​Last week, as things in Ukraine went from awful to catastrophic, the Globe and Mail published a lengthy analysis of the potential financial impacts of international sanctions against Russia on Canadian businesses.
 
It turns out that because Canada, Ukraine, and Russia produce a number of the same products, Vladimir Putin’s efforts to destroy the liberal democratic order that has kept us safe for close to 80 years could actually benefit quite a few Canadian producers.
 
Farmers (wheat), miners, and people in the fertilizer business (potash and phosphates) are among those set to profit the most, along with members of the forestry and energy sectors.
 
The losers could include restaurants, food producers, grocery stores and, of course, individual Canadians who should expect to see increases to the cost of living continue to accelerate.
 
The article got me thinking about the difference between supporting a cause, and sacrificing for it.
 
In Canadians’ recent experience with international conflict, we’ve been good at the former, but rarely called upon to do the latter.
 
Consider Afghanistan: For the first time in our history, Liberal and Conservative governments in Ottawa cut personal and corporate taxes while members of the Canadian Armed Forces were losing their lives in combat overseas.
 
Put crassly, while the CAF (and their families) went to war, the rest of Canada went shopping.
 
Sure, most of us supported the troops and their families, but it sure didn’t cost us much.
 
If the Ukrainians can continue to hold off Putin and his thugs, and the international sanctions regime against Russia remains in place indefinitely, Canadians will likely be asked to do more than just support Ukraine; most of us will have to make sacrifices.
 
Environmentalists will have to hold their noses while Western Europe burns coal to compensate for a lack of access to Russian oil and natural gas.
 
Fiscal conservatives might have to come to grips with tax increases to pay for enhancements to our armed forces, our cyber defences, and our domestic security operations to defend the national interest in a significantly more dangerous world.

New parents might have to deal with a delay in the achievement of $10-a-day childcare  as Ottawa reprioritizes spending on national and international security.
  
Businesses with plans in place to welcome new immigrant workers might have to wait so that Ottawa can offer those immigration opportunities to Ukrainian refugees.
 
New Canadians could face delays in their ability to sponsor family members to move here for the same reason.

(Responsible) provincial leaders whose fiscal balance sheets are benefiting from the death and destruction of liberal democracy in Eastern Europe might have to recalculate their budgets to enable the successful integration an influx of unanticipated refugees.
 
All of us will almost certainly have to deal with higher prices at the pump, a bigger number on our grocery bills, and new costs to improve our individual and collective cyber hygiene to defend against the Russian threat.
 
No one should expect this to be easy.
 
The national willingness to make sacrifices for the greater good at the beginning of the current pandemic was inspirational, but the last few months in particular have seen too many Canadians privilege their own “freedoms” over the idea of collective safety and security.
 
In that context, it seems to me that if there ever was a time for our political leaders to level with us about what might lay ahead, now would be it.
 
The onus is on the federal government to make the first move. But Canadians will only believe a prime minister with negative approval ratings if members of the opposition back him up.
 
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For a sense of the societal transformation that could be necessary here in Canada, take a look at what's happening in Germany.

To support Ukrainian refugees, you can donate here.
 
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​Ryan Tumilty had a story in the National Post this weekend that provides a fairly comprehensive summary of the events leading up to the federal government’s imposition of the Emergencies Act.
 
That said, I wonder whether he’s missed something on the foreign policy side.
 
Tumilty identifies the turning point in federal policy as the weekend of February 12-13. He notes that even early on Friday, February 11th, Prime Minister Trudeau was calling the blockades a local law-enforcement issue.
 
He then quotes a source that says: “The absolute state of mayhem that it was over the (second) weekend, I think cemented to everyone that this is beyond the capacity of local law enforcement.”
 
I accept the timeline, but I’m not certain we can really understand the change in the government’s posture without taking into consideration the personal intervention of US president Joe Biden that Friday.
 
Biden called Ottawa to make clear that the blockades at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor and at other border crossings were unacceptable and had to be ended.
 
The American read-out of the conversation noted that “The Prime Minister promised quick action in enforcing the law.”
 
The Canadian read-out added: “The leaders agreed to continue closely coordinating bilateral efforts to ensure our respective authorities have all of the tools and information required to bring these illegal actions to an end as quickly as possible.”
 
In my experience studying the history of Canada-US relations, taking these two sentences together suggests that if Ottawa did not resolve the border situation soon, Washington would do so on its behalf.
 
As CTV News’s Rachel Aiello and Sarah Turnbull reported, almost immediately following Biden’s call, the prime minister’s tone changed.
 
All of a sudden, “‘everything’ – with the exception of deploying the Canadian Armed Forces” was on the table.
 
If you read the text of the Emergencies Act announcement, you’ll find a number of references to the Ambassador Bridge and to border security.
 
There’s a similar reference in subsection (b) (iii) of the February 14th Order in Council.
 
And don’t forget the always perceptive Paul Wells of Macleans, who drew attention to the significance of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s comments justifying the new policy:
 
“We fought tooth and nail to protect Canada’s privileged relationship with the United States during the NAFTA negotiations, and we stood up to the 232 tariffs that were illegal and unjustified. We won’t let these hard-won victories be tarnished. The world is watching us. Our jobs, prosperity and livelihoods are at stake. That’s why the government is acting.”
 
As an outsider who was not privy to the Biden-Trudeau conversation, it’s hard for me to be certain of anything, but based on what I’ve read, the Canadian government might well have imposed the Emergencies Act as a form of what the late Norwegian historian Nils Ørvik once called “defence against help.”
 
In other words, Ottawa did whatever it took to defend itself against “help” from Washington that would have compromised Canada’s sovereignty.
 
Why does this matter?
 
Because once things have calmed back down, I suspect that most Canadians will be focused on understanding what happened in Ottawa itself: the failures of the local police, the provincial Tories, and the federal Liberals to respond meaningfully until the situation was out of control.
 
We need an explanation for those failures, but if we don’t take the time to think seriously about the future of Canada-US border security, I fear that we will miss one of the critical lessons of this terrible month.
 
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On “defence against help,” I recommend an article by Philippe Lagassé from International Journal. Don Barry and Duane Bratt wrote a longer piece here. There is also a more recent essay by P. Whitney Lackenbauer here. The original 1973 article can be found here.
 
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A couple of additional political musings for a deeply political time:

• In his 2019 book, Promise and Peril: Justin Trudeau in Power, the CBC’s Aaron Wherry noted that the prime minister seems to be at his “most vulnerable when he [feels he] is doing well.” I can’t disagree. We seem to have a prime minister who too often plays down to the level of his competition. It cost Canadians dearly this month.

 

• In the period leading up to the 1995 referendum, Canadians faced a crisis of national unity far greater than the one we face today. At the time, we were led by a Liberal prime minister who failed to take the threat of Quebec separatism seriously until it was almost too late. Fortunately, the leader of the Progressive Conservatives, Jean Charest, put aside partisanship to help to keep Canada together. I can only imagine what might have happened had Charest thought instead: “So we need to turn this into the (prime minister’s) problem.” It’s easy to forget that there was a time when Conservatives took pride in being the adults in the room.

 
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I spent some time yesterday thinking about the so-called freedom convoy through the lens of foreign policy.
 
Setting aside the hyperbolic foolishness of one former leader of the Official Opposition, I remain convinced that the greatest threat to the security – and therefore also to the freedom – of Canadians is a successful attack on the United States planned in and/or launched from Canada.
 
In that context, inasmuch as I understand the media’s fixation on the horrific situation in Ottawa, it’s also worth paying attention to the problem along the Canada-US border in Coutts, Alberta.
 
I shudder to think of the impact of even a single lone wolf who were to use the chaos caused by the protestors to do serious harm to US travellers, or border officials.
 
More broadly, it seems to me that the greatest threat today to the liberal democratic values and ideals that have shaped the international order under which Canadians have prospered is the deterioration of respect for our fellow citizens that these sorts of convoys engender.
 
Disunity at home undermines our ability to promote and defend our interests abroad.
 
Consider, for example, how ongoing domestic chaos risks compromising Ottawa’s position as a dependable NATO ally in the face of increasing Russian military pressure on Ukraine.
 
I have therefore struggled to understand how members of the Opposition can criticize the government for failing to offer sufficient support to the people of Ukraine, and yet still all but welcome the disorder into which our capital has fallen on account of the extremists among the protestors.
 
Surely, they too can see Vladimir Putin grinning as the chief of the Ottawa police muses about requesting that our already over-committed Canadian Armed Forces take their eyes off of Eastern Europe to help restore order at home.
 
And I wonder whether Xi Jinping could even manufacture better evidence to support the claim he makes around the world that the liberal democratic way is inferior to China’s “proper socialist values.”
 
While I am therefore disappointed with members of the Opposition for their ignorance and self-aggrandizing behaviour, I cannot help but be critical of the government as well.
 
A serious conversation about global affairs in this country must begin at the top. And when you refuse to speak about Canada’s national interests in language that is at once nuanced yet also accessible, eventually the public comes to believe that foreign policy is both easy and unimportant.
 
It’s time for fewer media lines about so-called Canadian leadership and more detailed, authentic answers to questions about the thinking behind our actions, and inaction.
 
When the so-called rallies for freedom began, rather than posing for pictures, I would have liked to have seen members of Parliament from all sides of the House of Commons escorting health care workers to hospitals, and the vulnerable to appointments, while doing anything they could to augment the disappointing efforts of the Ottawa police to hold the nefarious elements within the convoy to account.

It should be possible to recognize the right to speak freely while at the same time standing up for the rule of law and the most vulnerable among us. Such a posture would be helpful at home, but it would also send a reassuring message to Canadian allies and counter our adversaries' efforts to undermine the liberal democratic order.

In sum, the foreign policy implications of the “freedom convoy” are too significant to ignore:
 
The situation in Coutts threatens our credibility as a reliable American partner and neighbour; the disappointing response of our political representatives has multiplied the social cleavages among us at a time when NATO needs Canadians to stand together; Ukraine - and the liberal order it has come to represent - is in greater danger than it has been in years; and Putin and Xi are laughing from afar.
 
If that’s what more freedom will get me, I’ll pass.
 
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On the issue of deploying the Canadian Armed Forces to quell the protests in Ottawa, see this Twitter thread from Carleton’s Leah West.
 
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The late Canadian diplomat turned international affairs commentator, John Holmes, used to say that Canada was a regional power without a region.
 
It was a clever turn of phrase, but it also helped explain why, during the Cold War, Ottawa was well-positioned to pursue a middle-power-like agenda.
 
We looked like a serious country, but when it came to international security, to borrow a phrase from my father, we weren’t busy.
 
I’ve been thinking a lot about that idea recently in the context of ongoing public criticism of Canadian foreign policy.
 
Just last week, John Ivison of the National Post wrote: “The hard truth is that Canada doesn’t matter that much anymore.”
 
In The Line, Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney suggested something similar:
 
“The world is a dangerous, complicated, and challenging place, and getting more so with each passing day. And while our allies and partners are rolling up their sleeves and preparing to meet these challenges head on, they aren’t even bothering to give Canada a call.” 
 
They went on to cite Ottawa’s exclusion from AUKUS; a call by President Biden on Ukraine that included the UK, France, Germany, Poland, the EU, and NATO (but not Prime Minister Trudeau); and a meeting in Norway on Afghanistan that brought together the US, Britain, Germany, Italy, and the EU, but again, not Canada.
 
Gerson and Gurney claim that Ottawa has failed to take international relations seriously:
 
“We don’t spend the money, or put in the effort, or adopt the required policies that would cause our friends and allies to take us seriously. We’re seen as feckless, or free riders, or both, and instead of acknowledging the problem, we spin obvious snubs as signs of our deeper virtue.” 
 
There’s certainly some truth in what they’ve written. Historically, our country has too often pursued a foreign policy that, to crib from my RMC colleague and defence policy expert Joel Sokolsky, has started with the question: How much is just enough?
 
To make matters worse, too many Canadian governments have framed such frugality in absurdly self-congratulatory terms.
 
But I think that part of the challenge is also structural.
 
Take Canada’s rather accidental membership in the G7.
 
Being part of the G7 implies a degree of international importance.
 
But Canada is a country of less than 40 million people. The next smallest G7 member, Italy, has a population of about 60 million.
 
Put another way, the difference in population size between Canada and Italy is about the same as that between Canada and Mali, or Romania, or Chile.
 
The difference in population size between Canada and the smallest of the original G5 members is about the same as that between Canada and the Dominican Republic.
 
But shouldn’t those numbers make it easier for Ottawa to play the role, in Ivison’s terms, of “middle power interlocutor”?
 
Not really in 2022 – we’re too rich for that.
 
Canada has the world’s 10th largest economy, and we have economic interests everywhere. We cannot claim to be the disinterested, smallish impartial state we could in the 1950s when we traded almost exclusively with the United States and the United Kingdom, and Canadians of European descent formed the overwhelming majority of our population.
 
Norway has one-quarter of Canada’s GDP and is significantly more homogeneous. With that much less skin in the international game, it can make a more credible case to the world when it presents itself as a disinterested and well-meaning global problem solver.
 
So we’re a regional power without a region; a G7 country lacking the population necessary to keep up; and a middle power that has grown too wealthy and internationally-invested to appeal to the smaller states.
 
All of this is not forgive successive Canadian governments for their collective failures to take our international obligations sufficiently seriously.
 
And there is no question that most states would give anything for Canada’s “problems.”
 
But perhaps it wouldn’t hurt – at least occasionally – to judge political Ottawa with a touch of empathy.
 
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For some thoughtful ideas on where Canadian foreign policy should be heading, take a look at this essay by the former ambassador and current Canadian Forces College mentor, Kerry Buck. For more on the “golden age” of foreign policy, you could try this essay that I wrote a while back.
 
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