Roundup: Foreign policy complacency

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There has been some musing of late about Canada’s place in the world, and a couple of things jumped out at me. First is Paul Wells’ most recent column, which responds to a Globe and Mailop-ed from a former trade negotiator that wrings its hands at the way the current government is handling China. As Wells points out, said former negotiator is all over the map in terms of contradictory advice, but most gallingly, suggests that we break our extradition treaty with our largest and closest ally in order to appease China. And Wells quite properly boggles at this suggestion we break our treaty, while at the same time taking a moment to reflect on how there is a different way in which Ottawa seems to operate when it comes to these matters, particularly in an era where major corporations with investments in China are no longer calling the shots by way of political financing.

At the same time, Stephanie Carvin makes some particularly poignant observations about Canada’s foreign policy complacency in this era of the Americans retreating from their obligations on the world stage (never mind the Brexit-mired UK). We talk a good game, but have no follow-through, and in the past, she has quite rightly pointed to the fact that we won’t invest in the kinds of things we talk about the importance of globally (most especially “feminist” foreign aid). The government’s actions in Mali are another decent example – putting on a big song and dance about how important it is we go there, spend a few months there doing low-risk medevac, and then refuse to extend the mission for a few extra months so that our replacements can get properly established, meaning there will be a gap in services there.

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1080853935328497665

https://twitter.com/StephanieCarvin/status/1080854398052564992

I do have to wonder about some of the crossover between what Wells and Carvin are talking about – that Wells points to the rise of crowd-pleasing populism freeing governments from the go-along-to-get-along complacency, but Carvin points to the fact that we are not actually free of that complacency, though perhaps there are different sorts of complacency that we are grappling with when it comes to our place on the world stage. Something to think about in any case.

Good reads:

  • A delegation of MPs and senators are going ahead with a planned trip to China despite the current tensions and detentions.
  • Meanwhile, the Chinese government says it’s “not convenient” to discuss the charges of the two most prominent Canadians being detained.
  • The government is scaling back on underused post-arrival services for new immigrants, and scaling up funding for pre-arrival services.
  • Tech companies say that the government’s programmes to help start-ups scale-up aren’t working for them.
  • Just before the Christmas break, three expert reports on expanding the right-to-die to include advance directives, mental illness and mature minors were tabled.
  • The RCMP could be facing a major change in its structure to include civilian oversight and external process to deal with harassment.
  • CSIS is looking to hire hackers and data scientists, but some worry that this means an escalation in the cyber-arms race.
  • The deal to acquire 25 Australian F-18s has been finalised and the first of them could be flying here by this summer.
  • Access to Information requests for internal Privy Council Office polling data shows that carbon pricing may not be as unpopular as Andrew Scheer suggests.
  • StatsCan says that the partial US-government shutdown could affect the quality of trade data it relies upon.
  • Rising interest rates are showing signs of a housing correction in Canada.
  • Organisers of a wannabe-Yellow Vest truck convoy to Ottawa to demand pipelines are concerned their message might confused. Gosh, you think?
  • MPs are tinkering with the e-petition system to make it more responsive.
  • New political fundraising rules are now in place in advance of the next election.
  • Here’s a profile of the new Liberal candidate in Burnaby South, who will run against Jagmeet Singh. (The Conservatives declined to comment).
  • Here’s a look at why campaigning on anger makes for a poor governing strategy, and how Jason Kenney should avoid Doug Ford’s mistakes with it.
  • Colby Cosh goes through the arguments of the federal government in the Saskatchewan carbon tax challenge, and finds they short-changed the winning one.
  • Chris Selley walks us through the problems with Canada’s butter market, dominated by Supply Management that produces a mediocre, indistinguishable product.

Odds and ends:

Here’s a look at the Lake of the Woods issue, with a sliver of land that should belong to Manitoba belonging to the Americans because of a survey error.

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