Published On Wed Jun 16 2010
Toronto Star Editorial
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is challenging Canadians to “to re-engage with the world again,” after years of uninspired Conservative foreign policy. An energetic, outward-looking spirit informs the policy paper he unveiled in Toronto on Tuesday. At root, Ignatieff proposes to “restore Canada’s global leadership.”
That challenge to aim higher befits a politician who achieved fame as a global thinker. It raises Ignatieff’s game at a time when the Liberals are struggling to gain political traction. And it is bound to resonate with Canadians who are less than impressed with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s far more circumscribed approach.
Harper has cultivated warmer ties with the United States (without much to show for it), rebuilt the military, and staked a claim to the Arctic. But he has been a disappointment in other areas. He has paid scant attention to the United Nations (except to lobby for a Security Council seat), and he has shown little interest in global warming, peacekeeping and arms control. He shelved Canada’s traditional nuanced approach to the Middle East. He initially neglected China and India, two rising superpowers. He tilted foreign aid away from Africa, where it is needed the most. And he has been erratic, at best, in defending citizens who get into trouble abroad.
Ignatieff’s vision, rolled out in a paper called Canada in the World, a Global Networks Strategy, is broader, and more generous.
He proposes to expand Canada’s economic and cultural ties with China and India. He’d also engage “proactively,” not passively, with Washington on carbon pricing, clean energy and arms control. He’d resurrect Team Canada trade missions. His Mideast policy seems better balanced. He’d re-engage with the UN as a peacekeeper and conflict preventer. He’d place Africa and women back at the top of foreign aid pirorities. He’d bolster diplomacy and increase aid. And he’d lobby to have Group of 20 and Arctic secretariats based here.
There’s more. But the details (including keeping troops in Afghanistan as trainers) matter less than the bolder approach. Ignatieff has put a credible, progressive Liberal alternative in the window for voters to judge. That sets the stage for a healthy political debate.
