Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me today. It's always a great privilege to be able to address the elected representatives of the House of Commons.
In the coming years, Canada will face major structural challenges. Climate change has already been mentioned. Combatting climate change must be a priority. We are also witnessing the rise of China, which will perhaps become one of the two great superpowers of the international system, which will shake things up a lot.
I would like to draw the attention of the members of the committee today on the risk, unfortunately increasingly real in recent months, that we will see elected, in the United States, a president or, indeed, a leadership team that abandons the role played by the United States—its role as leader of the western world and guarantor of the international order in which we have been operating since the Second World War.
I'm not alone among my colleagues in being concerned about issues like these. I'm thinking in particular of my colleague Kim Richard Nossal, retired from Queen's University, who a few weeks ago published a book entitled Canada Alone: Navigating the Post-American World, which also posits this problem as being at the heart of what should preoccupy Canada. Right now, I'm speaking for myself, but I mention it, because it is, I think, an important resource for the committee.
There's a good chance, then, that the next American presidency will be much closer to an isolationist foreign policy, tinged with distrust, if not contempt, for international institutions; this would include military alliances such as NATO. Such a presidency and policy would have strained, or difficult relations, to say the least, even with its allies and closest partners.
Of course I am referring to Donald Trump, but the individual himself is no longer, in my view, as important, insofar as the Republican Party of the United States and a large number of American leaders espouse the “Make America Great Again”, or “America First” approach. This policy, which we generally attribute to Donald Trump, may therefore become institutionalized in American foreign policy.
This phenomenon has several consequences for Canada. On the one hand, Canada is likely to have very difficult relations with the United States in the years, if not decades, to come; on the other, the international system that was put in place, largely under U.S. leadership after the Second World War, could be called into question. Yet this international system has largely served Canada's interests.
To address this, what recommendations can we make? I won't go into strategies today. Canada generally uses three or four main strategies in its relations with the United States, but I will simply remind you that should a more isolationist government be elected next November, the Canadian government will have to be ready this time, rather than improvising a policy towards the United States in a hurry, as seems to have been the case in 2016-17.
As for the purpose of the committee's current work, the need to have a very competent diplomatic apparatus, and with a very large staff, is going to be crucial in this context. On the one hand, the Canadian government is likely to rely on a classic strategy of cultivating its relationships with interest groups in the United States, groups that would also benefit from maintaining good relations with Canada.
On the other hand, Canada must also cultivate perhaps closer relations with other countries, especially western states that would find themselves in a similar situation and would also have to deal with a more inward-looking and perhaps tougher U.S. government in its relations with others.
These two fundamental missions of Global Affairs Canada do require resources, and they require personnel in the field, and therefore foreign service officers, both numerous and ready to fulfil this role.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.