Carter Malkasian: American War in Afghanistan

Colin Robertson August 25, 2021 Comments Off

From Policy Magazine: Canadian Politics and Public Policy

What Happened in Afghanistan and What Does it Mean for Canada?

Colin Robertson

August 25, 2021

On the advice of an American friend – one of the many American foreign service officers who had served in both Iraq and Afghanistan – I’d started reading Carter Malkasian’s The American War in Afghanistan: A History. It was early July and President Joe Biden had just given a news conference at the White House saying, “We did not go to Afghanistan to nation build. It’s the right and the responsibility of Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.”

No one thought then that by mid-August the Taliban would be in Kabul. For Malkasian, however, the war was already lost long ago. Having travelled the country in 2009, Malkasian saw that in “battle after battle, numerically superior and better-supplied soldiers and police were being defeated by poorly resourced and unexceptionally led Taliban.” That America could not have done much more, writes Malkasian, than “muddle along for years in the face of a relentless enemy is the unsatisfying, sometimes frustrating coda to our longest war.”

A Taliban religious scholar told Malkasian “The Taliban fight for belief, for janat (heaven) and ghazi (killing infidels). … The army and police fight for money…The Taliban are willing to lose their head to fight. … How can the army and police compete.” Besides, writes Malkasian, “the police and soldiers did not want to put their lives on the line for a government that was corrupt and prone to neglect them.” Even the better-trained Afghan special forces, “still had great difficulty fighting without U.S. air support and advisers.” So, while the world was shocked at the suddenness of the Afghan forces’ retreat, that they folded was not a surprise.

The Taliban’s ability to link their cause to the very meaning of being Afghan, writes Malkasian, was a crucial factor in America’s defeat. For Afghans, jihad, better translated as “resistance” or “struggle”, has historically been a means of defense against oppression by outsiders, part of their endurance against invader after invader since the time of Alexander the Great. In more recent times, they have first exhausted, then repelled the British, the Soviets and now the Americans.

Malkasian writes as a scholar having done his doctorate at Oxford in military history and then taught. He is also a practitioner, having served as a civilian advisor in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Later he was the senior advisor to General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from 2015 to 2019.

The American War in Afghanistan is Malkasian’s third book. It builds on his War Comes to Garmser: Thirty Years of Conflict on the Afghan Frontier (2013), and Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State (2017). As source material for this big book, Malkasian draws from the documents collected by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. He also interviewed Taliban leadership and digested Taliban texts in Pashto.

Afghanistan has spawned a cottage industry of narratives and memoirs and Malkasian’s book deserves a place alongside the Sarah Chayes classic The Punishment of Virtue (2006), Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War (2008), Sebastian Junger’s War (2010) and General Stanley McCrystal’s My Share of the Task (2013).

Malkasian begins his story in a rural village surrounded by mounds of gray rocks each planted with a flag — “a strip of cloth tied to a long bamboo pole.” It is illustrative of Malkasian’s fluidly readable prose, essential because the book, like the war itself, is long: 21 chapters at 577 pages. It begins with a sketch of Afghanistan geography and demography, culture and society, then moves to the US invasion and the early years of Hamid Karzai and the Bush administration. Then comes the fighting, including the Canadian experience in Kandahar (2007-9), followed by the surge (2009-11) and the height of the American military experience. The latter third looks at the American efforts at drawdown and the on-again, off- again negotiations with the rotating Taliban and Afghan leadership, and the unity government of 2014. It concludes with the Trump administration, why the US failed, what opportunities existed for a better ending, and why America “never just got out.”

Afghanistan, as President Biden put it recently, has earned the sobriquet ‘the graveyard of empires’, sadly proving ‘that no amount of military force would ever deliver a stable, united, and secure Afghanistan’.

Some good, Malkasian acknowledges, came from the American occupation: better infrastructure, women’s rights and freedom of the press. How much of that will endure? The last time the Taliban ruled, extremism spread, the Islamic State appeared and, writes Malkasian, “Sacrifice, suicide, revenge, and killing ascended as values. Violence begat violence… Worst of all, the war twisted the Afghan people.”

In 1990, as the Soviets were pulling out of Afghanistan, I travelled up the Khyber Pass with a friend serving at our Embassy in Islamabad. Our escort in the jeep that took us through the mountainous pass was a member of the Khyber Rifles, whose fame dated back to Kipling’s time. He wore running shoes and carried a Lee-Enfield rifle but his talisman against harm and our real protection was his Khyber Rifles beret that could easily be seen by those in the Pass. It was a hot, bleak and happily uneventful trip with the only distraction the crests of British regiments that had once served on the frontier. We got to Landi Kotal and then Michni, close to the Afghan border. In the distance, what I thought were clouds was the smoke from the Mujahadeen shelling the retreating Soviets. We stopped at a refugee camp and watched a buzkashi game — a kind of polo but played with a goat’s head or when played across the border, as I was told by one participant, with the head of a Soviet “invader”. We bought tribal prayer rugs decorated with Kalashnikovs and the spiked grenades that the Afghans hated because they had maimed too many of their children.

Afghanistan, as President Biden put it recently, has earned the sobriquet ‘the graveyard of empires’, sadly proving “that no amount of military force would ever deliver a stable, united, and secure Afghanistan.”

The ‘forever war’ for Americans was also a long war for Canadians. Nick Burns, then the US ambassador to NATO (and now President Biden’s nominee to go to Beijing) told me on several occasions that the NATO decision to invoke, for the first time, the collective security provisions of Article Five — that an attack on one is an attack on all — was the initiative of our then-NATO ambassador David Wright. That decision launched the US-led NATO intervention that is only now concluding.

More than 40,000 Canadians served in Afghanistan with 158 killed between 2001 and 2014, including my foreign service colleague Glyn Berry (2006). More came home injured or psychologically wounded, and the Canadian Armed Forces report that 191 veterans have taken their own lives since 2011.

John Manley captured the dilemma for Canadians in the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan report (2008) prepared for then-prime minister Stephen Harper. Manley wrote, “If I learned one thing from this enquiry, it is that there is no obvious answer to the question of Canada’s future role in Afghanistan. But our presence in that distant land does matter… because it concerns global and Canadian security, Canada’s international reputation, and the well-being of some of the world’s most impoverished and vulnerable people.” Our commitment is important, continued Manley, “because it has already involved the sacrifice of Canadian lives.” The report concluded with a prescient warning: “The war in Afghanistan is complicated. The future there is dangerous and can frustrate the most confident plan or prediction.”

Stephen Harper concluded that to suggest victory was the complete defeat of the insurgency and the replacement of a failed state in Afghanistan with a modern liberal democracy was not realistic: “I think what we should be aiming for in Afghanistan is a viable state that respects…some democratic norms, but I think ultimately the insurgency will last a long time. Afghanistan, through most of its history, has been an untamed country…the idea we’re going to wipe out an insurgency is completely unrealistic.”

For Canada, the Maple Leaf in Kandahar came down in 2011.

In a recent CGAI essay on the lessons of Afghanistan, longtime World Bank official and former North-Institute President Joe Ingram concludes that international support going forward needs to help “internal actors build a core set of governance institutions and systems that would be able to mobilize and effectively spend state revenue in accordance with accountability systems and transparency requirements, thereby reducing corruption and state capture while diminishing the state’s reliance on foreign aid.”

The Afghan experience is a cautionary tale for future international interventions. The defeat has created a palpable fatigue with nation-building. How will this square with Joe Biden’s determination to promote and support democracy, especially as the divide between open and closed systems widens?

The US is the one nation with the capacity and capability to truly make a difference. No American ally can take comfort in what happened in Afghanistan. American presidents and their Congress will be chary about any sort of security assistance, especially when it requires boots on the ground. The US will also expect more of the allies. Even then, when push comes to shove, can the allies depend on the US?

The western experience in Afghanistan obliges policy-makers to think hard about future interventions. “We believed things were possible in Afghanistan” observes Malkasian, “defeat of the Taliban or enabling the Afghan government to stand on its own — that probably were not.” Without an appreciation of the history, culture, geography and local politics, we may win battles but we lose the war.

2021 Election Primer

Colin Robertson August 24, 2021 Comments Off

What Diplomats Need to Know about Canadian Elections

Image credit: Elections Canada

PRIMER

In partnership with

Colin Robertson, CGAI Vice-President, and
Maureen Boyd, Chair, Parliamentary Centre and CGAI Fellow
August 2021

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Introduction

August 2021 – In response to requests by foreign diplomats to explain our election process, we have revised this primer, written originally in 2019. It tries to explain the process of our elections and forming a new government. We consulted stakeholders from the different parties as well as experts on Canadian politics, polling and our elections in putting this piece together. This primer does not analyze the parties’ policies and politicking – these are available daily from the news media and we point to those we follow in the “Further Sources” section. CGAI will also be publishing a series of prescriptive pieces on global affairs issues to help the next government in its global policy development. The Parliamentary Centre will be offering an Election Primer for Diplomats, September 8 at 10 a.m. – more info at parlcent.org.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet, Green Party Leader Annamie Paul. Source: CBC

Election 2019 Results

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The Mechanics of Elections

On August 15, 2021 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walked with his family the short distance from Rideau Cottage to Rideau Hall to ask the new Governor General, Mary Simon, to dissolve the 44^th parliament and call an election for Monday, September 20, 2021 – a shortest possible 36-day campaign.

General elections in Canada are called when the Governor General dissolves Parliament on the advice of the prime minister. The Governor General issues a Proclamation for the issuance of writs of election and an Order in Council is addressed to the Chief Electoral Officer requesting the issuance of separate writs of election to the returning officers for each of the 338 electoral districts. Three weeks before the election, each candidate must file with the returning officer several documents, including the nomination paper. The federal election is under non-partisan control of Elections Canada and its chief electoral officer.

In seeking the dissolution of Parliament, the prime minister also recommends the election date. The Canada Elections Act now specifies that the election period must last a minimum of 36 days and a maximum of 51 days: in 2015, the election period was unusually long – 78 days – while the 2019 election period was 40 days. In an Abacus survey taken just before the election call, 77 per cent said that they intend to vote.

Unlike Australia and certain other countries, Canada does not have mandatory voting. Voter turnout in national elections is usually around two-thirds of eligible voters – it was 67 per cent in 2019, 68.5 per cent in 2015 and 61 per cent in 2011.

Elections in Canada’s 338 electoral districts (aka constituencies or ridings) are decided by the first-past-the-post system, i.e., whoever gets the most votes wins the election, even though “most votes” rarely translates into the majority of votes.

For most of our history, the race to govern has been essentially between the Conservatives and Liberals. They are our oldest parties, dating back to Confederation. The Tories, as the Conservatives are often called, governed for most of the period after Confederation in 1867 until just before the turn of the century when the Liberals took power and then governed for most of the 20^th century. So far, this century has been a split between the Liberals and Conservatives. The NDP grew out of the early 20^th century progressive movement of farmers and labour and while they have formed government in the provinces, they have only enjoyed one spell as Official Opposition (2011-2015). The Bloc Québécois was formed in the early 1990s to defend Quebec’s interests leading to independence. They formed the Official Opposition (1993-97), and held the most seats in Quebec until 2011. The Greens were formed in the early 1980s and won their first seat in 2011. Other parties, such as the current People’s Party and Maverick Party, come and go but rarely win seats.

In the 2019 election, the Conservatives won more votes than the Liberals. The New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Green Party (Greens) favour proportional representation and, in the 2015 campaign, Trudeau promised electoral reform that many interpreted as favouring proportional representation. It has not happened at either the national or provincial level. Indeed, when put to a vote, proportional representation has been defeated in provincial referendums in British Columbia (B.C.), Ontario and Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.).

The first-past-the-post system means that, based on previous elections, a party can win the majority of the seats in the House of Commons with around 38 per cent of the votes. Only two governments in recent history have won more than 50 per cent of the vote: John Diefenbaker’s Progressive Conservatives in 1958 and Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives in 1984.

The Constitution Act defines how many seats are accorded to each province. Unlike partisan gerrymandering in the United States, the formula is adjusted based on population after each decennial census in an independent non-partisan process with independent commissions working separately in each province. The Constitution guarantees both Quebec and Prince Edward Island a minimum number of seats. This creates major discrepancies in the population of constituencies. For example, there are an average of 36,500 voters in each of the four constituencies in P.E.I., Canada’s smallest province, while each of Alberta’s 34 constituencies has 111,000 voters. The current 338 electoral districts break down by province as follows: Ontario, 121; Quebec, 78; B.C., 42; Alberta, 34; Manitoba, 14; Saskatchewan, 14; Nova Scotia, 11; New Brunswick, 10; Newfoundland and Labrador, 7; P.E.I., 4; Northwest Territories, 1; Yukon, 1; and Nunavut, 1. In terms of geography, Nunavut is the largest at 2,093,190 square kilometres (almost four times the size of Germany) while the smallest is Toronto Centre at 5.84 square kilometres.

The parties all handle candidate selection slightly differently, with different discretion afforded the leader to “parachute” candidates into a riding or to screen out really bad candidates. Every party candidate needs to have the leader sign the nomination form. But by international standards, the candidate selection process in Canada is remarkably decentralized.

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Election Spending

By U.S. standards, Canadian elections are not just shorter, but also much cheaper to administer. There are also much stricter rules on election spending. The price tag for the 2019 election was $502 million or $18.35 per elector. The 2015 federal election cost $443 million, up 53 per cent from the $290 million spent on the 2011 election because of the addition of 30 new ridings and an unusually long campaign.

In terms of party campaign spending in the 2019 election, the Conservatives spent $28.9 million – nearly to the $30 million limit – the Liberals spent $26.1 million and the NDP spent $10.3 million.

The Election Modernization Act (2018) restricts the amount of spending allowed in the period before a campaign and aims to prevent foreign interference with rules to regulate third-party political activity. Political parties can now spend up to $2,046,800 on advertising in the pre-writ period. After the writs are issued, those spending limits are raised significantly. Interest groups can spend up to $1,023,400 in the pre-election period and then $511,700 during the election period, with a maximum of $10,234 in each constituency in the pre-election period and $4,386 in each constituency during the election. Canadians can give up to $1,650 annually in total to all the registered associations, nomination contestants and candidates of each registered party. Election expenses for each candidate in a constituency are fixed and they vary between $88,000 (Charlottetown) and $134,000 (Pontiac) with the average around $110,000. Depending on their vote, there is a degree of reimbursement from public funds.

According to Elections Canada, the Conservatives have raised the most money in recent months, breaking new fundraising records and surpassing the Liberals by their widest margin yet.

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Foreign Interference

Foreign interference in democratic elections is a reality. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and the RCMP are monitoring foreign threat activity in Canada. For the 2019 election, a Cabinet Directive on the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol set out general directions and the principles to guide the process for informing the public of an incident that threatens Canada’s ability to have a free and fair election. It will guide the 2021 election.

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Canadian Elections: Project, But Be Careful about Predictions

Canadian federal elections are volatile and unpredictable in outcome so predictions are dangerous. It’s better to offer projections based on polling, but polls too have their problems. The 2015 election is a good example. Two-thirds of Canadians going to the polls were comfortable with the country’s direction and optimistic about the economy, but two-thirds also wanted change. At various points, the polls showed the lead was held by the Conservatives, the NDP and the Liberals (who won, but who began in third place).

Unlike the U.S., where most voters have registered as Democrats or Republicans, it is estimated that between a third and a half of the Canadian electorate is prepared to change its mind based on the campaigns. Pundits and political scientists reckon that the Conservatives have the most solid base – around 25 per cent. The Liberal base is lower, around 22 per cent, but they also have a higher potential ceiling. The NDP can count on around 13 per cent and the Greens, who won their first seat in Parliament in 2011, have polled as high as 10 per cent although they are currently in internal turmoil. The Liberals are generally considered centre-left, the Conservatives centre-right, the NDP and the Greens are left and the Bloc Québécois is a coalition of those looking out for Quebec’s interests.

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Voters’ Considerations in 2021

It is likely that 2021 will be remembered as the pandemic election. Going into the election, voters will consider:

Referendum on Leadership

For many voters the election boils down to leadership – who do you want to lead the nation and spend time watching and listening to over the next few years? Elections are an opportunity for newer leaders and leaders of the opposition parties to portray themselves to the voters and to convince them they have the temperament and character required to lead Canada. Most voters’ assessment of the campaign is more about personalities and personal flaws. Leaders who misgauge the country’s mood soon find themselves out of a job.

Debate on Issues

At the outset of the 1993 campaign, then-prime minister Kim Campbell famously declared that elections were not the place to discuss policies. She may have been right but she then took her party into oblivion. Watch for polling that assesses voters’ desire for change and voter satisfaction with the direction of the country. That governments defeat themselves is another political axiom, especially when there is an overwhelming desire for change. As to the issues in this campaign, an IPSOS poll taken before the election identified health care, affordability and cost of living, climate change and the economy – essentially those that were top of mind in 2019. These top identified issues were followed by COVID-19, taxes, housing and poverty. An Abacus poll taken after the election call confirmed this lineup and noted that the top issues – cost of living, health care, climate and post-COVID economic recovery – were the same for the two biggest demographic voting groups – the millennials and the baby boomers, with marginal differences between men and women.

Pandemic Management

Liberals believe they will score good marks if the election is a referendum on how the government has handled the COVID-19 pandemic, including their recent calls for mandatory vaccinations for federal public servants and those travelling across federal jurisdictions. They also believe that Canadians support measures to cushion the pandemic’s economic effects, including wage subsidies and cheques to individuals.

Since the pandemic’s onset, the provinces that have called elections have been rewarded with a majority – until Nova Scotia’s Liberal government went down to a resounding defeat to Progressive Conservative leader Tim Houston the week after the federal election was called. Before that, majority governments were returned to New Brunswick’s Progressive Conservative Premier Blaine Higgs in September 2020, Saskatchewan Party Premier Scott Moe in October 2020, British Columbia’s NDP Premier John Horgan in October 2020 and Newfoundland and Labrador’s Liberal Premier Andrew Furey in March 2021.

Managing the Economy: Who Can Keep the Country Prosperous or At Least Out of a Pandemic-induced Recession?

Running deficits became part of the equation in 1993 when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) almost had to intervene to prop up the economy. Since then, Canadians and governments of all political stripes were chary of running deficits. Attitudes have changed since the start of the pandemic. Government programs to support workers, families, business and seniors have received widespread approval. Even the deficit-wary Conservatives have put forth proposals in their election manifesto, Secure the Future: Canada’s Recovery Plan, to increase spending, although they plan to curb the deficit within 10 years.

Response to World Events

Foreign policy has not usually been a major election issue. The last time it played a decisive role was in the 1988 election around freer trade with the U.S., with Brian Mulroney’s pro-free trade Progressive Conservatives winning re-election. In 2015, the government’s response to the plight of Syrian refugees was widely discussed. But in 2021, there is a growing sense that the world is a messier and meaner place. Relations with China are in the deep-freeze and, as with other liberal democracies, negative views of China have reached their highest level ever. For Canadians, this is in large part due to China’s “hostage diplomacy” and the incarceration of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. Canadians will wonder whether the fall of Afghanistan justified the loss of Canadian lives. The plight of Haiti, and concern from Haitian-Canadians, particularly in Quebec, is a reminder that diaspora politics remains a potent force in Canada. Concerns such as global climate change and the large-scale movement of peoples requiring global action, along with the decline of democracy in many countries, are moving foreign policy from its traditional back-burner position.

The U.S.

Canadians’ view of the U.S. has rebounded favourably with the election of President Joe Biden. But relief at Donald Trump’s defeat comes with recurring questions about how much things have changed under the Democratic administration. There is a growing list of irritants, including the cancellation of Keystone XL, restrictive Buy American purchasing provisions, lack of U.S. federal government support for Line 5 and lack of recognition for mixed-dose vaccines and the Covishield version of Astra Zeneca and, now, growing dissatisfaction around the exit from Afghanistan. The U.S.’s closure of its land border to Canadians will remain in effect past the election.

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Canadians Will Vote One Way Provincially and Another Federally

Canadians are also quite ready to vote one way provincially and then balance it by voting for a different party federally. When Trudeau took office after the Liberals had spent a decade in the wilderness, most provincial governments were Liberal. Today, conservative governments lead seven provinces: Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government in Quebec is nationalist centre-right. The only Liberal governments are in Newfoundland and Labrador and Yukon. The NDP governs British Columbia, our third largest province. Independents lead the governments in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

While provincial and federal parties may bear the same name, they are distinct and different entities although the NDP tends to draw from the same workers and base of support. Be careful in assuming close support and collaboration during elections, although in 2021 the Tory premiers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick will either actively campaign or tacitly support their federal counterparts.

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The Debates

Debates matter and they draw an audience. They may not produce a winner but they do identify losers. They can also gel impressions about personality – for and against – even if they do little to shed light on policies.

The Trudeau government established a Leaders’ Debates Commission headed by former governor general David Johnston in order to ensure debates are a “predictable, reliable and stable element(s) of future election campaigns”. This has created a partnership of news organizations that will produce two leaders’ debates – each two hours – on Wednesday, September 8 in French and Thursday, September 9 in English, broadcast from the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec. The English debate will be produced, promoted and distributed by CBC News, CTV News, Global News and APTN News, while the French debate will be produced, promoted and distributed by Radio-Canada, Noovo, La Presse, Le Devoir, L’actualité and Les Coops de l’information (Le Soleil, Le Droit, La Tribune, Le Nouvelliste, Le Quotidien and La Voix de l’Est). TVA is also planning a French-language debate on September 2 but it is not clear how many leaders will participate.

In 2019, there was widespread criticism of the English debate with its less than cohesive moderator format that failed to hold debaters to account and the inclusion of People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier, criticism that was validated when the People’s Party took only 1.6 per cent of the popular vote and elected no candidates. To participate in the 2021 leaders’ debates, the commission requires a leader of a political party to meet one of the following criteria:

(i) On the date the general election is called, the party is represented in the House of Commons by a member of Parliament who was elected as a member of that party; or

(ii) At the most recent general election, the party’s candidates received at least four per cent of the number of valid votes cast; or

(iii) Five days after the date the general election is called, the party receives a level of national support of at least four per cent, determined by voting intention, and as measured by leading national public opinion polling organizations, using the average of those organizations’ most recently publicly reported results.

In practical terms, their application keeps the leaders of the People’s Party (Maxime Bernier) and Maverick Party (Jay Hill) out of the debates.

Source: Leaders’ Debates Commission

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The Polls

Skepticism about polls began after previous elections with pollsters’ reliance on landlines that discounted younger voters’ intentions. The pollsters acknowledge this criticism. As Jean-Marc Léger wrote in his book Cracking the Quebec Code: The 7 Keys to Understanding Quebec, “Political polls make for about 1% of all my revenues, but account (for) 99% of my problems.” After an embarrassing series of inaccurate polls, there is now a healthy competition between pollsters on their last polling record.

There will be lots of polling during the election campaign but again, voters do shift and not all polls are equal. There are now many different polling firms, each using a different methodology; yet some media continue to report them as if they are equal and interchangeable. Some media also aggregate all the polls to produce an average on which they then base seat projections. So, when asked for a forecast, you can project based on current polling. But to confidently forecast is always treacherous. With this caveat, do look at the polling:

After Labour Day (the first Monday in September) for a sense of where the electorate is. This is a good baseline of initial voter sentiment. Many will have paid limited attention during the summer.
After the leaders’ debates, as families and friends will have gathered over a mid-September weekend with discussion of the election. This will provide a sense of how opinions are developing as the campaign heads into the final stretch. The most influential voices are families and trusted friends and this set of polls will provide a sense of how voters are assessing the now-lively campaign.

The final week is like the finale of a horse race as each party jockeys for advantage. Politesse goes out the window. There are calls for strategic voting. Backloaded advertising floods voters with negative messaging and the leaders’ rhetoric becomes harsh, pointed and desperate. During the final weekend, the undecideds, sometimes more than we think, make two decisions: whether they will vote and, if so, for whom, although many go to the ballot box still thinking about their decision. Parties with money pour on the advertising and their vote-getting operation goes into full swing. The issues become secondary to the focus on the leaders.

It is important to recognize that national polls, while interesting and may indicate a trend, do not usually accurately reflect what is happening regionally. Canada is a country of regions: B.C.; the Prairie Provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba; Ontario; Quebec; the Atlantic Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, P.E.I. and Newfoundland and Labrador; and the North, consisting of Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

There are national issues, but there are also important local and regional issues. Arguably, given Canada’s regional diversity, the national election is in fact a series of concurrent regional elections with a different set of parties contending in each region. There are also splits between rural and urban/suburban voters on a range of issues. Regions have their own breakdowns: the Toronto suburbs – also known as the 905 after their area code; Quebec-outside-Montreal (meaning Quebec usually divides between Montreal and the rest); and B.C.’s Lower Mainland.

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Voting

Getting out the vote is critical. Conservatives are generally acknowledged to be best at it. The Conservatives are generally seen to have the most reliable voters and their ground game is good. The NDP is reliable but its ground game is always a question. The Liberals usually benefit from a big turnout but this requires an energetic campaign that convinces their voters to turn out. However, a question will be how many Canadians decide, because of the pandemic, to exercise their right to use provisions for advance or mail-in voting. Mail-in votes are only counted after the election to ensure there is no double voting, which could significantly delay results. With COVID-19, there has been a much greater emphasis on and promotion of mail-in ballots with some suggesting that up to five million of the approximately 18 million votes cast could be by mail. That means results may not be available on election night and it could take several days for all votes to be counted, which could delay determining whether one party has a majority.

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Forming a Government and Governing

With 338 seats in today’s House of Commons, a majority requires 170 seats. The leader of the government (i.e., prime minister), prior to the dissolution of Parliament, has the right to try to form a new government and then to affirm that government, at an early date, in a formal sitting of the House of Commons. If they fail to win a confidence motion when they meet the new legislature, they must tender their resignation to the governor general (in the case of the provinces, the lieutenant-governor). The vice-regal representative then decides whether to call another election or determine if any other party or group of parties can sustain the confidence of the House. That can be, but does not have to be, the party with the most seats. Equally, if the governing party entering the election falls into second place and can strike a deal with a smaller party, it can stay in power even if another party has more seats. Much of this procedure is based on Westminster constitutional conventions and past Canadian precedents and practices.

When no party has a majority of seats, the options are a minority government or a coalition government.

In the event of a minority, the vice-regal representative will usually ask the party with the most seats to meet the House and present its speech from the throne outlining its plans and policy priorities. Usually, a new government will come to an understanding with another party – including promises to introduce legislation on which the other party campaigned. The vote on the speech from the throne is considered a vote of confidence. If it passes, the new government will then present a budget. Past minority governments have usually lasted 18 to 24 months based on a vote-to-vote basis, as was the case in the Canadian parliaments from 1972-74, 2005-11 and since 2019.

A coalition government occurs when parties join forces to hold the larger share of seats. This can include agreements where the cabinet includes members from both, or all, parties depending on how many team up. Unlike in Europe, coalitions are rare in Canada – the last formal coalition was formed in 1864, before Confederation. Some Liberals backed the Conservative Robert Borden government in 1917, during the First World War, in an informal coalition.

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Cabinet-Making

Once elected, the first job of the prime minister (or provincial premier) is to form a cabinet. Unlike the U.S. where cabinet ministers are not members of the legislature (and must resign if they join the administration), forming a cabinet is a federal Canadian balancing act of geography, gender (Trudeau takes great pride that women comprise half of his cabinet), language, ethnicity and ideology. However, compared to elsewhere, the principal parties are not terribly riven by ideological splits.

Cabinet ministers are relatively independent as long as they follow their mandate letters and do not cross the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The PMO and the Privy Council Office (PCO) – the control system for the public service and government – have most of the power, a trend in other liberal democracies as well, and a source of increasing concern for those who worry about the concentration of power in the executive. Lobbyists in Canada know that it is the bureaucrats, especially the senior mandarins, who make the recommendations upon which most ministers will act. In comparison to the U.S. system where power resides in Congress, power in Canada is concentrated among the senior bureaucrats and cabinet ministers.

Source: House of Commons

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Private Members

Private members or backbenchers are MPs who do not hold office as a cabinet minister, parliamentary secretary or chair of a committee. Backbenchers almost always vote for their respective party positions to avoid sanctions ranging from removal from committees to removal from caucus.

Some argue that toeing the line encourages cohesive party messaging and adherence to party policies. Others disagree. In his book, Whipped: Party Discipline in Canada, scholar Alex Marland examines the hidden ways by which political parties exert control over elected members of Canadian legislatures. In recent years, there have been efforts to give more power to Parliament and to private members through, for example, the creation of the Parliamentary Budget Office to give independent assessments of financial issues, including spending.

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The Senate

Our unelected Senate is evolving. Shortly after he was elected leader, Trudeau kicked the Liberal Senators out of caucus and, as prime minister, stuck to his promise to make appointments based on the stature of the individuals recommended by an independent commission rather than the prime minister’s personal choice. Prior to the 2015 election, then-prime minister Stephen Harper refused to make any new Senate appointments and was considering its abolition. As prime minister, Trudeau has now appointed most of the current 105-member Senate. Senators have divided themselves into various groups: Independent Senators Group, Conservative Party, Canadian Senators Group, Progressive Senate Group and Non-affiliated.

The Trudeau-appointed senators mostly support the Trudeau government. Critics suggest that the people appointed to the Senate tend to look like members of the Order of Canada – virtuous high-achievers – who just conveniently seem to think along the same lines as Liberals.

Is the Trudeau experiment working? The jury is still out. When he resigned in 2019, André Pratte, the former editor-in-chief of La Presse, and one of the first Trudeau appointees, said it was because the Senate was too “partisan”. The unelected “virtuous” new senators do not always appreciate that, while they are the chamber of “sober second thought”, their second thoughts are often neither welcomed nor acted upon by the elected House of Commons. Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole has said the Senate needs to change to become more accountable but what that means is unclear.

Source: House of Commons, 43^rd Parliament, Second Session

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Further Sources

On election night, all of the major media outlets will have ongoing coverage as will Maclean’s, Politico, the Hill Times and iPolitics. The Herle Burly podcast has campaign insights.

The parties’ websites contain their platforms: Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Bloc, Green.

On Polling: Pollsters of note include Abacus’s David Coletto (who is also a CGAI Advisory Council member), Frank Graves (a CGAI Fellow) of EKOS, Darrell Bricker of IPSOS, Greg Lyle of Innovative Research Group, as well as Mainstreet and Angus Reid and, for Quebec, Leger. Check out Philippe Fournier’s 338Canada and on CBC, Eric Grenier’s Poll Tracker, as well as the weekly running tracking poll from Nik Nanos.

For insights into Trudeau, read National Post columnist John Ivison’s Trudeau: The Education of a Prime Minister as well as Promise and Peril: Justin Trudeau in Power by the CBC’s Aaron Wherry. For autobiographical tomes: Trudeau’s Common Ground, and Jagmeet Singh’s Love and Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected.

Nik Nanos looks at populism in his The Age of Voter Rage: Trump, Trudeau, Farage, Corbyn & Macron – The Tyranny of Small Numbers. Bricker and John Ibbitson wrote in The Big Shift: The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future that Canadian politics, once dominated by the liberal Laurentian elite, is shifting to a conservative Western base. Their analysis is good, although their conclusion is unconvincing. Their book, Empty Planet, argues that Canada will rise as global population declines. For comic relief, Terry Fallis has written a clever novel, The Best Laid Plans, on a Canadian election, that is informative and funny.

For a critical look at Trudeau’s foreign policy by a Liberal insider, read Jocelyn Coulon’s Canada is Not Back: How Justin Trudeau is in Over His Head on Foreign Policy. For a counterpart, see Doug Saunders’ very good essay in the Globe and Mail on Trudeau’s foreign policy: Justin Trudeau vs. the World. For a view of global issues, read Stephen Harper’s Right Here, Right Now: Politics and Leadership in the Age of Disruption.

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About the Authors

Maureen Boyd is a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and chair of the Parliamentary Centre, a non-profit organization that has worked for the past half-century in more than 70 countries supporting legislatures to better serve their citizens. She is a fellow of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and the founding director of Carleton University’s Initiative for Parliamentary and Diplomatic Engagement which provides outreach and policy orientation to parliamentarians and diplomats, including orientation for newly elected members of Parliament and annually for newly arrived diplomats to Canada.

maureen.boyd@carleton.ca

Colin Robertson is vice-president and fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and hosts its regular Global Exchange podcast. He is an executive fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and a distinguished senior fellow at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. A member of the Department of National Defence’s Defence Advisory Board, Robertson is an honorary captain (Royal Canadian Navy) assigned to the Strategic Communications Directorate. Robertson sits on the advisory councils of the Alphen Group, Johnson-Shoyama School of Public Policy, North American Research Partnership and the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa. During his foreign service career, he served as first head of the Advocacy Secretariat and minister at the Canadian embassy in Washington, consul general in Los Angeles, consul in Hong Kong and in New York at the UN and Consulate General. A member of the teams that negotiated the Canada-U.S. FTA and then NAFTA, he is a member of the Deputy Minister of International Trade’s Trade Advisory Council and the North American Forum. He writes on foreign affairs for the Globe and Mail and Policy Magazine and he is a frequent contributor to other media. The Hill Times has named him as one of those who influence Canadian foreign policy.

crobertson@cgai.ca

China, Michael Spavor and Robert Schellenberg

Colin Robertson August 11, 2021 Comments Off

Calgarian Michael Spavor found guilty, sentenced to 11 years on espionage chargesCTV

Bill MacfarlaneCTV News Calgary Video JournalistCALGARY — A Chinese court sentenced Calgarian Michael Spavor to 11 years in prison late Tuesday night.

The news was announced shortly before 9 p.m. Calgary time.

At a press conference, Dominic Barton, Canada’s ambassador to China, added that the sentence was ‘”11 years with deportation”, although it remained unclear what was meant by that.

“That deportation phrase is noted,” Barton said.

He said he spoke to Spavor, who had three messages for friends and family in Canada.

“Thank you for all your support,” Barton said. “I am in good spirits and I want to get home.”

Although there did not appear to be any evidence to support the charges, the outcome was almost certain, according to some.

“We know in China that for high profile cases, it’s the Communist Party that dictates the rulings,” said Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian diplomat.

“They are trumped-up charges for which there’s absolutely, absolutely no basis in law,” said Justice Minister David Lametti.

Spavor has been in custody since December 2018 in apparent retaliation for Canada’s arrest of senior Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on an extradition warrant to the United States.

He has 10 days in which to appeal the sentence.

GREW UP IN CALGARY

Spavor grew up in Calgary and graduated from the University of Calgary with a degree in international relations.

He went to teach overseas in Korea where he fell in love with the people and culture, eventually becoming fluent.

He first visited North Korea in 2001, returning several times, including to live for six months. He is one of the few westerners to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Despite his remarkable life overseas, his friends say he always kept in touch and was interested in their lives at home.

“In the mid-90s we just started hanging out together and we’ve stayed friends ever since,” recalls friend Matt Burgener.

Burgener says he received a text days before Spavor was to return home to Calgary, making plans to see music together. That meeting never happened.

“He’s just a regular guy who had an incredible skill with languages and it took him into some unique corners,” he said.

SPAVOR FAMILY RESPONDS

The Spavor family issued the following statement after learning of the verdict and sentence.

We have been informed that the court in Dandong, China has come to a verdict and sentence in the case against Michael.

While we disagree with the charges, we realize that this is the next step in the process to bring Michael home and we will continue to support him through this challenging time.

Michael’s life passion has been to bring different cultures together through tourism and events shared between the Korean peninsula and other countries including China and Canada. This situation has not dampened, but strengthened his passion.

Once again we thank the Government of Canada for its tireless advocacy for the release of Michael, and are endlessly grateful for the support, thoughts and prayers of our friends and allies around the world.

KOVRIG TRIAL SET TO BEGIN MONDAY

Former diplomat Micheal Kovrig’s trial on similar charges is set to begin Monday.

A third Canadian, Robert Schellenberg, had his death sentence affirmed by China earlier this week for drug trafficking. He had earlier been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

“The Chinese end game, it’s free Meng Wanzhou, full stop, and they will bring all pressure they can,” says former Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson.

Meng’s extradition hearing could be decided this week. The United States issued a warrant for her arrest on fraud charges related to the sale of equipment to Iran despite sanctions prohibiting the transaction.

Chinese shadows over the election campaign

JOËL-DENIS BELLAVANCEPRESS

(Ottawa) On September 4, there will be only a few weeks left before Canadians go to the polls.

Posted on August 12, 2021 at 5:00 a.m.

On September 4, it will also be 1000 days that former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and his compatriot Michael Spavor, entrepreneur, are detained in China. Accused of espionage by Beijing, they have been languishing in prison since the Canadian authorities arrested, at the request of the United States, in December 2018 in Vancouver, the financial director of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, Meng Wanzhou.

The United States demanded the extradition of M ^me Meng because she lied about Huawei control over another company that was brewing business in Iran, in violation of US sanctions against Tehran.

In general, foreign affairs are seldom a dominant issue during an election campaign. But the case of the two Michael’s, which is raising outrage and concern across the country, may well be the exception that proves this rule. The pressure on the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau to obtain their release is increasing, especially since the Chinese government sentenced, in an “unfair” and “unacceptable” manner, Michael Spavor to 11 years in prison on Wednesday.

The Chinese Communist regime has demonstrated time and again in the past that it knows how to choose the strategic moment to impose trade sanctions against a country that irritates it or to announce prison terms against foreign nationals detained in China.

He demonstrated it in 2019 when Beijing imposed restrictions on Canadian pork and canola exports just months before the federal election. China has done it again this week by announcing the sentence imposed on Michael Spavor after a mock trial, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prepares to call an election, and as the hearings on the ^Ms. Meng’s extradition to Vancouver is drawing to a close.

Raise the tone, without offending

So far, the pressure tactics exerted by Canada through diplomatic channels have not had any tangible effect. Earlier this year, Foreign Minister Marc Garneau managed to rally around 60 nations to the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations, including the United States, France and the United States. ‘Australia. This initiative targeted China without naming it. The Communist regime expressed its irritation, but that did not change the fate of the two Michael’s.

In April, Canada followed suit with its American and European allies by imposing a series of economic sanctions against four officials and a Chinese entity for “their participation in the persecution of the Uyghur Muslim minority in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.” . The gesture was denounced by the Chinese regime, but the sanctions did not change the tone.

Also in April, Canada’s Ambassador to China Dominic Barton quietly visited Washington to convince the Biden administration to agree to a deferred prosecution agreement that would allow ^Ms. Meng to return to China in exchange for ‘an acknowledgment of guilt. According to The Globe and Mail , the Canadian Ambassador to Washington, Kirsten Hillman, participated in these talks which were to lead to the departure of ^Ms. Meng from Canada in exchange for the release of the two Michael.

Asked about this on Wednesday, the head of Canadian diplomacy, Marc Garneau, refused to give details, simply saying that the two ambassadors were continuing their efforts to obtain the return to the country of the two Canadians.

Since coming to power, the Trudeau government has gradually raised its tone towards China. But he also multiplied the contortions to avoid offending the Chinese regime too much. Examples ? He still has not decided whether he will allow the Chinese giant Huawei to participate in the deployment of 5G technology in Canada, even if its main allies have ruled out for security reasons a long time ago. This decision has dragged on for three years.

In February, Justin Trudeau and his ministers also abstained from voting on a Conservative Party motion, passed unanimously by the Commons, which recognizes that “genocide” is currently being perpetrated by the People’s Republic of China against Uyghurs and “other Turkic Muslims”.

The Olympic Games, an “incredible lever of pressure”

In the opinion of several observers of Canadian diplomacy, the Trudeau government must now be intractable towards China. This is the case of Colin Robertson, who worked at the Canadian consulates in New York and Los Angeles and who is now vice-president of the Canadian Institute of Global Affairs. “Canada must adopt sanctions that have more bite,” he said Wednesday on CBC Newsworld.

In this context, the member for Lac-Saint-Jean, the Bloc Québécois Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, returns to the charge with his proposal formulated in an open letter at the beginning of the year. According to him, it is absolutely necessary to move the Winter Olympics planned in China in early 2022 to another country, or even suspend them until further notice.

In February, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe’s letter on “the Games of Shame” caused a stir. It was signed by some thirty elected representatives from Canada and Quebec. It has been endorsed by Olympic medalist Jean-Luc Brassard, the Advisory Center for Israeli Jewish Relations, and the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, among others. It also had echoes abroad.

“What we have just seen in the last two days are additions to the violation of human rights yet again by this regime which is completely tyrannical. This regime violates human rights all day long, ”the Bloc member said on Wednesday.

“I still believe in relocating the Olympics. They tell me I’m crazy because it’s six months from now. But as far as I know, the Tokyo Olympics have been postponed for a year due to a pandemic. We could push them back as long as China continues to violate human rights. We could very well relocate them in a year if the situation does not change, ”he added.

His letter itself followed a call by some 180 human rights groups to boycott the Beijing Games, which are scheduled to begin on February 4, 2022.

At the end of the line, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe gets carried away thinking that China could be the host of this grandiose sporting event.

Why were we able to delay the Tokyo Olympics for a year because of a pandemic? Is genocide less serious than a pandemic?

Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Member of the Bloc Québécois

“Economic sanctions, we can see that this does not stop the Chinese regime. What would hurt them the most is their international image. And the Olympic Games, it’s not only to nurture their international image, but it’s also a way of controlling the population even more by saying: “See, everything is fine. People come to party with us. ” It’s an incredible leverage that we have. “

A hard-line supporter of China, Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole has already argued that the Olympics should not be held in Beijing.

“It would violate fundamental ethical principles to participate in the Olympic Games organized by a country which commits genocide against part of its population,” he said in February.

As the election campaign approaches, will Justin Trudeau’s Liberals dare to make the same emergency appeal to the International Olympic Committee?

Canadians pass Americans in vaccination

Colin Robertson July 20, 2021 Comments Off

HOW JUSTIN TRUDEAU ONE-UPPED JOE BIDEN

Updated: Jul 20, 2021 4:31 PM

Posted By: Opinion by Michael Bociurkiw

Against all odds, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau managed to beat a Covid-19 vaccination benchmark that even his counterpart to the south, US President Joe Biden, was unable to meet.

After initially bungling its Covid-19 vaccine rollout, falling behind many other developed nations, including the United States, over the weekend Canada moved ahead of its southern neighbor in per-capita vaccinations.

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) vaccine tracker, as of mid-day Tuesday, 50.8% of Canadians were fully vaccinated. By comparison, just 48.6% of Americans have taken their full dose of vaccines, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the difference for people given at least one dose is even greater: 69.7% and 56.1% respectively).

That beats a benchmark set by Trudeau and federal officials, who said in late November that the majority of Canadians would not be expected to be vaccinated until September or even as late as December 2021.

Meanwhile, a levelling off of inoculations south of the Canadian border meant that the US fell short of Biden’s goal of having 70% of adults get at least one Covid-19 vaccine shot by July 4, and the spread of the Delta variant in the US is leading to a sharp increase in hospitalizations and deaths nationwide, particularly in states with high numbers of unvaccinated people.

While the Trudeau government should avoid the temptation to take a victory lap, it arrived just in time to deliver political dividends for Trudeau as he prepares for an expected reelection campaign.

It also allowed Ottawa on Monday to jump ahead of the US and announce a long-anticipated opening of the US-Canada border on August 9, when fully-vaccinated US citizens and permanent residents will be allowed into Canada. Public Security Minister Bill Blair said Monday in a press briefing that during a recent call with US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the US had not yet indicated that it would approve a reciprocal opening of the border to Canadians. (The border, which usually sees nearly 200,000 people cross in either direction each day, was closed for the first time ever to non-essential travelers and traffic in March 2020 due to Covid-19.)

How did Canada, which badly bungled its initial vaccine roll-out and largely avoided extreme measures, like the ones seen in the US, such as using pop stars and financial incentives such as guns, trucks and cash to help boost demand, manage to pull ahead of the United States?

To start, Canada was spared the politicization of vaccines and of the rejection of such widely-accepted public health protocols as mask-wearing and social distancing that was seen in the United States.

“Of course we have our share of libertarians and anti-vaxxers. But they are a small minority. Canadians huddle close to the center and it serves them well. Getting the jab is part of that,” Colin Robertson, vice president and fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute told me.

In Canada for the most part, scientists and experts — some of whom became mini celebrities on television — were given the lead in dictating policy and that gave Canada a leg up over othercountries. And there are only 13 provincial and territorial leaders in Canada, compared to 50 governors in the US, which made it easier for Ottawa to battle the virus in a coordinated manner.

“One thing the data show us is the extent to which politics does not drive the decision to be vaccinated in Canada relative to the US,” Shachi Kurl, president of polling organization Angus Reid Institute, told me.

But nothing seemed to have focused the minds of Canadians more than the possibility of further lockdowns. The federal and provincial governments tactic of turning up the heat with the threat of rollbacks on openings resembled the playbook of other jurisdictions such as Singapore where case numbers were kept low. Late last year in the Southeast Asian city state, authorities said lockdown restrictions may not be relaxed if at least 70% of Singaporeans didn’t use some form of approved tracing technology.

Initially, Canada faced great difficulty procuring Covid-19 vaccines, and Trudeau warned citizens to expect to fall behind other developed countries, including the US. The delay in vaccination – which was partially blamed on the country not having its own its own domestic pharmaceutical production facilities – allowed an incredibly punishing third wave, resulting in Toronto, Canada’s biggest city, having one of the world’s longest lockdowns — more than 360 days — according to BBC News.

To date, more than 1.4 million Canadians have been infected by Covid-19 and 26,466 have died.

By late 2020, Canada had reportedly secured enough Covid-19 vaccines for every citizen to be vaccinated five times over, but the country still lagged in actually getting those doses out to the public because of delivery delays. By the time spring rolled around, Canadians were spoiled for choice, given the luxury of opting for the messenger RNA (mRNA) or vector vaccines — or an exotic combination of both technologies.

Expect Trudeau to leverage the vaccine success to the hilt when he hits the hustings. Tainted by several political scandals from his past two terms in office and still fresh memories of punishing lockdowns and seniors dying by the hundreds in care homes, clawing back his parliamentary majority will require political spin on the level not yet seen in a Canadian election.

But as other elected leaders worldwide have discovered, if there is one thing the Covid-19 virus is extremely adept at it is exploiting the smallest cracks in our defenses. Taking a victory lap too early and rolling back public health measures for political gain — especially when, as Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, has been warning that the country is still confronting struggles with vaccine hesitancy among its citizens — can bring literally deadly consequences

NATO , G7 and Multilateralism

Colin Robertson June 16, 2021 Comments Off

COLIN ROBERTSON

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Like Humpty Dumpty, multilateralism had a great fall.

American presidents have historically led and underwritten the rules-based system. But for U.S. president Donald Trump, multilateralism – the concept of countries working together for the common good – meant allies freeloading at America’s expense. With the abdication of U.S. leadership, efforts to fill the “empty throne” arose, notably by the Franco-German Alliance for Multilateralism, but multilateralism still stalled and fractured. “Westlessness,” as the Europeans called it, spawned an effort at strategic autonomy, but it has yet to take.

Then came the pandemic with its vaccine nationalism and closed borders. As a test of multilateralism, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres ruefully observed a few months ago: “It is a test we have failed.” The leaders of the world’s democracies are now picking up the pieces.

Multilateralism thankfully got a boost at the G7 and NATO summits. That the democracies, despite their differences, can achieve shared purpose on the challenges of our time – COVID-19, climate and China – is a relief.

Hitting ‘Control-Alt-Delete’ on the world’s biggest corporate tax loophole

Pledging one billion more vaccine doses to help end the pandemic, G7 leaders will accelerate future development and production to tackle COVID-19 in developing countries. Pandemic-related debt relief will rely on the G20, meeting this fall in Rome, underlining that multilateralism is a smorgasbord with a variety of actors. The key, of course, is to act and not just punt problems into the aspirational phrasing that too often drowns summit communiques.

With Nobel laureates, including the Dalai Lama, pressing for action on climate change and global public opinion increasingly convinced that the issue is a “global emergency,” the G7 leaders pledged to end support for coal generation, the single biggest cause of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Building on the 2018 Charlevoix summit, leaders also pledged to conserve at least 30 per cent of the world’s land and ocean by 2030, a reminder that multilateralism is a process that moves incrementally

China and Russia were called out for their aggressive behaviour and violations of human rights. As an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative – its massive, cross-continents infrastructure project stretching across land and sea involving 139 countries – G7 leaders are promising a “build back better” public-private infrastructure program. Public opinion in G7 countries has shifted significantly, with at least seven in 10 having a negative view of China.

NATO labelled Russia a threat and China a systemic competitor. U.S. President Joe Biden was right when he framed their challenge as a battle between the “democracies and autocracies,” in which the democracies must “prove democracy works.”

The return to great power competition and technology has changed the strategic environment, so NATO is revising its fundamental “Strategic Concept.” To remain fit for purpose, multilateral institutions must reform and adapt.

For Canada, changing geopolitics underlines the value of multilateralism in advancing our shared values as well as our self-interest. It will oblige us to reinvest in diplomacy, defence and development and to revive our skills as a “helpful fixer.”

Prime ministers Louis St. Laurent and Lester Pearson defined and engineered the institutions of postwar multilateralism. Pierre Trudeau sought to bridge the North-South and East-West divides. Brian Mulroney enabled German reunification, put climate change on the international agenda and advanced human rights in places like South Africa. Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin led on responsibility to protect, in the campaigns against land mines and child soldiers, and in the creation of the International Criminal Court and G20. For Stephen Harper, it was about improving global maternal and child health. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau consistently champions the empowerment of women and gender equality. This is helpful fixing.

With the world in a mess, Canada is capable of more. This means more money. The Trudeau government has made modest increases to its development budget of 0.27 per cent of GDP and 1.39 per cent of defence, but they fall short of the targets set by the UN (0.7 per cent) and NATO (2 per cent). Our foreign service also needs reinvestment.

It is time for the Trudeau government to move on its promised “peace, order and good government” initiative. There is an urgent need to focus on supporting democracy at home, while collaborating with fellow democracies and with emerging democracies.

Winston Churchill said of democracy that it was the worst system, except for all the rest. The same can be said of multilateralism. The G7 and NATO summits showed that the democracies can still act together for the global good. Multilateralism endures. Now the promises made in their communiques and declarations need to be matched in budgets and actions.

NATO Summit 2021: A Primer

Colin Robertson June 13, 2021 Comments Off

Canadian Primer to the NATO Summit in Brussels June 14, 2021

Image credit: Vlad Kochelaevskiy/Adobe Stock

PRIMER

by Colin Robertson
CGAI Vice President and Fellow
June 2021

DOWNLOAD PDF

Introduction

Presidents and prime ministers of the thirty NATO nations will meet in Brussels on Monday, June 14. The agenda, for this their 29^th summit since the Alliance was formed in 1949, will discuss safeguarding the rules-based order in the face of the rising challenge from China and Russia. NATO operations in Afghanistan and Iraq will also be discussed.

Note map does not include North Macedonia that joined NATO as the 30^th ally in 2020.

To “defend” NATO, says Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, requires “strengthening existing partnerships and building new ones, including in the Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America,” in line with NATO’s 2030 ambitions.

For the U.S., which is the biggest contributor to NATO, “deterrence and defense remain NATO’s job number one“. As President Joe Biden said before leaving for a European tour that includes the G7 and EU summits and a meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as well as the NATO summit, he wants to ensure that “the democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century” will also shape the post-pandemic world.

An important discussion will be around an updated Strategic Concept to sustain NATO’s technological edge. Discussion will flow from the recent NATO 2030 report. Strengthening readiness and resilience requires securing supply chains, renovating infrastructure, and improving communications.

Defence Expenditures as a share of GDP

Facing destabilizing and malicious cyber activity, there is recognition that NATO’s cyber operations needs attention. In February, Defence Ministers endorsed NATO’s Coherent Implementation Strategy on Emerging and Disruptive Technologies including a security-focused technology hub, what Stoltenberg calls a “defence innovation accelerator”, with private sector partnership. At the Munich Security conference in March, Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed we “join forces in all spheres and regard security as a concept of networked security, of multidimensional security.”

The summit will also “set the gold standard when it comes to understanding and mitigating the security implications of climate change”, says Secretary General Stoltenberg.

The U.S. inevitably dominates these summits, for better or worse. As Biden told the State Department shortly after his inauguration “we will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again, not to meet yesterday’s challenges, but today’s and tomorrow’s”. Repairing NATO is central to this objective. The values enunciated in the new Atlantic Charter, signed with Prime Minister Johnson on the eve of the G7 meeting will be reflected in his interventions. In practical terms, it means support for the NATO 2030 initiative, keeping the alliance strong militarily, making it stronger politically and giving it a more global view.

In his preview of the summit, Secretary General Stoltenberg described a world of growing global competition saying NATO members must strengthen its political consultations; reinforce collective defence through increased readiness, modernize capabilities, and invest; and develop Alliance-wide resilience to make its societies less vulnerable to attack and coercion. This means more money – burden sharing – for joint training and exercises, stronger cyber defences, cutting-edge capabilities, and more capacity-building for partners.

Success at Brussels will be measured not just by the degree of cohesion and camaraderie after the turbulence of the Trump years but on how they deal with the immediate, urgent and future. All are important.

In the immediate and urgent category: Can the Alliance come together with stronger actions on Russia and on China? Are the Europeans, for example, prepared to support with their ships, submarines and aircraft freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea? Do they turn a blind eye to growing illiberal practises in Alliance members Turkey, Hungary and Poland? How do they manage the exit from Afghanistan? Do they stay the course in Iraq? And how does climate fit into their deliberations?

Looking forward, will they agree on a new Strategic Concept that addresses the challenges of technological change as represented by 5G, semiconductors, supply chains, export controls and technology rules and standards. Will we see some of the ‘values’ contained in the new ‘Atlantic Charter’ set forth by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Biden reflected in the NATO communique? Can the EU and U.S. resolve their differences on data protection and big data content? What about the new battle domains of cyber, hybrid, space and disinformation? Can the Alliance take a collective defence against ransomware attacks and deal with the challenges posed by cryptocurrency?

And then what about that old chestnut: burden-sharing?

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What will be Discussed?

Defence Spending

The United States shoulders nearly 70 per cent of the alliance’s operating budget. In terms of GDP the U.S. spent roughly 3.87 per cent on defence in 2020, according to NATO, while the average in European NATO countries and Canada was around 1.78 per cent. U.S. Presidents and Secretaries of Defense have consistently encouraged NATO members to spend more and, while president, Donald Trump mused about quitting NATO over allies’ inability to meet the 2 per cent GDP target for defence spending. While most allies, including Canada, still fall short, NATO defence spending by European allies and Canada has seen seven consecutive years of increases.

Developing a new Strategic Concept

The current Strategic Concept “Active Engagement, Modern Defence”, adopted in 2010, outlines three essential core tasks – collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security to meet diverse threats including the proliferation of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, terrorism, cyber-attacks and fundamental environmental problems. NATO 2030: United for a New Era, the 67-page report (November, 2020) of the Secretary General’s Reflection Group (that included former Canadian National Security Advisor Greta Bossenmaier) argues for a new strategic concept, drawing from the current concept but taking into account the return of systemic rivalry and the rise of global threats as well as the strains on allied unity. A big piece of the Reflection Group’s report deals with technological change and the need for NATO to catch-up and adapt to emerging and disruptive technologies (EDT). As they argue:

Maintaining a technological edge is the foundation upon which NATO’s ability to deter and defend against potential threats ultimately rests. EDTs pose a fundamental challenge but also—if harnessed correctly—an opportunity for the Alliance. Without a strategic surge in this area, allowing adversaries to gain competitive advantage would impede NATO’s ability to win on the battlefield, challenge strategic stability and change the fundamentals of deterrence, but also offer state and even non-state actors, including eventually terrorists, the potential to threaten our societies from within. They also could undermine NATO’s political cohesion, by raising questions about technology.

China

The Reflection Group described the China challenge as follows:

The scale of Chinese power and global reach poses acute challenges to open and democratic societies, particularly because of that country’s trajectory to greater authoritarianism and an expansion of its territorial ambitions. For most Allies, China is both an economic competitor and significant trade partner. China is therefore best understood as a full-spectrum systemic rival, rather than a purely economic player or an only Asia-focused security actor. While China does not pose an immediate military threat to the Euro-Atlantic area on the scale of Russia, it is expanding its military reach into the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Arctic, deepening defence ties with Russia, and developing long-range missiles and aircraft, aircraft carriers, and nuclear-attack submarines with global reach, extensive space-based capabilities, and a larger nuclear arsenal. NATO Allies feel China’s influence more and more in every domain. Its Belt and Road, Polar Silk Road, and Cyber Silk Road have extended rapidly, and it is acquiring infrastructure across Europe with a potential bearing upon communications and interoperability.

It recommended NATO take a series of steps including:

Increase information-sharing analysis on China within the Alliance;
Continue efforts to build resilience and counter cyber-attacks and disinformation that originate in China;
Expand efforts to assess the implications for Allies’ security of China’s technology capability development;
Invest in its ability to monitor and defend against any Chinese activities that could impact collective defence, military readiness and/or resilience in SACEUR’s Area of Responsibility;
Continue to identify vulnerabilities of key sectors and supply chains, in coordination with the EU;
Uphold NATO cohesion when Allies engage China bilaterally and through formats such as the 17+1 format and Belt Road Initiative;
Adapt to China’s integrated MCF doctrine by encouraging Allies to increase technological and military engagement with Allies more vulnerable to Chinese penetration.

Secretary General Stoltenberg recently observed that while NATO needs to “engage with China on issues like arms control and climate change, and therefore China is not an adversary”, their human rights record and actions in the South China sea is a reminder that “they don’t share our values.” China is also a potential challenger: it has the second largest defence budget, the largest Navy, they are investing heavily in new modern capabilities including hypersonic weapon systems and they are integrating new disruptive technologies like facial recognition, artificial intelligence and big data into the new weapon systems.

Russia

As the NATO chiefs of defence observed after their May meeting, “Russia continues to demonstrate a sustained pattern of destabilising behaviour, including its violations of Ukraine’s and Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The Reflection Group recommended NATO should continue the dual-track approach of deterrence and dialogue, within parameters agreed at the Wales and Warsaw Summits. The Group assessed Russia as follows:

After the end of the Cold War, NATO attempted to build a meaningful partnership with Russia, based on dialogue and practical cooperation in areas of common interest. But Russia’s aggression against Georgia and Ukraine, followed by its ongoing military build-ups and assertive activity in the Baltic and Black Sea regions, in the Eastern Mediterranean, Baltic, and in the High North, have led to a sharp deterioration in the relationship and negatively impacted the security of the Euro-Atlantic area. Russia routinely engages in intimidatory military operations in the immediate vicinity of NATO and has enhanced its reach and capabilities for threatening airspace and freedom of navigation in the Atlantic. It has violated a number of major international commitments and developed an array of conventional and non-conventional capabilities that threaten both the security of individual NATO Allies and the stability and cohesion of the Alliance as a whole. Russia has amply demonstrated its ability and willingness to use military force, and continues to attempt to exploit fissures between Allies, and inside NATO societies. It has also employed chemical weapons on Allied soil, costing civilian lives.

Afghanistan

By September NATO will be drawing down its non-combat Resolute Support Mission (RSM), which has been training, advising and assisting the Afghan security forces and institutions since January 2015. NATO operations in Afghanistan began after the UN Security Council authorized the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force that operated from August 2003 to December 2014. ISAF is NATO’s longest mission employing more than 130,000 troops from 51 NATO and partner nations, including Canada. Canadian Forces left Afghanistan in March 2014 after a twelve-year campaign and the loss of 161 men and women. Canada continues to support a number of programs and activities.

Iraq

Iraq remains a battle-ground for domestic, regional, and international competition. In May, NATO ministers agreed to expand the alliance’s Iraqi mission.

Ukraine

At their April meeting the NATO-Ukraine Commission “reaffirmed NATO’s unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity calling on Russia to engage constructively at the OSCE on its military activities. Secretary General Stoltenberg called on Russia to end its military build-up, stop its provocations, end its support for the militants in eastern Ukraine, and withdraw its forces from Ukrainian territory to abide by the Minsk Agreements.

Belarus

The North Atlantic Council condemned the forced landing of the civilian aircraft in Minsk (23 May) as a violation of international norms and rules, and a direct attack on the freedom of expression and the free and independent press. Some allies now restrict the access of the Belarussian airliner to their airspace and called for an independent international investigation.

NATO Readiness

In 2018, NATO defense ministers agreed to the “Four Thirties” initiative, a military readiness plan that now means the Alliance has 30 land battalions, 30 air squadrons, and 30 navy vessels, ready for deployment in 30 days or less. The Russian invasion of Ukraine (2014) and intervention in Syria (2015) underline the need for NATO readiness. In practical terms this means a rapid combat-ready expeditionary force with attention to cyber defence and maritime security. As NATO scholar Julian Lindley-French and Admiral (retd) James Stavridis, former SACEUR, argue: “Article 5 collective defence must be modernized and re-organized around cyber-defence, missile defence and the advanced deployable forces vital to contemporary defence.” Military exercises demonstrate shortcomings in NATO’s ability to move forces across Europe, because of bureaucracy (customs officials asking to see passports at borders) and inadequate infrastructure (the bridges, roads and railways that have to handle military transports).

NATO Partners and NATO Expansion

NATO’s partnerships, born out of its 1990 London summit, focused first on the former Soviet bloc nations (many of whom are now full members), then on crisis management in the Balkans, and, since 9-11, on wider partnerships now including more than forty nations around the world – Australia, New Zealand and, as the latest addition, Mongolia. At its peak, the ISAF mission in Afghanistan included 22 partner nations. Partnership does not include the security guarantee of Article 5. Ukraine and Georgia want membership in NATO and, at the Bucharest summit in 2008, NATO encouraged this. But NATO enlargement is controversial and there is discussion of different architecture to guarantee security. A wise person’s report (2016) commissioned by the Finnish government concluded that Finland and Sweden should stick together, whatever the decision, but that membership would provoke Russia. It described Russia as an “unsatisfied power” that “has made unpredictability a strategic and tactical virtue, underpinned by an impressive degree of political and military agility.”

Countering Terrorism

With its Terrorism Intelligence Cell at NATO HQ, NATO’s Counter-Terrorism Policy Guidelines focus Alliance efforts on three main areas: awareness, capabilities and engagement. NATO is a member of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.

Migration

NATO and the EU work on migration, seeking to tackle the root causes and to help stabilize the source countries, including training local forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. NATO is also assisting in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean, and through Operation Sea Guardian, to provide help to the EU Operation Sophia in the Mediterranean, with ships and maritime surveillance aircraft.

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Public Opinion and NATO

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in spring 2021 says citizens hold a positive views of NATO at or near all-time highs across several member states. Americans, who contribute the most to NATO’s annual budget, are at 61 per cent favorable, the same as the overall median across the NATO states surveyed. While Americans are more favorable toward NATO than not, partisans hold very different views of the alliance. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are much more likely than their Republican counterparts to have a positive assessment of NATO (77 per cent vs. 44 per cent, respectively).

A pan-European survey in November and December 2020 of more than 15,000 people in 11 countries commissioned by the European Council on Foreign Relations concluded “while most Europeans rejoiced at Joe Biden’s victory in the November U.S. presidential election, they do not think he can help America make a comeback as the pre-eminent global leader.”

While Europeans are happy with Biden’s election, like their leaders, they fear a return of another Donald Trump in four years.

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What is NATO?

NATO is a military and political alliance constructed around the principles of collective security, democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. It has 30 members including Canada, the United States and most European nations, as well as a host of Euro-Atlantic partner nations. NATO represents half of the world’s economic and military power. As Secretary General Stoltenberg observes, “no other superpower has ever had such a strategic advantage.”

In the wake of the Second World War, the victors set up a series of international institutions. The foremost was the United Nations, and its alphabet soup of agencies – WHO, UNHCR, FAO et al – with universal membership designed to advance human progress and prevent the “scourge of war”. Responding to what Winston Churchill described as the “iron curtain” descending “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic”, the western alliance set up a collective security agreement called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

In the words of its first secretary general, Lord Ismay, NATO was to “keep the Russians out, the Germans down, and the Americans in”. Most importantly it’s a collective security agreement – an attack on one would be considered an attack on all (Article 5). NATO 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 in Washington 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. In signing the agreement Canadian External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson said that Canadians “feel deeply and instinctively” that the treaty is “a pledge for peace and progress”.

The Alliance expanded with Turkey and Greece joining in 1952, West Germany in 1955 and Spain in 1982. France left the military alliance in 1967 but rejoined in 2009. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, NATO membership is now 30 countries – including Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

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NATO Today

NATO is based in its purpose-built (2018) headquarters in Brussels, where Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, leads its Secretariat with Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană, a former Romanian minister of Foreign Affairs. NATO military operations are headed by two commanders: the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) based in Brussels is currently U.S. General General Tod D. Wolters and the incoming Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT) based in Norfolk, Virginia will be French General Philippe Lavigne currently French Air and Space Force Chief of Staff.

Member nations are represented in both the NATO Council and Military Committee. A Canadian has never held the post of Secretary General but Canadians have twice served as Chair of the Military Committee. General Ray Henault, a former Chief of Defense Staff, was chair from 2005-2008. The incoming chair is Admiral Rob Bauer, Chief of Defence of the Netherlands Armed Forces. Legislators from NATO nations meet annually in the NATO parliamentary assembly.

In 2018 NATO has four Joint Forces Commands located in: Brunssum, Netherlands, to enhance coordination, cooperation and situational awareness; Naples, Italy, to prepare for, plan and conduct military operations in order to preserve the peace, security and territorial integrity of Alliance member states; Norfolk, Virginia to protect sea lanes between Europe and North America; and inUlm, Germany, to focus on logistics in Europe. The Norfolk and Ulm commands were added in 2018.

Canada, Norway and the U.S. collaborate with the EU through participation in the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) defence project Military Mobility enabling the movement of military personnel and assets throughout the EU, whether by rail, road, air or sea.

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What has NATO done?

NATO is the classic defensive alliance with Article 5 of its charter declaring that “an attack on one is an attack on all.” Arguably the world’s most successful military alliance, alliance unity and its deterrence capacity contributed significantly to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, the reunification of Germany, and the demise of the communist threat in Europe.

NATO has three core tasks: collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security. For its first 40 years, NATO’s purpose was to deter Soviet aggression. With the end of the Cold War, NATO shifted to help the former Soviet-bloc countries embrace democracy and the market economy. Today, it deters Russian aggression.

NATO forces were involved in bringing peace to the Balkans (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo) in operations that continue today. NATO forces, under the umbrella of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), have been present in Afghanistan since 2003. There have been operations around Iraq (1990-1) and a training mission (2004-11). 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. NATO led the UN-sanctioned Libyan campaign (Operation Unified Protector in 2011), maintaining a no-fly zone and conducting air strikes against the Gaddafi regime. Canadian Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard directed the air campaign.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2014 presented NATO with a renewed challenge. Conflicts within and between states have created failing states and mass migration on its southern flank – in North Africa and the Middle East – that requires ongoing attention.

Since 1989, NATO has also become involved in a series of out-of-theatre missions. Over 150,000 troops served under NATO command in six different operations on three continents, including counter-piracy operation in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.

NATO still matters. But collective security means collective contributions from all alliance members. As the New York Times editorialized:

Born after World War II, NATO linked America and Europe not just in a mutual defense pledge but in advancing democratic governance, the rule of law, civil and human rights, and an increasingly open international economy. The alliance was the core of an American-led liberal world order that extended to Asia and relied on a web of international institutions, including the United Nations and the World Bank. It remains the most successful military alliance in history, the anchor of an American-led and American-financed peace that fostered Western prosperity and prevented new world wars. No one has proposed anything credible to improve upon it.

But as NATO 2030 argues, the Alliance also needs to be continuously adapting to changing technology and geopolitics.

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Canada and NATO

As a founding member of NATO, Canada has stood with their NATO Allies since 1949. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be pressed on Canada’s financial commitment to NATO. The government’s Strong, Secure, Engaged defence policy (2017) commits Canada to increasing its defence spending to 1.4 per cent of GDP by 2026-27, well short of the NATO two per cent norm. But as Trudeau has said, “there are many ways of evaluating one’s contribution to NATO” noting that Canada has “always been amongst the strongest actors in NATO.”

This includes Canada’s leadership of a multinational NATO mission in Latvia (and Trudeau will visit Latvia before going to the NATO summit). The 450-strong Canadian Forces contingent represent the commitment Trudeau made at the Warsaw summit in 2016, as part of broader Canadian support to Operation Reassurance, and note the “significant procurement projects” – especially the ongoing construction of new warships and the purchase of fighter jets – and Canada’s renewed activist internationalism.

As part of Canada’s commitment to NATO’s Operation Reassurance, Canada fighter jets patrol the Baltic skies. Since April 2014, Canada has deployed our Halifax-class frigates, most recently HMCS Charlottetown and HMCS St. John’s, in support of NATO reassurance measures. HMCS Windsor, one of our Victoria-class submarines, recently returned from five months in the Mediterranean where its mission including tracking Russian submarines. Canada is also providing humanitarian and Special Forces support to a U.S.-led multinational effort to support pro-Iraq forces battling ISIS and other terrorist groups.

In terms of readiness, Canadian forces already have achieved significant interoperability on land, air and sea with the U.S. through NORAD, our binational aerospace and maritime surveillance agreement, and through both joint exercises and active operations in theatres like Afghanistan and Libya and now in Latvia. Trudeau can also point to Canada’s recent mission as part of the UN peacekeeping operation in Mali, involving 250 Canadian soldiers and eight helicopters.

Then-president Barack Obama repeatedly told Canada’s Parliament: “NATO needs more Canada”. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland understands this, telling a Washington audience (June, 2018) that:

Since the end of the Second World War, we have built a system that championed freedom and democracy and prevented regional conflicts from turning into total war. Canada for one is going to stand up in defense of that system.…America has been the leader of the free world. We Canadians have been proud to stand at your side and to have your back. As your closest friend, ally, and neighbor, we also understand that many Americans today are no longer certain that the rules-based international order of which you were the principal architect and for which you did write the biggest checks still benefits America.

At the center of that defence arrangement, as Freeland, then foreign minister, told Parliament (June, 2017) in laying out the Trudeau foreign policy “NATO and Article 5 are at the heart of Canada’s national security policy.” We now need to up our defence contribution even beyond the additional monies included in the 2021 budget.

We should do more because Canadian sovereignty requires it and as we learned once again, during the COVID pandemic, the Canadian Forces first responder role goes beyond natural disasters – including bringing relief in retirement homes as well.

We could also do much more to assert our Arctic sovereignty – picking up the pace for construction of the icebreakers by using all of Canada’s shipyards and building more Arctic Offshore patrol ships and supply ships. We should also invest now in the next generation of submarines – they are the ultimate stealth weapon to deter unwelcome intrusions. And why not invest in a hospital ship to provide humanitarian relief in the increasing number of climate-related disasters that beset coastal nations?

Canada should also make the most of its membership in the EU/NATO Centers for Excellence especially those focusing on hybrid threats in Helsinki, Finland; cyber threats in Tallinn, Estonia; strategic communications in Riga, Latvia.

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G7 Carbis Bay

Colin Robertson June 9, 2021 Comments Off

From Politico

What Justin Trudeau wants from the G-7

This week, Corridors asks: What’s the most important thing Trudeau needs to accomplish at the G-7 summit?

— Colin Robertson, former Canadian diplomat: In strategic terms there is Canada’s relationship with the USA, our principal ally and trading partner. Trudeau will get real face time (not virtual) with Biden at the G-7 and NATO summit. This is always useful especially now we have a roadmap aiming to take the partnership to a new level.

We balance the U.S. relationship with multilateralism where the rules-based-system (designed and sustained by U.S. presidents until Trump) levels the playing field and allows Canada to play on areas of expertise. Trudeau, for example, has gender equality and women’s empowerment — themes that will underline G-7 discussions on everything from debt relief to Covid recovery and “building back better.”

Progress, quiet but incremental — how the G-7 works — is an achievement.

Multilateralism is undergoing its most severe stress test since it was created after the Second World War — the rise of China that offers an alternative, authoritarian-based order and an aggressive, disruptive Russia that respects no norms or rules.

When Trump proclaimed and acted on ”America First,” the multilateral system drifted and broke down (the “every nation for itself” Covid response is one example). If the leading democracies can come out of the G-7 and NATO summits with cohesion and purpose, and Trudeau has played the traditional Canadian role of “helpful fixer,” then Canadian interests are well served.

Canada hopes for a bolstered G7 in a post-Trump world

By Neil Moss June 9, 2021

The G7 will meet in the U.K. for the first time since its haphazard summit in 2019 and since the end of the Trump presidency.

With G7 leaders heading to England for their first meeting in nearly two years, the Canadian government is hoping the group has renewed importance in showcasing the value of the rules-based order at a time of growing authoritarianism around the world.

The leaders of Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, and Italy have not had a G7 meeting since the summit in Biarritz, France, in August 2019. The 2020 summit, which was set to be hosted by the U.S., was cancelled amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The June 11-13 in-person meeting in Cornwall, England, will be the first for U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, and the last for German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

While recent summits have been marked by friction, there is hope that this meeting will be different, as all leaders have publicly embraced the G7, according to a senior Canadian government official.

The height of the discord during the Trump administration came during the 2018 Canadian-hosted G7 meeting in Charlevoix, Que., during which then-U.S. president Donald Trump, who left the proceedings early, erupted on social media calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) “meek and mild” and “dishonest and weak” after the Canadian prime minister’s press conference where he defended Ottawa’s position amid a trade dispute with the U.S. Mr. Trump said he told U.S. officials not to endorse the meeting’s already agreed-upon communiqué. Ms. Merkel called the eruption “sobering and a bit depressing.”

At the summit the next year in France, the G7 passed on trying to reach consensus on a communiqué.

In a post-Trump world, the 2021 G7 summit is the first meeting in which all the members are committed to multilateralism and have a desire to address the world’s challenges collectively, noted the senior government official, which was not the case with Mr. Trump’s isolationist world view.

The summit will be the first opportunity in a couple of years for liberal democracies to trumpet their model and counter the attack that the model of governance is on the decline, the official said, noting that the summit is a chance for the G7 to bounce back from a period where it hasn’t operated as effectively as it historically has. In addition to supporting human rights and democratic promotion, the official remarked that illiberal tendencies need to be publicly addressed.

While there will be natural points of complications, the official said, this summit will focus on what unites the G7, as opposed to the divisions.

Former diplomat Colin Robertson, vice-president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said the G7 is going through a “stress test” while competing with opposing worldviews.

“The rules-based system is vital to Canadian foreign policy,” he said, noting that system faced a challenge with the Trump administration. “As a consequence of [Trump’s America first policies], the rules-based system, I think, failed.”

For this summit, Mr. Robertson said, the world leaders are entering united with hopes to gain concrete goals. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he will push the G7 to commit to working towards vaccinating the entire world by the end of 2022.

“It will be the democracies taking the lead,” Mr. Robertson said. “The Chinese aren’t offering this. The Russians aren’t offering this. But if this comes out of the G7, that really is important.”

“Johnson wouldn’t have said, ‘Let’s agree to vaccinate the world by 2022,’ if he hadn’t lined this stuff up,” he said.

Since the beginning of the year, G7 foreign ministers have jointly released a series of statements condemning authoritarianism and human rights abuses. The statements have targeted China over the Hong Kong situation and Russia for its aggression along the Ukraine border and its arrest and detention of Alexei Navalny.

Following the G7 foreign ministers meeting last month, a wide-ranging communiqué was issued addressing China and Russia, as well as North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Myanmar, among others.

“That, to me, is the restoration of multilateralism and acting in concert as we now have to do,” Mr. Robertson said. “Multilateralism is coming out of a severe stress test over the last four years and … democracies recognize that they have to stand together. That’s the one strength we have over the Chinese and the Russians. The Russians don’t have allies, they have tributaries. It’s the same with the Chinese.”

Independent Senator Peter Boehm (Ontario), a former G7 sherpa to both Mr. Trudeau and past prime minister Stephen Harper, said having all members of the G7 embracing the group in a post-Trump world is “significant.”

He noted that Mr. Biden comes to his first summit with a lot of experience as a former vice-president and a past chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

“He’s someone who likes to get into the file, which his predecessor was not. His predecessor had a bit more casual approach,” said Sen. Boehm, chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

With the other new leaders coming to their first summit, it will give Ms. Merkel and Mr. Trudeau an opportunity to play an important role, Sen. Boehm said.

“The veterans will be carrying, I think, a fair amount of the discussion, which includes [French] President [Emmanuel] Macron,” he said. “I think the dynamic will be much more collegial. There will be greater engagement—that doesn’t mean there won’t be differences on issues, but not the sort of fundamental issues that we witnessed, for example, on climate change in 2018 in our summit in Charlevoix and on some of the other global crisis points.”

University of Toronto professor John J. Kirton, co-founder and director of the G7 Research Group, said this year’s summit is “exceptionally significant” to an “unprecedented degree.”

“Never before, since the G7 summits started in 1975, have they faced such a unusually strong, severe, swift, interconnected set of crises across such a wide domain,” said Prof. Kirton, citing the pandemic, climate change, economic recovery, and geopolitical competition between liberal democracies and authoritarianism.

He noted that “shock-activated vulnerability” is what has led to “great success” for past summits.

“For that reason alone, I am predicting that Cornwall’s summit will be a strong success,” he said. “The fact that it is the first in-person summit since Biarritz … really matters. Because at a minimum, you need each leader across the proverbial kitchen table to look each other in the eye.”

“There’s chats over coffee breaks, walks in the woods, conversations when you are sitting together at the pageantry events,” Prof. Kirton said. “You just can’t do that on Zoom and especially after a year and a half of Zoom fatigue.”

He said that is why, from the very beginning, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson selected Cornwall as the summit’s location, where COVID-19 cases were among the lowest in the U.K.

While Mr. Trudeau could face political pressure from travelling internationally during a time when he is advising Canadians not to, experts say the meeting is too important for the prime minister to stay home.

The call for an in-person meeting was a collective one, according to the senior government official, noting that there isn’t an alternative to meeting in person and that the types of in-depth discussions that happen at the G7 don’t happen in any other forum and need to occur in person.

The summit will also be the first in-person meeting that Mr. Trudeau will have with Mr. Biden since he became president. The G7 has a special ability where leaders can have meetings on the margins, the official said, remarking that it will be significant for all as Mr. Biden has only met with Mr. Suga face to face.

Sen. Boehm said in-person meetings allow leaders to step aside to have a discussion in hopes of reaching a compromise.

“That is an important factor,” he said, adding that security is another. “If you are having this entire meeting virtually, there are chances that your communication will not be secure, that it could fall into the wrong hands or be manipulated by malign actors. So there is a tremendous advantage to obviously being there.”

Along with addressing climate change and trumpeting liberal democratic values, gender equality and the regulation of future technologies will also be on the agenda. It is still an open question if the rules for the use of new technologies will be made by authoritarian governments or governments that are committed to transparency, the senior government official noted.

The official also noted that G7 members will discuss specific measures regarding how to safeguard the world from a future pandemic.

The G7 meeting will be followed by a NATO summit on June 14 in Brussels and then Mr. Trudeau will participate in a Canada-European Union meeting while Mr. Biden will take part in a greatly anticipated summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.

nmoss@hilltimes.com

From POLICY Magazine June 7 2021

The G7 Cornwall: Back to Normal, with Key Upgrades

Colin Robertson

June 7, 2021

This coming weekend, the leaders of the advanced economies and leading democracies will meet at the Carbis Bay Hotel in a tiny Cornish seaside village in Britain’s most southerly county. While the agenda has evolved annually since its creation in 1975 (Canada joined in 1976) in the wake of the oil shock crisis, the G7 leaders have had two overriding priorities: strengthening the global economy and bolstering the rules-based order.

For this meeting, host British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has also invited the leaders of, India, Australia, South Korea and South Africa to Carbis Bay. Together, the 11 leaders represent almost two-thirds of the people living in democracies around the world.

The leaders meet against a challenging backdrop. In a signed statement released June 3rd and titled Our Planet, Our Future: An Urgent Call to Action to the G7, 126 Nobel laureates called on the leaders to commit to “a new relationship with the planet” recognizing that this decade will be “decisive” in determining whether the Earth remains habitable.

As host, PM Johnson has set a high bar, declaring that “as the most prominent grouping of democratic countries, the G7 has long been the catalyst for decisive international action to tackle the greatest challenges we face.” Johnson wants to ‘build back better’ from the pandemic by:

leading the global recovery from coronavirus while strengthening our resilience against future pandemics
promoting our future prosperity by championing free and fair trade
tackling climate change and preserving the planet’s biodiversity
championing our shared values

The leaders’ summit is the culmination of a yearlong process of meetings including seven ministerial tracks: foreign, finance, transport, development, education, health and environment. A comparison to an iceberg is apt: if the summit is the tip and most visible piece of the G7 process, this coordinated process of ministers and officials lies mostly beneath the surface of public attention but it is vitally important. There is also significant civil society outreach involving the Gender Equality Advisory Council and the G7 engagement groups: Business7, Civil7, ThinkThank7, Labour7, Science7, Women7 and Youth7.

The G7 leaders met virtually in February when PM Johnson convened them on the pandemic. They agreed to “build back better for all” – the theme of this year’s conference — through addressing climate change and the reversal of biodiversity loss, and committing to “levelling up our economies so that no geographic region or person, irrespective of gender or ethnicity, is left behind.”

Carbis Bay will be Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s fifth G7 summit, and from there he will go to Brussels for the NATO summit (June 14) and then the Canada-EU summit (June 15) before returning to Canada to quarantine. After Chancellor Angela Merkel, who steps down this fall, Trudeau is the longest-serving member of the current G7 leaders’ club.

Trudeau hosted the 2018 Charlevoix G7 summit, which emphasized gender equality and the empowerment of women, combating the climate crisis, ridding the oceans of plastic, and defending the rules-based international order. These themes remain on the G7 agenda, the latter given particular prominence by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the foreign ministers’ ministerial in London, where he singled out “defending democratic values and open societies” as an agenda item amid systemic threats from China and Russia.

Trudeau will continue to press for action on Canada’s agenda, including through the Gender Equality Advisory Council, established at Charlevoix. Its work is incremental but continuous, like the G7 itself. Another example is the Oceans Plastics Charter, also discussed at Charlevoix, that continues to expand its signatories to global partners like IKEA and Walmart.

Success at Carbis Bay will be measured not just by the post-Trumpian dynamic with President Joe Biden in the American seat — who can forget Angela Merkel staring downDonald Trump at Charlevoix? — or their communique (without Trump there will be one) but by their actions and follow-up. More people may work on the draft of the final communiqué than will read it but the process of getting there is what really matters. The ongoing meetings between the leaders’ Sherpas and relevant ministers, keep the dialogue going.

Deliverables come in two parts. There are the useful initiatives like the ongoing work on gender. Then there are the top-table agreements on critical issues hammered out in their face-to-face formal and informal discussions.

A good example is the work of the finance ministers to reform, as Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak put it: “A tax system that was largely designed in the 1920s.” G7 Finance ministers agreed June 5 to a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15 per cent, designed, per Chancellor Sunak, “to reform the global tax system to make it fit for the global digital age.” Agreement at Carbis Bay would give the proposal momentum for October’s G20 summit in Rome.

Deliverables come in two parts. There are the useful initiatives like the ongoing work on gender. Then there are the top-table agreements on critical issues hammered out in their face-to-face formal and informal discussions. The extent and number of these commitments is their test at Carbis Bay. Can they find consensus in a shared communiqué that they then translate into legislative and regulatory actions?

A favorable verdict on Carbis Bay will hinge on three big issues – COVID recovery; climate; and defending the rules-based international order.

On COVID, can the democracies collectively act to vaccinate the rest of the world? The International Monetary Fund wants a commitment to vaccinating at least 40 percent of the population in all countries by the end of 2021 and at least 60 percent by the first half of 2022. Debt relief for poorer countries also needs firm commitments. Debt relief, increasing vaccine production, then getting the actual jabbing done would give credibility to the G7 summit theme of “Building Back”. G7 militaries, especially the US divisions that helped contain Ebola in Africa with Operation United Assistance in 2014, should play a key first-responder role – which will no doubt be discussed at the NATO summit on June 14.

On climate, it is a question of ambition. Looking to the Glasgow climate summit in November, G7 environment ministers have already committed to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 at the latest, with deep emissions reduction targets in this decade. Building on the 2018 Charlevoix commitments, they have also agreed to conserve at least 30 percent of the world’s land and ocean and to bend the curve of biodiversity loss by 2030. The recent Peoples’ Climate Vote, the world’s biggest-ever survey of public opinion on climate change, revealed that over half see climate change as a “global emergency”. As customers, shareholders, and the courts weigh in over climate change, business now routinely factors environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) into their investment calculations. These ideas are explored by UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney in his new book Values, that draws on his 2020 Reith Lectures in which he argued that the shift from market economies to market societies helped spawn the crisis of credit, climate and COVID. For Carney, a “strategy of relentlessly focusing on decarbonization across the economy while achieving commercial returns for investors” is doable, necessary and will generate new prosperity.

On China, President Biden has framed it as a battle between the “democracies and autocracies…We’ve got to prove democracy works.” Public opinion in G7 nations has shifted significantly in recent years, with at least seven in ten having a negative view of China. In their meeting last month, G7 foreign ministers called on China to follow global rules on trade and to respect human rights, specifically pointing out its violations in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. In a coordinated move, Canada, the UK, USA and EU imposed sanctions over Xinjiang, but more targeted action needs to be applied. The G7 actions on China and Russia will condition the discussion at the NATO summit.

After four years of a disruptive Donald Trump, the other leaders will also be assessing whether Biden’s presidency means that the US is really “back” and ready to lead the democracies. The Trump experience showed that without American leadership, the democracies drift. Despite efforts, especially by the Germans and French in creating the Alliance for Multilateralism, there is really no plausible alternative to US leadership, especially when it comes to security.

The pandemic has created greater confidence in governments. Can the G7 leaders come to a consensus on climate, energy, protectionism, populism and extremism? If we are moving into an economic decoupling with China, then supply chain resilience will need the G7’s ongoing attention.

At this, their 47^th summit, it is easy to be cynical about the G7 and to regard it as “an artifact of a bygone era”. With no members from Africa, Latin America or the southern hemisphere it also faces a challenge from fast-growing emerging economies, such as India and Brazil, that may outstrip some of the G7 nations by 2050.

But in turbulent times, there is real value in leaders of the world’s largest advanced economies, who share the values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, getting together to discuss shared concerns. As Canada’s former long-time Sherpa, and now chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs committee, Senator Peter Boehm, observed: “The G7 is a collective, it’s not a global government. Yes, we’re going to have differences — we wouldn’t be having these meetings if we were all agreed on everything … The leaders are really only together for about 48 hours, so are we going to solve all the problems in the world? No. Can they have a good discussion and push things forward? Yes. Can they convince some of the more recalcitrant leaders that maybe they should be a bit more open-minded? There’s a good possibility of that too.”

Winston Churchill, who popularized the word “summitry”, observed that “jaw-jaw” among leaders is better than “war-war” and with trade conflicts on the rise within the G7 partnership they need to talk. Frank discussions and informality characterize the G7 summits. Multilateralism needs constant reinvigoration and through its multiple ministerial tracks and annual summit, this is what the G7 is all about.

A Primer to the G7 Summit in Carbis Bay June 11-13, 2021

Image credit: G7 UK

PRIMER

by Colin Robertson
CGAI Vice President and Fellow
June 2021

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Introduction

The leaders of the advanced economies and leading democracies will meet this coming weekend at the Carbis Bay Hotel in Carbis Bay, a tiny Cornish seaside village in Britain’s most southerly county. While the issues change, since its creation in 1975 in the wake of the oil shock crisis, the G7 leaders have had two overriding priorities: strengthening the global economy and bolstering the rules-based order. With their economies accounting for over two-fifths of global GDP, when they act collectively their decisions make a difference.

Top of this year’s agenda is dealing with the pandemic and post-pandemic recovery. Host and chair of this year’s summit, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is imploring his fellow leaders saying: “The world is looking to us to rise to the greatest challenge of the post-war era – defeating COVID and leading a global recovery driven by our shared values. Vaccinating the world by the end of next year would be the single greatest feat in medical history.”

Climate change, looking to the COP Glasgow conference in November, also gets top billing. Leaders will also discuss the rules -based order and how to deal with an increasingly aggressive China and Russia.

After four years of a disruptive Donald Trump, the other leaders will also be assessing whether Joe Biden’s presidency means that the U.S. is really ‘back’ and ready to lead the democracies. The Trump experience showed that the democracies drift without American leadership. Despite efforts, especially by the Germans and French in creating the Alliance for Multilateralism, there is really no plausible alternative to U.S. leadership, especially when it comes to security.

The leaders met virtually in February when Johnson, convened them on the pandemic. They agreed to “build back better for all” – the theme of this year’s conference – through addressing climate change and the reversal of biodiversity loss, and committing to “levelling up our economies so that no geographic region or person, irrespective of gender or ethnicity, is left behind.” They also committed to champion “open economies and societies; promote global economic resilience; harness the digital economy with data free flow with trust; cooperate on a modernised, freer and fairer rules-based multilateral trading system that reflects our values and delivers balanced growth with a reformed World Trade Organization (WHO) at its centre; and, strive to reach a consensus-based solution on international taxation by mid-2021 within the framework of the OECD.”

For the meeting at Carbis Bay, Johnson has set a high bar declaring that “as the most prominent grouping of democratic countries, the G7 has long been the catalyst for decisive international action to tackle the greatest challenges we face.” Johnson has invited the leaders of India, Australia, South Korea and South Africa to Carbis Bay. Together, the 11 leaders represent almost two-thirds of the people living in democracies around the world.

Source: Brookings

The pandemic has created greater confidence in governments. Can the G7 leaders come to a consensus on climate, energy, protectionism, populism and extremism?

Success at Carbis Bay will be measured not just by an assessment of their camaraderie – who can forget Angela Merkel staring down Donald Trump at Charlevoix – or their communique, without Trump there will be one, but by their actions and follow-up.

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The G7 In-Basket

Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to ‘build back better’ from the pandemic by:

leading the global recovery from coronavirus while strengthening our resilience against future pandemics
promoting our future prosperity by championing free and fair trade
tackling climate change and preserving the planet’s biodiversity
championing our shared values

The G7 leaders meet against a challenging backdrop. In a signed statement to the G7 titled “Our Planet, Our Future: An Urgent Call to Action”, 126 Nobel laureates called last week on the leaders to commit to “a new relationship with the planet” recognizing that this decade will be ‘decisive’ in determining whether the Earth remains habitable. Addressing future zoonotic diseases requires a ‘one health’ approach to global wellbeing recognizing the intimate connections between human health and the health of other animals and the environment.” The laureates’ “inescapable conclusion” is that “inequality and global sustainability challenges are deeply linked. Reducing inequality will positively impact collective decision-making.”

In its analysis the IMF says the strength of the recovery from the pandemic will vary significantly across countries, depending on access to medical interventions, effectiveness of policy and structural support and exposure to cross-country spillovers. Multilateral and national policy actions will be vital to ensure vaccines are globally available and then to place global growth on a stronger footing.

Amid exceptional uncertainty, the IMF projects global economic growth at 5.5 per cent in 2021 and 4.2 per cent in 2022. The pandemic’s impact on the world’s poor has been brutal, pushing an estimated 100 million people into extreme poverty in 2020 alone. The UN warns that in some regions poverty could rise to levels not seen in 30 years. Derailing progress towards basic development goals, low-income developing countries must now balance emergency relief against longer-term investments in health, education, physical infrastructure, and other essential needs.

The geo-political problems come in four parts. First, there is the growing systemic challenge that China, Russia and the other authoritarian disruptors – North Korea, Turkey, Saudi Arabia – pose to the rules-based system. Second, the democracies are dealing domestically with social inequities that are exacerbated by populism, extremism and disinformation.

Third, there are the problems, new and old. The emerging political problems – cyber-intrusion and ransomware (Russia), hostage-taking (China), air piracy (Belarus) require action. The ongoing trans-national challenges like organized crime trafficking in people, drugs, guns and the ongoing effort to contain weapons of mass destruction be they chemical, biological or nuclear get ongoing attention but no one expects they will go away. It’s the same with the chronic issues. Many, like Israel and Palestine, pre-date the G7. The forced movement of people is another. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that someone is forcibly displaced every two seconds with 79.5 million people forced from their homes. Among them are 26 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. Their movement strains EU unity and polarizes Americans. The most the leaders can hope to achieve is to prevent their chronic condition from exploding into violence and chaos.

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The Road to Carbis Bay

The leaders’ summit is the culmination of a year-long process of meetings including seven ministerial tracks: foreign, finance, transport, development, education, health and environment. A comparison to an iceberg is apt: if the summit is the tip and most visible piece of the G7 process, this coordinated process involving ministers and officials lies mostly beneath the surface of public attention but it is vitally important. The chart below – produced by the French for the 2019 Biarritz summit – illustrates this process that also includes the sessions involving the Gender Equality Advisory Council and the G7 engagement groups: Business7, Civil7, ThinkThank7, Labour7, Science7, Women7 and Youth7.

These ministerial sessions and civil society discussions may not get a lot of media attention, but they build the necessary consensus for actions and decisions outlined in the final communique. Sometimes it is just a matter of moving an issue forward as with the ministers’ May statement on corruption, a longstanding concern. It’s also about trying to figure out solutions to new problems. For example, transport ministers met in early May to plan for a safe return to international travel which could include some form of uniform vaccine certificate.

The collective action by Foreign Ministers through joint statements is noteworthy, especially as they have also included sanctions applied in tandem. In recent months the foreign ministers have issued statements on the arrest and detention of Alexey Navalny, condemning the coup in Myanmar, and subsequent violence, on electoral changes in Hong Kong, on Ukraine, on Tigray, Ethiopia, and Belarus. At their May meeting with Development Ministers, the Foreign Ministers issued an 87-paragraph communique with a series of separate statements on equitable access, girls’ education, defending democracy from foreign threats, and famine prevention that was longer than many leaders’ communiques.

In April, the G7 Non-Proliferation Directors Group met and their statement put the spotlight on the nuclear threat posed by North Korea and Iran and committed to uphold the global norm against the use of chemical weapons and to countering illegal intangible technology transfer, preventing the illicit transfers and destabilising accumulation of conventional weapons, and countering proliferation financing, threats in space, the threat of non-state actors acquiring nuclear and radioactive materials and the threat of disease being used as a weapon.

At their May meeting, Health ministers released the Carbis Bay Progress Report: Advancing Universal Health Coverage and Global Health Through Strengthening Health Systems, Preparedness and Resilience and at their June meeting pledged to focus on global health security, antimicrobial resistance, clinical trials and digital health and to build a pandemic-proof global health system to counter future threats.

Environment ministers met in May, committing to deliver climate targets in line with limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C, phase out new direct government support for international fossil fuels and to protect land and ocean to bend the curve of biodiversity loss by 2030. The G7 countries will end all new finance for coal power by the end of 2021, while at the same time supporting clean energy alternatives like solar and wind.

Finance Ministers and heads of international financial institutions virtual meeting, May 2021. Source: UK Government

At their meetings in May and June, Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors proposed imposing a minimum 15 per cent tax on the profits of big international tech companies. The goal is to prevent big corporations – Google, Apple and Amazon – from shifting their vast profits to tax havens. They also agreed to beneficial ownership registers to combat money-laundering and corruption. The U.S. Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act, aimed at the creation of a federal register of company owners in the country. Canada announced plans to establish a public register in the recent budget.

In April G7 digital and technology ministers met and agreed to a roadmap for cooperation on data free flow with trust and frameworks for G7 collaboration on digital technical standards and electronic transferable records.

At their May meeting transport ministers committed to a common set of principles to guide the resumption of international travel that would include a coordinated approach for testing and a common platform for recognizing the vaccinated status of travellers.

At their May meeting Trade ministers “recalling the G7 Leaders’ Statement at Charlevoix in 2018” reaffirmed their commitment to “open markets and a global trading system that should not be undermined by unfair trade.” In a veiled shot at China, ministers expressed concern over “harmful industrial subsidies, including those that lead to severe excess capacity, a lack of transparency regarding the state’s role in the economy and the role of state enterprises in unfair subsidisation, and forced technology transfer.” At their March meeting Trade ministers committed to free and fair trade, open digital markets and to modernizing the trade system to ensure it is environmentally sustainable, empowers women, supports trade in health products and supply chain resilience.

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What About Deliverables from Carbis Bay?

More people may work on the draft of the final communiqué than will read it but the process of getting there is what really matters. The ongoing meetings between the leaders’ Sherpas – their personal representatives – and relevant ministers keep the dialogue going. They are supported by their discussions with business, civil society and think tanks.

A favorable verdict on Carbis Bay will hinge on three big issues – COVID recovery; climate; China and the rules-based order.

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COVID Recovery

At the top of his ten priorities for 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres put responding to COVID-19. The global landscape of the pandemic looks different among countries and even communities given the many variables at play — demographics, public funding, and international aid.

Getting Everyone Jabbed

According to the World Health Organization the pandemic has claimed nearly 3.5 million lives. Several coronavirus vaccines have been approved for use but as this map demonstrates global vaccinations have a long way to go. Some countries, including Canada and the U.S., have secured more vaccine doses than their populations need. Most lower-income countries are relying on COVAX, a global plan supported by Canada designed to ensure that everyone in the world has access to a vaccine. Earlier this month Japan hosted the virtual Gavi COVAX Advance Market Commitment (AMC) summit aimed at accelerating access to 1.8 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses for lower-income economies via the Gavi COVAX Advance Market Commitment by raising an additional US$ 2 billion from donors and the private sector, in addition to US$ 6.3 billion already raised before the campaign was launched at the “One World Protected” event in April.

The COVAX programme needs vaccines. The Serum Institute of India, the largest single supplier to the COVAX scheme, has made none of its planned shipments since exports were suspended in March to address the pandemic crisis in India. Developing nations led by India and South Africa proposed to the WTO that the patents on vaccinations and other COVID-related items should be waived and while the U.S. has now agreed the EU and UK have not. If this is not formally addressed, it will be the subject of corridor discussion at Carbis Bay.

Building Back Better

‘Building back better’ has got to be more than just a bumper sticker. Global trade between 1979-2020 grew from 36 to 60 percent of global GDP. After having fallen 5.3 per cent in 2020, the WTO estimates that the volume of world merchandise trade will increase by 8.0 per cent in 2021.

Trade has played a huge role in the vaccine development and the commitment to restoring global trade is important. As the WTO noted, one of the leading COVID-19 vaccines included 280 components sourced from 19 different countries. In calling for a trade reboot. The new WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala stated recently, “the biggest economic stimulus for developing countries is access to COVID vaccines.”

The recent Global State of Small Business Report from Facebook reports that of more than 35,000 small business leaders surveyed across 27 countries, almost a quarter reported their businesses were closed. Especially hard hit were women and minorities. The International Trade Centre’s (ITC) findings also demonstrates that the smaller the firm, the more negative impact of the pandemic.

Source: UNCTAD

Corporate Tax and the Digital Economy

As Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak put it: “we cannot continue to rely on a tax system that was largely designed in the 1920s.” The United States wants an end to the digital services taxes which Britain, France and Italy have levied, and which it considers unfairly target U.S. tech giants like Amazon. G7 Finance ministers agreed (June 5) to a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15 per cent, designed as Chancellor Sunak put it “to reform the global tax system to make it fit for the global digital age.” Agreement at Carbis Bay would give the proposal momentum for October’s G20 summit in Rome.

We live in a digital world but lack agreed standards on data governance. With more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data created every day, the global economy is increasingly driven by data, yet there are few globally accepted rules on the collection, processing, and sharing of data. Is it time for an international institution to oversee the digital revolution, as the International Monetary Fund does for global payments, the World Bank for development, the WHO for trade and the International Energy Association aims to do for energy?

Debt relief

External debt repayments from low-income countries are forecast to reach between $2.6 and $3.4 trillion next year. The looming debt crisis in the global South is set to become a debt catastrophe. Calling for more ambitious debt relief for poorer countries including private creditors are both World Bank president David Malpass, and IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. Georgieva noted ahead of the April 2021 IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings: “The global economy is on firmer footing as millions of people benefit from vaccines. But while the recovery is underway, too many countries are falling behind and economic inequality is worsening.”

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Climate

Can the G7 reach agreement on a collective approach as they prepare for the Glasgow COP summit in November? The UK and Italian governments, which are co-hosting COP26, have set four goals for the 2021 event:

Agreeing to a step change in commitments to emissions reduction
Strengthening adaptation to climate change impacts
Getting finance flowing for climate action
Enhancing international collaboration on energy transition, clean road transport and nature

COP26 is the latest Conference of the Parties (COP), the group of nations that forged the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, committing them to collectively stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations “at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system”.

The U.S. recommitment to climate opens the door to meaningful action. Biden’s executive order, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, makes it an integral element of his foreign and security policy. The European Climate Law commits the EU to be climate neutral by 2050.

The recent Peoples’ Climate Vote, the world’s biggest ever survey of public opinion on climate change surveying 50 nations and 1.2 million people revealed that over half see climate change as a “global emergency” requiring action with regional breakdown as follows: Western Europe and North America (72%), Eastern Europe and Central Asia (65%), Arab States (64%), Latin America and Caribbean (63%), Asia and Pacific (63%), and Sub-Saharan Africa (61%).

In its recent report Net Zero by 2050: a Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector, the International Energy Association concluded that to get to net zero emissions by 2050 there must be an epic transformation concluding that “Climate pledges by governments to date – even if fully achieved – would fall well short of what is required.” The report provides 400 steps to transform energy production, transportation and use. Fatih Birol, the IEA Executive Director observed that we need to see a “historic surge in clean energy investment…Moving the world onto that pathway requires strong and credible policy actions from governments, underpinned by much greater international cooperation.”

These are ideas pursued by UN special envoy on climate action and finance Mark Carney in his new book Values that draws on his 2020 Reith Lectures in which he argued that the shift from market economies to market societies helped spawn the crisis of credit, climate and COVID. For Carney a “strategy of relentlessly focusing on decarbonization across the economy while achieving commercial returns for investors” is doable, necessary and will generate new prosperity. As customers, shareholders, and the courts weigh in over climate change, business now routinely factors environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) into their investment calculations.

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China and the liberal rules-based order

Describing the challenge posed by China, Joe Biden said in his first press conference: “this is a battle between the utility of democracies in the twenty-first century and autocracies. We’ve got to prove democracy works.” From Xi Jinping’s perspective the ‘East is rising’ and the West is in decline. With the United States riven by class, race and identity with its attendant violence, culture wars and political polarization, Xi is convinced that the tide of history is flowing in China’s favour.

Joe Biden wants to limit Chinese capacity in high-tech areas like AI and robotics. To diversify and guarantee supply chains and to bring jobs back to North America will mean more decoupling from China. For their part, the Chinese have embraced ‘dual circulation’ meaning less dependence on foreign investment and exports in favour of domestic consumption and state-generated capital.

Can the G7 leaders unite to restore confidence in the open, rules-based system? The West is at risk of ceding its global economic leadership to a China that is more than ready to bring in its own authoritarian state capitalism practises to replace the market democracy designed by the West.

To meet the challenge posed by China will require joint resolve, reform of institutions and a recommitment to collective security and deterrence that also embraces space and cyber. It will oblige concerted financial and regulatory actions, catapulting technocratic processes to the forefront of national security. The new lexicon of national security now involves trade remedies and tax, export controls, accounting standards and investment screening, and sanctions.

It also means differently through, for example, a G7 backed ‘Clean Green Initiative’ supporting sustainable development and the green transition in developing countries. It would be the West’s alternative to China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative that already has projects in over 100 countries.

There will also be discussion of other authoritarian states. Their view of Russia’s “negative pattern of irresponsible and destabilising behaviour”, as the foreign minister’s May communique termed it, will set the tone for the NATO summit the following Monday in Brussels. Leaders will want President Biden’s perspective on his June 16 Geneva meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

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Canada and the G7

Carbis Bay will be Prime Minister Trudeau’s fifth G7 summit, and from Carbis Bay he will go to Brussels for the NATO summit (June 14) and then the Canada-EU summit (June 15) before returning to Canada to quarantine. After Chancellor Angela Merkel, who steps down this fall, Trudeau is the longest serving member of the G7 leaders’ club.

Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau hosted Canada’s first G7 summit in 1981 at Montebello, and since then we have hosted summits in Toronto (1988, Brian Mulroney), Halifax (1995, Jean Chrétien), Kananaskis (2002, Jean Chrétien), Huntsville (2010, Stephen Harper), and Charlevoix (2018, Justin Trudeau).

Justin Trudeau hosted the 2018 Charlevoix G7 summit where he put the emphasis on gender equality and the empowerment of women, combating the climate crisis, ridding the oceans of plastic, and defending the rules-based international order.

These themes remain on the G7 agenda. Trudeau will continue to press for action. A good example is the Gender Equality Advisory Council, established at Charlevoix. Its work is incremental but continuous like the G7 itself. Another example, is the Oceans Plastics Charter, also discussed at Charlevoix that continues to expand its signatories to global partners like IKEA and Walmart.

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Who and What is the G7?

The G7 is the forum through which the leaders of the big liberal democracies talk about their common problems and how, collectively, they can if not fix things at least keep the lid on. The G7 is not an institution, it has no bureaucracy. Hosting passes from nation to nation and the host leader sets the agenda for their year setting in train an ongoing process of top-level meetings by ministers and senior officials culminating in the summit. The summit is a gathering for the leaders to meet in relatively informal and intimate settings to inject dynamism and drive into the pressing issues of our time.

The G7 current leaders are:

Canada – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
France – President Emmanuel Macron
Germany – Chancellor Angela Merkel
Italy – Prime Minister Mario Draghi
Japan – Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga
United Kingdom – Prime Minister Boris Johnson
United States – President Joe Biden

Also invited:

Australia – Prime Minister Scott Morrison
European Union – Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President Charles Michel
India – Prime Minister Narendra Modi
South Korea – President Moon Jae-In
South Africa – President Cyril Ramaphosa

Collectively, the G7 represent 40 per cent of global GDP and 10 per cent of the world’s population. The G7 provides over 75 per cent of global development and humanitarian assistance. Through their membership in NATO, the European and North American G7 members provide the backbone of collective security and humanitarian relief. While not a NATO member, Japan is strengthening relations with the Alliance.

The G7 came into being in the wake of the 1973 OPEC oil crisis and the appreciation by then-U.S. secretary of the Treasury George Shultz and former president Richard Nixon that the leading democratic powers needed a forum at which their leaders could meet in sustained but informal discussion over a couple of days. Russia was a member from 1997-2014 but Vladimir Putin was disinvited after the Russian invasion of Crimea and Ukraine.

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Do We Need a G7?

At this, their 47^th summit, it is easy to be cynical about the G7 and to regard it as “an artifact of a bygone era”. With no members from Africa, Latin America or the southern hemisphere it also faces a challenge from fast-growing emerging economies, like India and Brazil that may will outstrip some of the G7 nations by 2050.

But in turbulent times, there is real value in leaders of the world’s largest advanced democracies, who share the values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, getting together to discuss shared concerns. As Canada’s long-time Sherpa, and now senator, Peter Boehm, observed: “The G7 is a collective, it’s not a global government. Yes, we’re going to have differences – we wouldn’t be having these meetings if we were all agreed on everything … The leaders are really only together for about 48 hours, so are we going to solve all the problems in the world? No. Can they have a good discussion and push things forward? Yes. Can they convince some of the more recalcitrant leaders that maybe they should be a bit more open-minded? There’s a good possibility of that too.”

When the French hosted the Biarritz summit, they identified these G7 achievements:

If diseases are losing ground, it is (in part) thanks to the action of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria saving 27 million lives. If maternal and infant mortality is down, it is (in part) thanks to the Muskoka programme. If we are fighting climate change, it is (in part) through the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement. If women’s rights are progressing worldwide, it is (in part) thanks to the commitment to girls’ education in Africa.

The rules-based liberal international order and multilateral co-operation are under protectionist and populist pressures, both from within and without. The G7 summit is the top-table where the leaders of the major liberal democracies visibly demonstrate (or not) their ability to collectively manage the geopolitical pressure points and the growing socio-economic consequences of globalization. Winston Churchill, who popularized the word “summitry”, observed that “jaw-jaw” among leaders is better than “war-war” and with trade conflicts on the rise within the G7 partnership they need to talk. Frank discussions and informality characterize the G7 summits.

Costs for G7 summits run into the hundreds of millions of dollars but we need to look at the price as an insurance premium for democratic wellbeing. Most of it is for security (there will be more than 5500 police at Carbis Bay) but, again, the right to demonstration is integral to democracy.

Figure 1: A graphic outlining how individual countries break into the G7, G8, and G20. (Source: Foreign Policy in Focus/Bloomberg)

The UN Security Council and the G20 are the other top-table global management forum. The Security Council’s permanent members – Russia, China, France, Britain and the United States – represent the world of 1945 and the early Cold War. As we witness over Myanmar, Syria, North Korea and other recent crises, getting the Security Council to act constructively is very difficult. Reforming the Security Council is an exercise in futility.

The G20, founded in 1999 through Canadian and U.S. leadership, includes the G7 members – Canada, the United States, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom – as well as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey. With two-thirds of the world’s population, their economies account for approximately 80 per cent of world trade and global production.

Like the G20, much of the G7’s value is in its process – the meetings of Sherpas and ministers throughout the year and the working groups examining issues like climate, energy, health and disease, non-proliferation, development, food safety, gender, empowerment of women and minorities and support for the UN’s peacekeeping and peace-consolidating operations.

Multilateralism needs constant reinvigoration and through its multiple ministerial tracks, the annual G7 process does this. In a report (2019) for the Center for Innovative Governance Institutions, David Malone and Rohinton Medhora observed:

“What can be asserted with some confidence…is that given the complexity and interconnected nature of economic and social policies and programs today, across the globe, and the greater risks of disaster on a global scale, due to climate change, nuclear proliferation, weapon miniaturization, terrorism and global pandemic risks, and much else, international cooperation will remain vital if the worst is to be avoided.”

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Further References

The UK G7 site contains much useful background. The best Canadian source for G7/8 documentation, with a chronology of past summits, is the University of Toronto’s G7 Information Centre. Listen to a Global Exchange podcast discussion with former Canadian Sherpas Peter Boehm, Jonathan Fried and Peter Harder.

Budget 2021 and Foreign Policy

Colin Robertson April 28, 2021 Comments Off

With an ambitious domestic policy budget, Liberals leave little for foreign affairs

By NEIL MOSS APRIL 28, 2021

While the Trudeau Liberal government focused on a domestic recovery from the public health and economic crises brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, it left foreign policy largely ignored in its first budget in two years.

Ambitious plans for childcare and Indigenous spending were unveiled in the April 19 budget, but that same ambition wasn’t seen in the announcement of new foreign policy initiatives, said Canadian International Council president Ben Rowswell.

“We’ve seen a huge increase on spending on domestic priorities by this government without a corresponding increase in foreign policy,” said Mr. Rowswell, a former senior-level Canadian diplomat. “And I think that represents a failure of organizations in civil society that are focused on global affairs … we don’t seem to have convinced the government that the challenges facing Canada are growing considerably on the international stage. We need the focus of the government and its resources [to be on] as much as what’s happening abroad as what’s happening in Canada.”

“This budget shows the government’s willingness and determination to tackle certain long-standing systemic issues at home and put its money where its mouth is,” he said. “There are equal challenges on the international stage—they are not as directly within our control, that’s the definition of foreign policy—but they are no less urgent.”

For Canada’s foreign policy, Mr. Rowswell said, the budget represents continuity at a time of dramatic global change. “From my own perspective, that’s not adequate,” he added.

The budget’s foreign policy commitments include pledges to increase NATO contributions and funding for NORAD modernization. Canada’s international development purse got an injection—around $1.4-billion over five years, including more than $500-million in the next fiscal year—but not as much as some stakeholders hoped. The federal government also responded to geopolitical crises around the world with funding to address the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, the migrant and refugee crisis in Venezuela, and a one-year extension of the Middle East strategy.

The government also announced $236.2-million over five years to address the sexual misconduct and gender-based violence crisis in the Canadian Armed Forces.

The budget additionally earmarked funds to ensure the “timely delivery” of defence and marine procurements, as well as ensured future procurements would include a provision to assess a bidder’s impact on “Canada’s economic interests.”

Mr. Rowswell said many of the initiatives are responses to regional crises that have emerged, suggesting a lack of foreign policy ambition.

“If Canada were to be ambitious in its international affairs, there would be some kind of changes that we would be driving as well, not just responding. It would be something more proactive,” he said.

What is lacking, he said, is a recognition of the new world that Canada is finding itself, such as in global economics, geopolitical rivalry, and defence.

Faced with these new challenges Canada, Mr. Rowswell said Canada has only made a “slight increase” in its commitments, none of which respond directly “to some pretty serious shifts in geopolitical realities facing Canada.”

“I get the sense that we are kind of treading water. That we’re operating on the assumption that the international environment will remain as it has been up until now and so we can focus on what’s happening in Canada,” he said. “While I’m certainly not arguing that we ignore these challenges on the domestic front, the contrast is jarring between huge ambition at home and no ambition abroad.”

Mr. Rowswell applauded Indigenous and gender equality initiatives that he said may give Canada a greater ability to promote human rights and gender equality on the international stage, but said there is no vision for how that can be done in the budget.

“I don’t see the feminist foreign policy reflected in the budget. There’s potential there that the government has not pursued,” he said.

University of Waterloo professor Bessma Momani, an expert on international relations, said she wasn’t surprised that foreign policy wasn’t a focus of the budget.

“It was personally what I would expect from a budget where we’re going to have to do something about some real economic scarring,” she said. “I didn’t really expect a lot on the international side … I think under the circumstances of where we are in the economy, I wasn’t surprised that there wasn’t a lot of international [focus].”

She noted there was investment in multilateralism through NATO and NORAD.

For the extension of the Middle East strategy, Prof. Momani said it will need to be further developed, as what was announced didn’t give much indication of its scope.

The strategy was last renewed in the 2019 budget with $1.39-billion over two years. The new extension reduces the strategy’s per-year funding level, with $527 million over a single fiscal year. The initiative was first forwarded to stabilize the region following the rise of ISIS, and includes diplomacy, defence, development, and intelligence.

Prof. Momani said the objectives of the strategy are a “moving target.”

Former diplomat Colin Robertson says Canada is following the U.S.’s lead in addressing the pandemic at home before embarking on ambitious foreign policy plans. The Hill Times photograph by Sam Garcia

“We don’t know what the needs of the region are. We have to wait for the dust to settle for this crisis to see really where investment is required,” she said, noting the strategy could shift based on geopolitical changes in the region, which has had significant transformations in the past year, such as in Lebanon.

She said the budget also spotlights the realities of a government’s commitment to foreign policy during a minority Parliament. With an election coming sooner or later, governments don’t win votes on foreign affairs initiatives, she said.

“I think a strong majority government … would put more emphasis towards the international, and I certainly don’t think it would happen in the immediate term coming out of this pandemic, where there’s just so much stimulus need at home,” Prof. Momani said.

Former Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson, vice-president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said the domestic budget isn’t unlike spending packages that have come out of the United States and Europe.

He added much of the budget’s focus is to strengthen the domestic situation to build the desired foreign policy, which he said is the same approach as the Biden administration.

“If Canada wants to do things abroad, it first of all has to get its domestic house in order,” he said. “And that starts with of course with recovery from COVID economically, and only then will we have the kind of capacity to continue to do work abroad.”

While foreign policy doesn’t feature predominantly in the budget, Mr. Robertson said it doesn’t mean that the government isn’t looking at global affairs.

Mr. Robertson said the foreign policy initiatives that were announced are “housekeeping” and largely are things the government was already doing.

He noted that the funding for the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar reflects an approach of the government to target specific efforts where it thinks it can make a difference.

“We’ve taken a leadership role, which is kind a niche foreign policy, which I think is a helpful fixer role,” he said, noting the work of now-UN Ambassador Bob Rae and then-foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland (University-Rosedale, Ont.) on the file.

Buy America House of Commons tsstimony

Colin Robertson April 8, 2021 Comments Off

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON THE ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES

NUMBER 009

2nd SESSION

43rd PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021

Mr. Colin Robertson:

Thank you.

My experience with buy America began in Albany in 1981, when my then boss consul general Ken Taylor and I travelled from New York City to Albany to see then governor Hugh Carey to push back on buy New York policies on steel and cement, an experience that over the years I would repeat in different states and on Capitol Hill.

Protectionism through preferential procurement policies for goods and services is not particular to the United States. It is practised by all nations, including Canada, and at every level of government.

If all politics is local, so is trade. Voters prefer that their tax dollars be spent locally, even though buying local generally costs more and provides less choice. But these are economists’ arguments, and they don’t matter much to the public. Neither does the bleat that Canada deserves an exemption from buy America because we are America’s friend and neighbour. While polls consistently show that Americans like Canada more than any other nation—in fact, more than we like them—the business of America is business.

We’ve learned to deal with buy America policies on four levels.

First is by negotiating a procurement agreement within our trade agreements, as with defence production sharing. At the Trump administration’s insistence, there is no procurement chapter in the current Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement. Yet, much of what was included in the NAFTA is included in the WTO’s plurilateral agreement on government procurement. There are more likely to be deletions from the entities listed in this agreement, given the current protectionist mood on both sides of the aisle in Congress and the “Made in America” approach of the Biden administration.

Second is to offer reciprocity in procurement at the state and province level, because that is where the money is spent. This is how we dealt with President Obama’s Recovery Act program in the wake of the 2008-09 recession. Prime Minister Harper turned to the premiers’ Council of the Federation. Premier Jean Charest and his successor as chair, Premier Brad Wall, reached out to their governor counterparts, including through a trip by seven premiers to the National Governors Association in February 2010, to make the case for reciprocity.

The arguments that the premiers made then still apply. By opening to outside vendors, local cartels’ ability to game the market was curtailed. Competition means better value. Most states are constitutionally prevented from running deficits. Governors need to make their dollars count, especially as they face huge costs in public services because of the pandemic. The 2010 Canada-U.S. Agreement on Government Procurement did not include every state nor cover every sector, but it did open procurement opportunities for Canada.

Third, working with labour is vital. When our unions are part of the negotiations, as we saw during the CUSMA negotiations, we make progress. United Steelworkers leads the charge for buy America, but their membership is both Canadian and American. In the early 1990s, we gained respite from buy America on steel because then trade minister Michael Wilson went to Washington with then Canadian Steelworkers national director, later Steelworkers president, Leo Gerard. After talks with then Steelworkers president Lynn Williams, the administration agreed that buy America would not apply.

Fourth, with those Americans we buy from and sell to, we need to make permanent our campaign that making things together is mutually profitable for jobs and prosperity. Look at our mutually profitable integrated auto trade. Before a car is assembled, its parts have criss-crossed the border at least six times. A car assembled in Canada contains 60% American-made parts, often from Canadian manufacturers with U.S. operations, like Magna, Martinrea or Linamar.

We need to underline that our regulatory standards, especially labour and environmental, are commensurate with those of the United States. We also need to avoid the “tyranny of small differences” that keeps us out of the U.S. market.

Given America’s growing national security concerns about reliable supply and resiliency, we need to point out that we are their closest ally and the source of their energy independence, including for the critical minerals required for next-generation manufacturing. When it becomes an American issue with Americans who want to preserve their supply chains, we increase our success rate, as we witnessed with the dismissal of the Trump tariffs on steel and aluminum.

To conclude, there is no magic bullet for buy America. Hoping for an exemption because we are Canadian won’t work. We need to make our case around reciprocity and better value, while underlining the security of our mutually beneficial supply chains. Buy America is not going away, so making our case must be a permanent campaign, a team Canada effort involving the Prime Minister, premiers, cabinets and legislators working with business and labour.

Mr. Colin Robertson:

We’ve had a long trade screen when we cross the border. After 9/11, we had a security screen. We’re now going to add a health screen. We need to look at border crossings.

Regionally, there’s very good work being done by the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region out there in terms of pilots as to how to make the border work better. There’s something going on at the Wilson Center. Ultimately, it’s going to be the Prime Minister and the premiers, in their Thursday night conversations, who will make the decisions on where we go.

It’s an opportunity for us to also think about how we reimagine this border, post COVID. Yes, we should be looking at this, and we shouldn’t be bound by the notion that one size fits all. There may be a variety of things we can try, opening it in certain parts of the…. We have a massive border. It’s not just the 49th parallel; it’s also the border between Yukon and Alaska.

Sanction China over the two Michaels

Colin Robertson March 22, 2021 Comments Off

COLIN ROBERTSON THE GLOBE AND MAIL MARCH 22, 2021UPDATED 1 HOUR AGO

It’s time to sanction Chinese officials for their gross human-rights abuse of Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. As pieces in a global geo-strategic chessboard, their freedom depends on democracies standing strong together.

Accused of violating Chinese national security, the two Michaels have been deprived of meaningful legal representation and consular access in violation of diplomatic norms. Their imprisonment continues following their secret trials.

The Trudeau government’s response to China has been timid and temporizing. When the House of Commons voted to condemn the Chinese genocide of the Uyghurs, Mr. Trudeau and his cabinet were conspicuously absent. Their rhetoric has escalated, reflecting an increasingly angry Canadian public, but their meaningful actions on the two Michaels have been limited to the declaration on arbitrary detentions, and it lacks enforcement provisions.

While the Michaels await their trials’ verdicts in Chinese jails, we need to act. We need to change the calculus by which China assesses its own best interest regarding Canada. We can start by applying teeth to the arbitrary detention declaration by enlisting first the Five Eyes allies – Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States – and then the rest of the 61 signatories.

Canada should apply the Magnitsky sanctions against those responsible for the human-rights abuses the two Michaels have endured. We apply them against citizens of Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Myanmar and Belarus, and we have just joined the U.S., European Union and Britain in applying them against Chinese officials for human-rights abuses against the Uyghurs.

We should also refuse to let family members of senior Chinese Communist Party members study in our countries. Education, especially in English-speaking countries, is highly valued by the Chinese. President Xi Jinping’s daughter went to Harvard. You can be sure Chinese mothers and grandmothers will similarly be on to their spouses to have their children educated abroad. Publishing the beneficial ownership of assets in Canada held by Chinese Communist Party members would also be a good move. There will be squirming in Beijing.

As for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Chinese athletes are training at Calgary’s excellent facilities. Former ambassador to China Guy St. Jacques has suggested we send them packing. The House of Commons resolution wants the Games out of China. All athletes need to ask themselves: Do we really want to compete in a country that violates the spirit of the Olympic movement daily?

We got into this mess because the U.S. requested the arrest and extradition of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, on allegations of bank fraud, as she was flying through Vancouver. China has since claimed that the U.S. leaned on others to detain her while in their countries, but there were no takers. We acted, apparently without a careful evaluation of consequences. It’s too late now, but John Manley got it right when he said we might have shown some “creative incompetence.” It’s a reminder why we need a first-class diplomatic service possessing experience, expertise and a sense of realism so we avoid these traps.

We have entered an era of strategic competition with a systemic rival. Xi Jinping is the most aggressive and dangerous Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. Mr. Xi draws his inspiration from Mao rather than the more pragmatic Deng Xiaoping. Mr. Deng and his successors practised Mr. Deng’s dictum “hide your strength, bide your time.” For Mr. Xi, “the East is rising and the West is declining.”

As demonstrated last week in Anchorage, Alaska, relations between the U.S. and China will be a mixture of competition and co-operation. The democracies need to stand together in enforcing freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific, combatting cyberintrusions and in enforcing standards on transparency in the digital economy.

Continuing talks at various levels and with different players will be essential to avoid falling into a new cold war. Distinguishing between what is dangerous and what is workable will put a premium on diplomacy. The goal must be to manage confrontations and avoid conflict. We need fail-safe mechanisms to prevent military miscalculations.

The two Michaels are pawns in a bigger geopolitical confrontation between autocracy and democracy. The democracies, especially middle powers such as Canada, need to reassess their foreign policies, going beyond the transactional to ensure that our values are forefront when addressing transnational threats.

It means more attention and investment in security, intelligence and defence. We must continue to engage China in trade and people-to-people contact, but with our eyes wide open, avoiding both wishful thinking and paranoia. Mutual hostility and isolation serve no one’s interests. Just ask the two Michaels.

What Happened in Afghanistan and What Does it Mean for Canada?

Afghanistan, as President Biden put it recently, has earned the sobriquet ‘the graveyard of empires’, sadly proving ‘that no amount of military force would ever deliver a stable, united, and secure Afghanistan’.

Image credit: Elections Canada

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Mechanics of Elections

Election Spending

Foreign Interference

Canadian Elections: Project, But Be Careful about Predictions

Voters’ Considerations in 2021

Canadians Will Vote One Way Provincially and Another Federally

The Debates

The Polls

Voting

Forming a Government and Governing

Cabinet-Making

Private Members

The Senate

Further Sources

About the Authors

Calgarian Michael Spavor found guilty, sentenced to 11 years on espionage chargesCTV

GREW UP IN CALGARY

SPAVOR FAMILY RESPONDS

KOVRIG TRIAL SET TO BEGIN MONDAY

Raise the tone, without offending

The Olympic Games, an “incredible lever of pressure”

Image credit: Vlad Kochelaevskiy/Adobe Stock

Table of Contents

Introduction

What will be Discussed?

Public Opinion and NATO

What is NATO?

NATO Today

What has NATO done?

Canada and NATO

Further Reading

The G7 Cornwall: Back to Normal, with Key Upgrades

Deliverables come in two parts. There are the useful initiatives like the ongoing work on gender. Then there are the top-table agreements on critical issues hammered out in their face-to-face formal and informal discussions.

A Primer to the G7 Summit in Carbis Bay June 11-13, 2021

Image credit: G7 UK

Table of Contents

Introduction

The G7 In-Basket

The Road to Carbis Bay

What About Deliverables from Carbis Bay?

COVID Recovery

Climate

China and the liberal rules-based order

Canada and the G7

Who and What is the G7?

Do We Need a G7?

Further References

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON THE ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES

THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021