Where has Canada gone?
Time Canadian edition
Authors: Steven Frank
Volume 161
Issue: 21
Pages: 14-18
ISSN: 03158446
Copyright Time Incorporated May 26, 2003
The world's second largest country is being swallowed up by its own
irrelevance. TIME investigates Canada's disappearance
THREE WEEKS BEFORE THE WORLD'S Attention froze on the War in Iraq,
Canada's H.M.C.S. Iroquois steamed across the North Atlantic toward the
Persian Gulf. The destroyer was to join a 12-ship multinational task force as part
of the global war on terrorism. But at sunset on that late-February evening, the
Iroquois's only Sea King helicopter somehow lost power during a routine training
exercise. The 40-year-old aircraft came crashing into the ship. No one was killed,
which was just about the only good news in the whole affair.
By the next morning, though, the Iroquois was steaming back to its Halifax home
port with the carcass of the Sea King lashed to its rear deck. Even more
embarrassing: the crash delayed by nine days the warship's arrival in the Persian
Gulf, where it was to become the base of operations for Canadian Commodore
Roger Girouard, who had just taken command of the multinational antiterrorism
force. But the saddest fact of all was that the Canadian military couldn't
immediately free up a replacement Sea King. When the Iroquois finally set sail
again for the Middle East on March 5, it did so without a Sea King-which acts as
the ship's eyes and ears for surveillance and is used for emergency evacuations.
And when a replacement helicopter was ready to follow, it had to be sent on a
commercial container ship three weeks later.
The sorry tale illuminates a larger truth. Some 50 years after Canadian troops
helped win World War II and Canadian diplomats helped shape the international
institutions that remade a shattered globe, Canada seems to have neither the will
nor the wallet to make its mark on the world. Canadians can look back with pride
at their past achievements on the world stage: the heroism at Dieppe in 1942 and
on D-day in 1944, the brokering of the truce that stanched the 1956 Suez crisis,
leadership in dozens of U.N. peacekeeping missions in the 1960s and '70s. But
those glory years are gone. Canada's influence these days is more like a
phantom limb: it feels to Canadians as though it's still there, but to many
observers the reality is different. The nations ability to extend power and
influence has been hacked back to a shadow of its former self. "We are now a
marginal player in the world," says Hugh Segal, who heads the Montreal-based
think tank Institute for Research on Public Pol! icy. "We have a series of conceits
about how important we are and about how much our views count that is
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completely unrelated to reality." Christopher Sands, a senior associate at the
Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, agrees.
"Canada's footprint in for-eign affairs is getting smaller," he says. "It's an
important, Western, decent country but certainly not a principal player."
Increasingly, Canada seems to be a child hiding in tangled underbrush. You
know it's there, but you just can't find it. One Canadian diplomat in Europe feels
the country's place in the world is diminished because Ottawa has subjugated
much of its foreign policy to goals involving international trade. Arguably, doing
that made some sense in the 1990s, when economic globalization was all the
rage. But with the return of big geopolitical questions since Sept. 11, 2001-some
of them capable of solution only by the application of military power-Canada has
been found wanting. "Canada really no longer has a force capable of doing all
the traditional military tasks," says the Canadian diplomat. The nation is shrinking
even from areas where it has most often been a leader, like aid to poor countries.
"Development ministers in Europe now meet regularly to find ways to deal with
growing poverty," says a senior U.N. official. "Canada is just no longer connected
there."
Many people don't believe it. "Our reputation, our capability to change things, has
not diminished at all," a senior government official tells TIME. "To the contrary, I
think we are still seen as a country that people look to for advice and for ideas."
Among those ideas is the basic Canadian goal of "trying to create a sense of
social justice in the world community that involves a pluralistic system where all
races and nationalities can come together" says Foreign Minister Bill Graham.
Canada's loss of stature is relative, says Graham. "I don't think we've lost our
leadership capacity just because other nations are more important than they
were 50 years ago." This, to some extent, is true. Canada's decline in influence
since 1945 is an inevitable part of the way the world has changed. Emerging
powers like China and India now speak with a confident voice, while Germany
and Japan have the clout that goes with their wealth. But the world's changing
dynamics explain only part! of Canada's retreat. More of it is the result of
conscious policy decisions made in Ottawa.
Canada's disappearance from the world stage is tangible. Take peacekeeping,
for years a source of pride-almost an element of national identity-among
Canadians. The height of Canada's international prestige was in the early 1970s,
when "Canada was involved in every peacekeeping operation," says military
historian Fred Gaffen. "We always provided the headquarters or the brains
behind the operation." In the early 1990s, Canada had about 4,000 troops in
such places as the Balkans, Haiti and Cambodia. Now, because Canada is
sending up to 2,000 soldiers to Afghanistan this summer, it has little leeway to
send troops on any other new missions. The government could not have sent
any substantial number of combat troops to Iraq in March, even if it had wanted
to. In February, Canada had to turn down a plea by the U.N. to send a
desperately needed force to civil war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo,
formerly known as Zaire. "There's no question," says Graham. "With the
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demands on u! s in Afghanistan and other parts of the world, we can't answer
every demand."
Why not? Because Canada has noticeably reduced the size of its armed forces.
Only 10 years ago, Canada had 80,000 regular troops; today there are 61,000.
And Canada's military budget has stagnated. Despite a boost this year, it is still,
in inflation-adjusted terms, 17% below its 1993 level. Canada is near the bottom
of NATO'S roster when it comes to percentage of GDP devoted to defense.
"Without question, since the cold war, with a few exceptions, we're able to play a
much less significant military role" says John de Chastelain, former Canadian
Chief of Defense Staff.
Much the same story is true in diplomacy. For years, Canada's foreign service
was known as one of the best in the world. But budget cuts have made it harder
to keep and attract the best and brightest. There are actually 17 more Canadian
missions around the world than there were 10 years ago, but there are 140 fewer
foreign-affairs people to staff them. Canada gives a lot of aid to the world's poor
and downtrodden, right? No, it doesn't. Canada's foreign-aid budget has fallen
from a high of 0.53% of its GDP in 1975 to 0.28% today. That puts Canada well
below the average-0.4%-of the 22 leading donor nations in the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development.
Canada cut back its foreign policy tools in the early 1990s for a reason: the
country's finances were in a mess. The budget cuts of the mid-1990s, which are
only now being slowly reversed, forced the country to do more with less. "Canada
has always led by being creative," says the Europe-based Canadian diplomat.
But in the past few years, even the number of great ideas coming from Canada
has been reduced. The last big initiative promoted by Ottawa was the NEPAD
program, which commits Africa to improve governance in exchange for Western
aid and liberalized trade.
Many observers blame a lack of direction from Ottawa and a leader who often
seems loath to lead. American officials have been meeting to brief Canadians on
the U.S. National Missile Defense plan for two years. The Americans want to
place command and control under NORAD, the joint U.S.-Canada air-defense
organization. But despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, Prime Minister
Jean Chretien seems unlikely to give a clear answer until midsummer, the
supposed last possible moment. "We have not started discussing it," Chretien
told the House of Commons on April 29. "Perhaps the wise thing to do is to try to
find out what they are asking of us-if they ask anything." That sort of attitude
mystifies U.S. Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci. "Why would you have
meetings over a two-year period if we didn't want Canada to participate?"
The problem is one of uncertainty of focus and aim. For months, Chretien
managed to say both that a second Security Council resolution was needed to
justify armed intervention in Iraq and that it wasn't. Worse yet, the Prime Minister
did not directly alert the U.S. Administration about Canada's decision not to
participate in the war before he announced it to Parliament on March 18. Even
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Canadians who were pleased with Chretien's choice were critical of his handling
of the affair. "Deciding at the absolute last possible minute, with 3,000 troops or
so already in the theater, sent a lot of mixed messages," says N.D.P. leader Jack
Layton. "I don't think it cultivated any sense of respect."
Not in Washington-that's for sure. "The image that was carried live by CNN was
of an unsympathetic Prime Minister surrounded by a triumphalist caucus slagging
the U.S." says the Globe and Mail's former Washington correspondent Andrew
Cohen, author of the new book While Canada Slept, a trenchant critique of
modern Canadian foreign policy. Less than three weeks after the war started,
Ottawa announced its ships patrolling the Persian Gulf might not hand over
fleeing Iraqis it captured to the U. S. "We found the policy to be
incomprehensible" Cellucci says. No surprise, then, that Bush canceled his
planned May 5 trip to Ottawa.
Chretien, of course, is not the only world leader who has lost a little cachet in
Washington for not falling in line with America. "Many countries in the Western
world have felt, under Bush, relatively little room for maneuver," says University
of Edinburgh history professor Colin Coates. But for years, Canada has thought
of itself and spoken of itself as the U.S.'s best friend-and many Americans have
been happy to return the favor. If the Prime Minister was going to alienate
Canada's partner on a matter that Washington thought, for better or worse,
touched its vital national interest, he might have spelled out precisely what
Canada was likely to gain from the choice. But he never did. "This government
has a fundamental problem of not articulating its national interests, so that others
can predict Canada's behavior," Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper says.
"That's making us increasingly marginal and irrelevant in a lot of discussions."
There were signs last week that Canada was testing a new tack. Justice Minister
Martin Cauchon met with U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to brief him on
Canada's newly drafted marijuana laws. And in the larger picture, Foreign
Minister Graham has been conducting a major foreign policy review. But don't
expect any immediate changes. "In terms of our foreign policy taking bold new
initiatives," Graham says, "I would like to wait until we've completed this
process." Recommendations, he says, probably won't go to Cabinet until the fall.
By then, the Liberals will be picking a new leader and preparing for a new
administration. One guarantee: the Department of National Defense will still be
waiting for a new helicopter to replace the Sea King.
Historically, Canada has been an International Player:

1914-1918 Canada has 600,000 troops in World War I and suffers 60,000
casualties

1939 Canada declares war on Germany a week after Britain's declaration
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
1943-1944 Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and William Lyon
Mackenzie King meet in Quebec to discuss war strategy

1945 At the end of the war, Canada boasts the world's third largest navy
and fourth largest army. Its forces were invaluable at Dieppe, on the Italian
front and in Holland

1950 22,000 Canadian army special forces volunteer for a U.N. mission to
Korea. As a member of NATO, Canada also maintains a force of 120,000
soldiers in Europe

1950 22,000 Canadian army special forces volunteer for a U.N. mission to
Korea. As a member of NATO, Canada also maintains a force of 120,000
soldiers in Europe

1956 Canada defuses the Suez crisis and develops the idea of
"peacekeeping." A year later, Lester Pearson, Secretary of State of
External Affairs, wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his role

1970s Canada is the world leader in peacekeeping, participating in almost
every misson worldwide.

1980 The Canadian embassy in Iran rescues six Americans during the
histage crisis

1991 Canadian troops help drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait

1999 with 1,300 personnel, Canada joins a Nato-led force in Kosovo

2002 830 Canadian troops support the U.S. war on terrorism in
Afghanistan
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
The debate on this issue is just beginning, and we want to hear from you, our
readers. Do you agree that Canada is disappearing from the world stage? Do
you care? What do you think should be the country's next step? Please send
your e-mails to:
feedbackcanada@timemagazine.com
With reporting by Perry Bacon Jt./Washington, Laura Eggertson/Ottawa, James
Graff/Paris, Stephen Handelman/New York and reproduced with permission of
the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without
permission.
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