Leaders clash sharply in foreign policy debate

Harper, Trudeau, Mulcair spar over Keystone, Arctic sovereignty and the fight against ISIS

OTTAWA— A foreign policy debate between the three main party leaders vying for power highlighted wide gaps over how Canada should exercise its military might, work with its main allies and play a stronger role in the world.

Staged before an audience of 3,000 people at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, it featured a combative performance by Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who accused Conservative Leader Stephen Harper of damaging the most important foreign relationship Canada has — with the United States — because of Harper’s inability to get along with those he disagrees with.

Trudeau assailed Harper for “haranguing” the U.S. administration over footdragging on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, saying Harper has narrowed the Canada-U.S. relationship down to that single issue.

“The fact is that Canadians are sitting around worried about their jobs because we have a prime minister that doesn’t like Barack Obama,” Trudeau charged in one of the sharpest exchanges of the evening. Stung, Harper defended his record. “We have a great relationship with the U.S administration and I have a great relationship with President Obama and, by the way, the Americans have never said otherwise and neither have we. This is just an invention.”

Harper said he spoke directly to Obama about the pipeline in limbo, and “he said to me there’s nothing he’s asking Canada to do; he’s going to make that decision based on his own assessment of American interests.”

But the debate — the fourth of the campaign so far — largely turned into a bitter struggle between the Liberals and NDP over who is the most likely agent of change from the Conservatives, with New Democrat Leader Tom Mulcair trying to strike a contrast every chance he got.

The evening kicked off with a sharp Harper-Mulcair duel over when Canada should deploy its armed forces if not against a brutal foe like the Islamic State – a duel that soon developed into a three-way fight.

Mulcair said it was not a multilateral effort led by the United Nations or Canada’s NATO allies unlike the mission in Libya which the NDP backed.

“We understand that there will be times when we have to, either under the NATO charter or under our international obligations at the UN, use force,” Mulcair said. “We won’t shy away from that.”

Harper retorted that although not a NATO-led mission, all Canada’s NATO partners support the fight against ISIS, and suggested his political rivals are naive. Canada still participates in peacekeeping around the world, but there “is not a peacekeeping mission to be had right now in Iraq and Syria” against the fundamentalist Islamist militias of ISIS, said Harper. “Why we would abandon this mission is a question that goes begging.”

The battle between Trudeau and Mulcair to define themselves as the leader with the policies most in line with Canadian values and traditions crystallized in fierce exchanges over the Liberals’ support for controversial anti- t errorism amendments the Conservatives enacted in Bill C-51.

Mulcair savaged Trudeau, repeatedly suggesting the Liberal leader lacked political courage. He said the NDP is the only party that voted for Canadians’ freedoms and liberties against overarching state surveillance.

“I’m not afraid of Stephen Harper, I voted against C-51,” he said to Trudeau.

Trudeau accused Mulcair of “stoking fear” in Canadians by suggesting that Canada is turning into a police state, with their rights being taken away.

The debate canvassed a range of issues with all leaders getting in sharp, partisan and sometimes personal jabs about issues from Arctic sovereignty, Russia’s occupation of Crimea in Ukraine, and Canada’s relationship with its main ally, the United States.

Trudeau scoffed at Harper’s claim to have defended Arctic sovereignty. “The one thing they keep saying about you up there Mr. Harper is you’re big sled, no dogs.”

Yet it was over Canada’s relationship to the U.S. that the three leaders clashed over climate change, trade and the American administration’s seeming reluctance to approve the Keystone XL pipeline proposal.

Harper said his government has worked “with two radically different administrations in the U.S.” under Republican and Democratic leaders, and worked “productively with both.”

At another point, Trudeau and Harper clashed sharply over the Conservatives’ decision to revoke the citizenship of an Islamic extremist who masterminded a plot to bomb downtown Toronto.

Harper defended the decision to strip citizenship from Zakaria Amara, saying, “A few blocks from here, (he) would have detonated bombs that would have been on a scale of 9-11. This country has every right to revoke the citizenship of an individual like that.”

Trudeau said the man “should be in jail” but, “We have a rule of law in this country and you can’t take away citizenship because you don’t like what someone does.”

Trudeau challenged Harper’s claim to have acted on climate change, saying that in the face of federal “inaction,” provinces took action themselves, such as when Ontario shut down the province’s coal plants.

Although Green Party Leader Elizabeth May was not invited to participate in the Munk Debate, she posted video responses to the questions on Twitter.

Many of her answers, including on the Arctic and the Islamic State, referred to climate change as one of the greatest threats posed to Canada and the world. With files from Les Whittington and Joanna Smith