Rex Murphy calls out Canadian politicians for their unwillingness to act upon the 'Responsibility to Protect' doctrine of justifiable intervention against repressive states committing humanitarian atrocities, a doctrine Canada was instrumental in the creating.
Foreign Policy issues have not been even near a main focus of any Canadian election in a long time. Canadian politics have been inwardly focused for a while now, so governments haven't had a strong mandate to take strong foreign policy orientations radically different from the past. Hence the waffling in 2003 over the decision about our stance re: the Iraq War
Before, Canada was a leader of the middle powers, but now we're a small player in the Big Powers camp. Canada is no longer a distinct player on the West's team in the eyes of the rest of the world, in contrast to Canada's role as the Peacekeeping nation that we had earlier. Voting for the extra seats on the UN Security council is basically decided by countries outside the West, so currying favour in these is more important than doing the same within the West.
International influence could be achieved for Canada by pursuing a strong election-based mandate to take a radically new foreign policy stance that would make us popular again in the Developing World/South.
However, the Centre-Left has strongly made its point known that it will not support military spending to have a military force capable of either tactical deployment or peacekeeping missions. And the Centre-Right will not support a radical increase in ODA spending given the concerns over the economy in the current recessionary period. We're really stuck at the moment.
Despite the fact that Libya is a textbook case of intervention on R2P grounds, Canada has not sufficiently thrown its support behind ousting Qaddafi from power, reflecting our country's divided foreign policy stances. However, I think that R2P could become that basis for a united foreign policy.
It simultaneously meets the desires of some groups on the Right for Regime Changes towards Democracy. It also meets the Left's desire for the promotion of Human Rights globally, a sentiment shared by a huge proportion of Canadians.
However, promotion of R2P isn't without its detractions in terms of UN influence. The UN General Assembly is populated by numerous countries who would be prime targets for the application of R2P, or could be in the future. Also, it would be absolutely necessary to avoid the optic of R2P being seen as merely another justification for Western cultural/political imperialism over other countries. Although I think this solution is unlikely, given Russia would veto any such proposal, it could mean taking action against unsavory characters in Eastern Europe. In any case, R2P seems limited in its application to the countries in which states have no diplomatic protection and are viewed generally as the basket cases of the world.
Canada's Foreign Policy should be a major election issue so that our wavering support for R2P can be discussed at decided upon.
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