SUN-TV anchor David Akin interviews Colin Robertson on the Daily Brief about the financial and social cost of the changes to security in the decade since 9/11, the advantages of NEXUS and the need to make headway with the Beyond-the-Border discussions. September 8, 2011
excerpted from Globe and Mail Wednesday, Sep. 07, 2011 Canadian embassies have till Sept. 15 to hang the Queen’s portrait by Steven Chase
The Harper government, a staunch proponent of the monarchy, has ordered all Canadian embassies and missions abroad to display a portrait of the Queen by mid-month.
It’s the latest effort by the Conservatives to demonstrate support for Canada’s sovereign and part of a steady Tory campaign to champion more traditional elements of this country’s national identity, including the military.“Like virtually every other country in the world who display pictures of their head of state in their missions, we expect all Canadian missions abroad to display pictures of Canada’s head of state, the Queen; along with the Governor-General, the Prime Minister and relevant ministers,” said Rick Roth, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.
The instruction to install royal portraits in all of Canada’s foreign missions – scattered throughout 150 countries – calls for the pictures to be in place by Sept. 15, a government official said.
The Tories acknowledged that most Canadian offices abroad already hang a portrait of the Queen but said the new order is “simply to ensure conformity” across the board. They declined to identify scofflaw missions.
Back in August, the Harper government restored the word “royal” in front of the names of Canada’s navy and air force, reviving designations that had been discarded decades earlier. Defence Minister Peter MacKay championed the change as “celebrat[ing] our heritage” in the face of complaints from anti-monarchists and some Quebeckers.
Earlier this summer, Mr. Baird ordered colourful modern artworks by Quebec painter Alfred Pellan removed from the lobby of the Department of Foreign Affairs and replaced with a portrait of Elizabeth II.
Colin Robertson, a former Canadian diplomat, said the moves at Foreign Affairs suggest that it’s Mr. Baird who has a particular affinity for the monarchy. He could not recall previous Conservative foreign affairs ministers driving similar initiatives.
“This is, I think, particular to the minister. I don’t think we saw anything like this under [Lawrence] Cannon or [Peter] MacKay or [Maxime] Bernier,” said Mr. Robertson, vice-president of the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute.
The border: The bygone days of ‘Pass friend’ in Embassy Magazine, September 7, 2011 By Colin Robertson
Landing at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport after a 12-hour flight from Beijing, I saw that there was a connecting flight to Ottawa 45 minutes later. Could I manage US Customs and Border Protection, catch the train from Terminal 5 to 1 and then get past security? The US Airways agent was doubtful. The line for customs was at least 30 minutes and the security wait at Terminal 1 was currently 40 minutes, but if I got off at Terminal 2 it was only a 20-minute wait with a 10-minute hoof through the underground tunnel.
My Nexus card, which lets pre-approved, low-risk travellers cross the United States-Canada border quickly, was registered with the US Global Entry program so I could use an automated kiosk for quick border clearance. It worked, although instead of an iris scan it demanded my fingerprints. I winged my way through customs, managed the train and then at Terminal 2 I ran into a solid line at security. Was there a fast-pass lane, as there is in Ottawa for Nexus card holders?
No such luck. I would ‘enjoy’ Chicago for another three hours.
Listening to Sam Cooke “twistin’ the night away” and consoling myself with a frosted malt at the Johnny Rockets restaurant, I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“These bags—yours, sir?” said the uniformed man.
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep them close and your eye on them. Okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
It had been nearly a decade since I was last in Chicago. That time, I had been travelling by train to my new assignment as consul general in Los Angeles and I’d spent the afternoon looking at the magnificent Chicago Art Institute, having dumped my bags in the unattended luggage room at Union Station.
Those days are long gone.
When the US Navy Seals took out Osama bin Laden there was a part of me that said “Yes!” I suspect his efforts to disrupt and inconvenience the Western world and travellers everywhere succeeded beyond his wildest imagination.
Those killed on Sept. 11 in the Twin Towers, at the Pentagon and on United Airlines Flight 93 were the immediate victims. The toll has since included innocents in London, Madrid, Moscow, Frankfurt and Bali with near misses in New York and elsewhere as the world has hunkered down to the grim new reality imposed by the global war on terror. Canada is not immune, as we witnessed with the arrest and conviction of most of the Toronto 18 and others who have committed both homegrown and ‘imported’ terrorism.
If truth is the first casualty in war then trust is a principal victim of the ongoing war on terror. No more ‘Pass, friend.’ Instead, wait in line and keep your bags within sight.
While all countries have suffered the effects of 9/11, Afghanistan has seen tens of thousands killed and hundreds of thousands have fled the country. Then there are the 2,600 brave warriors of the coalition operations (the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force), including more than 150 Canadians, who have died in the Afghan campaign.
Every country has remade its security apparatus and security trumps privacy for travellers. The US Department of Homeland Security counts almost as many employees as the entire government of Canada. As with the rest of the world, Canada is constantly introducing ‘improved’ new measures including about 45 airport scanners that offer a ‘naked’ view of the passenger. They cost $250,000 each, but as then-transport minister John Baird put it when they were ordered, “We’ve got to stay ahead of the terrorist elements.”
Our ability to detect, prevent and respond to terrorist attacks has been difficult, incomplete and slow. On balance, we are probably safer but at a considerable cost. Tourism from the United States has never recovered, especially since travellers were required to show passports to cross the border, and notwithstanding the exemptions for children and the useful addition of the smart driver’s licence there is no easy flow back and forth, especially for day-trippers from the US.
Two professors, John Mueller of Ohio State University and Mark Stewart of the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia, recently concluded that the United States government and private companies have spent a little over a trillion dollars on enhanced homeland security since 9/11.
Ten years on, how do we answer the question that then-defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked his advisers on one of the early anniversaries of 9/11: “Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?”
And what of the quest to enlist the energy and sympathy of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims against the extremist threat? On the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the wise men who directed the 9/11 Commission report, concluded that “we have not been persuasive.”
Then there is the border with the United States. In opening the Thousand Islands bridge in August, 1938, Franklin Roosevelt remarked that “It has always seemed to me that the best symbol of common sense was a bridge.”
Alas, bridges, like roads and other gateways, are now incorporated into what US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says must become a ‘real’ border. Drones now fly over the 49th parallel and the number of border agents patrolling the northern border has more than tripled. Where once we were foreign but friendly and got the benefit of the doubt, now we are simply foreign. Even the officers in the post 9/11 Canada Border Services Agency now pack a pistol.
“This bridge stands as an open door,” observed Roosevelt in Clayton, NY. “There will be no challenge at the border and no guard to ask a countersign. Where the boundary is crossed the only words must be, ‘Pass, friend.'”
Will we ever return to those days of ‘Pass, friend?’
excerpted from Ottawa Citizen, August 31, 2011 EU snubbed free-trade offer from Canada By Jordan Press, Postmedia
The European Union had no interest in negotiating a freetrade agreement with Canada nine years ago, despite heavy lobbying from the federal government, according to a newly leaked diplomatic cable.
That cable from the U.S. embassy in Ottawa and posted on the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, says the EU did not see any sound economic argument for the two parties to enter into a freetrade agreement.
“The European Commission did not see an economic/commercial case for a full-fledged FTA, and did not want to risk detracting from multilateral negotiations,” then U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci wrote in the leaked cable.
“There was some difference of opinion regarding the value of a FTA among EU member states . The EU Trade Policy Body, however, remained unified in their position against a FTA.”
Instead, the government and EU decided on a trade agreement a step below free trade, which was put on permanent hiatus in 2006.
Now, eight years after the EU’s initial trepidation, officials from Europe and the federal government are on the verge of hammering out the last remaining details of a free-trade agreement.
The difference in eight years?
In 2003, the EU was in the midst of incorporating eastern European states into its organization and working on smaller trade agreements, said former diplomat Colin Robertson, a fellow at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa.
“At that point, we’re just not on their scope,” he said.
Now, he said, the EU and other governments around the world are seeing Canada as a valuable trading partner because of its abundance of natural resources.
and also in the Halifax Chronicle Herald August 20, 2011 under the title ‘Forces to be Reckoned with’
Nations draw their character from their history. We draw our shared memories especially during times of conflict, stress and challenge. National cohesion and character are put to the test when the nation faces real trials – during national emergencies or armed conflict. Canadians look with pride to our uniformed men and women and to the service they have performed for our country.
Today, our Rangers are in the midst of this year’s Operation Nanook, actively demonstrating Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. After a decade at the sharp end in Kandahar, the Canadian Army is helping Afghans learn to defend themselves. Our pilots are flying guard over the skies of Libya, and HMCS Charlottetown recently came under fire fending off an attack on Misrata.
For a great deal of our history, our military performed under the identities of the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and Royal Canadian Air Force. The restoration of these identities is a moment for reflection in the importance of memory and the value of tradition.
During the valiant years of the Second World War, the Royal Canadian Navy secured the vital North Atlantic sea-lanes, while the RCAF training of thousands of Commonwealth and allied crew would earn for Canada the title “aerodrome of democracy.” By war’s end, our army had helped to liberate Europe and we possessed the world’s third largest navy. Our three services would enhance their reputation whether wearing the UN blue beret or under NATO command in Korea, Suez, Cyprus, the Balkans, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan.
There were many positive features to the Pearson government’s decision to reinforce Canadian identity, most notably our maple leaf flag, but the erasure of the three distinct services was not one of them. There was about that decision too much of the central planner.
Doing what works to best stand guard for Canada requires constant effort and investment, with special attention to morale and the men and women who serve. Conditions of service have improved, distinctive uniforms and ranks were restored, bolstering recruitment and confidence in the individual services. The RCAF logo resurfaced as the design for popular clothing and, most recently, on the uniform of the resurrected Winnipeg Jets.
Now we need to ensure our armed services can live up to their distinguished heritage.
The world is a dangerous place. Canadians do not live in a “fireproof” house or waters free of peril. We spend a little over one per cent of our GDP on national defence. The British spend about two per cent and the Americans nearly five per cent. We will need to do more because our principal allies can no longer afford to constantly take up the slack.
Why do we need to spend more?
The Seven Seas are global highways for 80 per cent of world commerce. They are also inherently lawless. We export about half of what we manufacture as part of supply chain dynamics that date back to the Second World War. We have a record number of trade discussions under way – notably with Europe and India – as we seek to sell our goods and services. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has just returned from opening doors in Latin America and he visits China again this fall.
Trade by sea is vital to our prosperity. We also have the longest coastline in the world, enough to circle the equator six times. This has special implications for the Royal Canadian Navy.
The Canada First Defence Strategy provides a solid blueprint for the future that includes high recruitment targets and new kit; the Chinook helicopters and Hercules aircraft have already proven their worth in battle and in disaster relief. In the coming years, major projects will range from satellites to ships. We must now develop a coherent industrial defence strategy if we are to meet the procurement timetable.
The challenge for the Harper government will be to deliver on their commitment for new planes, new warships and, for the North, icebreakers. Getting this done will enable the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Army – all proud partners in the Canadian Forces – to build on their distinguished reputations.
excerpted from Financial Times August 16, 2011 9:18 pm Royalty restored to Canada’s armed forces By Bernard Simon in Toronto
Canada has restored a touch of royalty to its armed forces, demonstrating renewed affection for the British monarchy and underlining the military’s growing political clout.
Peter MacKay, defence minister, announced on Tuesday that the navy and air force, known for more than three decades as Maritime Command and Air Command respectively, would revert to their earlier names of the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force.
Also following the British example, the army, formerly called the Land Force Command, will again become the Canadian Army.
The switch, urged for years by veterans’ and other military groups, comes a month after a hugely successful tour of Canada by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the couple’s first foreign trip since their wedding last spring.
Colin Robertson, a former diplomat and now vice-president of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, described the move as “part of a much bigger effort that touches not just the military to remind Canadians that they have a rich heritage of which the monarchy is an important piece”.
Canada’s ruling Conservatives, led by Stephen Harper, have given high priority to the military since taking office in 2006. The government has ordered a new fleet of F-35 Lightning fighters and three big C-17 transport aircraft, as well as plans for a big new icebreaker to help assert Ottawa’s sovereignty over the Arctic. Canada has no aircraft carriers.
More symbolically, the government named Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth’s husband, an honorary admiral and general on his 90th birthday in June.
At a time of public spending restraint, “this is something you can do that doesn’t cost anything”, Mr Robertson said, adding that the military’s profile has risen further since the Conservatives turned their minority government into a majority in last spring’s election.
Monday, Aug. 08, 2011 Globe and Mail
With his election victory, Stephen Harper has achieved a new place among world leaders. Admired for his political skills as the leader of an insurgent movement and then, as a prime minister who jockeyed a pair of minority governments into a majority, he’s also recognized for steering Canada’s economy through recessionary waters that are still threatening his fellow G7 leaders.
So what role will international affairs play in his government?
In several recent statements, he has told us it will be a major one. Foreign affairs/foreign relations, he said, “has become almost everything.” In a world where “change is the new constant,” he declared, “our party’s great purpose is nothing less than to prepare our nation to shoulder a bigger load, in a world that will require it of us.” Accordingly, “strength is not an option, it is a vital necessity.”
If these words signal the government’s intentions, then there must be a match between our aspirations and our abilities to achieve them. For too long, our capacity to be a significant player on the international stage has failed to match our rhetoric. The Prime Minister’s declarations of intent have credibility, coming, as they do, from a government that has consistently supported the strengthening of our military capabilities. The Canada First Defence Strategy, including the new command structure for the Canadian Forces, has proved itself both at home and away – in Libya, Afghanistan and in the reconstruction of Haiti.
All the more welcoming, therefore, is Mr. Harper’s recent statement that “re-equipping the military is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to making Canada a meaningful contributor in the world.” The implications of this for Canadian foreign policy are profound. Mr. Harper seems to foresee a highly active foreign policy, and a very independent one. “We also have a purpose,” he said. “And that purpose is no longer just to go along and get along with everyone else’s agenda.”
Implicit in Mr. Harper’s statements is a recognition that Canada’s national interests are at the core of our foreign policy and have never been more demanding than they are today. To do so requires rebuilding our diplomatic resources to the stature they had in the postwar era when it was widely acknowledged that the impact of Canada’s contributions far exceeded its size.
The negotiation of a new accord with the United States to reverse the hardening of our border, the need to protect the access of our energy exports to American markets, the need to create new markets for our oil sands, the negotiation of a free-trade deal with the European Union and India, the strengthening of our relations with China, the protection of our interests in the Arctic – all are of the highest importance for our national interest and all deserving of the most talented of our human resources.
“To shoulder a bigger load” will necessitate a foreign service at the very top of its game. If the 1990s were a decade of darkness for the Canadian Forces, both the ’90s and the noughts were equally so for the foreign service. Process took priority over policy-making. Public diplomacy, an area Canada pioneered, virtually disappeared.
Meantime, there’s been a revolution in the way information is acquired and transcribed. Far from the information revolution shrinking the role of the ambassador, it’s enhancing it. Out of the vortex of information and communication, the ambassador emerges as chief interpreter of data and events, chief analyst, chief intelligence officer, chief advocate and chief adviser, the central player in a field with an infinite number of actors, pursuing conflicting goals and agendas.
In this age of the Internet and WikiLeaks, the role of diplomacy needs to be assessed and understood. The Prime Minister should commission a task force on the foreign service, as he did for Afghanistan. It’s been more than 30 years since the McDougall Commission looked at our diplomats. There will be no new golden age of Canadian foreign policy unless we invest in the human resources that, in the Prime Minister’s words, are necessary “to making Canada a meaningful contributor in the world.”
Excerpted from Recent government efforts fail to engage Canadians in activities in Americas by Laura Baziuk, Postmedia News. Friday, July 22, 2011
OTTAWA – The federal government’s efforts over the past few years to engage Canadians in its activities with the Americas aren’t working, according to a public-opinion poll.
The Ipsos Reid survey was commissioned by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to determine how much attention Canadians are paying to its re-engagement strategy with the Americas, as announced in 2007 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.About 84 per cent of Canadians surveyed said that what happens in Central America, South America and the Caribbean is important to Canada, citing reasons such as impact on the economy (52 per cent) and humanitarian concerns (18 per cent).
More people said the Americas are important because of economic reasons as well as a sense of interconnectedness – up from 44 per cent and 19 per cent in 2008 respectively – but “very little has shifted,” the survey suggests.
Harper announced his re-engagement strategy with the Americas in July 2007, while on tour stop through the continent in Santiago, Chile.
“We are a country of the Americas,” Harper said. “Re-engagement in our hemisphere is a critical international priority for our government. Canada is committed to playing a bigger role in the Americas and to doing so for the long term.”
It was built on three pillars: security, the promotion of values such as freedom and democracy, and building sustainable economies through free trade.
The strategy was reiterated during the 2008 Speech from the Throne, after Harper’s Conservatives had won a minority government.
The survey did find that more Canadians believe the country’s interest are linked to the United States and Mexico, at 96 per cent, than in 2008, and that Canadians agree that the government’s foreign policy goals, such as controlling drug trafficking, are important.
But the pollster ultimately concludes: “The public are not actively engaged or concerned with Central America, South America or the Caribbean.”
“The government is right here. We should be doing more with the Americas because we’ve got significant interest,” said Colin Robertson, former Canadian diplomat and current vice-president with the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute. “It serves our interests with other relationships as well,” such as with China and the United States, who eye the continent for its natural resources.
“You can’t change geography,” he added. “Therefore we should be putting significant weight and emphasis on what takes place.”
As well, new to the survey this year were questions about Haiti, which was added after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated that country.
Four in five Canadians agree the government should continue to send aid to Haiti for the next five to ten years, while one in five (18 per cent) do not agree.
As many Canadians view the country’s interests to be linked to Haiti as linked with Mexico, the survey also reported, which has a much larger population and economy.
Ipsos Reid polled 1,000 adults over three weeks in January. The survey has a margin of error or plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The data is weighted to ensure the survey sample’s age and gender composition reflects that of the actual adult Canadian population according the Statistics Canada census.
While he didn’t get the details right, Joel Garreau was onto something when he wrote Nine Nations of North America in 1981. Too often, we look at North America as three nations, when in fact it is also comprised of 94 states, provinces, and territories. In economic terms, supply-chain dynamics have made North America a series of regions.
The most dynamic is the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Region (GLSLR). Home to nearly 35 million people, and with a population slightly larger than Canada, the two provinces (Ontario, Quebec) and eight states (New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota) of the Great Lakes region constitute a super “economy,” which is only eclipsed in gross domestic product by the U.S., Japan, and China.
Regions deserve greater attention, especially into the vital supply-chain dynamics that sustain them. Last year, the Brookings Institute’s Jennifer Vey, John Austin, and Jennifer Bradley co-authored a paper that argued that, notwithstanding the affliction of the “Rust Belt,” the GLSLR “still has many of the fundamental resources – top-ranked universities, companies with deep experience in global trade, and emerging centres of clean-energy research, to name just a few – necessary to create a better, more sustainable, economic model.”
Building on this work, the Mowat Centre’s Joshua Hjartson, Matthew Mendelsohn, Allison Bramwell, and Kelly Hinton released The Vital Commons, in which they argue that “the wealth and infrastructure built over the 20th century” in the GLSLR “created the foundation for new emerging sectors” in areas including financial services, health care, food processing, energy, aerospace, information and communications technology, transportation, and pharmaceuticals. But a shared future for the GLSLR requires a shared vision “to act and think collectively, transcending national boundaries to address shared problems, manage shared resources, and take advantage of new economic opportunities.”
With this objective in mind, under the umbrella of the Mowat Centre and Brookings Institute, over 300 participants met in the St. Clair College Centre for the Arts, a short walk from the banks of the Detroit River looking north to Detroit. Over two days (June 21-2), we listened, discussed, and debated through a couple dozen plenaries, keynotes, and idea labs constructed around issues in the GLSLR, including human capital, transportation and infrastructure, water, trade and border issues, agriculture, innovation, manufacturing, clean energy and electricity, the blue economy, and tourism.
The challenge of the border for the GLSLR was brought home on the first evening, when delegates crossed the frontier and, notwithstanding the hope of pre-clearance, were obliged to go through a secondary search before re-boarding the buses taking them to enjoy the hospitality of Canadian Consul General Roy Norton in downtown Detroit’s Max Fisher Music Center.
If we are to be truly competitive, we must find a better way of managing the legitimate passage of people and goods. The Beyond the Borders Initiative launched in February by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama offers promise, but as former premier Gordon Campbell told delegates, political will also requires considerable behind-the-scenes work by business and government.
The GLSLR contains our busiest border crossings and, because so much of the boundary line is on water, the border is dominated by bridges. This presents unique challenges for just-in-time delivery. The first step should be the easiest: having inspection for all government services at each of the region’s crossing available 24/7, because our competition overseas does not work 9-5.
But the top priority in the GLSLR has to be the construction of the New International Trade Crossing between Windsor and Detroit, especially as the recovery picks up speed – trade between Michigan and Canada rose 43 per cent from 2009 to 2010. The 7,000 trucks that cross the Ambassador Bridge daily contain over a quarter of the goods traded between Canada and the United States. Any interruption in traffic on this 80-year-old, privately owned bridge means layoffs: thousands in the first day and tens of thousands stretching south to the Carolinas into day two.
The need for a new crossing was one of the key themes of the two-day conference, and was driven home by both American and Canadian participants. Michigan Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville acknowledged that special interests and the spending of lots of money have circumvented and delayed what should be an obvious task, but he promised delegates that, by the fall, he and Governor Rick Snyder should have the votes to secure passage through the Michigan legislature.
It can’t be soon enough for those who live and work in the GLSLR. The international competition is not waiting for us to get our act together.
Knitting the various components of regional co-operation together is the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER). Its core is the continuing support of legislators in five states (Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana), three provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan), and two territories (the Yukon and the Northwest Territories). This year, it celebrates its twentieth anniversary. Based in Seattle, with a small, very efficient secretariat, it works because it is a true non-partisan, bi-national, public-private partnership. As former premier Campbell acknowledged, it was PNWER, working, under his direction and that of Washington Governor Chris Gregoire, with a grassroots movement, that persuaded Homeland Security to accept the “smart drivers’ licence” as a practical means to address cross-border traffic during the Vancouver Olympics. The “smart drivers’ license” has seen been rolled out by states and provinces on both sides of the 49th parallel. It confirms another observation from the Windsor Summit: When provincial and state legislators get their acts together, federal governments join the parade.
Conferences are brain food, but it is the follow up in ideas and proposals that makes them practical to policy-makers. The Windsor Summit leadership of John Austin and Matthew Mendelson intend to carry the momentum forward and, in October, release a revised version of The Vital Commons that will identify actionable agenda items for various sectors in the GLSLR.