Last week, the University of Ottawa’s Task Force on National Security released its much anticipated report: A National Security Strategy for the 2020s.
 
The Task Force was directed by the recently-retired former national security and intelligence advisor to the prime minister, Vincent Rigby, and one of the most credible analysts of security and defence in this country, Thomas Juneau.
 
They were joined by a veritable who’s who of Canadian national security experts.
 
In other words, it’s hard to imagine a more qualified group to make recommendations on “How Canada can adapt to a deteriorating security environment.”
 
The majority of the report’s recommendations are entirely reasonable, in particular in terms of how Ottawa should organize the public service to analyze and counter threats to the state, to national institutions, and to individual Canadians.
 
If you are interested in these issues, the document is therefore well worth your time.
 
But I am not hopeful that it will effect transformative change in Ottawa.
 
The authors all but explain why on page 10:
 
“Collectively, we have neglected national security for decades, largely because we could afford to do so. Shielded from major threats, we generally suffered little or no cost for our complacency. Whenever we dealt with national security issues, it was largely in a reactive way, in response to events, and not through a more proactive, structured approach.”
 
They justify the need for a different approach by claiming that this time “of intense global instability, when the security of Canada and other liberal democracies is under growing threat,” is somehow different from all of the previous ones.
 
I agree that Ottawa’s traditional approach to national security has been risky, perhaps even irresponsible, but I wonder whether the strategic environment today is that much more threatening than the one we faced when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, or when Donald Trump was elected in 2016, or when Syria dropped chemical weapons on its own people in 2017, or when the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps blew up Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in 2020.
 
Nor do I detect any sense of urgency among Canadians writ large.
 
National security is hardly a focus of the current Conservative leadership campaign. It has not come up much, if at all, in Ontario’s provincial election. I don’t recall reading much about it when Jason Kenney pledged to resign as premier of Alberta. It is certainly not the reason for the ongoing political controversy in Quebec. Nor do I suspect it will have a role in the forthcoming Toronto municipal election.
 
Part of the problem is that, for decades, practitioners and analysts of Canadian national security (and defence) have all but cried wolf on a regular basis.
 
When I arrived at the Canadian Forces College in 2006, I recall hearing over and over again how the contemporary operating environment was more dangerous than it had ever been.
 
In the 16 years since, a year hasn’t gone by when I haven’t heard the same thing – from multiple speakers. Yet, as the authors of the report make clear, Canadians have yet to pay a serious price for our collective apathy.
 
Ottawa might well need “the support and trust of Canadians” to develop “a whole-of-Canada response to security threats,” but I don’t think that the report’s recommendations to increase government transparency and the engagement of practitioners with the public will suffice.
 
Barring a genuine catastrophe, the national security apparatus is unlikely to touch a sufficient number of Canadians directly, and sustainably, so as to effect the necessary change in public perception.
 
On the other hand, who hasn’t heard of someone with a problem renewing their passport, or with the status of their immigration paperwork recently? Are there any Canadians left that aren’t aware that long-term drinking water advisories are still a reality on almost 30 reserves?  
 
If public trust is key to changing Canada’s national security culture (which it might well be), perhaps Ottawa should focus on getting the little things right. Do that, and I suspect that the Canadian public will be much more amenable to tackling the big challenges down the road.
 
Hopefully, we can reach that point before it’s too late.
 
***
If you do read the report, why not compare it to a similar one produced by the Centre for International Governance Innovation back in December. I’d be fascinated to learn more about any differences between the two.
 
***
In other news, I originally intended to post to this blog once or twice per month. Somehow, I seem to have ended up posting weekly. While I enjoy doing so, this pace is not sustainable, especially as I prepare to return to the classroom in August. I therefore anticipate cutting back a bit going forward. If there are things you’d like me to write about, you can reach me here.
 
***
 
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Just over two weeks ago, North Korea recorded its first case of Covid-19.
 
Since then, as The Economist has noted, the virus has been “spreading like wildfire.” Already, more than 2.5 million North Koreans have come down with what the regime is calling an undiagnosed “fever.” At least 67 have died.
 
Cases of this “fever” continue to increase by close to 200,000 per day, if you trust North Korean reporting.
 
What limited coverage of the outbreak I’ve seen thus far – there has been virtually none in the Canadian press – has focused on the humanitarian catastrophe that it poses for North Koreans.
 
Since leader Kim Jong Un doesn’t trust outsiders, he has repeatedly rejected donations of vaccines from COVAX, as well as offers of support from China, Russia, the United States, and South Korea.
 
So Omicron is spreading rapidly among 25 million unvaccinated North Koreans, many of whom were not in good health in the first place.
 
What’s more, the last two years have seen the country’s food stocks shrink dramatically, so as Kim begins to lock down the country to mitigate the outbreak, he risks further compromising his people’s food supply. (Rice planting season began a few weeks ago).
 
Inasmuch as the plight of the North Koreans is tragic, I fear that the issue could easily become much graver, and I wonder whether the fact that so much of the West appears to have moved on from the pandemic is preventing us, collectively, from seeing it.
 
The science is clear that “the more the virus circulates, the greater the opportunity it has to mutate.” With millions of North Koreans likely to be infected over the next few months, it is hard to imagine that new variants won’t emerge.
 
If we’re lucky, they won’t cause symptoms that are any worse than those we are already dealing with, and the vaccines we have will continue to stave off the most deadly outcomes.
 
But if we aren’t, the fall resurgence of the pandemic that the Public Health Agency of Canada is all but promising could be far more damaging than it is anticipated it to be.
 
In other words, the situation in North Korea could easily become much more than just a humanitarian challenge – our national interests could be at stake.
 
Canada’s options right now are limited: Kim won’t accept our aid; China isn’t interested in our advice; and we are poorly-positioned to impose our will on anyone.
 
And while a recent op-ed in the Globe and Mail is absolutely right to call out the City of Toronto for its foolish decision to shut down what had been a successful outreach effort to “overcome vaccine hesitancy” in targeted neighbourhoods, no amount of vaccinating at home will be sufficient to protect us if a rogue variant emerges abroad.
 
It follows that one can only hope that Ottawa redoubles its efforts to contribute to the global recovery by supporting countries that will accept our assistance, and also by encouraging our allies and partners to do the same.
 
In sum, this is not a call for Canadian leadership – I don’t think there would be many followers – but it is a recognition of the urgent need for states like Canada to continue to do their fair share to mitigate the global impact of Covid-19 at a time when it seems all too easy to pretend that the pandemic is fully behind us.
 
***
For the official account of Canada’s response to Covid-19, see here. On Canada’s global response specifically, see here, and note the difference between Ottawa’s original promise to donate at least 200 million vaccine doses to COVAX by the end of 2022 and the current wording: “Canada has also committed to donating the equivalent of at least 200 million doses to the COVAX Facility by the end of 2022.”
​***
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​As a parent with two children enrolled in schools served by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), I am struggling with the board’s controversial plan to transform their specialized schools program.
 
For readers outside of Toronto, here’s the context:
 
Toronto is home to 40-odd specialized programs or schools that provide an enriched curriculum in some or all of the arts, athletics, sciences, and math.
 
In 2017, with data indicating that a disproportionate percentage of the students attending these programs and schools came from relatively privileged families, a TDSB Equity Task Force recommended shutting them all down.
 
As you can imagine, parents (and their kids) mutinied, and the board promised to do better.
 
Five years later, doing better seems to mean overhauling the admissions process to these programs so that students will be accepted by lottery, based only on their expressed interest, rather than because of any evidence of exceptional ability or skill.
 
As one proponent of the proposed change explains:
 
“Moving to an interest-based model will ensure that [previous formal training in specific disciplines] is no longer a barrier to students who may not have had those same opportunities, but still bring an interest, passion, and commitment to those fields.”
 
Viewed less optimistically, we could soon have a specialized school for kids with an expressed interest in athletics, but no particular athletic skill; or an enriched STEM program for students who are passionate about engineering, but barely passed math or science the previous year.
 
Inevitably, such specialized programs will become less special – until they are no longer special at all.
 
Critics have offered two alternatives to the TDSB’s plan that they claim will maintain the quality of the programs but also deincrease the inequity.
 
The Globe and Mail’s Marcus Gee urges the board to do a better job of “making sure that parents hear about [the programs] and that teachers are on the lookout for promising candidates, especially in needy neighbourhoods.”
 
Writing in the Toronto Star, Maclean’s editor Sarah Fulford (whose son attends one of the schools in question) suggests:
 
“Instead of flattening the system into sameness by bureaucratic decree, the TDSB should take a hard look at why some schools are failing to attract students. Let’s empower principals and teachers, the heart and soul of every institution, to design programs that are creative, compelling and lively.”
 
Neither solution is likely to work. Privilege will always be just that, and parents who have it will find a way to ensure that their kids have the best opportunities.
 
And while empowering schools and principals sounds great in theory, the quality of educational leadership in Toronto is uneven, and one can only allocate so much time to creativity when your students come to class hungry and exhausted, if they come at all.
 
Nevertheless, it seems to me that there is a solution that should give both sides some of what they want:
 
Why not keep the schools, and their application processes, the way they are – for 85%-90% of all admissions - but set aside 10%-15% of all the places in each program for kids from underprivileged backgrounds.
 
For this smaller group, design an even more individualized application process that emphasizes potential, and allows for greater flexibility in interpreting previously demonstrated aptitude.
 
All kids could still apply through the main process, but some would have the option of also being considered through the second stream.
 
Such consideration would ideally be kept confidential (and all acceptances would be announced at the same time), so that no one would know who was admitted separately.
 
This approach would preserve the elitist element of the schools that makes them so popular and successful, but also ensure a more equitable, inclusive, and diverse student body that no amount of parental privilege can overcome.
 
Such an approach was in place at Trent University when I studied there as an undergraduate, and seemed to work well.
 
Surely, the TDSB should give something like it a try before gutting one of the Toronto public education system’s crown jewels.
 
***
For a list of Toronto’s specialized high school programs, see here. The elementary programs can be found here.
 
***
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Ryan Tumilty had a piece in the National Post last week that is really two stories in one.
 
The article focuses on an obscure series of details in the latest budget implementation bill that recognize that our Senate is no longer organized the way it used to be.
 
First off, since Justin Trudeau disowned all of the previously appointed Liberal senators prior to the 2015 election, there is no longer a Leader of the Government in the Senate at all.
 
And because the prime minister has appointed every new senator since 2015 as an independent, after nearly 7 years of Liberal rule, the number of partisan senators – all Conservatives – has been reduced to 16.
 
Although most of the Trudeau appointees sat together at first, the independents are now themselves divided into an Independent Senators Group (41), a Progressive Senate Group (14), and a Canadian Senators Group (12).
 
The Liberals are also – inexcusably, in my view – 15 senators behind in filling vacancies.
 
As Tumilty explains, the budget implementation bill will legitimize the existence of the independent Senate groups, and provide funding to support their leaders.
 
So the first of the two stories should be disappointing to Canadians of every political stripe.
 
Like the Conservatives before them, the Trudeau Liberals are using the budget implementation bill to deal with government business that is only tangentially linked to the budget.
 
Efforts to effect significant change in the Senate deserve the full attention of Parliament (and, by extension, Canadians); they should not be tucked into the sort of omnibus bill that the Liberals had promised to avoid during the 2015 election.
 
The second story is actually good news.
 
Setting aside the unconvincing accusations of some of the remaining Conservative senators – who refuse to accept that Senate appointees could choose to either support, or simply not oppose, government legislation on its merits – once the budget implementation bill passes, the Trudeau government will have all but permanently altered the composition of a critical element of our parliamentary system for the better.
 
The current Senate is working better than it has in years. Indeed, even the Conservatives know this implicitly, seeing as they have benefited from it.
 
Consider how many times the opposition has criticized the Liberals for failing to pass legislation in a timely manner.
 
Much of that slow-down has been caused by independent senators insisting on doing their due diligence and proposing substantive legislative amendments.
 
The increase in lobbying that has targeted independent senators’ offices also indicates that the private sector does not believe that the Senate is in the pocket of the government.
 
So the Senate is keeping the government honest, and offering meaningful, non-partisan, amendments to legislation, just as it is supposed to.
 
If you put the two stories together – the Liberals are undermining the spirit of democracy in order to make our democracy more effective – you are left with what I take to be an excellent example of one of the tragedies of contemporary Canadian politics.
 
We are currently led by a government that arrived with a well-intentioned commitment to restore Canadians’ faith in liberal democratic rule.
 
Seven years later, even this fresh, youthful, idealistic cohort of legislators has been worn down by the intensity and mercilessness of our political process.
 
I don’t have a solution to offer other than to encourage all of us to view those who take the plunge into politics with greater empathy, and to recognize and reward those who choose to treat their opponents – and all of their fellow Canadians – with a dignified civility reflective of the seriousness of their jobs.
 
We have created a system that seems to celebrate eating its own, and no one benefits from that.
 
***
On the Senate, see this report by the University of Waterloo’s Emmett Macfarlane.
 
***
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Jack Mintz wrote an article for the Financial Post last week that left me frustrated.
 
It begins with a call to arms: “With revenues pouring into federal and provincial coffers, it’s time for Canadians to tell their governments they’ve had enough with high taxes.”
 
If governments – federal and provincial – collected the same 38.5% of GDP in taxes and non-tax revenues in 2022 as they did in 2015 (rather than the 41.2% they plan to collect this year), individual Canadians would pay $2000 less in taxes.
 
“To help beleaguered Canadians,” Mintz concludes, governments “should put tax relief on the front burner.”
 
Typically, it’s progressives who reject this sort of argument most vehemently.
 
Governments, however imperfect, fund the public goods that liberal-democratic societies need to flourish.
 
Moreover, a degree of wealth redistribution is necessary in societies that recognize that there are real differences between equality, equity, and justice.
 
I can sympathize with that view, but my primary concern with Mintz’s argument comes from a different place.
 
Ottawa alone ran deficits of over $300 billion in 2020-21 and nearly $150 billion this past year.
 
My family benefited directly from some of that money (we took, and continue to take, ‘free’ rapid tests; we got vaccinated ‘for free’; we ordered take-out from restaurants that used government subsidies to pay their workers; etc.), and I suspect that most readers’ families did, too.
 
I think that much of that spending was necessary given the challenges brought on by the pandemic.
 
But now that the economy is growing again, and unemployment is down, it seems to me it would be prudent to try to start paying back some of what we collectively borrowed.
 
That’s why I find Mintz’s calls for balanced budgets to enable new tax cuts so frustrating.
 
Balanced budgets don’t reduce the national debt, and tax cuts reduce revenue, which limits a government’s ability to pay back what it has borrowed.
 
(Sure, some tax cuts spur economic growth – and might therefore increase government revenue in the medium-to-long term - but the immediate result is less money for the state. Given the size of the national debt, we should be saving our tax cuts for when the economy is struggling.)
 
In sum, Mintz is right to identify a lack of fiscal discipline among today’s governments. But his solution – to replace them with others that promise to balance the budget and cut taxes – won’t solve the problem, and might even make it worse.
 
Surely, there is space in our political system for a party, ‘conservative’ or ‘progressive,’ that has the courage to ask us collectively – and not just the “ultra rich” – to pay more when times are relatively good so that future generations have a genuine opportunity to enjoy the same privileges of liberal democracy that we have.
 
A party that called on me to sacrifice so that my kids could have a better life would have my vote in a minute.
 
***
When it comes to economic issues, I always find Trevor Tombe’s work helpful.
 
***
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Last week, Ontario Liberal leader Steven Del Duca announced that if he was able to form a government after the provincial election in June, he would ban handguns almost immediately.
 
His pledge was rightly taken to task by Matt Gurney on TVO.org and Robyn Urback in the Globe and Mail.
 
The authors made two similar arguments.
 
First, banning (legal) handguns will not reduce gun crime very much because the overwhelming majority of handguns used in violent crimes are smuggled into Canada illegally from the United States.
 
So, when it comes to violent crime in Canada, legal handgun owners aren’t the problem.
 
Second, as Urback puts it, “Mr. Del Duca’s announcement is a crass political move that exploits the fears of those unfamiliar with Canada’s existing firearms laws to create a divisive wedge issue out of thin air” at a time when Ontarians have serious challenges to be thinking about, like the state of our health care system.
 
In Gurney’s words: “And after the past four years, it is absolutely inexplicable that the Liberals have seized on this as a splashy, hyped-up pre-election announcement. This is what they think the people of Ontario care about right now?”
 
I can’t disagree, but it seems to me that both authors are underselling how disappointing this policy proposal really is.
 
Surely, the Liberals are aware that the vast majority of gun deaths in Canada are suicides, most of which affect older men living in rural areas.
 
As a result, the serious progressive argument in favour of gun control has moved away from viewing gun violence in criminal terms and towards seeing it instead as a public health issue.
 
Here is how Queen’s University’s Dr. Michelle Cohen explained it in an Ottawa Citizen article in 2019:
 
“Suicide is often an impulsive act, and when a weapon as effective as a gun is available, the likelihood of completed suicide rises dramatically. Simply having a gun in the home increases the risk of death by suicide… Guns must be included in mental health policy if we are serious about reducing suicide deaths.”
 
She goes on to note the role of guns in gender-based violence, and their particular impact on rural and Indigenous women.
 
Based on my admittedly limited reading, I don’t think we have enough data yet to determine the best public health response to the proliferation of handguns in Ontario, but I’m sure that the Liberals’ proposal won’t get us closer to a solution.
 
What’s more, by framing gun control as a criminal issue, the Liberals have made it even harder to begin a genuinely productive conversation about an ever-increasing mental health crisis in Ontario that is in desperate need of new ideas.
.
***
For recent peer-reviewed research on firearm deaths in Ontario, see this article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal by David Gomez, Natasha Saunders, Brittany Greene, Robin Santiago, Najma Ahmed and Nancy N. Baxter. On some of the challenges with the federal Liberals’ gun policy, see this piece by Gurney.
 
***
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A couple of weeks ago, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion Carla Qualtrough announced a number of significant changes to Canada’s temporary foreign workers program.
 
The changes are meant to respond to the concerns of businesses like TBM Service Group, whose CEO, Val Ramanand, wrote about the organization’s challenges in a recent article in the Financial Post.
 
Ramanand’s cleaning company has job openings that “have been advertised widely across Canada but have gone unfilled.”
 
Meanwhile, there are workers from El Salvador ready and willing to take the jobs.
 
TBM Service Group has always treated such temporary foreign workers respectfully:
 
“We help them find housing and provide a two-year work permit, English-as-a-second-language courses, and a starting wage of $16.50 an hour on a full-time schedule, $1.50 higher than minimum wage.
 
We pay all our new workers’ travel costs and fees and sign a Spanish-language contract with them approved by El Salvador’s labour ministry. This contract outlines their rights as employees in Canada.”
 
Still, Ramanand identifies two problems.
 
For one, Ottawa has traditionally limited temporary foreign workers at companies like TBM to 10% of the total workforce, and TBM needs “to be able to fill 30% of our jobs with migrant workers to meet our capacity and focus on growth.”
 
Second, when the temporary visas expire, the workers have to return home and TBM must restart the recruitment process from scratch.
 
Ramanand would prefer that Ottawa “offer more of these workers a path to permanent residency while they are here, rather than forcing them to return home to reapply.”
 
Qualtrough has now relaxed a number of rules on the hiring of temporary foreign workers, which should meet Ramanand’s first concern. (She has also pledged to increase the scrutiny applied to employers of such workers to discourage exploitation.)
 
I haven’t seen evidence to indicate that she is doing much about the second issue.
 
Although I understand the minister’s action from a political point of view – the economy is operating at full employment, the jobs need to be filled immediately, and there aren’t enough willing Canadians to do them – it seems to me that her solution addresses the wrong problem.
 
As Ramanand concedes at the end of his article, the real issue facing his company is that “There is a shortage of labour for these jobs in Canada at current wages.”
 
If you believe in a market-based economy, if a company can’t hire enough employees at “current wages” for jobs that clearly aren’t temporary – if they were, Ramanand’s complaint about the need to replace the workers who must return home when their visas expire would be moot – then the company should improve its compensation package.
 
If doing so isn’t economically feasible, then there is a problem with the business plan.
 
Allowing companies to hire workers from other countries at wages that Canadians apparently (based on their unwillingness to take the jobs) consider exploitative, and then denying them a path to citizenship, is shameful.
 
It also discourages these individuals – some of whom might eventually find another way to immigrate permanently – from integrating into Canadian society while they are here.
 
Far better, and in keeping with the prime minister’s claim that “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” would be to offer anyone who is hired into a fulltime position a transparent path to permanent residence.
 
What’s puzzling to me is that the government seems to recognize that an excess of temporary foreign workers is a bad idea.
 
Qualtrough’s press release notes that, with the new changes, such workers, which “made up less than 0.4% of the Canadian workforce [in 2020] … will continue to make up a small percentage of our workforce.”
 
So if you know that the temporary foreign workers program is a problem, and you’re planning massive increases to immigration anyways, why make such workers temporary at all?
 
***
For one of many criticisms of the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, see this older study from the CD Howe Institute. For something more academicky, try this article by Vivianne Landry et al.
 
***
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​Last week, the Centre for International Governance Innovation’s Wesley Wark published an article in The Globe and Mail calling on Ottawa to close the Russian embassy, recall the Canadian ambassador from Moscow, and reduce the staff at the Canadian embassy “to a small consular establishment.”
 
Wark finds it “repugnant” that Ottawa continues to maintain diplomatic relations with a country whose military is committing war crimes in Ukraine.
 
He also does not believe that the staff at the Canadian embassy in Moscow can do much of anything right now.
 
“There are no back channels to call into play,” he contends, “no helpful fixer role to be played.”
 
Moreover, whereas our EU allies have expelled over 230 Russian officials since Ukraine was attacked, Canada has not expelled any.
 
When reporters asked Prime Minister Trudeau about the idea, he noted that Russia would likely respond similarly, and he wasn’t sure whether “the symbolic gesture of excluding Russian diplomats from what they are doing in Canada is worth the cost of losing our diplomats in Moscow.”
 
As for Canadian officials in Russia being ineffective, the prime minister claimed they were “giving us feedback on what the Russian people are doing, connecting with civil society and understanding and supporting Canadians and others who happen to be in Russia at this time.”
 
I would make Trudeau's case somewhat differently:
 
Canadian interests are best served within an international system based upon transparent and predictable rules and laws.
 
We can’t compete when more powerful states make up the rules as they go along; we do better when we can plan ahead.
 
A sudden closure of the Russian embassy in Ottawa would undermine our commitment to a predictable diplomatic order.
 
If Russian aggression was the problem, why didn’t we order the embassy closed a month ago?
 
If Russian war crimes were the reason, why does Syria still have an embassy in Ottawa?
 
To me, the fact that our EU allies are reducing their missions in Moscow makes the case to stay the course even more compelling.
 
By remaining in Moscow, Canadian diplomats can augment the EU’s consular capacity should EU citizens in Russia become endangered.
 
Such capacity matters.

Recall just two years ago, when Iran shot down Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752, killing 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.
 
Having shuttered our embassy in 2012, Ottawa’s response was slowed by the need to rely on Italy to coordinate on its behalf.
 
To his credit, Wark does call for Canada to maintain a bare-bones consular presence in Russia, but he seems to assume that Moscow will allow that to happen.
 
I’m not so sure.
 
Twice in the last five years, Canadian adversaries have reacted disproportionately to Ottawa’s diplomatic actions.
 
Consider Saudi Arabia’s over-the-top response to a Tweet from Global Affairs Canada in August 2018.
 
Or Chinese hostage diplomacy in the aftermath of Canada’s arrest of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou in fulfillment of a US extradition request.
 
It seems to me that an order to close the Russian Embassy in Ottawa could just as easily lead Moscow to not only close ours right back, eliminating consular access for Canadians in need, but also take further steps to punish innocent Canadians arbitrarily.
 
All of this is not to say that Russian diplomats in Canada should get a free pass. Rather, Ottawa should respond to any inappropriate Russian activity on a case-by-case basis.
 
So, by all means, order individual Russian representatives responsible for Tweeting out disinformation to go home, but do so because they violated Canadian policy “against manipulated, deceptively altered or fabricated media.”
 
Such a measured, transparent move would preserve our interest in a stable and predictable international order as well as Ottawa’s capacity to support Canadians (and others) in Russia as needed.
 
In sum, now is not the time to take unnecessary diplomatic risks so that we can feel better inside.
 
***
On the disproportionate diplomatic responses that Canada has faced of late, see this thoughtful piece by the University of Ottawa’s Roland Paris.
 
***
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Last week, Canada’s former chief of the defence staff, Jonathan Vance, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in a case that focused on whether he had pressured a subordinate, Major Kellie Brennan, to lie to military police about their long-term sexual relationship.
 
As per his plea agreement, he was granted a conditional discharge:
 
In exchange for his full confession, the successful completion of a year of probation (including a communications ban with Brennan on issues other than care for the child they had together), the payment of child support, and 80 hours of community service, Vance will emerge from the ordeal without a criminal record.
 
According to reports from the National Post, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star, Ontario Court Justice Robert Wadden noted that while Vance’s actions were “serious,” it appeared to him that “other than this, [he] was a man of good character.”
 
“I don’t feel it is necessary to burden you with a criminal conviction,” Wadden added, “because I feel that will allow you now to go on and to make further contributions to society.”
 
The following day, the Post’s Sabrina Maddeaux offered a scathing critique of the case’s outcome:
 
“The ongoing saga of retired general and ex-defence chief Jonathan Vance is a prime example of how our courts fail the vulnerable while tipping the scales of justice in favour of the wealthy, the decorated and the male.
 
… Vance was allowed to walk away from his sole criminal charge with what can’t even be described as a slap on the wrist. Rather, the presiding judge practically held his hand in solidarity.”
 
Although I understand Maddeaux’s reaction, I wonder whether one element of the outcome might be more complicated than she lets on.
 
Consider the sense of urgency evident in this excerpt from Major Brennan’s victim impact statement: “I don’t want him to have any power over me or the ability to influence me in my lifetime. I want to live free of fear of ever doing anything he tells me to do. I want to be free, heal, and keep my children safe, happy, and look to the future.”
 
The plea agreement seems to allow Major Brennan to begin her healing process sooner than would otherwise have been possible.
 
If she supported it, as Crown attorney Mark Holmes says she did, then I can see why the Crown might have chosen to close the case quickly, even if that meant agreeing to a lighter sentence than may have been possible otherwise.
 
On the other hand, I’m really struggling to understand Justice Wadden’s comments.
 
Presumably, he could have justified his decision to accept the plea by noting that both sides had agreed to it.
 
How could he not realize that his reflections on Vance’s character were, at the very least, remarkably insensitive – at a time when the cultural challenges facing the Canadian Armed Forces make such insensitivity inexcusable?
 
Back in 2017, Conservative MP Rona Ambrose introduced a private member’s bill which sought to compel any lawyer that wanted to become a judge to take a course in sexual assault law.
 
The bill was a response to Federal Court Justice Robin Camp’s conduct in a 2014 sexual assault trial, during which he asked the victim why she didn’t just keep her “knees together” to prevent the assault.
 
Ambrose’s bill died prior to the 2019 election, but was re-introduced as government legislation in February 2020. (I believed it died again last summer.)
 
The bill has always made me nervous.
 
As my former colleague at Massey College, Gib van Ert, has argued, taking responsibility for judicial training out of the hands of the arms-length Canadian Judicial Council risks politicizing the legal process and “undermining public confidence in our judges’ independence from government.”
 
The Vance case is forcing me to reconsider that view.
 
It’s been five years since Camp was forced to resign. The Canadian Judicial Council has had plenty of time to improve its education programs on its own yet, clearly, more still needs to be done.
 
I can only hope that members of the legal profession recognize how critical it is that they get this right, and soon.
 
If not, it will be hard to criticize Ottawa for stepping in.
 
***
On culture and the Canadian Armed Forces, there are some good essays in Alistair Edgar, Rupinder Mangat, and Bessma Momani’s Strengthening the Canadian Armed Forces through Diversity and Inclusion.
 
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It was Commonwealth Day last week (I, too, didn’t know there was such a thing), and both the CBC and Open Canada published articles about it that got me thinking.
 
At the CBC, Janet Davison, noted the “longstanding debate and questions over the role and relevance of the organization” without coming to any strong conclusions.  
 
The article on Open Canada, by community advocate Spencer van Vloten, called for Ottawa to abandon the club altogether.
 
Van Vloten argues that even as the Commonwealth claims to be dedicated to promoting “equality, diversity, and shared values,” it includes as members a number of states well-known for their human rights abuses.
 
Canada gains little economically from the association, most of which is with Great Britain anyways.
 
As for our historical Commonwealth ties, Canadians are growing increasingly detached from the monarchy, and contemporary Canadian values are “at odds with a system of hereditary privilege” that forms its basis.
 
The article concludes as follows:
 
“When it comes to the Commonwealth, the tens of millions of dollars* Canada contributes each year to keep this ineffective, increasingly irrelevant club afloat could instead be spent improving the lives of Canadians in a time of great need.”
 
[*Canada actually contributes just over $10 million per year, hardly a negligible amount of money, but much less than “tens of millions.”]
 
It seems to me that there are at least three strong reasons to reject van Vloten’s argument, each of which speaks to the importance of understanding the role of diplomacy in contemporary Canadian statecraft.
 
First, and most important, the Commonwealth offers Ottawa a significant (54-country) venue for international negotiations that does not include the United States.
 
Put more practically, the Commonwealth’s biannual heads of government meeting provides Canadian prime ministers with a regularized opportunity to meet with their UK, Australia, and New Zealand counterparts (the other non-American Five Eyes members) without drawing potentially embarrassing attention to Washington’s exclusion.
 
Canadian prime ministers gain similarly privileged, unimpeded access to the heads of government of India, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Singapore, among others.
 
Second, at the operational level, Commonwealth membership provides Ottawa with regular access to nearly all of CARICOM, some of the fastest-growing countries in Africa, as well as a majority of the world’s small-island developing states.
 
In these latter cases, Canada’s status as the second-largest Commonwealth donor (along with its close relationship to the United States) makes it a country to which many of these smaller states will gravitate.
 
Such gravitation is what I suspect (and hope?) Foreign Minister Joly meant last week when she heralded Canada’s convening power: the depth and scope of our diplomatic network enables Canadian officials to assemble diverse groups of states with otherwise divergent interests on behalf of allies whose Rolodexes might be leaner.
 
Such convening power increases our international relevance, and occasionally allows Ottawa to shape the broader global diplomatic agenda in line with the national interest.
 
Finally, I wonder whether van Vloten has underestimated the strategic implications of a Canadian decision to unilaterally exit the Commonwealth.
 
Were the organization to lose its second largest donor, if it were to survive at all, it would be a shell of its former self, and Canada would be to blame.
 
Such negative international attention would be particularly harmful to a country whose interests are best promoted and protected in a multilateral system of rules and laws.
 
Once we make our own commitment to international organization conditional (and based solely on an overly rigid conception of 'what's in it for us'), we compromise our ability to criticize others for doing the same.
 
In sum, the practice of diplomacy in the modern era is significantly more complicated than a simple quantification of the measurable benefits and drawbacks of membership in an international organization.
 
For a country like Canada, that typically lacks the resources to effect drastic change in bilateral negotiations with the more powerful states, venues that allow for relationship-building with some of the international community’s smaller members – outside of the American shadow – should be welcomed, not nickel-and-dimed.
 
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On the history of Canadian multilateralism, see the third edition of Tom Keating’s, Canada and World Order: The Multilateralist Tradition in Canadian Foreign Policy.

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