaud and Kim Richard Nossal.
Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,
2001. Pp. xiv, 326. $85.00.
This book, by means of a collection of 19 relatively
short essays, offers a broad survey of the foreign
policies of the Conservative governments led by
Brian Mulroney. Anyone wanting an aid memoire
to Canadian foreign policy in this period will find it
in this volume. The theme of the book is found in
an introductory essay by Denis Stairs, who in his
usually elegant way poses the question of whether
the Conservatives were “architects,” able to shape
and lead policy in new directions, or were they “engineers,” able only to manage issues within a structure largely determined by others outside Canada.
If the latter, then the Conservatives could have been
expected to follow policies that almost anyone in
power would have followed. The conclusion of the
contributors to this collection is that, far more often
than not, the Conservatives, like their predecessors
and successors, fell into the engineering category.
According to Brian Tomlin, even the Free Trade
Agreement (FTA), the single most significant foreign policy departure of Mulroney’s governments,
was the result of forces that had emerged before the
1984 election, and the timing of its being placed on
the agenda was as much the result of political opportunism as it was of any ideological commitment.
This is borne out in Tammy Nemeth’s chapter on energy policy in which she points out that the energy
chapter in the FTA ensured that something like
Trudeau’s National Energy Policy could not be reintroduced without abrogating the Free Trade Agreement.
The story presented here is one of a pragmatic
government taking advantage of such opportunities
as presented themselves, and of practising damage
limitation when events appeared politically threatening. Nothing new here as far as the foreign policies of Canadian governments are concerned.
609
However, the fact that the foreign policy of the Conservatives was driven primarily by circumstance and
political necessity did not preclude shifts in Canadian policy, of which two notable examples were
the decision to join the Organization of American
States (OAS) and the decision to withdraw Canadian forces from Germany. (Though it is worth noting that Canada still maintains a sizeable military
presence in Europe.) At the margins, for instance,
with respect to human rights and the opening-up of
the policy process to previously excluded lobbies,
the Conservatives set precedents that were followed
by their Liberal successors. The rhetoric of “human
security” and “soft power” may be different, but the
substance is less remarkable than the spin doctors
would have us believe.
This book may be read as a rebuttal of the accounts of such journalists as Lawrence Martin and
Marci McDonald, whose picture of Mulroney’s governments as being driven by a neo-conservative ideological agenda designed to bring about the
Americanization of Canada is effectively refuted.
Rather, a reading of the contributors, whether they
be discussing the substance of policy or the policy
process, demonstrates a convincing picture of the
underlying incrementalism of Canadian policy. We
may wonder how we ended up where we are, and
we may not necessarily like it very much, but we
can be sure that it was not the result of some deeplyheld Machiavellian plan.
One slight criticism: in the effort to be comprehensive, the editors have given about equal space to
the significant and the relatively insignificant features of Canadian foreign policy in these years.
Thus, about as much attention is given to free trade,
the OAS, and the withdrawal of the Canadian Forces
from Germany as to gender, UN social conferences,
and environmental issues. Difficult to avoid, I suppose, in a survey of this kind.
P AUL B UTEUX , Director, Centre for Defence and
Security Studies, University of Manitoba
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Who is Afraid of the State? Canada in a World
of Multiple Centres of Power
edited by Gordon Smith and Daniel Wolfish.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.
Pp. xviii, 351.
Some readers of this journal may not be familiar
with the international relations debates covered in
this book, but reading it will surely persuade them
of the benefits of considering Canadian public policy
in light of evolving relationships between various
levels of governance and the international and
transnational actors. The nine contributors include
senior government officials, political scientists, and
a criminologist. Their deliberations (initiated by the
Clerk of the Privy Council and sponsored jointly by
the SSHRC and the Policy Research Secretariat)
delve into issues of efficiency and accountability,
authority, and governance. Each chapter bears on
concerns about rapid global change and national
responses raised by the assistant deputy minister’s
Subcommittee on Challenges and Opportunities
(presented in 1997 as Canada 2005: Draft Interim
Report on Global Challenges and Opportunities).
Analyses of international parliamentary institutions
and international convention secretariats, as well as
Canada’s international political economy are enriched by thorough reviews of theoretical literature
from neo-realism to regime theory and legal
pluralism.
One theme of the book is that we need not be
afraid for the state: the contributors agree that epitaphs for national government have been written
prematurely and that the issues and challenges of
globalization are more likely to transform than to
undermine the central role of the state in a world of
subnational, intergovernmental, and non-governmental actors. Stephen Clarkson suggests that we
should be more afraid of the state, arguing that a
combination of external pressures and neo-liberal
ideology has diminished social policy responsibilities. Ronald Crelinsten notes that “in certain policy
domains the state may not really be losing autonomy
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or power, but rather redefining governance in such
a way as to circumvent issues of legitimacy, public
responsibility and accountability.” Thus, citizens
may justly fear that the “hollowed out” neo-liberal
state will not only provide less social policy outputs but will also be less permeable to representation from civil society while responding more to
pressures outside territorial boundaries.
While there is some disagreement among the contributors on the extent of the erosion of state authority, all are persuasive that state-centric models
of the international system and public policy are
outdated. The state is not so much in decline as
refocusing its policy and diplomacy, for example,
through convention secretariats, as Philippe Le
Prestre’s chapter on multi-level governance in the
environmental domain plausibly illustrates. Robert
Wolfe concludes that states should not seek to impose harmonizing regulations on international trade,
but rather hope to find a productive rhythm along
with actors at different levels, with the supranational
World Trade Organization helping to discover rather
than making trade rules.
This book will interest policymakers as well as
academics teaching international relations and Canadian public policy courses. Their students’ vocabulary will be expanded to include
“transgovernmentalism,” “fragmergration,” and
“responsibilization.” Like the contributors, we may
not agree on the direction or value of change suggested in the new roles and challenges before the
state, but we will surely agree that “The reality of
the multi-centred world is that fewer and fewer relationships are amenable to being formally codified
in law or enshrined in contracts.” As the editors conclude, this is an ambiguous situation with which
governments are uncomfortable, but with which
public policy analysis must come to grips.
MALCOLM GRIEVE, Department of Political Science,
Acadia University
VOL. XXVIII , NO. 4 2002
Reviews/Comptes rendus
Backbone of the Army: Non-Commissioned
Officers in the Future Army
edited by Douglas L. Bland. Kingston: Queen’s
School of Policy Studies and McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000. Pp. 126, xxvii. $22.95.
Like most people with military service, I remember
my sergeants far better than the remote, colourless
and sometimes inept characters called officers. One
of my first sergeants, at a cadet camp, gave me the
most useful pedagogical advice I have had in years
of professional teaching. “Write f— big on the
blackboard.” Another, a black sergeant from Trinidad, deftly wheeled me out of range of a drunken
British chief petty officer who had eyed me and proclaimed: “I’ve ’ad every boy on my ship.”
Therefore, I welcome the spirit that led Doug
Bland to organize a seminar on the army’s noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and their future at a
time when armies are still intensely tradition-bound;
but everything military is in flux. From the
centurions and the rear-rank veterans of the Roman
legion to the warrant officers and sergeants of 3
PPCLI in Afghanistan, non-commissioned officers
have been the hard-core reason why soldiers don’t
flee but fight. They were steady in danger and canny
in combat. As Bland explains in his introduction,
the NCOs were often the cement between raw officers and raw privates.
All of which looks fearfully retro in an age when
the alleged Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)
turns combat into an adult-style Nintendo game
waged by computer wizards empowered to annihilate whole towns and army brigades with precisionguided missiles. Such geniuses will balk at the
thought of drill, route marches or digging a slit
trench in the pouring rain. Not for them the group
611
identities that lead to esprit de corps. RMA is essentially air force doctrine, with officer-pilots raining death from the sky and returning to sleep
between sheets. In the new vision, armies need flexibility, not backbone. Sergeants can continue to exist. The badges can be sewn on any sleeve — but
they will signify status and salaries more than discipline, competence, and authority.
Most of the contributors to this 1999 Queen’s
seminar worry about careers for non-commissioned
members in an increasingly technological and
informatic environment. The tome is optimistic,
from Lieutenant-General Mike Jeffries, current Canadian land forces commander, to Chris Dandeker
and Donna Winslow, the only academics in the collection. Perhaps Sergeant Author Majoor, one of several
non-commissioned officers included, was more realistic. Would anyone planning an RMA army for 2020
— the currently fashionable planning time-line — even
include a non-commissioned officer corps?
The one common feature of all official prophecy
is that it will be disproved by time. The American
clamour to adapt to RMA guarantees its importance.
A super-power is not easily mocked. RMA-style war
avoided US casualties in Kosovo and Afghanistan
but how many fighters did the Serbs or al-Qaede
lose? Terrorism thrives on innocent mass casualties,
whether in Belfast, Gaza City, Kabul or Belgrade.
As the British discovered and the Israelis are learning, the most effective way to fight any enemy may
be to fight an enemy. If so, old-fashioned young
sergeants will be needed and perhaps unavailable.
Public policy prefers a balance of options.
DESMOND MORTON, Department of History, McGill
University
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The Supreme Court on Trial: Judicial Activism
or Democratic Dialogue
by Kent Roach. Toronto: Irwin Law, 2001. Pp. 378.
$29.95.
Courts and legislatures are best understood, according to recent Canadian scholarship, as engaged in a
continual process of inter-institutional “dialogue.”
Kent Roach’s book-length treatment of the “dialogue” metaphor is a welcome effort at placing this
approach within a broader historical and comparative context.
Roach argues that institutional dialogue occurs
through the unique structural features of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the “reasonable limits” clause of section one and the
“notwithstanding” clause found in section 33 —
which permits legislatures to respond to judicial rulings and, if necessary, overrule them. Roach suggests that these features distinguish Canadian
judicial review from the American variety, which
requires a truly supreme judiciary to enforce absolute rights. The Charter’s incorporation of legislative participation therefore neatly sidesteps the tired
American debate over judicial activism and its
“counter-majoritarian” difficulties. Roach overstates
this Canadian exceptionalism, however, since most
American rights have been interpreted to allow for
justifiable limits similar to those explicitly identified in the Charter. Roach concedes this point in
passing but fails to explore its implications for his
argument.
For Roach, the Charter-defined relationship between the Court and Parliament is less like American-style judicial supremacy and more akin to the
give-and-take of common law and federalism jurisprudence. As Roach correctly notes, Canadian courts
have a long pre-Charter history of using procedural
and jurisdictional devices to invalidate or modify
legislation. Often, the practical effect of these interventions was to make it politically impossible for
a legislature to re-enact the law despite the Court’s
doctrinal respect for parliamentary sovereignty.
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Even if one disagrees with his suggestion that federalism jurisprudence poses a greater danger to democracy than the Charter, Roach rightly rebuts the
conventional assumption that constitutional adjudication is a radical departure from traditional Canadian judicial norms.
Roach illustrates the dialogue-driven relationship
in a number of specific case studies. Unfortunately,
Roach’s examples, which range from prisoner’s voting rights to the ban on tobacco advertisements,
identify only a couple of instances where the legislature has successfully defended a Charter interpretation different from the Court’s, and these Roach
criticizes as misapplications of dialogue theory. Tellingly, Roach’s approved illustrations tend to be more
concerned with justifying legislative obedience to
the Court’s pronouncements than with demonstrating any active role for the legislature in the development of constitutional principles. Legislatures can
only override judicially defined rights or limit them
within judicially defined boundaries. Despite his oftprofessed dislike of judicial supremacy, Roach is
comfortable leaving all interpretive authority to the
Court. He sees little deliberation in the parliamentary process, portraying the legislature as little more
than the vehicle by which majorities mechanically
impose their will. By contrasting this impoverished
account of Parliament to the coolly rational (if occasionally misguided) Supreme Court, Roach easily concludes that the dialogue process is, and should
remain, under the ultimate supervision of the Court.
Even though his approach to dialogue fails to live
up to its promise, Roach’s summary and account of
the debate is a valuable contribution. By
contextualizing this latest theory of judicial review,
Roach challenges both opponents and defenders of
the Court to appreciate the comparative and historical context of their own arguments. The Supreme
Court on Trial thus advances the continuing dialogue
about dialogue theory.
D ENNIS B AKER , Department of Political Science,
University of Calgary
VOL. XXVIII , NO. 4 2002
Reviews/Comptes rendus
The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada
by Katherine Covell and R. Brian Howe. Waterloo:
Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001. Pp. 244.
$24.95.
This book is clearly-written, intelligible, and accessible to a wide audience. Covell and Howe’s main
argument is straightforward: children have a right
to be brought up in an environment free of “social
toxins,” that is, any social-environmental conditions
that threaten their development. Thus, the authors
submit that while Canada made headway in 1990
by ratifying the landmark United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, further strides must
be taken in this regard. Essentially, the authors urge
that the UN Convention has to be taken seriously
and argue that this involves taking two, rather large
steps. First, society has to recognize that children
are not chattel, the property of parents, but are individuals with inherent rights. Second, laws, policies
and practices must pro-actively, rather than reactively, adhere to the principle of the best interests
of the child. Although these views are substantiated
with law and family policy scholarship, as well as
research in developmental psychology and neuroscience, the book remains lucid and jargon-free.
The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada
is coherent and concise. It is structured in such a
way as to explore the status of children’s substantive rights in relation to what Thomas Hammarberg
identified as the three “p’s”: provision, protection,
and participation. Whereas Chapter 1 provides an
overview of the challenge of children’s rights, and
Chapter 2 discusses their promise (with a background information on the UN Convention, and what
took place before and after it was signed), the next
three chapters respectively examine each of the
“p’s.” The final chapter offers a set of recommendations geared toward meeting the challenge of children’s rights.
Chapters 3, 4, and 5 demonstrate the book’s real
strengths. Here the authors provide up-to-date information and a valuable assessment of what has
613
taken place, and what still needs to be done, in a
range of relevant policy areas vis-à-vis children. For
instance, in Chapter 3, on the theme of provision,
we find a brief and to-the-point evaluation of recent
Canadian governments’ responses to child poverty,
children’s health and child care. The authors repeat
this pattern in Chapter 4 with the subject of protection. Here the authors assess policy gains and losses
when it comes to issues such as assault, abuse, and
neglect of children, along with the treatment of
young offenders. Chapter 5 considers developments
geared toward enhancing children’s participation in
families, schools, and communities. These three
chapters are an important resource in that they cogently identify where there has been some progress
in relation to children, and carefully outline where
there have been fewer advances, and even some retrogression. The latter is especially evident in the
cases of child poverty and child care, and here the
authors plainly show governments’ delinquency.
Overall, the book is strong in terms of its organization, its descriptive overview and its evaluation
of recent policy developments. Where the authors
falter is in their own recommendations, which are
made most explicit in the first and last chapters.
Covell and Howe fail to reflexively consider the
implications of their own positions. In short, they
uncritically embrace a quintessentially liberal viewpoint. As a result, the positive dimensions of a children’s rights strategy, the merits of resorting to the
state and laws to advance this cause, as well as the
inherent virtue of key liberal principles such as individualism, equality, opportunity and choice are all
taken for granted.
Consider the following illustrations of these limitations. Covell and Howe, echoing current Liberal
government discourses, recommend that the state
“invest” in children, the earlier the better. Children
make sound investments because they not only have
the potential to realize liberal ideals like equal opportunity and the potentialities of education, but
early intervention will save governments money in the
long run. The authors unabashedly favour legal rem-
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614 Reviews/Comptes rendus
edies, and optimistically advise that the law can be
utilized in ways that are not “punitive” but “educative.”
Yet the state and laws have not been known to make
such distinctions. For instance, policy developments
in relation to young offenders in Britain suggest that,
in addition to learning from and responding to children being at risk, the Labour government has also
put in place measures that monitor and control youth
deemed to be risks, and undermine public safety.
Here we see the coercive capacities of the state as it
resorts to a punitive legal approach whereby children are treated as risks (Garrett 1999).
The authors also support “choice,” and this is
made explicit in terms of parental leave. The invocation of choice may seem laudable at first blush,
but upon closer examination, numerous difficulties
can arise. Who, for instance, has the power to exercise choice? Research by Rianne Mahon (1999) has
effectively uncovered the less than progressive consequences of a “choice” strategy in Sweden, where
women continue to predominately bear the burden
of child-rearing responsibilities, and men choose not
to do so. The book in this instance, and in others,
downplays the implications of gender, race, and
class with distressing results.
To illustrate, the core principles advanced by the
authors, such as the “best interests of the child” or
“joint custody” and the regulation of “effective
parenting,” can certainly have different repercussions depending on one’s gender, race, ethnicity,
class, sexual orientation, and so on. Lessons can be
learned from the gendered dimensions of family law,
in general, and child custody matters, in particular.
It is important to recognize the fact that in custody
disputes judges often equate children’s best interests with the stay-at-home mother (Chunn 1999,
p. 252), or the fact that joint custody typically means
that mothers carry disproportional responsibility and
that fathers have more select duties, albeit with an
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“equal” say in how all child-rearing is done. Additionally, the authors identify how multiculturalism
can constitute a hindrance to the progression of children’s rights. This obviously underscores how individualistic rights strategies tend to promote
sameness over difference. And yet, how can one
foster “effective parenting” as the authors propose,
without being heedful of a parent’s context and how
such determinations may be affected by one’s gender, racial, ethnic or class background? These are
all problematic assumptions that need to be unpacked in a more concerted, and less assertive
manner.
In sum, this book is easy to read and contains
important information in relation to policy developments that pertain to children’s rights in Canada.
It will be of interest to a wide readership, from academics and policymakers to children’s rights advocates. However, a more nuanced intervention, and
fuller analysis that critically situates the authors’
basic philosophical premises and the recommendations that stem from them, would be welcome.
REFERENCES
Chunn, D.E. 1999. “Feminism, Law, and ‘the Family’:
Assessing the Reform Legacy,” in Locating Law: Race/
Class/Gender Connections, ed. E. Comack. Halifax:
Fernwood Publishing.
Garrett, P.M. 1999. “Producing the Moral Citizen: the
‘Looking After Children’ System and the Regulation
of Children and Young People in Public Care,” Critical Social Policy 60(19):291-311.
Mahon, R. 1999. “Both Wage Earner and Mother: Women’s Organizing and Child Care Policy in Sweden and
Canada,” in Women’s Organizing and Public Policy in
Canada and Sweden, ed.L. Briskin and M. Eliasson.
Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University
Press, pp. 238-79.
ALEXANDRA DOBROWOLSKY, Department of Political
Science, Saint Mary’s University
VOL. XXVIII , NO. 4 2002