FOR THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT TO SO PUBLICLY SIGNAL A BREAK WITH THE U.S. ADMINISTRATION, HOWEVER GENTLY, REGRETFULLY, OR TEMPORARILY, IS BREATHTAKING.

Freeland speech notable for its precise timing

It is the context, not the content, of Chrystia Freeland’s speech to Parliament Tuesday that makes it radical.

In any other context but the present, the foreign policy the minister laid out, in what was clearly intended to be taken as a Major Statement, would be regarded mostly as an anodyne recitation of liberal/Liberal nostrums: multilateralism, a rules-based international order, free trade, all laced with the usual “the world needs more Canada” self-congratulation and moral preening.

Indeed, by tying foreign policy to “upholding progressive Canadian values,” the minister was able to repackage every other Liberal chestnut — multiculturalism, feminism, bilingualism — as an emanation, not of that party’s particular brand of clientelism, but of Canada itself. Again, pretty much par for the course.

To be sure, the speech’s assertion of the irreplaceable role of “hard power,” its clear-eyed endorsement of the “principled use of force,” where necessary, as part of our foreign policy, its stress on “pulling our weight” and “doing our fair share” in international military councils, rather than accepting the “client state” status implied by relying solely on the U.S. to defend us, are not the sorts of notes we have been accustomed to hearing from Liberal ministers. But I would suppose they sound like common sense to most Canadians.

It is the times we live in, rather, that made the speech of note. In an age in which virtually every one of the institutions and assumptions of the postwar international order are under strain, if not under attack, the mere assertion of their enduring worth, together with a determination to work with others in their defence, can be made to sound like a radical departure.

And while the minister listed several challenges to that order — “Russian military adventurism,” ISIL terrorism, the rise of China and the South as counterweights to the Western powers, and the “crisis of confidence” in globalization among the West’s electorates — her primary concern was unmistakable: the abdication of American leadership, under a president she declined to name.

The minister was right not to make it personal, or to imply that Donald Trump was somehow sui generis: he was, after all, elected, by millions of voters who were “animated in part by a desire to shrug off the burden of world leadership.” So, too, she was right to acknowledge the reality of that burden, the vastly disproportionate contribution of the United States, “in blood, in treasure, in strategic vision.”

But there was no sugarcoating the message: if the United States was unwilling to lead, its erstwhile allies would have to pick up the slack, Canada included. With America having “come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership,” she said, the task now was “for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course.” For Canada’s part, it would seek to play “an active role in the preservation and strengthening of the global order.”

Indeed, though she did not say so, the task is much more than that: not just to repair the gap in the international order left by the departing Americans, but to repel Trump’s attacks on it. Whether refusing to endorse Article 5 of the NATO treaty — the collective defence clause at the heart of the alliance — or threatening to tear up NAFTA, or encouraging the breakup of the European Union, or pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, Trump is in some ways a more significant challenge to the West than Russia or China. We do not, after all, expect the threat to come from within.

Still, for the Canadian government to so publicly signal a break with the U.S. administration, however gently, regretfully, or temporarily (“with open hands and open hearts extended to our American friends”), is breathtaking. Coming on the heels of similar comments from Germany’s Angela Merkel, and the exasperated, even mocking reports of Trump’s performance at the recent G7 meeting, it suggests the appeasement phase of international diplomacy visa-vis Trump, in which world leaders, our own among them, competed to court his favour, is over. The containment phase has begun.

The question is, why now? What’s changed? It is surely not coincidental that this external common front should have emerged just as Trump’s internal woes have multiplied. His legislative agenda, such as it is, stalled; hundreds of senior offices unfilled; cabinet officers directly contradicting his own statements; multiple investigations into his associates’ dealings with the Putin regime, and his efforts to suppress those investigations, closing in; and most seriously of all, a plummeting popular approval rating, to levels never seen so early in a presidency: the signs of Trump’s growing weakness are everywhere.

I don’t think we’d see this sort of insubordination if Trump were polling in the 60s. As it is, Trump’s opponents, domestic and foreign, have been emboldened. Indeed, Freeland’s speech contained an extraordinary pledge: to work directly with Trump’s critics, “at all levels of government and with partners in business, labour and civil society,” to circumvent his administration’s opposition to action on climate change.

I don’t want to overstate this. It’s worth noting that the promised “substantial investment” in military capacity, fleshed out in the following day’s defence policy review, fits neatly with Trump’s demands for NATO partners to ante up more. A cynic might say the minister’s statement had the virtue of dressing up compliance as defiance.

Still, there is no doubting the change of tone, if not direction. For the time being, at least, the world is prepared to get along without America.