PM must figure out who’s a friend of Canada. Fast
The Star’s Heather Scoffield is travelling with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the G20 Summit in Rome and the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, covering Canada’s role in the shifting world order and the global fight against climate change.
THE HAGUE—Canada needs to figure out who its friends are.
We’re at “the beginning of the end” stage in the pandemic, as Justin Trudeau said in his address to the Dutch parliament on Friday.
In foreign policy terms, it’s that time when we gingerly poke our heads out of our houses after an 18-month confinement, look around and realize our social circle has been shaken up while we were keeping the virus at bay.
Through the fog, we need to remember how to socialize in the new, post-pandemic world order. We need to remember that the problems that plagued us and our friendships before the pandemic are still lurking, and they’re even worse than before. And we have a pile of residual COVID-19 damage to contend with.
That’s where Trudeau’s visit to the Netherlands comes in.
Before wading into the turbulent waters of the G20 in Rome and COP26 in Glasgow this weekend — where rich-versuspoor, China-versus-the-U.S., and oil-versus-solar battles will play out with fireworks — the prime minister spent a busy but amiable day with likeminded Dutch politicians to set out some of his thoughts about foreign policy.
As always, the two countries’ leaders reminded each other that they’re bound by a linked history from the Second World War, a dedication to global trade, and a middle-power status that demands a dedication to multilateralism.
Trudeau was here to ask the Dutch to double down on those values alongside Canada — and solidify his own principles in foreign policy at the same time. His speech to the Dutch Parliament and his off-the-cuff comments to students at day’s end hammered home his message: Countries that have a modern, inclusive and moderate approach to promoting democracy and sustainable growth need to stick together.
“It’s the best exposition I’ve seen from Trudeau of what he means by a ‘progressive’ foreign policy,” says the University of Ottawa’s Roland Paris, a former senior foreign policy adviser to Trudeau.
“It’s also clearly an appeal for the Netherlands, and by extension other like-minded states, to rally together in support of these values.”
Trudeau compared historic threats to liberal democracy, such as fascism, to today’s online hate mongering, which he said was driven not just by conspiracy theorists but also by state actors.
“In this age of unreason, of disinformation, of skepticism and cynicism, we need to acknowledge that there are those who would tear down what we are building, who stand against these positive values we share,” Trudeau told the Dutch parliament in a 900-year-old building laden with the history of fighting Nazis and finding peace.
The rule of law, multilateralism and collaboration with like-minded countries can keep those forces at bay, Trudeau said.
But he also called on the public, young people in particular, to get off the sidelines and demand action, especially when it comes to climate change.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte made a point of enthusiastically agreeing with Trudeau repeatedly throughout the day, underlining the need for liberal democracies to stand up to autocracy and the destructive forces of populism.
That’s a real-life challenge in Europe, where some governments in the eastern part of the continent have veered hard right, and opposition parties in Holland and elsewhere have gained a steady share of the electorate for anti-immigrant views.
And perhaps that’s why the Dutch parliamentarians, when they had a chance to ask Trudeau some questions, pushed hard on how Canada and other liberal democracies could stand a chance of standing up to China when we are so dependent on their exports and finance.
Indeed, that’s where Trudeau’s progressive foreign policy rhetoric runs into difficulty, and he falls back on the pragmatism learned the hard way during the imprisonment of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig.
Canada will challenge China on human rights, and won’t let up on its international campaign to call out “coercive diplomacy” but will co-operate with the superpower on trade and economics, he explained.
“We can’t pretend China isn’t there.”
The post-pandemic Trudeau is unbridled when it comes to advocating progress on climate, free and fair trade, and a better distribution of the world’s riches.
But on China, he equivocates — for good reason. There’s no way any of his aspirations on climate action can come close to materializing without the collaboration of the country that produces more than a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
China’s voice in the discussion about how to smooth out global supply chains is also a prerequisite, given the fact that so many of those trade routes draw from that country at some point.
Both those discussions will be top of mind starting Saturday when G20 leaders meet in Rome on the economy and then move on to Glasgow to negotiate cutting greenhouse gases.
Trudeau, with the help of his new foreign affairs minister, Mélanie Joly, will have to carefully rationalize that realpolitik with their renewed vigour for progressivism in foreign policy.
Figuring out who our friends are is a necessity to navigate the post-pandemic world, but that’s a lot easier than to plot how to deal with our sometime rival.