Unfinished Business: Canada-US Border and Regulatory Cooperation

Excerpted from Inside Policy February-March 2013 MacDonald Laurier Institute

Launched a year ago the Regulatory Cooperation and Beyond the Border Initiatives are making progress even if they are not generating headlines. The re-election of the Obama Administration, with its commitment to create jobs through doubling trade, offers the promise of more to come.  It is easier for people and goods to cross the border and we should see more improvements. While the regulatory thicket remains, its growth is curbed and, in time, we may even see some trimming of the ‘tyranny of small differences’ that frustrates business and undermines North American competitiveness. While process is often a placebo for real progress, in these initiatives process is progress but for it to take hold we need to see attitudinal change on the part of those who mind the border…

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Colin Robertson, March 7th 2013 | Tags: ,
Posted in Major Research paper

G20 Summit in Los Cabos

Fro ipolitics Monday, June 18: A Canadian Primer to the G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico

On Monday and Tuesday, the leaders of the major economic nations, their finance ministers and central bankers will meet to discuss global economic issues in Los Cabos, on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula. The leaders will be accompanied by their personal advisors, or ‘sherpas’ as well as the usual entourage of paparazzi, pundits, and protesters of what is euphemistically known as  ‘civil’ society. The Los Cabos summit will take place against the backdrop of the continuing euro-crisis, Sunday’s Greek and Egyptian elections and continuing turmoil in Syria.

What is the G20?

The G20, originally a meeting of finance ministers, their deputies and central bankers, was formed in 1999 in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, The member countries include the G8 nations: Canada, United States, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom and Russia as well as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. The heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank participate, as do the heads of the European Union and European Commission. In the previous G20 summits, the heads of government of the Netherlands and Spain have participated.

Collectively, they account for over 80 per cent of world trade and world production. They began meeting at the head of government level in November 2008 when President Bush convened them in Washington to deal with the economic crisis. G20 leaders reconvened in London (April 2009), Pittsburgh (October 2009), Toronto (August 2010), Seoul (November 2010), Cannes (November 2011), and next year they will meet in Russia.

In advance of the meetings later this week, there was a G(irls)-20 summit, building on the first organized by Belinda Stronach in advance of the Toronto G-20 to discuss the Millennium Development goals

Do we really need a G20?

Yes. Getting the major nations’ leadership together to discuss problems is a good idea. As Winston Churchill, who popularized the word ‘summitry’ observed, ‘jaw-jaw’ is better than ‘war-war’. World leaders have met in various forums regularly since the Second World War.  Henry Kissinger has described 2009 as the year when the new world order began. The United States, arguably for the first time since the Second World War, was obliged to recognize that its economic strength was no longer sufficient to go it alone. The G-8 group of leaders, set up in 1975 to deal with an earlier economic crisis occasioned by a rise in oil prices, had become insufficiently representative of the major economic powers given the rise of China and India.

What does the summit want to achieve?

The “to do” remains the same as last year: to resuscitate the global economy as it crawls forward to deficit control. After the biggest stimulus package in world history, recovery is still very uneven . There is division, especially since the election in May of French President François Hollande, about the emphasis on austerity and deficit containment as opposed to  the need, once more, for additional stimulus to create growth.

The Eurozone crisis continues, with the Greek contagion now threatening Spain and Italy. José Manuel García-Margallo, Spain’s foreign minister, has likened Europe to the Titanic and reminded his fellow Europeans “If there’s a sinking here, even the first-class passengers drown.”

Unfortunately in this situation, we are all Europeans and as the Bank of Canada warned last week:

“If the sovereign debt crisis in Europe continues to intensify, it would further weaken global economic growth and prompt a general retrenchment from risk. In turn, the weaker global outlook would fuel sovereign fiscal strains and impair the credit quality of loan portfolios. Together, these factors would increase the probability of an adverse shock to the income and wealth of Canadian households.”

What else will be discussed?

There are the other continuing crises:

  • How to achieve collective action to advance collective freer trade in the Doha Round, now the longest running trade negotiations.
  • How to save the planet from climate change, although this discussion is effectively punted to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio Plus 20 summit) later in the week. Prime Minister Harper, U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chanc have deputized their foreign ministers or environment ministers to represent them.
  • How to keep the increasing millions of mouths fed, watered and free of pandemics. Around a billion people around the world suffer from hunger. Development assistance from the once ‘rich’ to poor nations declined last year for the first time in a decade.  The 2011 Global Hunger Index concludes that more than 50 countries were experiencing “extremely alarming,” “alarming,” or “serious” levels of hunger. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia continue to be hunger hot spots and it is not just the developing countries that face food issues. ActionAid USA found that augmented corn production in the U.S. for biofuel led to a rapid increase in food import prices in Mexico. “Between 2005 and 2011, the tortilla prices rose by nearly 70 percent. Since 2005, the increase in ethanol fuel usage in the U.S. has resulted in up to $500 million in corn price rises in Mexico each year.”
  • How to contain terrorism and crime, with the Mexican hosts certainly able to provide first-hand examples on the problems of drugs, guns and human trafficking.
  • How to prevent everything going up in a nuclear cloud. Half a world away, the P5 (permanent members of the UN Security Council – USA, France, United Kingdom, China, Russia) and Germany will be meeting in Moscow in another encounter with Iran in an effort to contain its nuclear ambitions. Further sanctions are to be applied to Iran on July 1.

President Obama has said that nuclear proliferation is the one issue that keeps him awake at night and Iran and North Korea will continue to be the focus of attention. A second nuclear security summit was hosted by South Korea in Seoul earlier this year, as a follow up to the 2009 conference hosted by President Obama. Earlier this month, the UN Security Council voted to impose new sanctions that target Iranian banks suspected of connections with nuclear or missile programs, expand the arms embargo, and call for a cargo inspection regime.

What are the Canadian interests?

With half of our production destined for trade, our prosperity depends on a healthy world economy. As Harvard economist Ken Rogoff recently told Global TV’s Tom Clark on West Block, Canada would not escape a global recession.

On the big issue – a gameplan for European recovery, Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will underline Canada’s commitment to fiscal discipline and structural reforms to employment insurance and pensions as well an aggressive expansion of trading opportunities.

“Canada’s message at the G20 summit”, Mr. Harper told the Conference de Montréal last week, “is that economic growth and fiscal discipline are not mutually exclusive; they go hand in hand.” In his speech earlier this year at Davos, Mr. Harper spelled out the Canadian perspective:

“As I look around the world, as I look particularly at developed countries, I ask whether the creation of economic growth, and therefore jobs, really is the number one policy priority everywhere? Or is it the case that in the developed world too many of us have in fact become complacent about our prosperity, taking our wealth as a given, assuming it is somehow the natural order of things, leaving us instead to focus primarily on our services and entitlements? Western nations, in particular, face a choice of whether to create the conditions for growth and prosperity, or to risk long-term economic decline and, as we all know, both from the global crises of the past few years and from past experience in our own countries, easy choices now mean fewer choices later.”

For these reasons, and because of the correct belief that Europeans have the capacity, if they have the collective will to resolve their situation,  Canada (and the USA) will not participate in the most recent IMF bailout for Europeans. Canada’s fiscal deficit is about 1.5% of gross domestic product. The Government is aiming to balance its budget by the 2015-16 fiscal year. As Finance Minister Flaherty put it last week, “You’re not going to have economic growth unless there’s market confidence. You’re not going to have market confidence unless you have a solid fiscal plan that’s credible and believable by the markets.  And that’s where we have been encouraging our European colleagues to go.”

For Prime Minister Harper, it is another opportunity to press President Obama on our application to the Trans Pacific Partnership now under negotiation among the United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Japan and Mexico are also seeking admission to the negotiations.  The Canada-Europe Trade Agreement (CETA) is in the final stages of negotiation and this is an occasion for discussions with the European leaders.

Canada, the G20 and our ability to ‘play at the top table’

The G20 owes much to Canadian engineering. As Finance Minister in the Chretien government, Paul Martin recognized that western dominance of the international economy would not endure so he  brought together his counterpart finance ministers in the emerging economies. It was smart public policy that also served the national interest. In any future recalculation of the biggest economic powers we would lose our seat, so better to create a bigger forum that recognized the current realities.

We belong to most of the multilateral clubs, including two in which the US is not a member – the Francophonie and Commonwealth. At our best we are informed, a constructive conscience, consensual and acting especially as a bridge between developed and developing nations, and coming up with useful initiatives – thus, for example, the Kananaskis Action Plan on Africa (2002).

In terms of international power dynamics, we have moved in a generation from the bipolarity that characterized the post World War II period to the unipolarity of the 1990s and now, a new era of multipolarity. Migration has made us a people of many nations and our pluralism is the envy of the world.

Our place at the top tables owes much to our relationship with the United States (it was Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger who ensured that we were admitted to the original G7).  History, geographic propinquity, economic integration and culture give us a unique appreciation of Uncle Sam. The US is still the paramount world power and has demonstrated remarkable resiliency in times of crisis.

When we fail to appreciate this privileged position and act as a scold and nag, or ‘stern voice of the daughter of God’ in the descriptive words of former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson (whose mother was Canadian), we reduce ourselves to irrelevance.

But when we play our hand well, drawing on our capacity as ‘interpreter’ of the US to the rest and of the rest to the US, we leverage our place and increase our standing. It is something every prime minister since Mackenzie King has come to learn if not always practice. Heading into Los Cabos, Mr. Harper struck the right tone for the G-20 when he told the audience at last week’s Conference de Montréal, “As Canadians neither are we able nor do we desire to impose our views on the world. But Canada can demonstrate, through our actions, a model that works”.

Prepared by Colin Robertson with research by Conor Robertson.

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Colin Robertson, June 18th 2012 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Major Research paper, Newspaper

NATO Chicago Summit

A Canadian Primer to the Chicago NATO Summit  in Ipolitics.ca May 20 2012

Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Ministers responsible for foreign affairs and defense will meet in Chicago for the 25th NATO summit May 20 and 21, 2012 at the invitation of President Obama. It is predicted to be the largest meeting in NATO’s 63-year history. It has been designated a “National Security Special Event” by Homeland Security as the meeting is expected to be met with demonstrations by the occupy movement and a rainbow assortment of other protest groups, including the coalition of clowns. The conference takes place against a backdrop of crisis in the Eurozone and the uncertainty of electoral change in the United States and other European countries. It will be the first NATO summit for newly elected French president François Hollande, whose electoral platform included a pledge to pull French forces out of Afghanistan. The meeting follows directly on the G8 summit held on the weekend at Camp David.

What is NATO?
In the wake of the Second World War, the victors set up a series of international institutions. The foremost was the United Nations, with universal membership designed to advance human progress and prevent the “scourge of war”. At the same time, mindful of the growing division between the Soviet Bloc and the West, the western alliance set up a collective security agreement called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In the words of its first secretary general, Lord Ismay, NATO was designed to “keep the Russians out, the Germans down, and the Americans in”. Designed primarily as a collective security agreement, whereby an attack on one would be considered an attack on all (Article 5), it was also designed at Canadian insistence to have an economic dimension to promote trade, investment, and commerce between the members (Article 2).

The agreement was signed on April 2, 1949. Its original membership included twelve countries – the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Turkey joined in 1952, West Germany in 1955 and Spain in 1982. France left the military alliance in 1967 and rejoined in 2009. With the collapse of the Soviet Union (1989), NATO membership has expanded to 28 countries, including most of the former Warsaw Bloc countries as well as the Balkan countries created with the dissolution of Yugoslavia (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia).

NATO is headquartered in Brussels, where Secretary General Anders Rasmussen, former Prime Minister of Denmark, leads its Secretariat. Member nations are represented by ambassadors (called Permanent Representatives) who sit on the NATO Council. Each country’s delegation also includes a Military Representative who sits on the Military Committee to provide advice on military policy and strategy. While there has never been a Canadian Secretary General, General Ray Henault, former Canadian Chief of the Canadian Defense Staff, served as Chairman of the Military Committee from 2005-2008.

What has NATO done?
NATO’s original purpose was to serve as a trans-Atlantic political and military alliance to deter Soviet aggression. However, since the end of the Cold War, NATO has expanded its operations. NATO forces were involved in bringing peace to the Balkans, an operation that continues today. NATO forces, under the umbrella of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), have been present in Afghanistan since 2003. In 2005, NATO assisted in the relief efforts following the Pakistan earthquake. In recent years, NATO has also provided support to African Union peacekeeping missions in the Sudan and Somalia. Most recently, NATO led the UN-sanctioned Libyan campaign, maintaining a no-fly zone and conducting air strikes against the Gaddafi regime. Canadian Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard directed the air campaign. Currently, NATO forces are involved in fighting piracy off the Horn of Africa.

Who pays for NATO?
The United States shoulders three quarters of the alliance’s operating budget. The balance used to be half Europe and Canada, and half the United States. In his valedictory remarks to NATO (June 10, 2011), former US defense secretary Robert Gates warned, “The blunt reality, is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress — and in the American body politic writ large — to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.” In addition to the United States, only four countries meet the NATO commitment to devote two percent of the GDP to defense: the UK, France, Albania, and Greece. Since 2001, European nations have been cutting their defense budgets by an average of 15 percent annually. The United States, on the other hand, has doubled its defense expenditures over the same time period. As former NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has remarked, “Defense and public opinion are a difficult combination in Europe”.

What is on the NATO agenda in Chicago?
NATO’s last summit (Lisbon 2010) endorsed a new strategic concept for NATO. The secretariat has grouped the agenda under three headings:

  • Afghanistan: The ISAF mission will shift in the next couple of years from a combat role to providing advice and training to Afghan National Security Forces. Last month, the US signed a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan. The US goal in Chicago is to begin to flesh out the outline of the agreement, so as to include contributions from allied and partner nations. On the second day of the conference, the 22 ISAF member nations who are not also members of NATO will join the discussions around the future of ISAF. Observers expect discussions will focus on issues including NATO’s shift to a supporting role in 2013, training and financial support for the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), partnership with Afghanistan beyond 2014, and long-term international assistance, although explicit financial commitments are not expected until the Tokyo Donors conference in July.
  • Smart Defense in an age of austerity: Defense budgets in each member nation are being reduced. To more fairly share the burden of collective defense, members will be asked to commit to share and pool resources and capabilities and to collaborate on future procurement. The objective is to eliminate duplication and to provide interoperable hardware for the alliance. Looking forward, NATO has to figure out how it can better ensure readiness and operational capacity. General Abrial, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, has said he will bring to Chicago a series of initial projects clustered around themes like training, education, logistics, sustainment and protection.
  • Partnerships: NATO has effectively become the global security force: part cop; part peacemaker; and part peacekeeper. Through partnerships with non-NATO members, (e.g. Australia and New Zealand in Afghanistan, the African Union and Arab League in Libya) it has also become a ‘coalition of the willing’, although willingness is an ambiguous term. However, protocols must be worked out to deal with the nitty gritty of operations in the field. Even within the alliance, the lack of common protocols hampered NATO operations in Afghanistan.

It is expected that there will be announcements around pilot projects, including air policing in the Baltic and the development of allied ground surveillance. Ballistic missile defense within Europe will also be discussed, although this continues to be contentious, with the Russians describing it as a provocation.

What about the future of NATO?
Recent NATO operations (Afghanistan, Libya, patrolling the Gulf and Straits of Hormuz) have been out of the European theater. If NATO is to become the hub for future Western Alliance military operations, especially given the US pivot to Asia and its focus on the Indian and Pacific Oceans, then NATO will continue to evolve. Partnership with non-NATO nations will become even more important.

What about Canadian interests?
Canada ended its combat role in Afghanistan earlier this year and its training role beyond 2014 is undecided. The NDP official opposition, echoing popular sentiment, wants the government to end the operation in Afghanistan, but the Harper government has not yet shown its hand. As Deepak Obhrai, parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird told the House of Commons on Friday, “Canada is committed until 2014 to participating in an international mission to train Afghanistan security forces to prevent that country from becoming a safe haven for terrorists. We will assess what is necessary to meet these objectives and we have not made any final decisions at this time.”

Other allies, including the UK and Australia, have responded positively to the US request for continued military presence and financial commitment. Like every other NATO nation, Canada is looking to reduce its defense commitments. The decision made in June 2011 to withdraw from NATO’s Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS) and the Alliance Ground Surveillance project, using drones, has been criticized by the Americans, in part because they fear a knock on effect by other allies. Nonetheless, Canada continues to make a contribution to NATO. In addition to continued economic assistance and trainers in Afghanistan, Canada is providing assistance in in post-conflict Libya.

A significant Canadian contribution to the trans-Atlantic dialogue in recent years is the Halifax International Security Forum held each November. Initiated and hosted by Defence Minister Peter MacKay, it draws ministers, senior military officers, diplomats, and the think tank world for three days of discussion.

Further Reading
Much of this primer is drawn from discussion and papers presented at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs conference on the future of the alliance (March 28-30). Partner organizations included the Canadian Defense and Foreign Affairs Institute and the Canadian International Council. CDFAI senior fellow Elinor Sloan presented NATO and Crisis Management Operations: A Canadian Perspective. See also David Bercuson and Jack Granatstein’s Lessons Learned? What Canada Should Learn from Afghanistan, as well as Paul Chapin’s Security in an Uncertain World, A Canadian Perspective on NATO’s New Strategic Concept (2010).

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Colin Robertson, May 20th 2012 | Tags: ,
Posted in Major Research paper

Canada in the Americas

Excerpted from Americas Quarterly Winter 2012 Diplomacy: Canada’s New Policies Toward Latin America

In August, on his fourth official visit to Latin America, Prime Minister Stephen Harper set out to reboot Canada’s on-and-off-again relationship with the region. In the first stop on a four-country tour that took him to Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Honduras, Harper declared in São Paulo that “during too long a time we neglected relations[…]too much grass grows in the cracks on the road. It is time,” he added, “for increased ambition.”

Ambition is important. But so is perseverance.

Canadian efforts in the Americas are characterized by quixotic spasms of tango-like embrace: joining the Organization of American States (1990); negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, 1993–1994); and committing to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (1994)—all nearly 20 years ago. But this rush of engagement was followed by a long siesta until 2007, when the Harper government announced its Strategy of Engagement in the Americas, which emphasized democratic governance, prosperity and security. The plan is only now taking shape.

It does take two to tango, and Latin American governments share equal responsibility for failing to take advantage of Canadian interest and opportunities.

So what makes Harper’s newest effort different?

First, there is the economic malaise in the United States and the recognition that Canadians really do need options to the U.S. market. Agree or not with Standard & Poor’s’ reevaluation of American creditworthiness, there is no disagreement with its analysis that “the effectiveness, stability and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened.”

For Canadians, the U.S. market and the bilateral relationship will always remain primordial, but as the U.S. hunkers down and the administration focuses on a “jobs” agenda, there is a likelihood of renewed protectionism—which could affect the huge Canada–U.S. resource trade in everything from lumber to fish. Notwithstanding President Barack Obama’s promise to export his way out of the economic malaise, certain Democrats and Tea Party Republicans equate free trade with the outsourcing of jobs. And that may impede further efforts to broaden the opportunities for Canada under NAFTA.

While Canadian and U.S. negotiators are in discussions to ease border access for people and goods, these steps alone will not strengthen the Canadian market. Canada must look to new opportunities to hedge its bets.

That is being done slowly in Latin America. On August 15, a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Colombia—an economy equal to the state of Connecticut—went into effect, and new implementing legislation for the Canada–Panama Free Trade Agreement (similar in economic weight to Vermont) is being introduced in Parliament this fall. Canada also has FTAs with Costa Rica, Peru and Chile.

Beyond FTAs, Latin American countries are making it easier for Canada to invest and do business in the region. A decade-long dose of the Washington Consensus, whatever its faults, has rinsed away the previous attachment to the Prebisch-inspired statism that stigmatized earlier efforts at boosting investment and terms of trade.

Mexico is a prime example. The World Bank and International Finance Corporation’s Doing Business 2011 report declared this NAFTA partner as the easiest place in Latin America to run a company. The International Monetary Fund says Mexico’s economic growth will eclipse that of the U.S. and Canada from now until 2015, and Goldman Sachs predicts that in 40 years Mexico will be the world’s fifth-largest economy—bigger than Russia, Japan or Germany.

Third, Canadian business is prepared for risk, recognizing that the options are either grow or get absorbed. Twenty years of freer trade have given Canadian companies, especially the larger ones, the confidence that they can compete internationally and the experience of operations on the global stage.

CTV network anchor Andrea Mandel-Campbell notes in Why Mexicans Don’t Drink Molson that Canadian companies are historically timid about venturing into international markets, but Mexicans ride on Bombardier-constructed subways and Scotiabank is the sixth-largest retail bank in Mexico. Where once Canada’s business associations focused almost exclusively on the U.S., their membership is now encouraging them to look beyond its neighbor to the south.

Fourth, the renewed Canadian approach melds trade objectives with development aspirations. Attitudes toward aid are changing with the increasing recognition that a job is the best form of development assistance. A key feature of the rebooted relationship with Brazil is a CEO Forum, staffed by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry.

This business-to-business dimension promises real gains, especially if Brazilians and Canadians can agree on a set of practical objectives such as increasing direct flights and identifying business impediments that can be addressed by working with governments. CEO forums should be included in every FTA negotiation and built into the existing relationships with Mexico and Chile.

To sustain the opening with Brazil and to move the relationships with key partners like Mexico and Chile to the next level will require a series of focused blueprints. These will have to address critical questions such as how to attract more Latin American investment in Canada and what barriers—especially those specific to Latin America—can be addressed by Canadian initiatives. The Canadian business community is engaged and should be a driving force for taking the relationship to the next level.

In every case, there needs to be a systematic plan of engagement starting at the most senior political level.

For one, the prime minister needs to block at least one week a year for visits to the region. To provide the needed intellectual capital, Canadians also need to actively support the work of think tanks and improve existing synergies among organizations.

The demise for lack of funding in September of the Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL) research center, after 21 years of advancing Canadian interests, is a setback because it consistently provided useful intellectual heft and intelligent trend-spotting.

FOCAL had been largely dependent on Canadian government funding after it was created by an act of cabinet under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (1984–1993). In its next iteration it should look more like the Inter-American Dialogue or Americas Society/Council of the Americas, with strong private-sector involvement and a focus on investment and trade as the best means of generating development and creating long-term relationships.

The current Canadian government is not the first to promise a new look at the region, but all too often action never followed rhetoric. If the Americas are truly a priority, and Harper’s promise to be “ambitious” is more than just repetition of the old rhetoric, the prime minister’s continued attention to the region will be necessary.

Unless the Canada–Latin America relationship is given a place of priority on the agenda and moves from aspiration to pragmatic results, the grass will grow back in the cracks.

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Colin Robertson, January 8th 2012 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Major Research paper

A Canadian Primer to the 2012 US Primaries and Caucuses

Contents page from A Canadian Primer to the 2012 US Primaries and Caucuses published by the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute

Introduction

Who’s running for the Republicans and what are their platforms?
Where do they stand?
What’s the difference between a primary and a caucus?
Is the process starting earlier than usual?
Are the Iowa caucuses (January 3) important?
What about the Iowa Straw Poll held last August?
And the New Hampshire primary (January 10)?
Do the parties do their primary process differently?
Haven’t there been a lot more candidate debates?
Do the debates matter?
Are all of the Republican presidential candidates on every ballot?
Are the primaries just for presidential nominees?
How are delegates apportioned?
Does the primary winner ‘take all’?
Does President Obama have to go through the primary process?
When are the conventions?
What are the chances of a convention fight?
What about a third party candidate?
What about Senate and House races?
And elections for Governor?
Do incumbents have an advantage?
How much does this all cost?
What is the mood of America?
Has Canada been a factor in the Republican race?
Why does this matter to Canada?
Want to know more?
2012 Election Calendar

See columnist Barry Cooper’s ‘In U.S. politics, ideas come second to money’ in Calgary Herald, January 11 2012

The Republicans have begun in earnest to choose a candidate whom they hope can defeat President Barack Obama. The procedure is remarkably complex. Colin Robertson, the first advocacy secretary in the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., called it a “spaghetti bowl of competing interests and factions.”

The various bits of spaghetti include elected officials and bureaucrats, lobbyists and think-tanks, mainstream media, along with bloggers and tweeters, party organizations and factions within them, all operating in an atmosphere of partisan intensity. As Newt Gingrich told ABC News, politics in America “has become a really nasty, vicious, negative business and I think it’s disgusting.”…

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Colin Robertson, January 2nd 2012 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Major Research paper, Uncategorized

Stephen Harper’s World View

Excerpted from October Policy Options ‘Harper’s World View’

…Argue with the taxonomy, but there are essentially three traditions in Canadian foreign policy. The first is the realist, power-and-interest tradition that holds close to the hegemon, initially Britain and then the United States. The external counterpart to Sir John A. Macdonald’s National Policy, it has been followed, in varying degrees, by Macdonald, then Sir Wilfrid Laurier through to Brian Mulroney. The second is the Mackenzie King tradition, nationalist, regional in outlook, and both cautious and skeptical about international entanglements. It also appealed to populist, regional third parties from the Progressives through the Bloc Quebecois. The third is the St- Laurent-Pearson tradition, further refined by Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien: strongly nationalist and internationalist – assertive, energetic, with an emphasis on international law and institutions.

Looking at Harper’s record suggests his approach to foreign policy fits comfortably within the realist, power-and-interest tradition.  At the outset the new PM promised to “build the relationships and the capabilities which will allow us to preserve our sovereignty, to protect our interests, and to project our values…In a shrinking, changing, dangerous world,” he declared in his first major foreign policy speech in October 2006. He continued: “our government must play a role in the world. And I believe that Canadians want a significant role – a clear, confident and influential role…they don’t want a Canada that just goes along; they want a Canada that leads. They want a Canada that doesn’t just criticize, but one that can contribute. They want a Canada that reflects their values and interests, and that punches above its weight.”

… The debate within Canada around energy and the environment is symptomatic of another rule of politics. What may constitute good public policy – taxing carbon, ending sales of asbestos, abandoning supply marketing, permitting foreign investment in our resources, is not always good politics. Regional differences make national consensus difficult. National unity comes with a price and there is more than a little wisdom to F.R.Scott’s lampoon of Mackenzie King: “Do nothing by halves/ Which can be done by quarters.”

While putting on the blue beret has considerable romantic appeal, Canadians have not led in peacekeeping for a couple of decades and contemporary circumstances make it unlikely we’ll do so again soon. In part, there has been an effort to ‘regionalize’ peacekeeping pools and in part, as Denis Stairs points out, contributing to UN peacekeeping operations is “a source of badly needed foreign exchange” for the main source countries – Bengladesh, Pakistan, India and Nigeria.

Technology and more failing states means what is required is less peacekeeping than peacemaking or peace enforcement or acting as a first responder to disasters. To echo historian Jack Granatstein, we owe former Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier a great debt for “changing the conceit that Canadians were peacekeepers first, last and always.” Our experience in Afghanistan has given us the ‘best little army’ in the world and the skills we’ve developed proved adaptable and effective in the relief of Haiti after the hurricane. This is a much more realistic role for Canada and while Canadians wanted us out of a combat role in Afghanistan, there is strong public support for the Forces.

Rather than flog the dead horse of peacekeeping, the bigger policy question for Canadians is how far, and how much, should we commit to duties beyond our border that actively involve us in other people’s conflicts with significant risk to the lives of Canadians. Observes Australian diplomat-scholar Owen Harries: “The successful promotion of democracy calls for restraint and patience, a sense of limits and an appreciation of the wisdom of indirection, a profound understanding of the particularity of circumstances.”

As we have learned in Afghanistan and Iraq, liberal democracy is not an easy transplant and any policy of imposing it through force will also fail. Acting with the best of intentions is inherently difficult to translate into significant change because of the extent to which they depend on other people and other, often intractable, societies.

The  2008 Canada First Defense Strategy gives teeth to our ambitions in homeland defence and in making a necessary contribution to collective security.: “`A handful of soldiers is better than a mouthful of arguments,”’ said Harper in Trapani, Italy the base for RCAF CF-18s flying over Libya, “For the Gadhafis of this world pay no attention to the force of argument. The only thing they get is the argument of force.”
Restoring the traditional designations – Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army and Royal Canadian Air Force – to strengthen their identities as national institutions is a positive step.

But the real test for the Conservatives will be to meet the new recruitment targets, ultimately 100,000 personnel (70,000 Regular Force and 30,000 Primary Reserve), and to meet the procurement timetable for the new ships and planes that will “give us the ability to act.” Our procurement process is inadequate. As the Auditor General and the Canadian Association of Defence and Securities Industries (CADSI) and others have pointed out, the likely result is that new kit will be delayed, abandoned or diminished in quality and quantity. We need to quickly develop a defence industrial strategy and a viable ship building industry.  A useful first step would be to look to the experiences of our British and Australian allies…

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Colin Robertson, October 4th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Major Research paper

Could the Great Lakes be a model for Canada-US regional cooperation?

From Canadian International Council Think Tank: Could the Great Lakes Represent Canada’s Economic Future? July 6, 2011

While he didn’t get the details right, Joel Garreau was onto something when he wrote Nine Nations of North America in 1981. Too often, we look at North America as three nations, when in fact it is also comprised of 94 states, provinces, and territories. In economic terms, supply-chain dynamics have made North America a series of regions.

The most dynamic is the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Region (GLSLR). Home to nearly 35 million people, and with a population slightly larger than Canada, the two provinces (Ontario, Quebec) and eight states (New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota) of the Great Lakes region constitute a super “economy,” which is only eclipsed in gross domestic product by the U.S., Japan, and China.

Regions deserve greater attention, especially into the vital supply-chain dynamics that sustain them. Last year, the Brookings Institute’s Jennifer Vey, John Austin, and Jennifer Bradley co-authored a paper that argued that, notwithstanding the affliction of the “Rust Belt,” the GLSLR “still has many of the fundamental resources – top-ranked universities, companies with deep experience in global trade, and emerging centres of clean-energy research, to name just a few – necessary to create a better, more sustainable, economic model.”

Building on this work, the Mowat Centre’s Joshua Hjartson, Matthew Mendelsohn, Allison Bramwell, and Kelly Hinton released The Vital Commons, in which they argue that “the wealth and infrastructure built over the 20th century” in the GLSLR “created the foundation for new emerging sectors” in areas including financial services, health care, food processing, energy, aerospace, information and communications technology, transportation, and pharmaceuticals. But a shared future for the GLSLR requires a shared vision “to act and think collectively, transcending national boundaries to address shared problems, manage shared resources, and take advantage of new economic opportunities.”

With this objective in mind, under the umbrella of the Mowat Centre and Brookings Institute, over 300 participants met in the St. Clair College Centre for the Arts, a short walk from the banks of the Detroit River looking north to Detroit. Over two days (June 21-2), we listened, discussed, and debated through a couple dozen plenaries, keynotes, and idea labs constructed around issues in the GLSLR, including human capital, transportation and infrastructure, water, trade and border issues, agriculture, innovation, manufacturing, clean energy and electricity, the blue economy, and tourism.

The challenge of the border for the GLSLR was brought home on the first evening, when delegates crossed the frontier and, notwithstanding the hope of pre-clearance, were obliged to go through a secondary search before re-boarding the buses taking them to enjoy the hospitality of Canadian Consul General Roy Norton in downtown Detroit’s Max Fisher Music Center.

If we are to be truly competitive, we must find a better way of managing the legitimate passage of people and goods. The Beyond the Borders Initiative launched in February by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama offers promise, but as former premier Gordon Campbell told delegates, political will also requires considerable behind-the-scenes work by business and government.

The GLSLR contains our busiest border crossings and, because so much of the boundary line is on water, the border is dominated by bridges. This presents unique challenges for just-in-time delivery. The first step should be the easiest: having inspection for all government services at each of the region’s crossing available 24/7, because our competition overseas does not work 9-5.

But the top priority in the GLSLR has to be the construction of the New International Trade Crossing between Windsor and Detroit, especially as the recovery picks up speed – trade between Michigan and Canada rose 43 per cent from 2009 to 2010. The 7,000 trucks that cross the Ambassador Bridge daily contain over a quarter of the goods traded between Canada and the United States. Any interruption in traffic on this 80-year-old, privately owned bridge means layoffs: thousands in the first day and tens of thousands stretching south to the Carolinas into day two.

The need for a new crossing was one of the key themes of the two-day conference, and was driven home by both American and Canadian participants. Michigan Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville acknowledged that special interests and the spending of lots of money have circumvented and delayed what should be an obvious task, but he promised delegates that, by the fall, he and Governor Rick Snyder should have the votes to secure passage through the Michigan legislature.

It can’t be soon enough for those who live and work in the GLSLR. The international competition is not waiting for us to get our act together.

Knitting the various components of regional co-operation together is the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER). Its core is the continuing support of legislators in five states (Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana), three provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan), and two territories (the Yukon and the Northwest Territories). This year, it celebrates its twentieth anniversary. Based in Seattle, with a small, very efficient secretariat, it works because it is a true non-partisan, bi-national, public-private partnership. As former premier Campbell acknowledged, it was PNWER, working, under his direction and that of Washington Governor Chris Gregoire, with a grassroots movement, that persuaded Homeland Security to accept the “smart drivers’ licence” as a practical means to address cross-border traffic during the Vancouver Olympics. The “smart drivers’ license” has seen been rolled out by states and provinces on both sides of the 49th parallel. It confirms another observation from the Windsor Summit: When provincial and state legislators get their acts together, federal governments join the parade.

Conferences are brain food, but it is the follow up in ideas and proposals that makes them practical to policy-makers. The Windsor Summit leadership of John Austin and Matthew Mendelson intend to carry the momentum forward and, in October, release a revised version of The Vital Commons that will identify actionable agenda items for various sectors in the GLSLR.

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Colin Robertson, July 6th 2011 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Major Research paper

Embracing the Americas Starting with Mexico

Excerpted from May edition Policy Options Embracing the Americas, starting with Mexico

If Canadians needed a wake-up call to the power of regional blocs and the pace of political integration within the European Union, we got it last fall with our failure to secure a seat on the Security Council as a member of the Western European and Other Group (WEOG). The message is clear: we aren’t European. It is time we recognized geography and embraced our place in the Americas.

We’ve created the most successful bilateral relationship in the world with the United States. It will always be our primordial relationship. But our usually comfortable alignment with the colossus has meant that we’ve been reluctant to look further south on the continental map. The US has never thought this way and the since the earliest days of the Republic they’ve always been active in the Americas and the Monroe Doctrine (1823) has been one of the most durable and longstanding element in American foreign policy.

The combined populations of the Americas south of the Rio Grande gives them the potential over the coming decades to develop into a market as important as that of the EU, China and India. Growth rates are predicted to be 4.1 per cent a year for the next five years – double that of the G8 economies. The Chinese get it and are making significant investments. And with China competing with America for influence, there are geo-political reasons for our making our presence felt because we also have significant interests in the Americas. Yet, as a recent report conducted by our Department of Foreign Affairs concluded, we need “more concrete evidence on the ground of Canada’s interest.” Our relevance in the region will also be measured in terms of our capacity and willingness to participate in the broader social, political and economic agenda.

The Bank of Nova Scotia opened its first branch outside of Canada in Kingston, Jamaica in 1889 and Canadian banks are now found throughout the Caribbean. Our Foreign Direct Investment in the Americas outside USA is three times that in Asia. We’ve created a network of FTAs, far more in Latin America than in Asia: with Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Colombia, Peru. The Panama FTA is before Parliament and we are negotiating with Honduras, Caribbean Community and we’ve started discussions with MERCOSUR. We are now the number one investor in Chile. Despite bumps in the road, we have a growing strategic relationship with Brazil, the bookend to Mexico in Latin America. In terms of aid and development, we are committed to Haiti for the long-term.

By embracing the Americas we also play back into our principal relationship with the United States because when successive administrations, especially since Ronald Reagan, think strategically about the Americas, they think start with the trilateral relationship of Mexico and Canada. We should do the same and start our embrace of the Americas with Mexico.

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Colin Robertson, May 10th 2011 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Major Research paper

Now for the Hard Part: Renewing the Canada US Relationship

Report offers ‘User’s guide’ to a new Canada-U.S. trade deal

February 3, 2011 4:25 PM By Chris Carter

A day before Prime Minister Stephen Harper is set to meet U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House, the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute has released a report on the potential future of the bilateral relationship.

The report (embedded below) by former diplomat Colin Robertson argues that in order to create “smart growth and jobs” in a post-NAFTA Canada, progress must be made in three key areas: “a common security perimeter, a rationalized regulatory regime that reduces red tape and a compatible approach to the stewardship and development of resources.” That last area includes a common approach to tackling climate change.

His report, titled ‘Now for the Hard Part’: A User’s Guide to Renewing the Canadian-American Partnership, then goes on to lay out a “plan of action” – both a way of getting things done but also what Robertson expects will actually happen, based on his research into what has been written and said on both sides of the border in recent decades.

The report envisions a much closer Canada-U.S. “partnership” than some Canadians might be prepared to accept.

Roberston says it will not be easy – he expects the Canadian debate “to be noisy” with “kabuki-like foreplay” – and says immigration issues will be one of the stickiest points for both sides, for different reasons.

Given the past battles over Free Trade and NAFTA, he is probably right, although much of this has flown under the public‘s radar so far – maybe his report will change that. But for all the potential for this to be a difficult course to navigate for a Canadian prime minister, Robertson ends his report by acknowledging that reluctance may be just as high on the U.S. side:

“The President told us that he ‘loved’ us when he made his first trip to Ottawa. Now we will find out how much.”

Addendum: As colleague Rosemary Barton points out, Robertson has advised the Harper government on the perimeter security issue, so his view is not simply academic. Here’s part of what Robertson had to say in a Canadian Press story:

“They want as much as we can give them, and we’re not going to give them as much as they want,” Colin Robertson, the former Canadian diplomat who has been consulting with the Harper government on the issue, told The Canadian Press.

“Homeland Security wanted access to all migration records and a whole bunch of other stuff. We said no,” Robertson said.

But Robertson said the issue has been resolved sufficiently enough to move forward.

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Colin Robertson, February 3rd 2011 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Major Research paper

‘You can’t change geography’: Taking the Canada-US Relationship to the Next Level

Excerpts from Remarks on Trade Innovation and Prosperity Working Paper 14 of the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity Toronto, September 22, 2010

We are blessed to be beside the US – the biggest market in the world and likely to remain so until at least 2025. I realize there are those, especially in this town, who lament our propinquity to the colossus to the South. To them, I respectfully repeat what a Polish diplomat said to me when I was posted to the UN. “Would you rather be us?”

I don’t subscribe to the declinist school on America. I lived in New York City during the late 70s when there were gas lines, graffiti covered the subway cars and, an epidemic of crime. The Big Apple was rotting and the country was in a malaise.  Jimmy Carter encouraged us all to wear cardigans to keep warm. Arab money was going to buy America. But a funny thing happened on the way to Madison Square Gardens. By 1984,  it was ‘morning again’ in Ronald Reagan’s America. Thanks to Rudy Giuliani, Bill Bratton and Comp-Stat, the Big Apple would get its shine back.

Then came Irangate and the 1987 market crash.  Paul Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of Great Powers was a bestseller. This time, the Japanese were about to become ‘masters of the universe’.  Mitsubishi bought the Rockefeller Centre and Sony bought Columbia Pictures. I worked in the Exxon Building – the name came off the building as the oil giant retreated to Dallas.

But you know what? America came back and the nineties launched a decade of growth that we in Canada especially enjoyed thanks to the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and its stepchild, NAFTA. There were certainly elements of ‘irrational exuberance’ – as I witnessed before the bubble burst in Silicon Valley. But when it did, the Valley climbed back by ‘boot-strapping’ and reinvention.

… Having spent most of my professional life living abroad and much of that in the United States, I agree with Alistair Cooke, who after 3000 broadcasts on the BBC between 1940-2000, concluded that “in America, the race is on between its decadence and its vitality, and it has lots of both.”

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Colin Robertson, September 22nd 2010 | Tags: ,
Posted in Major Research paper
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