Five things about Minister Chrystia Freeland’s foreign policy speech

OTTAWA — Remember Responsible Conviction? That was so 2016.

That was the label Stephane Dion gave to Canada’s foreign policy last year when Barack Obama was in the White House and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was enjoying a full-on bromance with his like-minded counterpart.

Now, it’s 2017. Donald Trump is the U.S. president and he is casting doubt on international institutions like the United Nations and NATO, he wants to tear up free trade deals central to Canada’s economic interest, he has taken the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, and wants countries to spend more on their militaries to ease the U.S. burden.

Canada’s new foreign policy, which Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland delivered to the House of Commons Tuesday, tried to address the new reality of the U.S. withdrawal from global leadership.

Freeland didn’t replace “responsible conviction” with her own new label. She never once named Trump. But there was never any doubt that Canada has changed direction to take into account the new presidency. Here are five things that can be taken away from her lengthy speech about Canada’s 2017 foreign policy:

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1. History Matters

It has been written by many that in the aftermath of the Second World War, Canada got a seat at the big international tables that birthed the UN, NATO and the roots of the global financial apparatus that endures to today, namely the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. As Freeland said: “Seventy years ago they were revolutionary. And they set the stage for the longest period of peace and prosperity in our history.” Therefore, Canada will defend their work.

2. You think we’re a nation of peacekeepers? Ha!

Though she noted Lester Pearson’s Nobel Peace Prize for helping invent peacekeeping back in the 1950s as well as numerous contributions to UN blue helmet missions from the Suez to Cyprus, Freeland said Canada still needs to spend “billions” on a military that can fight. That’s clearly meant to till the earth for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan’s defence review coming on Wednesday. Canada needs “hard power” to play its part with allies to offer a credible deterrent in world full of threats: North Korea’s dictatorship, the “monstrous extremists” of ISIL; Russian aggression in Europe. “Our ability to act against such threats alone is limited. It requires co-operation with like-minded countries.”

3. Climate change, like war, is also hell

Freeland called it an “existential threat” that the world needs to tackle. “Climate change is a shared menace, affecting every single person on this planet. Civil war, poverty, drought and natural disasters anywhere in the world threaten us as well — not least because these catastrophes spawn globally-destabilizing mass migrations.”

4. Diversity Matters

Sure, there’s a lot of anxiety that too many people “have been left behind” by globalization, and more needs to be done to distribute wealth more equally. But don’t blame immigrants: “It is wrong to view the woes of our middle class as the result of fiendish behaviour by foreigners.” Moreover, Canada will stand up for the rights of women, gays and lesbians, transgendered people, racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious minorities, and indigenous people. For women in particular, that means protecting sexual reproduction and the right to safe abortion: “These rights are at the core of our foreign policy.”

5. History Matters Redux: “Pretty Boy” Freeland and his brothers

Freeland recalled that her great uncle Warren Freeland joined her father, John Wilbur “Pretty Boy” Freeland, and their brother, Carleton, in enlisting in the Second World. Warren didn’t make it back. They “intuitively understood the connection between their lives, and those of people they’d never met” who lived far away and spoke different languages. “Our job today is to preserve their achievement, and to build on it; to use the multilateral structures they created as the foundation for planetary accords and institutions fit for the new realities of this century.”

Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press

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