Foreign policy spotlight puts Trudeau, not Mulcair, in shadow

Last September, with MPs just back from summer break, Stephen Harper delivered a speech in Ottawa in which foreign policy figured large. His thesis, which would be much repeated in the weeks following, was that we live in “dark and dangerous” times. The message was politically potent because of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s barbaric beheading videos. It would be viscerally reinforced in October, with the murders of Canadian soldiers Patrice Vincent and Nathan Cirillo by Islamist- inspired zealots.

The Conservative party, discerning that a majority of Canadians both loathe ISIL and support the international coalition now making war against it, put Canada in the fight, albeit with a modest commitment of six CF- 18 fighter- bombers, two Aurora spy planes and a Polaris refueller, and for just six months initially. Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats voted against the decision, as did Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, with a few more caveats.

In late March, when time came to extend, the NDP again opposed and, despite speculation the Liberals would change their stance, so did they. The upshot is that, in the run- up to the Oct. 19 federal election, the Tories have the centrist position in the fight against violent Islamist extremism completely to themselves. The New Democrats never held this ground to begin with. And the Grits, Trudeau confirmed Tuesday in an interview with the CBC’s Terry Milewski, have given it up. A Liberal government, Trudeau said categorically, would pull Canada’s CF- 18s out of Iraq and also seek to resume diplomatic relations with Iran.

For all intents and purposes, then, the Liberals and NDP now have the same foreign policy — with the possible difference that the NDP may actually be slightly less keen on rapprochement with Iran. In 2012, after Ottawa closed Canada’s embassy in Tehran, citing security concerns, Mulcair distanced himself from criticism of the move by his own foreign affairs point man, Paul Dewar. The NDP’s policy book sheds little light on the question, repeating old chestnuts about peacekeeping and the sanctity of the United Nations, and neglecting that peacekeeping has not worked anywhere for two decades. Thursday Harper himself linked his two main rivals’ postures vis- à- vis ISIL, calling the lot “irresponsible electoral politics.” Hello, ballot question.

All of which raises this puzzle, among others: if the Dippers and Grits now share more or less the same left- of- centre foreign policy, with minor shadings, why is Trudeau the one mainly getting hammered for it, while coverage of Mulcair continues to focus on his meteoric ascent in the polls?

The New Democrats now stand at 36 per cent in public support, according to the latest survey by Forum Research, with the Tories and Liberals well back at 28 per cent. If Trudeau is taking hits because of his harkening to the soft- power postures of yesteryear, why hasn’t Mulcair sustained a comparable barrage?

The first reason is obvious: the Conservative spin cycle is still set on Liberal. One gets the impression the PM and his supporters continue to consider Trudeau to be their principal foe. A related phenomenon is at work, it’s fair to say, in the media. Trudeau has long made front pages and seized TV oxygen more or less effortlessly. More importantly, Trudeau’s foreign policy is a deviation from his party’s recent past. It’s widely assumed his slide in support since last year has stemmed mainly from displeasure with a Liberal stance on the anti- terrorist bill, C- 51, that is conflicted and nuanced, compared with NDP and Tory positions that are simple and clear. But Trudeau’s support peaked last summer, based on the aggregate of polls as measured by ThreeHundredEight.com, at 39 per cent, and began falling sharply during the debate over the ISIL mission, months before C- 51 came along.

It was a Liberal government that put Canada in Afghanistan in 2002 and opted in 2005 to expand that mission. In 2010, the party supported Harper’s move to add training Afghan security forces. Foreign policy has been one area where, in the past, Liberals displayed an internationalist resolve that set them apart from the New Democrats. The old distinction is, for all intents and purposes, gone. That Trudeau chose to underline this, even as the NDP proceeds to hammer down his front gate, is curious indeed.