Foreign Affairs Committee on March 2nd, 2009

[Peter Harder]

He wrote Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I'm reading that one. I'm almost finished that one. I've become quite a fan of his, I think.

Hernando de Soto wrote the book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. He talks about the need for emerging economies to have, first of all, the rule of law, contract law, and recognition of the ownership of property as stabilizing factors. When we talk about Canada's foreign policy, and obviously we work very closely with the United States on many of these issues—you talked, Mr. Harder, about our businesses going in and about globalization—are we helping to make those things happen in these emerging economies? Is there something we can be doing that would help that move along more quickly? Do you see it as beneficial that we work in those areas?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Ms. Brown.

Go ahead, Mr. Harder.

[Peter Harder]

Thank you for the question.

I believe there is a lot we can do--a lot we can do with the existing resources we have and a lot we can do with targeted resources added to our repertoire. This needs both ministerial blessing and engagement, but a lot can be done by diplomats as well.

I do some work in South America. In the countries where I work, at the highest levels--presidents and ministers--they talk about the Canadian approach to investment. They mean transparency, rule of law, and predictability. We, in turn, ask of the local government that they respond in a fashion whereby Canadian investment meets the criteria of transparency, rule of law--often environmental issues and labour issues are involved if you're dealing with the mining sector--and in South America, aboriginal issues. In one case, there is active engagement of the aboriginal leadership in Canada with the aboriginal leadership in the countries I'm referring to. They are talking about Canadian aboriginals being part of the extraction industry in Canada as a model for the country.

I mention this because it's not just officials; civil society and other players can add to the repertoire we can bring to a particular country's needs. But I do think you have to have the enhanced capacity to do some of this stuff. It is very difficult to pursue this if you don't have a significant presence and the capacity and understanding.

I am an optimist. I believe that Canada can have influence globally, but we also must be realistic in acknowledging that while we are a G8 country and a serious economic player, we are not as unique as we were 20 years ago or 30 years ago in the sense of where global power is. To that extent, we have to focus. We have to have niches, and we have to have the ideas that bring relevance to the engagement. When that has worked well, it has made a significant difference, and there are examples you could cite.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Taylor, would you like to comment on whether Canada can be a player in this negotiation process?

[James H. Taylor]

Yes, certainly, I'd be glad to.

I think Peter is right about nations. Of course we want our country to hold its head up in the world, but you have to consider what your assets are and what your limitations are when you aspire to influence international events.

There's a certain amount of the Canadian presence that is, you might say, a fortuitous accident of our history. That is to say, we happen to be a country that was once a French colony and then became a British colony. That has given us in this past generation the possibility of creating links, if we wished, with two-thirds of the sovereign states in the world, with many of whom we really share, initially anyway, very little except this historic accident that they too were once either a French colony or a British colony. Well, if you apply the hard-boiled test of immediate Canadian interests, very often you find that our interests in these countries are minuscule, initially at least, and the relationships have to be synthesized out of almost nothing, to begin with.

When empires were put on the block after the first war, and particularly after the second war, the nation faced the decision of whether it would limit its perspectives. For instance, again as Peter was suggesting, we might have said Canada's role is really in the Americas, and if we're going to help poor countries, for instance, there's lots of poverty to be dealt with right here on our geographic doorstep, so to speak. We could have, had we wished to, focused our efforts then and not developed a worldwide set of connections. Again, I myself think it was because of a historic accident. That is to say, when the British empire broke up, it broke into some huge pieces, and when India, in particular, became independent in 1947 and marked the end of the British empire, it was obvious that this was a vast, new sovereign state, one of the most populous countries in the world, the focus of hundreds of millions of people, many of them living in poverty. This was a vast weight in the international system that you simply couldn't ignore, in particular because we had a connection with it in the Commonwealth membership and in the fact that India was this vast democracy, and we wished to encourage and support India.

So when the question was first put to Canada, in effect we said yes, we are open; we must be open, surely, to the possibilities of an expanded relationship with countries like India and Pakistan. But that set the pattern. Nobody thought at the time that, well, if you do that in India and Pakistan, what do you do for all the other ex-British colonies that are going to become sovereign states in the next generation? In particular, no one foresaw at that time that the French empire was going to be put on the block in the fifties.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you to our guests for taking the time today to help us with our project.

I was taken by both your presentations. I might just start with Mr. Taylor because I too was happy to hear in Mr. Obama's historic speech the mention of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. It's interesting, you mentioned that it was something that had been an issue right after the fall of the wall and that a lot of really good work was done. And I was glad to see, as you also mentioned, the bipartisan article of people like Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Shultz joining arms with Mr. Nunn.

I must say to you that if you had told me in 1986 that would ever happen, I would have said that you should check the water you're drinking.

So I'm glad you mentioned it, because I want to go further with you on this, to where Canada can play a role. You intimated just a second ago that we can't do everything, but that there are a couple of key things we can do. Are you aware of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol that was put forward recently? It basically is a venture whereby about a year ago there was a discussion about having a target date set of being nuclear free by 2020 and that there would be a convention to that effect signed by 2010. I would note that the name of the protocol, which obviously came out of Japan, was actually something that had been done through mayors globally around the world. And I know a little bit about that from when my mother was mayor and had taken this issue on, along with mayors from other cities around the world.

But what I was going to then venture into was, should Canada get involved in that? And I'm thinking of our experience on other protocols like the land mine treaty and of course the cluster bomb treaty.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Taylor.

[James H. Taylor]

Let me relate this to what I was saying in reply to the previous question.

Once again, I think we want to play a role and I think a role would be widely supported in Canada. But you have to consider how you're placed in relation to this question. I think the first step, in the case of further nuclear disarmament, would be for us to find out what the new administration intends to do in the United States. That could be done confidentially in diplomatic conversations, initially.

President Obama said more on this subject during the campaign, but we all know there's a difference between being a candidate and being in office. All he has said in office, as I pointed out, is so far very limited. What priority does he intend to give to this? If the United States intends to take a public lead soon, that's one thing. If he has decided that this is something so vast that he's going to go at it relatively slowly and not use up political credit early in his period of office on this project, that's something else.

Where do we stand in relation to it? Well, if the United Stated were indeed to take an initiative, it would require a vast diplomatic effort that would need to be supported by various categories of countries. There will be a task of persuading countries that have nuclear weapons. There will be a task of reassuring countries that could produce nuclear weapons. And it doesn't take much to produce them; when you think that countries such as Pakistan and North Korea can produce nuclear weapons, then there are all sorts of countries in the world that have the potential, including our own.

We were the first, really, to face that option and decide not to develop weapons. We have a unique standing, from that point of view, and an entry into the question and a right, if you will, to take an initiative in the absence, perhaps, of an American initiative. We would be representing a group of countries that have turned their faces against the option of developing a weapons program, and we would have to be prepared to deal with the people who would say to us, inevitably: it's all very well for you people to speak; your security has been guaranteed from the very beginning by the Americans, in the act of defending themselves.

You'd have to be able to speak to friendly countries, such as Japan, that are much more exposed and that obviously have the industrial potential to produce weapons--although it's almost unthinkable that Japan, of all countries, would ever embark on a weapons program. But think of how exposed the Japanese are, with China and Russia and North Korea. Countries in that position have a much less secure sense of their place, from this point of view, than we have. If we are going to step out and support a cause of this kind, in doing so we have to take account of anxieties of that kind.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have two more minutes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I have a question for Mr. Harder on his comments about global relationships—and of course, as they relate to the United States.

The Commonwealth is an interesting group. It's not that active these days, but it has certainly served us on many issues in the past, as in the case of South Africa, among others. There are some interesting data to back up what you've been saying.

What do you envision, looking ahead? Should we, with the Americans, be really pushing the G20 over the G8? This is not to say the G8 is dead, but is it time to put our emphasis there with the Americans and push them there as well?

[Peter Harder]

I believe the G8-G20 debate is not a zero-sum game, that we should be actively pursuing our role within the G8. There is an agenda. We will have the leadership of the G8 next year, which is a terrific opportunity for Canada to highlight its ideas for global issues, but the time has come for the G20 as well.

I was always of the view that the G20 would be a reality when an issue demanded its presence. The global economic crisis has allowed the G20, at the leaders' level, to be the logical forum. The G8 was not legitimate, in terms of representing the powers that were necessary, to begin to have the dialogue across the interests of nationalities and countries to shape a collective strategy. So the G20, I think, is here to be an additional forum on the agenda of global governance, and that's to be welcomed.

I'd probably suggest there are some absences on that list that one might wish to address, but that's nuance. As long as the G20 credits itself in this crisis as an effective forum for reaching some degree of consensus in how countries will participate in action plans to deal with the global crisis, it will be further legitimized for other issues, perhaps.

That continues to allow the G8, by the way, to have its role of being a catalyst. They certainly are more like-minded than the G20 can be. It used to be the industrial democracies, and the so-called Outreach 5, which have now almost become a regular feature of the G8, will continue. I suspect that maybe in 10 years, if the G20 has evolved with not just the issue they're dealing with today but perhaps other issues that it is able to contribute to global solutions through that mechanism, it might become a more prominent mechanism than the G8, and that's good.

But I don't think we should throw out the G8 and say it's all about the G20. There are issues on which the consensus the G8 is able to achieve--or the G7 on financial issues--is an important catalyst around which further work and further action can take place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Harder.

Mr. Goldring, please. We're into the second round, Mr. Goldring, so five or six minutes, please.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Taylor, you had made comments, the echoes from the Plains of Abraham, about the linguistic duality of our country. Certainly that's a very important asset in dealing with the French world and the English world, but there's an additional one here, which is our multiculturalism. Literally, Canada has all the nations of the world within one country and is unique in that aspect. A tremendous amount can be gained by better engaging the diaspora of the various communities internationally.

But my question is more toward the United States, Washington, and the embassy in Washington, and about my understanding of the secretariat that is being formed there, that's being set up for advocacy and as lobbyists for Canada's interest. How does that manifest itself and how many are engaged in that? Is there room to put in more resources? What have they been able to do? Do they influence Canada-U.S. policy? Could you tell us a little more about that group?.

[James H. Taylor]

I'm sorry, I'm really not equipped to answer that. I left the department in 1993 and I don't know what resources they've—

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Oh, my understanding is that it was set up before that.

[Peter Harder]

It was set up when I was there.

It built on the congressional relations office that was set up when Mr. Gotlieb was our ambassador and the whole notion of engaging Congress more aggressively. But there was an evolution of thinking that said, well, we have provinces that have relationships in Washington that we should leverage, and we should be more active in advocacy programs using web-based or other advocacy tools.

I couldn't tell you how many people are presently engaged; you will have to get that from the department. But I do know that after 9/11 the embassy launched a very significant advertisement campaign to show solidarity, and also the Canadian participation in post-9/11 events served us very well. And there are other ways in which I think the advocacy group could be made more robust in terms of the kinds of roles we talked about today.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Is that just set up in Washington, or are there other models? Are they trying to do that in other areas, or is it more specifically provincial representation--

[Peter Harder]

Well, there is co-location with other governments, provincial governments, and of course the presence of other departments in most embassies abroad--not all, but major capitals and the like.

In the United States it is G1, and given the nature of the diffusion of power, it is a more deliberative approach, absolutely, and resources are more generously allocated.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

On another issue, given the new regime there and some discussion about it, there is one remaining Cold War wall, if you like, to be torn down, and that's the Helms-Burton control of Cuba. Canada seems to have excellent relationships with Cuba. Is there a role that Canada can play to work with this new administration to better our interests in the region as well as help the United States and Washington bridge this last gap?

[Peter Harder]

I actually think there is a role we can play as long as we don't talk about it. That's one of the real challenges of foreign policy. There is in Parliament and there is in the media and in the broad public a desire to articulate what you are doing. Cuba is a perfect example of where our experience--our presence in Cuba over a long period of time--and the kind of expertise that we have developed are very carefully sought after by the Americans, and it can have significant effect, I believe, but not if we talk about it.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Would that same logic carry through to concerns that Washington might have in the eastern European countries, where Canada also seems to have excellent working relationships with countries like Ukraine, Poland, Georgia, and other countries?

[Peter Harder]

But the Americans are there.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

The Americans are there.