This past Saturday, thousands of Torontonians flocked to Trinity Bellwoods Park, a delightful, family-friendly space not too far from the lakeshore.

Photos taken that afternoon, showing over 10,000 Canadians virtually on top of one another, reflect a population seemingly oblivious to the pandemic surrounding them.

Toronto’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, condemned the behaviour of the revellers as “selfish and dangerous.”

A city spokesperson promised that by-law officials would be out in full-force the following day. (They were.)

In the meantime, the number of COVID-19 cases in Ontario is spiking, with Toronto leading the way.

How could this happen?

I suspect that part of the problem was caused by a group of disgruntled, perhaps entitled, Torontonians using an example set for them by some of our political leaders as justification to overlook municipal and provincial rules around physical distancing.

In early April, we learned that PM Justin Trudeau had visited his family at the Prime Minister’s summer residence at Harrington Lake barely hours after he had called on the rest of us to stay home for the weekend.

We never received a convincing explanation as to why seemed to be one set of rules for most Canadians and another for the prime minister and his family.

That same weekend, after urging Ontarians not to visit their cottages, Premier Doug Ford drove up to his own summer residence to “check on the plumbing.”

Rather than apologizing, Ford attempted to rationalize his trip. He drove alone; he didn’t stop along the way; he didn’t visit anyone; and he was genuinely worried about a flood.

Why someone from the area could not have checked the cottage on his behalf was never made clear.

Strike three came on Mother’s Day.

While Ontario public health officials continued to order provincial residents to stay away from anyone who lived outside of their household, Ford invited his two daughters who do not live with him to visit the family home for some quality time.

The premier’s justification this time was that we should all use our own best judgment in interpreting the advice from Public Health.

When leaders in other countries have behaved similarly, some have been forced to resign.

In Canada, there were no consequences for Trudeau, nor have there been any for Ford, now a repeat offender.

This context does not excuse Torontonians’ shoddy behaviour at Trinity Bellwoods. They put the health of their fellow residents at increased risk and might well have extended the length of our lockdown.

It might, however, explain how such a situation could occur, and suggests that it could happen again.

Both the prime minister and the Ontario premier have managed elements of the Canadian response to COVID-19 admirably.

But when it comes to consistently matching their words with their actions, they have made significant mistakes.

It seems to me that, at least in Toronto, these errors have undermined the critical message that our public health officials have been sending.

If Trudeau and Ford want to restore Torontonians’ commitment to flattening the curve, they should start by following Toronto Mayor John Tory's lead, and offering all Canadians a sincere apology.

***

Like many Canadians, I have been impressed by the work of Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia’s Provincial Health Officer, throughout the pandemic. Her calm, thoughtful presence has been reassuring. Dr. Deena Hinshaw’s work as the chief medical officer of health in Alberta has been equally inspiring.

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Last week, Rob Oliphant, parliamentary secretary to Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, spoke to The Hill Times about the “massive and complicated repatriation effort,” undertaken by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) in response to the current pandemic.

Oliphant noted that the personal relationships that Minister Champagne had established with his ministerial counterpart and officials in Morocco during a visit in January was critical to GAC’s ability to help more than 1,000 Canadians stranded there get home.

According to Oliphant, his own and Prime Minister Trudeau’s personal visits to Ethiopia earlier this year were similarly critical to GAC’s successful efforts to arrange flights out of Johannesburg and Cape Town.

It's worth recalling that those visits to Africa were initially controversial. Critics suggested that the Trudeau government was engaged in a vanity project to secure a seat on the UN Security Council.

In this context, Oliphant’s revelations illustrate not just the importance of effective diplomacy, but also the challenge of making that importance clear to the Canadian public.

Particularly in times of crisis, international relations is all about personal relationships. Our diplomats use the capital they have accumulated through their relationship-building efforts to advance and defend the national interest.

Put another way, world leaders don’t have a lot of time for favours during a pandemic. If you need something from them, and they don’t already know you, it’s probably too late.

The problem when it comes to building public support for diplomacy is that best diplomatic practices are a lot like insurance: the costs (embassies, receptions, official visits) are clear immediately, but the benefits are only incurred later, and typically when the average Canadian is too preoccupied to appreciate the work that was necessary to produce them.

To make matters worse, contemporary populist movements have promoted a disdain for elites and their expertise. Many Canadians have been conditioned to question the purpose and value of our diplomats and their efforts.

Nonetheless, diplomacy has proven time and again that it can save lives.

When we face the financial reckoning that is sure to arise in Ottawa when this pandemic is finally over, let’s hope that the critical work of Global Affairs Canada in getting so many stranded Canadians home is not forgotten.

***

The most convincing essay I’ve read on the value of diplomacy was written by the novelist and humourist, Sondra Gotlieb, as a chapter in Diplomacy in the Digital Age, a quasi-academic collection dedicated to her now late husband Allan, one of Canada’s foremost 20th century diplomats.

If you do take a look at the book, be sure to also check out “Professionals and amateurs in the diplomacy of the age of information,” by one of our finest scholars, Denis Stairs.

And a shout-out to the University of Toronto’s Brendan Kelly. His book, The Good Fight: Marcel Cadieux and Canadian Diplomacy was just awarded the 2020 Dafoe Prize, recognizing “the best book on Canada, Canadians, and/or Canada’s place in the world.”

Cadieux was another one of Canada’s great diplomats. His own book, The Canadian Diplomat, is another tremendous resource.

If those books aren’t enough, you can find some of mine here, here, or here.
 
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A couple of weeks ago, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released an extensive data set that tracks the contributions of member countries to official development assistance (ODA) in 2019.
 
Here is what the University of Ottawa’s Stephen Brown – one our leading experts on ODA – said about Canada’s numbers through a blog for the McLeod Group (later reproduced by the University of Ottawa’s Centre for International Policy Studies):
 
“Despite talking a good game when it comes to foreign aid … it is clear that Canada is refusing to contribute its fair share of development assistance.” 
 
Brown goes on to declare that “under the Trudeau government, Canada is less generous than under Harper.” Put another way, even though the Liberals have actually increased the international assistance budget since 2015, ODA as a percentage of gross national income has dropped from an average of 0.30% under the Conservatives to 0.27% in 2019.
 
I agree with this element of Brown’s analysis.
 
Canada has the capacity to contribute more to international assistance. Moreover, investing extensively in foreign aid is consistent with the national interest.
 
Canada is a trading nation. It is in our interest to increase the number of prospective consumers of Canadians goods and services around the world by helping struggling members of the international community pull themselves out of poverty.
 
Canada is also an aging nation, reliant on a steady stream of educated immigrants to maintain our economic prosperity. Supporting poverty alleviation around the world is a logical component of any proactive immigration strategy.

Later in the same blog, when Brown points out that “Norway and Ireland, Canada’s ‘rivals’ for a seat on the UN Security Council … are providing foreign aid equivalent to 1.02% and 0.31% of GNI, easily outshining Canada,” he appears to imply that Canada’s efforts to secure a seat on the UN Security Council this summer could be compromised by its lack of generosity relative to Norway and Ireland.

That contention, which has been made more explicitly by others, is less convincing.
 
Critics of Canadian ODA policy often fail to note that the same OECD data also show that, on a grant equivalent basis, Canada provided more aid than either of its Security Council competitors in 2019.
 
Some will respond that since the Canadian economy is much larger than Norway’s, and Ireland’s, the international community could punish Ottawa for being miserly.
 
But for the recipients of development assistance, it’s the total dollar amount that counts.
 
If I’m looking for seed money to start a new business, I’ll take $30,000 from a less generous Canada over $25,000 from a more generous Norway every time.
 
We therefore shouldn’t expect Canada’s disappointing record in international assistance to have any real effect on its campaign for a Security Council seat.
 
In fact, with more than four times Ireland’s development budget, Ottawa will be in a favourable position if the election comes down to using aid to sway a country’s vote.
 
***
 
If you’d like to read more about ODA, especially in Africa, take a look at the work of my fellow Trent alum, David Black. I also recommend anything that Shannon Kindornay has written. She is currently a senior analyst at the Canadian International Development Platform, a critical source for any student of Canadian foreign and public policy. 

If you need something longer to read while sheltering from the virus at home, you can find some my books here, here, or here.
 
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Last week, an open letter signed by over 100 academic experts, political represenatives, and members of the non-governmental community – including at least one former Liberal member of Parliament and a number of sitting Conservatives – declared that:

“The roots of the pandemic are in a cover-up by CCP authorities in Wuhan, Hubei province.”

Since then, the Canadian government has faced questions over its unwillingness to use similar language.

I am largely, even if not entirely, sympathetic to the signatories’ conclusion. (The failure of much of the international community to take public health security seriously over the last number of decades is also a real problem.) Moreover, credible sources confirm a number of their specific accusations.

But the implication that Ottawa should be speaking out loudly at this point is puzzling.

The Toronto Star’s Martin Regg Cohn, with whom I often agree, thinks it’s intolerable that we are “behaving like boy scouts at the multilateral level — deferring to diplomacy and authority.” The thoughtful former diplomat David Mulroney has said of the government: “I think they are genuinely afraid of China, and therefore flattery is their default position.”

It seems to me that Canada’s elected political representatives should be afraid right now, very afraid.

Two innocent Canadians, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, have been unfairly detained in a Chinese prison for over a year in retaliation for Ottawa’s legitimate arrest of Huwaei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in response to an American extradition request. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the two Michaels – who were never treated humanely to begin with – have been denied even their monthly consular visit.

So the Chinese government has a propensity for retaliation, and innocent Canadians are in the direct line of fire.

Consider also, as the prime minister has hinted, that Ottawa is sourcing some of the medical supplies so crucial to its management of the pandemic from China. Again, it makes good sense right now to avoid anything that might provoke a retaliatory response.

Third, Beijing's mismanagement of this crisis is already clear. Its influence in the World Health Organization is being undermined; its influence in Africa is suffering as well.

Regg Cohn suggests that Canada can act indirectly by supporting Taiwan’s entry into the World Health Organization. I don’t disagree, so long as such advocacy is part of a broad-based coalition that immunizes the Michaels from direct blow-back.

Indeed, Ottawa has already taken the prudent position of demanding a full investigation of the international community’s response to the outbreak of COVID-19 once the pandemic is under control.

For now, however, it might also consider the following:

• Launch a strategy to develop the domestic capacity to source materials critical to national security (including public health security) here at home, if not with our most trusted NATO allies. The strategy can build on the Canada-United States Joint Action Plan on Critical Minerals Collaboration signed this past January.

• Strongly encourage Bell and Telus to voluntarily end their plans to build their 5G networks with the Chinese firm Huawei. Bell and Telus claim that the cost of rejecting Huawei would be immense, but the current economic crisis provides an opening for Ottawa to offer funding to mitigate the impact. If no Canadian businesses are willing to work with Huawei, there will be no need to invite the retaliation that will inevitably come from banning the company altogether.
  

I understand that some Canadians interpret prudence as cowardice. And I suspect that some of our allies would appreciate greater boldness as well.

But the government of the day must defend and protect its citizens, and for now that means minimizing any further harm to the two Michaels, and to other Canadians who currently depend on Chinese benevolence.

***
On Canada and China, I enjoy reading Wendy Dobson and Paul Evans. Both are also true professionals. Dobson’s most recent book, Living with China: A Middle Power Finds its Way, is a finalist for this year’s Donner Prize.

If you need something longer to read while sheltering from the virus at home, you can find some my books here, here, or here.
 
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Last week, the National Post’s editorial board released a fascinating article: “If COVID-19 has taught us one thing, it’s that Canada needs to be more self-sufficient.”
 
The essay calls into question the Post’s long-time promotion of free markets and open trade. Over the next few weeks, articles in the paper will “ask tough questions about how our desire for more and freer trade must be balanced against our responsibility to always ensure that Canada can look after Canadians.”
 
Inasmuch as proponents of protectionist initiatives like supply management and Canada's Industrial and Technological Benefits Policy might say ‘I told you so,’ the Post’s position is hardly a turn to the political left.
 
Looked upon favourably, it is a prudent re-imagination of the national interest. More critically, it is also a surrender to those who seek an end to the liberal democratic world order that has dominated the international system since the end of the Second World War.
 
That order, anchored by the United Nations and its affiliated organizations and agencies, has been held together by two complementary forces: first, the immunity of the great powers (the United States, the Soviet Union / now Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France) from its reach; and second, the unspoken commitment of the United States to defend its integrity (presumably on their behalf).
 
There are plenty of flaws within this framework: for instance, it ignores the wants and needs of the Global South. Nonetheless, the trade-off has meant that in times of existential emergencies, Canada's only critical ally in terms of security, economic prosperity, and just about everything else could be counted on to engage.
 
The authors at the Post seem to be implying that Washington has abandoned its preserver role for good. All Canada can do now is look out for itself.
 
Perhaps they’re right. Arguments that the current US administration is less an aberration than representative of an ongoing American withdrawal from global leadership abound.
 
But it seems to me that it’s too soon to give up.

I can’t disagree with the argument that Ottawa should think seriously about “how much of our safety should be kept in Canadian hands.”
 
But the best future for Canada still includes renewed American leadership within the liberal democratic system that it did so much to create.

Now is not the time to give up on the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, the G20, and the other international institutions that have served Canadian interests so well over the last 75 years.

If we do, they are even more likely to be undermined, if not replaced. And whatever comes next will be far worse than what we have now.

***
 
On international organizations, I like the work of David Bosco. You can find some of his writing here. On the future of the Canadian economy, the work of Sean Speer (a Conservative) and Robert Asselin (a Liberal) is getting a lot of good press. You can find some of it here. And if you’re on Twitter and are looking for a combination of thoughtful commentary, wit, and good humour, why not follow @loleen_berdahl, a true role model for Canadian academics.
 
If you need something longer to read while sheltering from the virus at home, you can find some my books here, here, or here.
 
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Late last week, Michelle Carbert and Janice Dickson of The Globe and Mail published an important article that seems to have had only limited pick-up.
 
“Ottawa to role out foreign aid as part of the fight against COVID-19 spread,” detailed an announcement by Canada’s minister of international development, Karina Gould, that promised what is expected to ultimately be a $1 billion corronavirus response package to countries struggling to cope with the pandemic.
 
The article quotes the minister: “We can’t prioritize one population over another because it doesn’t matter who you are, where you live or what your socio-economic background is. The virus doesn’t care about those things.”
 
What Gould said is accurate, but I wonder whether there might be a better way to justify Canadian policy right now.
 
The minister framed the international assistance in humanitarian terms. Canadians, she suggested, have a moral duty to fight the virus everywhere, not just at home.
 
I don’t disagree, but it is worth recalling that over 6 million Canadians voted for a party less than a year ago that promised to cut foreign aid by 25 percent in order to focus federal budget expenditures on Canadian citizens.
 
So when hospitals across the country are scrambling to secure equipment, and thousands of Canadians are being laid off,  calls for precious government dollars to be spent abroad are likely to be disconcerting to some.
 
(Indeed, while I was working on this post, one of the candidates in the Conservative Party’s leadership campaign tweeted out: “Foreign aid can wait. Right now, the Trudeau government should prioritize Canadians.”)
 
It is a shame that Gould didn’t frame the global covid-19 rescue package as part of the government’s defence of the national interest.
 
Global pandemics don’t end when one country rids itself of the problem.
 
Until the virus is totally eradicated, or scientists produce a viable vaccine, we all remain at risk of a second wave. All it takes is one asymptomatic traveller to restart the need for social distancing all over again. (The Chinese are dealing with this already.)
 
It follows that Canadians should be paying attention to every new case, not just the ones here.
 
And since we are fortunate to have the wealth necessary to support the eradication of this virus beyond our borders, it makes perfect sense to invest accordingly.
  
The real danger is that other wealthy states won’t do the same
 
We must do more than just flatten the curve here at home. We must ensure that the curve is flattened everywhere.
 
A generous international assistance package to complement our domestic effort is utterly consistent with the national interest.
 
***
On the history of Canada’s international assistance policy, I like the work of Jill Campbell-Miller. She has a chapter in a new, open access book by Greg Donaghy and David Webster, A Samaritan State Revisited: Historical Perspectives on Canadian Foreign Aid. On foreign aid today, I always check to see what Stephen Brown has to say. On global health politics, check out the work of Jeremy Youde.
 
If you need something longer to read while sheltering from the virus at home, you can find some my books here, here, or here.
 
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COVID-19 is justifiably dominating the news of late. As a result, a number of stories that were percolating in early February have gone silent. One of them is the selection of Canada’s next ambassador to the United States.

Six weeks ago, the CBC’s Katie Simpson reported that Canada’s former ambassador, David McNaughton, was “urging” the government to choose the acting ambassador, Kirsten Hillman. Hillman, a lawyer and trade expert by training and a long-time public servant, would be the first woman ever to hold the position.

A few days later, the Toronto Star’s Susan Delacourt framed the story differently. Hillman’s selection, she noted, “would fit well with what seems to be a depoliticization trend in Canada’s foreign affairs these past few weeks.” The last time a career public servant had served as Canada’s leading representative in Washington was 2005. Prior to that, it was 1989.

Both articles were products of sound reporting and analysis.

Canada has had 20 ambassadors to the United States since the position was created in 1943. That all 20 have been men is symptomatic of a still-strong old-boys club that continues to dominate political appointments processes across the country.

And in a minority Parliament, it makes sense to try to take the politics out of Canada’s most significant bilateral relationship.

Moreover, Hillman is impressive: smart, articulate, open, and fearless. She’s briefed my students a number of times and is on a short list of speakers who have left a lasting and overwhelmingly positive impression with me.

But the last line of Simpson’s piece hints at a different story: In his pitch, McNaughton was apparently planning “to point out that appointing a career diplomat to such an important role would send a positive signal to all of the foreign service.” (my italics)

That signal, for those unfamiliar with the politics of Canadian diplomacy, is that it will no longer be impossible to rise through the ranks of Global Affairs Canada (GAC) to a top position.

When the Trudeau government arrived in 2015, it announced that it would end its predecessor’s habit of parachuting partisan loyalists into major postings.

The Harper government’s approach had demoralized GAC officials. No matter how well they served their country, under the Conservatives, they would never rise to a position of serious influence. (Sure, they could become deputy minister of the department, but most diplomats join the foreign service to work abroad; they don’t aspire to a high-level bureaucratic position in Ottawa.)

At first, the Liberals seemed serious. When Ottawa announced 26 new foreign service appointments in July 2016, Maclean’s’ Shannon Proudfoot wrote: “The list is heavy on foreign service experience, short on overtly political appointments and pristinely gender balanced.”

Admittedly, the government has chosen its own (older, white, male) ambassadors to the United States and the United Nations. Those two files were top prime ministerial priorities and needed representatives who had already earned the personal trust of Mr. Trudeau.

But for the most part, the Liberals seemed to acknowledge that diplomacy was a learned skill. There was value in having experts representing Canadian interests abroad.

Less than a year later, two older, white, male former ministers, Stéphane Dion and John McCallum, were dispatched to Germany and China. Pretty soon, the Trudeau government faced the same criticisms that had been leveled at the Conservatives.

Today, to the best of my understanding, morale in the foreign service is hardly better than it was during the Harper years. Some might even call it worse, because of the disappointment caused by the Liberals’ broken promises.

Making Kirsten Hillman ambassador to the United States wouldn’t solve the morale problem overnight. But if her appointment came with explicit recognition that patronage diplomacy is hit-and-miss, while the best of Canada’s career diplomats rarely disappoint, it would be a move in the right direction.

And I can imagine few more deserving of being the face of such a move than Ambassador Hillman.

***
To learn more about the diplomatic process, take a look at the latest volume of the history of Canada’s Department of External Affairs by John Hilliker, Mary Halloran, and Greg Donaghy.

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Should the Canadian government promote respect for human rights around the world? Absolutely. How to do so is more complicated.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faced significant criticism last week while visiting Africa to solicit support for Canada’s bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

In Senegal, home to a regime that continues to criminalize homosexuality, Trudeau was alleged to have “pulled his punches” when given the opportunity to publicly deplore the heinous law.

To be sure, the prime minister had it coming. Back in 2018, in the midst of a dispute with Saudi Arabia that erupted after Global Affairs Canada criticized Riyadh’s imprisonment of female human rights activists, Trudeau proclaimed:

“Canadians have always expected our government to speak strongly, firmly, clearly and politely about the need to respect human rights at home and around the world. We will continue to do that, we will continue to stand up for Canadian values and indeed for universal values and human rights at any occasion.”

In this case, the prime minister did speak up politely, but he was hardly strong, firm, and clear.

But even if criticism of his hypocrisy is warranted, that doesn’t mean that his actions were ill-considered.

Since the end of the Cold War, successive Canadian governments have conditioned us to believe that international relations are all about feeling good inside. In that sense, there is little difference between the Harper government’s principled foreign policy and the values-based posture currently trumpeted by the Trudeau Liberals.

Both approaches appeal to a sense of Canadian pride. We in Canada know best, they seem to suggest. The world could learn a lot from following our lead.

Such sentiment, sometimes referred to as virtue signalling or pulpit diplomacy, is not only arrogant, it is also a rather unhelpful approach to international relations.

For one, it rarely works. As UQAM’s Justin Massie noted on Twitter recently, Vladimir Putin did not leave Crimea because Stephen Harper told him to. Indeed, Russia’s still there.

Similarly, no African leader is going to change their country’s laws on LGTBQ+ rights because Justin Trudeau called them out on the world stage. Canada simply doesn’t have that kind of clout.

Second, the focus on values distracts Canadians from a difficult truth. At its core, foreign policy is an exercise in advancing the national interest, and sometimes doing so means making awkward compromises.

That’s why the virulently anti-communist British prime minister Winston Churchill willingly cooperated with the murderous Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin during the Second World War. (And yes, they even shook hands a few times.)

Does that mean that the government of Canada should ignore the repression of members of the LGBTQ+ community around the world? Of course not. But there are more effective means to promote sexual freedom than by ‘standing up for Canadian values’ with our chests puffed out.

Here are a few ideas:

First, accept more refugees. Provide more members of the LGBTQ+ community with a haven from persecution, and make sure that their path to citizenship is affordable and accessible.

Second, increase international assistance for non-governmental organizations that promote LGBTQ+ rights around the world. They are best positioned to determine the most appropriate strategies to effect change from within.

Third, if you do plan to go public with human rights concerns, do so as part of a coalition of like-minded states and non-state actors. When it comes to calling out world leaders, there is strength in numbers.

Finally, try not to put this country in the position of needing to curry favours from unsavory regimes in the first place. Had the Trudeau government not insisted on bidding for a Security Council seat that was already contested, this particular situation could have been avoided.
***
The classic critiques of Canadian diplomatic posturing include Fen Osler Hampson and Dean Oliver’s “Pulpit diplomacy,” Kim Richard Nossal’s “Pinchpenny diplomacy,” and Denis Stairs’ “Canada in the 1990s: Speak loudly and carry a bent twig.” For fresh thinking on Canadian foreign policy, take a look at the Generations Project launched by my colleague Andrea Lane and Dalhousie University’s Brian Bow. They will be releasing a new book later through UBC Press this year.

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A couple of weeks ago, an article in the National Post asked whether Governor General Julie Payette’s efforts to solicit support for Canada’s bid for election to the United Nations Security Council for 2021-22 crossed a political line. Not only was the Crown’s representative acting diplomatically on Canada’s behalf, she was doing so to advance an issue with partisan undertones.
 
The article raises two issues: (1) whether it’s appropriate for governors general to be political and (2) whether lobbying for a Security Council seat should be considered partisan.
 
I will leave it to constitutional experts like Philippe Lagassé to answer the first question. I am more concerned by implication that, through her actions, Payette was inserting herself into partisan politics.
 
A seat on the Security Council would belong to Canada - not to the Liberal Party. On paper, then, interventions to secure that seat seem to further the national interest, not one party’s partisan agenda.
 
Yet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has gone to great lengths to brand the Security Council campaign in his image. For the first time in Canada’s history, it was he – and not the minister of foreign affairs or a senior public servant – who officially announced Canada’s intent to bid. What’s more, the decision to pursue a seat was framed in the context of a distinctly Liberal message that Canada was “back” on the world stage after a ten-year hiatus under the Harper Conservatives.
 
The politicization of Canada’s Security Council aspirations is a relatively new phenomenon. In the last successful campaign of 1998, the opposition Reform Party offered the governing Liberals their full support.
 
Things changed at some point during the Harper government’s unsuccessful campaign for a seat for 2011-12.
 
Conservative supporters blame the Liberals, whose leader, Michael Ignatieff, publicly questioned whether Canada “deserved” a seat on the council in light of what he deemed to be the Harper government’s confrontational and ineffective foreign policy.
 
Conservative critics fault the Harper government for refusing to solicit or accept assistance from the opposition parties during the campaign and then blaming Ignatieff for the defeat.
 
Neither side is innocent.
 
More important, though, is what the current government can do differently over the five months that remain before the vote on June 17th. Here are three ideas:
 
First, offer opposition leaders a confidential briefing on the state of the campaign and the way ahead. Particularly in a minority Parliament, such outreach should be automatic.
 
Second, invite qualified members of the opposition to participate in the current bid. Conservative MP Peter Kent lobbied for council votes effectively on the Harper government’s behalf in Latin America in 2010. The NDP’s Heather McPherson is the former executive director of the Alberta Council on Global Co-operation and has previously served on a Canadian delegation to the UN.
 
Finally, form a non-partisan advisory council to feed into Global Affairs Canada’s thinking on all things Security Council-related. The group’s composition and mandate should mirror the NAFTA Council that served the Trudeau government well in 2017-18.
 
In short, it doesn’t matter whose fault it was for injecting politics into Canada’s Security Council aspirations. Partisanship hurts the bid, and the Trudeau government should do everything it can to eliminate it.
 
***
 
To learn more about Canada’s history on the Security Council (and why pursuing a seat is consistent with the national interest), please check out my new book or the podcast that discusses it. The Canadian Global Affairs Institute also just released a shorter, policy brief that I wrote about the history of Ottawa’s nine efforts to pursue a council seat. My research draws extensively from the excellent scholarship of David Malone, currently the rector of United Nations University and a former director general in Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and David Bosco, whose own history of the UN Security Council, Five to Rule them All, is outstanding. If you are interested in the UN more generally, take a look at some of the scholarship by the University of Manitoba’s Andrea Charron or my RMC colleague, Jane Boulden.  
 
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It’s rare that columnists from the National Post and the Toronto Star agree, but last Friday John Ivison of the Post and Heather Scoffield of the Star wrote remarkably similar columns criticizing Justin Trudeau’s initial, measured response to the tragic plane crash in Iran.
 
To Ivison, the prime minister’s reaction did not “instil confidence that the families of the [57] Canadians who perished will see any kind of justice.”
 
“If Canadians were looking for their prime minister to express their fury and the anguish,” he added, “they were sorely disappointed.”
 
Scoffield described Trudeau’s response as “subdued.” She called his preference for quiet diplomacy a failure, and asked: “Would indignation work any better? Maybe not — but at least we’d be telling Trump that we see his recklessness for what it is. And this week, it would certainly have reflected the mood of an angry and grieving nation. Sometimes, that’s a leader’s job.”
 
Neither thought there was any chance that the Iranians would admit liability and open up the country to an international investigation.
 
No doubt both are now eating humble pie, and it is not my intent to humiliate them further. (Having eaten my share of humble pie in the past, I empathize with their position.)
 
Nonetheless, it is important to note that the Trudeau government’s diplomatic approach to dealing with the Iranian government has already achieved far more than any expressions of fury and indignation ever could.
 
Diplomacy is not, as these journalists (and countless politicians and activists from across the political spectrum) are inclined to suggest, a sign of weakness. In this case in particular, it was almost certainly more difficult for Trudeau not to lash out in anger than it was to remain calm and offer Teheran every opportunity to save face.
 
Having closed our embassy in Iran, Ottawa needed to be invited into the country to investigate and repatriate the remains of those who lost their lives. So long as there remained the slightest chance that Tehran would open its doors, it made no rational sense to be provocative. (And even now that Canadians are inside the country, it’s still worth treading cautiously, seeing as Iran does not recognize dual citizenship. To the regime, the majority of Canadians who perished are Iranian citizens.)
 
The last 20 years of Canadian foreign policy, under Liberals and Conservatives, have too often seen our leaders privilege feeling good about ourselves over achieving results. Regrettably, columns like Ivison’s and Scoffield’s encourage such shallowness.
 
Diplomacy is hard, and it’s ugly. It often fails. And even when it works, the results aren’t always ideal. Still, when it comes to a country like Canada – lacking in the population size and military strength necessary to impose its interests – diplomacy is what we have. Kudos to the government for continuing to exhibit patience and firmness in the face of such heart-breaking devastation.
 
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For commentary on this issue, I will always want to know what Thomas Juneau has to say. The indefatigable Bessma Momani is also consistently helpful. On Iran, please look up my colleague, Pierre Pahlavi. The Canadian who encapsulated the best of quiet diplomacy was the former assistant deputy minister of external affairs and president of the old Canadian Institute of International Affairs (now the Canadian International Council), John Holmes. I wrote a book about him a while back.
 
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