Empty rhetoric in foreign affairs
The Conservatives boast of standing up to dictators, but their democracy agenda has stalled, writes GERALD SCHMITZ.
Since 2006, the Conservative government has proclaimed what it calls a “principled” foreign policy, one with a purpose that, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated in 2011, “is no longer just to go along to get along with everyone else’s agenda.” Canada’s stand, he added, “is no longer to please every dictator with a vote at the United Nations.” Strong words, even if belied by the usual inconsistencies of actual practice. Some dictatorial regimes — China and Saudi Arabia, to name two — get friendly treatment while others (North Korea, Iran) are condemned as dangerous enemies.
The prime minister’s remarks also carry a strong implication based on a negative perception of previous Canadian foreign policy, not only as conducted by Liberal predecessors but more broadly in the liberal internationalist tradition that has favoured a multilateralist approach to working with like-minded countries to achieve international goals. Since those have long included the promotion of human rights and democratic freedoms, many will find it unfair to castigate prior Canadian governments as behaving internationally in an unprincipled manner that appeased dictators.
Be that as it may, the clear conclusion to be drawn from these statements is that Canada’s Conservative government will stand up as never before for principles of human rights and democracy around the world; that Canada will do more than it ever has before to advance democracy globally.
Unfortunately, the record as distinct from the rhetoric of the Harper government does not support that conclusion. Indeed looking at Canada’s nearly invisible support for international democratic development in 2013, it appears that Canada is doing less in this area than was the case before 2006. It behooves us to ask why.
During the first several years of the first Harper minority government there was every indication that democracy promotion would be pursued as a central objective of Canadian foreign policy. Moreover, the importance of this goal was recognized by all parties on the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development (SCFAID) which undertook an in-depth study, encouraged by then Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter MacKay, resulting in a major July 2007 report, Advancing Canada’s Role in International Support for Democratic Development. Although NDP and Bloc members disagreed with recommendations for new well-funded arm’s length institutions for this purpose, there was consensus that Canada should do significantly more. The committee’s report articulated a conception of democracy assistance consistent with the human rights-based and developmental approach underpinning the 1988 establishment of Rights & Democracy under the Mulroney government.
The Harper government’s written response to the SCFAID report was generally positive and promised action. Given ministerial shuffles and a controversial prorogation, the file languished. Still, the re-elected Harper government made a commitment in its November 2008 throne speech to establish a new multiparty democracy promotion agency “to support the peaceful transition to democracy in repressive countries and help emerging democracies build strong institutions.” While responsibility for this was curiously transferred from the minister of foreign affairs to the minister of state for democratic reform, the government subsequently appointed a four-person advisory panel chaired by a prominent Liberal, Thomas Axworthy. The panel’s November 2009 report proposed a detailed plan for creating an arm’s length “Canadian Centre for Advancing Democracy” with an annual budget in the range of $30-70 million (at least several times the annual public funding for Rights & Democracy).
The Harper government released the panel’s report without comment and has never publicly responded to it. Instead of action, the next year was instead dominated by an increasingly heated reaction to divisions within Rights & Democracy’s board, resulting in staff dismissals and legal actions. The turmoil also provoked partisan dissension. Although members of all parties on SCFAID pronounced themselves in favour of Rights & Democracy’s continued role, they disagreed sharply on the causes of the malaise. And although the Liberal party would likely have supported the government’s 2008 commitment to a new democracy agency (a similar promise featured in the 2011 Liberal election platform), by the end of 2010 the atmosphere had been poisoned for multiparty cooperation.
At the same time, the Harper government had clearly cooled on the idea. Not only did it disappear from the government’s agenda, a series of diminishing actions followed: a Democracy Council composed of representatives from government and non-governmental organizations was disbanded; funding was terminated for groups like the Forum of the Federations; an Office of Democratic Governance within the Canadian International Development Agency vanished; a Democracy Unit within the Department of Foreign Affairs was subsumed within the Commonwealth and Francophonie division.
The current Harper majority government has shown no sign of revisiting the issue. In the year following the extraordinary events of the “Arab spring”, Foreign Minister John Baird announced the closure of Rights & Democracy, which was quietly legislated out of existence through a line in the 2012 omnibus Budget implementation bill. Some aid provided through the newly merged Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development will continue to be classified as supporting democratic development, and several million dollars remain available to be disbursed annually through the “democratic transitions envelope” of a peace and security program. Still, Canada’s presence in international democracy promotion has been effectively reduced at a time when democracy faces enormous challenges in many parts of the world and the need for more and better assistance to those engaged in democracy struggles has never been greater.
More is at work here than budget constraints in the wake of large deficits (although these can be invoked as a convenient pretext). After all, the Harper government will be spending $5 million annually on a new departmental Office of Religious Freedom without the benefit of any parliamentary study. More generally, the government has avoided public consultations and not welcomed independent sources of policy advice, especially those it considers ideologically suspect. In deciding to play to a partisan base rather than reaching out, it apparently sees no reason to provide public funding to non-governmental actors working in areas that confer no electoral advantage or which might be critical of government policy.
In short, a narrower and harder-edged Conservative foreign policy has developed which declares democratic principles but has lost interest in bringing forward a substantive, broadly supported agenda of democracy promotion. Only if this situation changes can we hope for a Canadian initiative appropriately grounded in a multiparty, internationalist and democratic approach.