Earlier this week, the Toronto Star’s Alex Boyd asked: “Is delaying second COVID vaccine doses a ‘half-baked solution’ to supply woes?”
 
Her article provides an excellent summary of the ongoing debate over whether, in light of the paucity of available COVID-19 vaccines, it might be worthwhile to hold off on administering the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine in order to provide more people with their first shot more quickly.
 
As Boyd notes, the argument in favour “is that it’s better to give more people the limited protection a single dose appears to deliver [52% rather than 95%] and they can still get their second shot, just a little later.”
 
I am more convinced by the arguments against, and there are plenty.
 
Dr. Alan Bernstein, a member of Canada’s COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force, offers eight, ranging from the dangers of tampering with “vaccines based on RNA technology that have never been tried on humans before,” to providing individuals with insufficient protection, to undermining faith in the integrity of public health recommendations, to upsetting Pfizer to the point that the company refuses to ship us more product.
 
Regrettably, Bernstein’s list of reasons does not appear to be sufficiently compelling to prevent some of our provinces, not to mention a number of Canada’s major allies, from planning to experiment.
 
So here is one more reason worth considering:
 
The global vaccination effort is no longer just a public health challenge; it has also become part of an ongoing diplomatic competition between China and the Western world.
 
For years, Beijing has tried to reshape the international order to better align with its interests.
 
To oversimplify, Chinese foreign policy has aimed to convince members of the global commons that Beijing’s illiberal approach to domestic and world affairs is superior to the liberal, democratic model typically championed by the United States and much preferred by the rest of the West.
 
And it seems to be working. Global confidence in democracy has been waning.
 
Most recently, Beijing has pointed to how its heavy-handed lockdowns and intrusive contact tracing methods have largely held the virus at bay, allowing the Chinese economy to rebound while the West continues to struggle.
 
So far, however, Beijing has not come close to demonstrating superiority in terms of its vaccines.
 
A recent article in The Economist details a Chinese approach to immunization that has included risky mass inoculations of untested products, inconsistent data, and a failure to match the 95% efficacy of Pfizer or the 94.1% efficacy of Moderna.
 
For now, then, it remains possible that when this pandemic finally ends, Western scientific discoveries could help discredit the Chinese model.
 
In that context, experimenting with the Pfizer vaccine – never a good idea in the first place – becomes an absolutely terrible one.
 
Against an adversary like China, we need all the soft power we can get.
 
***
I don’t follow a lot of people on Twitter, but I’m really impressed by the way that Lieutenant-Commander Amber Comisso (@cdnnavylady) uses her account. The tone and content of her tweets should make the Canadian Navy proud.

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Our World in Data, an outstanding website that provides up-to-the-minute reports on global efforts to solve the international community’s biggest problems, is now producing a handy chart that tracks cumulative COVID-19 vaccination doses administered by countries around the world.
 
The data are what have caused a public fixation on Israel’s thus far unsurpassed effort to vaccinate its population.
 
I fully support Our World in Data’s mandate: transparency is critical to effective public policy.
 
Nonetheless, all data must be understood in context, and I am concerned about the way critics of Canada’s vaccine roll-out have responded to the numbers.
 
As of this past Saturday, Canada ranked 10th in terms of the cumulative COVID-19 vaccination doses administered per 100 people.
 
We were behind Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, the US, Denmark, the UK, Italy, Slovenia, and Lithuania, but ahead of – presumably – well over 150 other countries.
 
Moreover, at 0.78 doses per 100 Canadians, our numbers were more than 2.5 times the global average of 0.3.
 
Still, according to the Globe and Mail’s Konrad Yakabuski, a growing number of Canadians are likely to be concerned that our vaccination campaign “has not kept pace with those under way in Britain and the United States.”
 
I don’t doubt that Yakabuski’s views reflect the thinking of a good portion of our population, but I struggle to understand why Canadians would expect us to be able to keep up with these two states in the first place.
 
The United States is the wealthiest country in the world, with a purchasing power that Canada could never dream of.
 
And while the United Kingdom has four National Health Service systems, Canada has ten independent provincial health systems along with three territories, each of which is difficult to access at the best of times, let alone in the middle of winter.
 
Both the US and the UK also have higher population densities than Canada does, which helps when the vaccines available are difficult to transport.
 
The challenge with charts is that they tend to lack such context.
 
Even worse, since this global vaccination effort is unprecedented, we have no real way to judge what an acceptable pace of vaccination might even be.
 
This difficulty doesn’t mean that we absolve our governments from their responsibility to serve the public interest responsibly, but I fear that we are using the wrong metrics to gauge success.
 
I would suggest that accountability be measured by (1) whether our officials are true to the vaccination schedule that they have already promised; (2) whether we understand how the speed of that process – including the prioritization of the recipients of the vaccines – has been determined; and (3) whether measures are being taken to enable open and transparent reviews of the national and provincial responses to this pandemic when we are finally past it.
 
It is too soon to pass judgment on number one. Information on part of number two is accessible here. Good work by the national media has added further detail.
 
I’m not yet satisfied about number three, but I remain hopeful.
 
In sum, there are lessons to be learned from other countries’ vaccination successes, but managing the COVID-19 vaccination roll-out is not a competition.
 
So let’s use the valuable information offered to us by The World in Data to improve our vaccination efforts, not to complain about our ranking on a list.
 
***
Over the last year, I’ve been really impressed by the work that Michael Garron Hospital has been doing in the Greater Toronto Community. I pay particularly close attention when anyone from Michael Garron has something to say about COVID-19.
 
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The Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) has released a second commentary as part of its “Leading a community of democracies in the post-COVID world order” project.
 
(You can find my analysis of the first one here.)
 
This report, written by Senior Fellow Balkan Devlen, is focused on Canadian attitudes towards international organizations.
 
As I noted last time, I agree with Devlen’s suggestion that Canada must work “with other democracies and likeminded states” to promote its national interests.
 
Nonetheless, I am concerned by the way he has interpreted the data the MLI has gathered with reference to the United Nations.
 
The report notes that 54% of Canadians have very positive or moderately positive views of the UN, while 19% feel the opposite.
 
The UN therefore gets a “net impression score” of +35%, which seems relatively good, until you compare it to the scores for NATO (+45%) and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (+51%).
 
Devlen concludes from these data that “Canadians are not undifferentiated multilateralists when it comes to international organizations.” They privilege some over others.
 
But that’s not exactly true. As he notes later in the same report, there is an overwhelming (my word) “partisan divide when it comes to the UN.”
 
Conservatives give the organization a net impression score of just +1%. Liberals give it a +62%.
 
If we assume that Green, NDP, and Bloc Québécois supporters are closer to the Liberals than the Conservatives on this one, a significant majority of Canadians are indeed undifferentiated multilateralists.
 
It’s only a (rather large) group of Conservative partisans who seem to differ.
 
If you believe, like Devlen does, that foreign policy development should be “a two-way street between the public and the government,” it seems to me that these findings will make it difficult for Canada’s international negotiators to build up the reserves of diplomatic capital that have traditionally enabled Ottawa to achieve its worldwide goals.
 
Consider some recent history:
 
The SNC-Lavalin affair’s impact on the Liberals’ 2019 re-election prospects had a notable, even if rarely mentioned, effect on Canada’s international posture.
 
The Globe and Mail broke the story in early 2019 while Ottawa was ramping up its campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC).
 
Once the Liberals dropped in the polls, Canadian officials in New York found it increasingly difficult to secure UNSC votes.
 
The countries we sought support from were not confident that a Conservative government would honour “Liberal” commitments.
 
I recognize that some readers might not care about whether a Canadian UNSC campaign succeeds; regardless, the broader lesson here is important:
 
In diplomacy, a country’s word matters.
 
It is difficult for Ottawa to negotiate effectively on the world stage when our two leading political parties disagree so extensively over the place of the UN within Canada’s multilateral universe.
 
This is not to say that there is no room for partisan differences in foreign policy. Rather, in more ideal circumstances, those differences would be largely confined to execution.
 
We cannot develop a long-term strategic vision of Canada’s place in the world without starting from a shared understanding of the national interest (and, by extension, the UN’s place in it).
 
The MLI’s report should therefore set off alarm bells for all Canadian leaders. The politicization of foreign policy has not left this country in a good place.  
 
***
Caroline Dunton is doing some innovative theoretical work on Canada and the UN. Her latest article  can be found here. On Canadian foreign policy more broadly, it’s always worth taking a look at what The Université de Québec à Montréal’s Justin Massie is thinking.
 
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This past week, the Government of Canada released “A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy” - its proposed strategy to combat the negative effects of climate change.
 
Most of the media attention thus far has focused on Ottawa’s pledge to increase the price of carbon from $30 per tonne to $170 per tonne over the next decade.
 
Personally, I find that issue rather tedious. Carbon pricing is a market-based, conservative approach to reducing greenhouse gasses.
 
Conservative partisans have made this argument convincingly in Canada and in the United States.
 
Even the National Post’s John Ivison, who has virtually nothing good to say about the roll-out of the Liberal announcement, agrees “with the carbon pricing model the federal government has chosen, at least as long as the rebates equivalent to the carbon tax continue to make their way back to consumers.”
 
I’m much more interested in a foreign policy implication noted on page 30:
 
“The Government is exploring the potential of border carbon adjustments, and will be discussing this issue with its international partners.”
 
Border carbon adjustments are environmental tariffs by another name.
 
In Ottawa’s own words:
 
“Border carbon adjustments level the playing field across jurisdictions: they put a carbon fee on imports from countries that either do not have carbon pricing or price it too low so that those products face the same costs as those supplied by domestic producers who pay a price on carbon pollution. As such, border carbon adjustments can help maintain competitiveness while also encouraging other countries to step up and take effective action to reduce emissions.”
 
The idea is hardly new.
 
In 1991, the United States Senate considered a proposal to tax imports from countries whose pollution controls were less stringent than America’s.
 
The bill failed, and the World Trade Organization has habitually rejected environmental tariffs as counter to the spirit of globalization.
 
But the WTO is tottering, and it looks like Washington will try again.
 
“Carbon adjustment fees” were mentioned in President-elect Joe Biden’s environmental platform. They are also included in the European Union’s plan to mitigate the effects of climate change.
 
Environmental tariffs resonate because they appeal to populists and pragmatists alike.
 
They are unapologetically protectionist, but they also serve a practical, functional end: they prevent the subsidization of pollution.
 
In this context, the Trudeau government has little choice but to price carbon in Canada aggressively.
 
If it doesn’t, Canadian exports could face new barriers to critical markets.
 
Armed with evidence of an acceptably high carbon price at home, however, Global Affairs Canada will be well-positioned to negotiate a regional, or even global, border carbon adjustment regime with our likeminded allies.
 
The governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario are currently contesting the Trudeau government’s right to tax carbon at the Supreme Court.
 
With Joe Biden about to assume the presidency of the United States, I’m not certain that they should be hoping for a win.
 
***
 
The best summary of recent Canadian thinking on what he calls carbon border adjustments is this prescient article by Adam Radwanski in the Globe and Mail. I’ve noted in a previous post that Radwanski’s reporting on environmental policy has been outstanding.
 
One of the best academics on Canadian environmental policy is Wilfrid Laurier’s Debora VanNijnatten. On energy and the environment, I enjoy the work of the University of Ottawa’s Monica Gattinger. For the Alberta angle, follow Andrew Leach, Trevor Tombe, and Duane Bratt on Twitter, or read their regular public commentaries,
 
 ***
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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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Last week, Canadian-Chinese relations took another turn for the worse.
 
Upon discovering that Canada had begun to accept refugees from Hong Kong (critics of Beijing no longer feel safe in the aftermath of a Chinese law that has all but criminalized negative commentary about the communist regime), China’s ambassador in Ottawa, Cong Peiwu, went on a tirade.
 
After labelling the asylum seekers “criminals,” he issued a clear threat:
 
“So, if the Canadian side … really cares about the good health and safety of those 300,000 Canadian passport holders in Hong Kong and the large number of Canadian companies operating in Hong Kong, you should support those efforts … to make sure the one country, two systems is most definitely and comprehensively implemented in Hong Kong.”
 
Canada’s foreign minister, François-Philippe Champagne, responded as follows:
 
“The reported comments by the Chinese Ambassador are totally unacceptable and disturbing. I have instructed Global Affairs to call the Ambassador in to make clear in no uncertain terms that Canada will always stand up for human rights and the rights of Canadians around the world.”
 
To the leader of the opposition, Erin O’Toole, Champagne’s actions were insufficient.
 
Ambassador Cong had engaged “in belligerent rhetoric unbecoming of his office.” O'Toole's party was “therefore calling on the Ambassador to fully retract his remarks and issue a public apology. Should the Ambassador fail to do so expeditiously, we expect the government to withdraw his credentials.”
 
As someone whose personal views of China today are likely closer to Mr. O’Toole’s than they are to some members of the Liberal government, I understand the anger and frustration.
 
I also recognize that it is the opposition’s job to oppose, and that in anticipation of an election that could come at any time, the Conservatives intend to differentiate themselves from the Trudeau Liberals on foreign policy. (Look, for instance, at how the Toronto Sun immediately praised O’Toole’s comments.)
 
But calling on Ottawa to escalate the conflict (since we all know that the ambassador will never retract his remarks) risks undermining Canadian interests both today and into the future.
 
First, and most important, kicking out the Chinese ambassador would inevitably lead to reciprocal action from Beijing.
 
Canada’s top representative in China, Dominic Barton, would soon be packing his bags as well, and that’s assuming that China did not escalate right back and shut down our diplomatic presence altogether.
 
From what I understand, whatever limited progress Ottawa has made in keeping tabs on the plight of the two Michaels is at least in part the result of Barton’s connections and diligence.
 
So, at best, we lose the relationships he has built. At worst, we lose access to the Canadian hostages altogether.
 
The longer-term problem is tactical.
 
States use diplomacy to resolve conflict without having to resort to war. Decisions to escalate must therefore take into consideration second- and third-order effects.
 
If Ottawa were to forcibly eject the Chinese ambassador for merely threatening the safety and security of Canadians in Hong Kong, what would it do if Beijing took real action?
 
Some might suggest that Canada could sever ties with China completely, but how would that help the Canadians stuck in Hong Kong?
 
Moreover, if or when escalation is truly necessary, Ottawa mustn’t act alone.
 
We share mutual interests with the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, and perhaps even the entire European Union. (Should the Americans choose a new administration in November, coordination with Washington would also be critical.)
 
We have significantly more leverage by acting together.
 
For now, it seems to me that Minister Champagne’s response was appropriate.
 
Our government is right to let Ambassador Cong’s comments be the story: yet another example of Chinese wolf warrior diplomacy that continues to undermine the communist regime’s international credibility.
 
***
On the dangers of diplomatic escalation, take a look at the recently retired (and already deeply missed) Kim Richard Nossal’s Rain Dancing: Sanctions in Canadian and Australian Foreign Policy.
 
If you’d like to read some more recent political history, check out Susie Colbourn and Tim Sayle’s new edited book, The Nuclear North: Histories of Canada in the Atomic Age.
 
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 This past weekend, the Government of Ontario sent Toronto, Peel, and Ottawa back to what it calls a modified Stage 2 in response to a surge in cases of COVID-19.
 
Practically, that means bars, restaurants, and nightclubs have joined strip clubs among the businesses that are no longer allowed to serve customers indoors.
 
Strip clubs have been prohibited from doing so since September 26th.
 
The decision to shut them down before everything else was the subject of at least two recent articles by current and former dancers.
 
In the Toronto Star, Barbara Sarpong asked: “If those other establishments are allowed to open, why aren’t we able to continue working?”
 
In the Globe and Mail, Marci Warshaft made almost the same case: “the province’s strip clubs are the only ones that, after being allowed to open at the start of Stage 3, have been ordered to shut down.”
 
And then she went on: “COVID-19 numbers are surging, and I completely understand the need to tighten our restrictions until we can get things under control. However, the callous way in which these restrictions are being enforced seems thoughtless and even misogynistic.”
 
The province’s initial explanation was hardly helpful: “Private social gatherings continue to be a significant source of transmission in many local communities, along with outbreak clusters in restaurants, bars, and other food and drink establishments, including strip clubs, with most cases in the 20-39 age group.”
 
Indeed, it could easily have been read to reinforce the idea that targeting strip clubs was, most generously, arbitrary.
 
I strongly suspect that was not the case.
 
A follow-up comment from the Ministry of Health, indicating that “contract tracing logs kept by the clubs were ‘often incomplete’,” seems to point to the real reason.
 
CTV News reported that after one outbreak, contact tracers couldn’t reach some 300 different attendees who might have been exposed because they had provided the club with phony contact information when they entered.
 
There is little incentive to hide your identity if you are dining at a restaurant. I suspect that many patrons of strip clubs are less comfortable confirming their presence.
 
So unless club managers are willing to demand photo ID and insist on working cell phone numbers and legitimate email addresses (and perhaps some would), welcoming patrons to strip clubs appears to pose a significantly greater risk to the spread of COVID-19 than does eating at a restaurant.
 
The issue might be moot for now – in Toronto, Peel, and Ottawa, at least – but I think there is a more significant lesson here.
 
Over the last nine months, Canadians have rewarded politicians who have embraced openness and authenticity in their response to this pandemic.
 
Many of us have been willing to forgive our elected officials for their flawed pandemic preparedness and action plans when we have sensed that they understand our concerns and are doing their best to respond to them.
 
I thought that Ontario premier Doug Ford – whose authenticity has always seemed genuine – got this, but the way his government dealt with closing strip clubs makes me less sure.
 
I recognize that Canadians are divided over the legitimacy of sex work. In this case, however, that really doesn’t matter.
 
Strip clubs are legal in Ontario, and when those in the industry lost their livelihoods to a decision from Queen’s Park, they deserved the same honesty and clarity as the rest of us.
 
Shame on the government for not giving it to them.
 
***
To learn more about political communication in Canada, take a look at Alex Marland, Thierry Giasson and Tamara A. Small’s book with that very title.
 
In other news, I just received my copy of Patrice Dutil’s new edited collection, The Unexpected Louis St-Laurent: Politics and Policies for a Modern Canada. It will be available for purchase (in hardcover and pdf) on November 1st and is a must for Canadian political history junkies.
 
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A couple of weeks ago, Harvey Schipper, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto (with one of the most overwhelming/intimidating biographies I have ever read), published an article in the Hill Times that proclaimed:
 
“Canada is in a unique position to be a, if not the, world leader in preparedness. We now have an unprecedented opportunity to reframe our thinking of what a pandemic represents, and in so doing, we can potentially create a revolutionary and science-driven health economy.”
 
The piece goes on to describe a series of medically-informed steps that Ottawa could take in order to position itself at the forefront of “the advancement of global responsiveness.”
 
Schipper’s argument for Canadian leadership is, on its surface, compelling:

“Our biological and medical sciences expertise is, on a population and expenditure basis, world leading already… our diversity both provides the test bed for new interventions and links to other countries that no other country can match. Moreover, as a middle power with a track record of trust and success in forging new concepts for global well-being … we have specific advantages in terms of engaging the international community.”
 
His thinking harkens back to the logic underlying the functional principle, a Canadian recipe for foreign policy influence that was articulated with moderate success in the 1940s.
 
Canada, the story went, was not a great power, but there were times when it had the capacity to contribute just like one.
 
In such cases, should Ottawa invest the necessary political and/or human capital, Canada deserved to be recognized as a leading player on the world stage.
 
According to Schipper, when it comes to pandemic preparedness, the capacity is there. And there is no denying that Canadian interests will be well-served by better preparation in anticipation of Covid-19’s inevitable successor.
 
Presumably, then, all that is needed is political will.
 
Between 2013 and 2019, I made a similar – albeit far less eloquent – suggestion in lectures at my home institution, the Canadian Forces College.
 
If Canadians insisted on looking for global leadership opportunities, I argued, they could do worse than becoming the world’s pandemic preparedness experts.
 
Ever since Covid-19 hit, however, I have dropped pandemics from my text.
 
Ironically, my thinking can also be traced to the functional principle.

Only I am thinking about its less well-known caveat: opportunities for smaller countries to exercise global leadership are typically contingent on the degree of great power interest in the issue in question.
 
Put bluntly, the more the great powers care, the less space there is for everyone else.
 
Notwithstanding the underwhelming response from the White House, it seems to me that Covid-19 has brought pandemics to the direct attention of many of the world’s most powerful states.
 
It follows that the likelihood of a China or a Russia, or a new administration in the United States, tolerating Canadian efforts to dominate the preparedness realm is slim to nil.
 
Schipper’s call for Ottawa to embrace the opportunity to make an already capable public health sector “more resilient, flexible, innovative, and responsive” is still well-taken, but I suspect that the opportunity for Canadian global leadership on pandemic preparedness has long since passed.
 
***
 
I have been interested in the functional principle since graduate school. My most recent work on it can be found here.
 
If global leadership opportunities for Canada interest you, take a look at the work that the University of British Columbia’s Karen Jessica Bakker does on water security.
 
Recently, I was fortunate to get a sneak peek at some of the draft chapters from Stephanie Carvin, Thomas Juneau, and Craig Forcese’s forthcoming book, Top Secret Canada: Understanding the Canadian Intelligence and National Security Community. If you teach Canadian national security and intelligence, or if you want to understand how our system works, this book will be indispensable. Kudos to them for putting it together, and to all of their contributors for the great work.
 
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