The Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), a non-partisan think tank that typically produces commentary that appeals to Canada’s centre-right, has a new report out on the future of Canadian foreign policy.
 
(Full disclosure: I have invited the MLI’s managing director, Brian Lee Crowley, to speak to students at the Canadian Forces College a couple of times, generally as part of a think tank panel.)
 
MLI Senior Fellow Balkan Devlen is responsible for the first of a series of commentaries focused on “Leading a community of democracies in the post-COVID world order.”
 
Devlen, or the institute as a whole (it is not entirely clear), advocates a “reorientation of foreign policy.” As we emerge from the pandemic, he argues, Canada must “take the lead in working with other democracies and like-minded states from Europe to the Indo-Pacific.”
 
While I will never understand the emphasis on foreign policy leadership that is so common among analysts from across the political spectrum, it is hard to find fault in the suggestion that Canada should work with natural allies to advance its national interests.
 
I begin to get less comfortable at Devlen’s next paragraph: “Such a reorientation of policy,” he claims, “is only sustainable if it reflects the views and priorities of everyday Canadians and not only the foreign policy elite.”
 
There are two ways to interpret the implications of this suggestion for practitioners.
 
One is that Ottawa should make foreign policy decisions based on what public opinion surveys say matter to Canadians.
 
The other is that when these same surveys suggest that Canadians do not agree with their government’s foreign policy posture, Ottawa should explain itself so convincingly that they come around.
 
You either follow the public, or you lead them.
 
My concern with Devlen’s analysis is that he seems to choose option one when public opinion aligns with the MLI’s views, and option two when it doesn’t.
 
The data provided (Figures 2 and 3 in the report) indicate that 73% of Canadians view China negatively. Seventy-two percent feel the same about Russia.
 
Devlen clearly agrees with the majority in these cases.
 
He quotes MLI Senior Fellow Charles Burton, who condemns the Government of Canada for being too lax, and therefore “out of sync” with public opinion on China.
 
Then he quotes another Senior Fellow, Marcus Kolga, who is similarly critical of Ottawa for failing to be hard enough on Russia.
 
And then things get awkward.
 
The MLI appears to have asked Canadians the same questions about their attitudes towards the United States, but the commentary does not provide a similarly detailed breakdown of the data.
 
We do learn, however, that 63% of Canadians “hold at least a moderately negative view of the U.S.”
 
Indeed, just 20% of Canadians have positive views of America. By way of comparison, 26% of Canadians have positive views of China, and 28% have positive views of Russia.
 
Yet there is no call from Devlen, nor are there quotations from other MLI fellows, to distance ourselves from Washington. Rather, we are reminded that the US is “Canada’s closest ally and trading partner.”
 
Moreover, according to another MLI Senior Fellow, Shuvaloy Majumdar, “the strategic relationship provides the bedrock for Canada’s national security and economy.”
 
In sum, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute clearly wants the Government of Canada to get tough on Russia and China, so it is jumping on opinion polling which suggests similarly and calling on Ottawa to respect the will of the people.
 
But when it comes to Canadian skepticism of the United States, the MLI fellows disagree with the public’s conclusion, and therefore demand that Ottawa find a way around it.
 
To be clear, I would not be so disappointed in this report if I didn’t generally agree with its conclusions.
 
China and Russia are seeking to undermine Canadian national interests, and we cannot defend those interests without cooperating with the United States.
 
Why Devlen and the MLI insist on framing their recommendations – unconvincingly – as reflective of a commitment to democratize the foreign policy process is therefore beyond me.
 
***
In other news, the Conservative finance critic, Pierre Poilievre, published an essay in Policy Options last week that caused me to do a double-take.
 
It’s called “The other lethal pandemic is worklessness,” and it claims that, since the outbreak of COVID-19, too many Canadians have lost “the purpose, pride, and place to go that comes from working.”
 
Work is not just about making money, Poilievre argues, it’s also about ensuring our “health and happiness.”
 
“Far from being a misery needed to pay the bills, work is a basic human need. It activates our brains and bodies in service of others. It makes us players not observers; powerful not powerless.”
 
Funny thing, that’s one of the key arguments raised by proponents of a basic income guarantee when critics (and I believe that Poilievre has generally been one of them) suggest that such a government program would inevitably lead to mass unemployment.
 
I look forward to hearing what the new leader of the Green Party, Annamie Paul, thinks of the essay. She’s been calling for a guaranteed livable income since well before she won the leadership.
 
 ***
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This past week, Maclean’s released an essay by Marie-Danielle Smith about the struggles of Canada’s New Democratic Party.
 
How, Smith asks, can a party with a hip, popular, scandal-free leader whose social-democratic priorities have resonated during this pandemic, and whose efforts in the House of Commons have led to significant Liberal concessions, struggle so mightily to achieve even 20% support in the polls?
 
The answer, she speculates, is that the NDP is mired in an identity crisis.
 
One camp wants it to embrace socialism aggressively and explicitly. Another yearns for a more moderate, pragmatic approach to moving Canadian society to the left. A third calls for patience – supporters must allow leader Jagmeet Singh to grow into the kind of person that Canadians will be able to imagine as their next prime minister.
 
I am not a member of the NDP (I have never joined nor donated to any political party), so I am not well-placed to comment on camps one and two, but I can certainly see where camp three is coming from.
 
It seems to me that Singh’s current approach to foreign policy holds him back significantly.
 
I am thinking specifically about a tweet he released shortly before the US election:
 
“For those that want to build a more just world – silence is not an option. We have a moral imperative to say very clearly, that it would be better for the world if Donald Trump loses.”
 
On the surface, both sentences are unremarkable.
 
Public silence has contributed all too often to the commission of mass atrocities around the world. When we see injustice, and we don’t speak out, we forsake an opportunity to stop it.
 
And Singh was speaking for close to three-quarters of Canadians (and much of the interrnatoinal community) when he advocated a Biden victory.
 
Nonetheless, his comments suggest an understanding of foreign policy that has not yet matured.
 
Every Canadian prime minister eventually recognizes that Canada cannot survive and prosper by limiting its global interactions to leaders and countries with whom it shares values and ideals. We must work with just about everyone.
 
In some cases, we must proceed with extreme caution, but our national interests can only be fulfilled through compromise and negotiation.
 
We work with the Russians at the Arctic Council. We have collaborated with the Chinese on climate change. We are negotiating with Iran to bring justice to those Canadians who died tragically in Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752.
 
When asked who they supported in the US election, Prime Minister Trudeau and Conservative leader Erin O’Toole indicated that they were prepared to work with any American administration.
 
Implicitly, they suggested, prime ministers of Canada (and aspirants to the office) do not have the luxury of indulging their frustrations and disappointments – no matter how intense – when Canada’s ability to advance its national interests is at stake.
 
And since this US president regularly lashes at out perceived, or real, personal affronts, Canadian heads of government must choose their words about him deliberately.
 
This is not to say that we cannot aggressively disagree with the United States.
 
When the Trump administration cut aid for contraception and family planning in 2017, Ottawa immediately increased its contribution to compensate.
 
But the government left it to Sandeep Prasad, executive director of Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, to say:
 
“Trump’s policy represents a gross violation of women’s rights and runs counter to the global trend of liberalizing abortion laws that has resulted in significant decreases in unsafe abortions.”
 
Singh doesn’t seem to grasp the nuance.
 
When it comes to international relations, Canadian prime ministers must play the long game. They cannot make their policy disagreements personal, especially when it comes to our most significant ally.
 
Marie-Danielle Smith’s camp three believes Singh will get there. I hope so, for his sake.
 
***
 
If you’re looking to read more about the NDP, the University of Saskatchewan’s David McGrane recently won a major award for his latest book, The New NDP: Moderation, Modernization, and Political Marketing. On anti-Americanism, I am looking forward to a planned book that will be co-edited by Jennifer Bonder, Susan Colbourn, and Graeme Thompson. The deadline for their call for papers is December 15th.

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Tomorrow marks this year’s deadline for Canadian citizens and permanent residents to submit their “interest to sponsor form” to launch a process that might eventually enable their parents or grandparents to join them in Canada permanently.
 
The next step is a lottery: the government draws enough forms to enable 10,000 successful parent and grandparent applicants to immigrate to Canada.
 
(Next year, that number will be 30,000 so that Ottawa can return to its target of an average of 20,000 new parents and grandparents arriving each year).
 
From there, two application processes begin simultaneously.
 
The Canadian who filled out the interest to sponsor form formally applies to be a sponsor. To be eligible, they must demonstrate that they make enough money to support each parent or grandparent for 20 years.
 
The website that explains all of this even provides a chart that quantifies how much you need to earn to qualify.
 
The parents or grandparents complete their own applications to apply for permanent residence. Both applications are submitted as a single package.
 
The fees for this process come out to a little over $1000, not including the costs of mandatory medical exams, police reports, and biometrics.
 
The parent and grandparent sponsorship program’s popularity has made it an endless head-ache for successive Canadian governments.
 
As John Ivison of the National Post noted a couple of weeks ago, in 2011 the Harper government even stopped considering new applicants for a year to reduce a 165,000 application backlog.
 
Back then, it could take almost a decade to complete the process.
 
That said, if you did manage to submit a successful application before the year’s cap was reached, you could be confident that your parents or grandparents would eventually be able to immigrate.
 
The current government is trying something different. This year, there were three weeks to submit an expression of interest, followed by a lottery to determine who would be invited to apply.
 
Those who are not selected will have to start over next year.
 
This is the second time the Liberals have tried a lottery. The first did not go over well. Nonetheless, the government appears to be convinced that lotteries are the best way to maintain fairness and transparency.
 
First-come, first-served makes it too easy to game the system; it risks preventing the less advantaged from ever getting in.
 
I suspect that some readers would prefer the competitive approach. Presumably, if you have enough money to game the system, your elderly relatives are less likely to ever become a financial burden.
 
Permanent residents qualify for publicly-funded health care, and older Canadians tend to draw extensively from our health care system.
 
Ivison makes that case clearly: “People who have not contributed to Canadian society should not automatically have access to this country’s social programs, just as … demand for those services is about to peak.”
 
The argument is tempting, but it seems to assume that we accept parents and grandparents out of the goodness of our hearts.
 
We don’t.
 
The (relative) ease with which one can sponsor members of the family class is part of what makes this country so attractive to prospective high-skilled immigrants from the economic class - those future Canadians who are critical to our long-term prosperity.
 
Any cost-benefit analysis of the value of the parent and grandparent sponsorship program must consider the possibility that, without such a generous system, sponsors might never come to Canada in the first place.
 
This is not to say that the lottery system is perfect. I’d much prefer a process where your chances improve after any unsuccessful application.
 
Nor is it to suggest that we can’t do more to better integrate parents and grandparents into our paid and volunteer work force.
 
But I do think that, once we are through this pandemic and governments begin to look for ways to cut costs, they should stay away from the parent and grandparent sponsorship program.
 
***
 
On immigration, check out the work of Irene Bloemraad. If you study Canadian foreign policy, please take a look at this new book edited by Brian Bow and my colleague, Andrea Lane. Once you have trudged through my take on why the field is dominated by political scientists, you will find some fascinating essays.
 
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