Last week, as the disaster in Afghanistan began to unfold more quickly than anticipated, the CBC’s Katie Simpson asked Minister of Foreign Affairs Marc Garneau whether Canada would recognize a Taliban government.
 
It was a reasonable question, seeing as Washington had warned the Taliban that if Afghanistan was taken by force, it would not be recognized internationally.
 
Garneau answered that it was too soon to say what Canada would or would not do, just like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had suggested earlier the same day.
 
Within hours, Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole released a rather different response:
 
“The use of force by the Taliban is completely unacceptable and that’s why today I am announcing that a Conservative government will not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.” 
 
The other opposition parties echoed his position.
 
Not much later, government critics were out in force:
 
“Once again, with Trudeau at the helm, Canada’s foreign policy is weak, equivocating and unable to condemn oppressive regimes … Canadians deserve better than this.”
 
Another analyst later described O’Toole’s posture as a “powerful stand against the violent, bloodthirsty terrorist organization,” and “yet another example of our weak-kneed national leader following rather than leading on important issues.”
 
Clearly feeling the pressure in the midst of an election that he should never have enabled, Prime Minister Trudeau changed his tune, threw his foreign minister under the bus, and declared that Ottawa had seen enough, and no longer had any plans to recognize the Taliban.
 
It seems to me that this record of events highlights a collective failure among analysts and practitioners of Canadian foreign policy to appreciate the role of diplomacy in international crisis management.
 
And I fear that the consequences of Ottawa’s reversal could be deadly for the very people we are trying to help.
 
Let me explain:
 
I suspect that the majority of readers would agree with the prime minister’s suggestion that Canada’s top priority in Afghanistan should be “getting Afghans who worked for the Canadian military and federal agencies out of the country safely.”
 
The Taliban is indeed the cruel, vengeful organization portrayed by government critics.
 
Even if its pledge to grant amnesty to former opponents were truthful (and it clearly isn’t), there is no guarantee that Taliban sympathizers wouldn’t take matters into their own hands and murder any perceived ‘traitor’ at the earliest opportunity.
 
In this context, with every Afghan who ever supported the Canadian intervention in grave danger, the last thing that Ottawa should be doing is deliberately increasing the size of the bullseye on the back of their heads.
 
Condemning the Taliban definitively, no matter how justifiable, does just that.
 
In contrast, Ottawa’s initial position might have bought our evacuation team some time by daring the Taliban to protect the lives of Afghans with Canadian ties as evidence of its professed commitment to change.
 
Regardless of whether the tactic might have succeeded, the government had left its options open. (Minister Garneau was quite clear in the interview that Canadian recognition was unlikely.)
 
Unfortunately, elected officials (and their advisors) too often view foreign policy as a venue to demonstrate their virility.
 
They should know better.
 
In my 20+ years studying Canadian foreign policy, I have rarely seen a significant world actor cower in response to Ottawa’s tough talk, and I’ve never seen it happen in response to threats from the leader of the Canadian opposition.
 
So what now?
 
The Afghans we are trying to rescue are less safe; our minister of foreign affairs has been discredited and humiliated by his boss; and the public has been left with the impression that foreign policy is about puffing your chest and being “strong.”
 
Canadians do indeed deserve better than this.
 
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For more on my concerns with the ongoing national obsession with foreign policy leadership, take a look at this essay. On Afghanistan, I’ve been paying particularly close attention to tweets coming from Global Affairs Canada’s Colin Townson (a deep-thinking graduate of the Canadian Forces College’s National Security Programme). I also blogged about it in a previous post.

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Last week, the leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, Jagmeet Singh, wrote a letter to our newly installed governor general, Mary Simon, asking her to turn down Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if he tries to precipitate a snap election by requesting a dissolution of Parliament.
 
As The Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson has noted, “Mr. Singh was speaking nonsense.”
 
At this point, if the prime minister asks for an election, the governor general will have no realistic choice but to grant his request.
 
If you don’t believe Ibbitson (or me), take a look at these two blogs (here and here) by the expert on this issue, Carleton University’s Philippe Lagassé.
 
And if that isn’t good enough for you, try Lagassé’s 18-page academic explanation, complete with 80 footnotes.
 
Like Ibbitson and others, I suspect that Lagassé is disappointed in Singh’s actions.
 
Such letters, he suggests in an earlier blog, “are mostly performative. The writers know it’s not going to happen, but it helps draw attention to their cause. But it also feeds ignorance about our constitution and undermines our democratic principles. That doesn’t help anybody.”
 
Put another way, Singh is deliberately spreading misinformation, and for that he should be ashamed.
 
It seems to me, however, that such criticism lets the NDP leader off too easily.
 
In this particular case, Singh’s hypocrisy is absolutely breath-taking.
 
Less than a year ago, the NDP premier of British Columbia, John Horgan, approached BC’s lieutenant governor, Janet Austin, to request a snap election.
 
At the time, just like Prime Minister Trudeau, Horgan held a minority of the seats in the BC legislature.
 
But, again like Trudeau, his grasp on power, and consequent ability to run the business of government, was secure – in this case thanks to a signed confidence and supply agreement with the BC Green Party.
 
Horgan’s decision was widely criticized at the time as a cynical attempt at a power grab by a leader who the polls suggested was well-positioned to secure a majority.
 
But I don’t recall Singh or his party having any problem with it.
 
Personally, I was disappointed by Horgan’s actions, and if Prime Minister Trudeau takes us to an election prior to October 2023, I will find his move similarly upsetting.
 
I don’t see a compelling public policy reason to force an election right now, especially given the likelihood of a fourth wave of COVID-19 this fall.
 
I was also less than impressed in 2010 when Prime Minister Stephen Harper suggested that “losers don’t get to form coalitions” under the Westminster-style system.
 
His statement was both crass and untrue (any combination of political parties that can secure the confidence of the House can form a government, no matter whether any of them won the most seats in the previous election), and he knew it.
 
His close ally, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, had done exactly that one year earlier, and Mr. Harper certainly didn’t object then.
 
Some readers might counter that politics has always been ugly, and that it is naïve to expect better of our elected representatives.
 
I understand the sentiment, but Mr. Singh has been appealing to Canadian youth by suggesting that he’s a different sort of politician.
 
His letter to Mary Simon suggests otherwise.
 
And that is a shame.
 
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I suspect that you will find a more sympathetic take on Mr. Singh’s thinking about political life in his memoir, Love & Courage: My Story of Family, Resilience, and Overcoming the Unexpected.
 
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