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Canada 21: A moment and a modelJanice Gross Stein aa Harrowston Professor of Conflict Management and Negotiation , University of TorontoPublished online: 14 Mar 2011.

To cite this article: Janice Gross Stein (1994) Canada 21: A moment and a model, Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 2:1, 9-13,DOI: 10.1080/11926422.1994.9673019

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9

CANADA 21: A MOMENT AND A MODEL

JANICE GROSS STEIN

Introduction

A group of men and women gathered together in the spring of 1993 to consider theimportant choices that would face any new government that would take office after a long-anticipated election. They agreed that the world had changed dramatically in the wake of the endof the Cold War but that Canadian institutions and policies had not kept pace. The scope andintensity of change were creating unique challenges and opportunities for Canadians. Thechoices a new government would make would shape Canada’s future for decades.

From this meeting grew CANADA 21, a project designed to encourage independent non-partisan thinking and to stimulate public debate on fundamental issues of Canadian security.Those who worked on CANADA 21 were agreed on the moment and the model. The momentwas extraordinary in its potential for new opportunities for Canada and Canadians. The modelwas a commission drawn from the private sector that was free to think about new directions forCanadian Foreign Policy.

Meeting throughout the spring, the group formed a steering committee, assembled a researchteam, invited outstanding Canadians with long and diverse experience in public life to join theCANADA 21 Council, and solicited funding exclusively from the private sector to financeresearch and the publication of a report. Those who joined the CANADA 21 Council agreed toparticipate actively in setting the agenda, evaluating the research papers, and in preparing thefinal report. Council members attended several meetings in the autumn of 1993, met with theresearch consultants to discuss their papers, and reviewed several drafts of the final report. TheCANADA 21 Council was bands-on throughout the’

Assumptions Underlying the Research Agenda of CANADA 21

A set of common assumptions informed the research agenda of CANADA 21. The Councilagreed that the prospect of an attack by the armed forces of a

Janice Gross Stein is the Harrowston Professor of Conflict Management and Negotiation at the Universityof Toronto, and was the Project Director for the CANADA 21 Council

1. Members of the CANADA 21 Council include: Ivan L. Head, Chair, Thomas S. Axworthy, John KimBell, S. Robert Blair, Jean Paul Brodeur, Tim Broadhead, Annamarie P. Castrilli, the Honourable JacquesCourtois, Arthur A. Defehr, Admiral Robert H. Falls, Arthur S. Hara, the Honourable Donald S.Macdonald, Ann Medina, Knowlton Nash, Sylvia Ostry, the Honourable Gerard Pelletier, John C. Polanyi,Joseph L. Rotman, the Rt. Honourable Robert Lorne Stanfield, and the Honourable Maurice F. Strong.The CANADA 21 Report can be obtained from the Centre of International Studies, University of Toronto,170 Bloor St.,W., 5th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1T9. Canadian Foreign Policy - ISSN 1192-6422, Vol. 2, No.1, (SprIng 1994), pp. 9-13

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10 CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY

powerful state directly upon Canada or upon our allies is now unlikely. Canada is consequentlyfreer to make choices about its security than it was throughout the long Cold War. Theautonomous capacity to make choices is a fundamental component of sovereignty and it is in thissense that CANADA 21 feels that Canada is newly empowered. The need for Canada to makechoices - even difficult choices - is also greater than it ever has been.

The need to choose arises from conditions within and outside Canada. The Councilrecognized that the divide between domestic and foreign policy has all but disappeared. Capital,labour, information, technology and ideas now cross frontiers effortlessly and governments haveless autonomy in the management of their economies. At home, Canada is burdened by largedebt and troubled by the unemployment of a disproportionately large number of its youngpeople. In an interdependent web of international and transnational relations, the government hasless control of the economy and a reduced capacity to ensure the well-being of Canadians.Governmental policies and institutions often seem ineffective. Canadians are consequentlytroubled by a “democratic deficit” that inescapably grows out of domestic and internationalconstraints on our government.

The Council agreed that Canada must put its economic house in order if it is to have thecapacity to engage in the global system. What we can do abroad will depend in large measure onthe health of the domestic economy, but the health of our domestic economy will depend in largepart on what we do abroad. Only through cooperation with others can Canada address the issuesthat are fundamental to our economic well-being and security.

The CANADA 21 Council also identified new kinds of challenges to Canada’s security.Threatening Canada’s well-being and security is an unprecedented conjunction of demographic,economic, and environmental stresses. Challenges to global security are most likely to arise fromconflict triggered by population growth, poverty involuntary migration, resource scarcities, andethnic clashes.

To understand the urgency of making hard choices, we need only look at the threat to thesecurity of our maritime population that has arisen from the depletion of fish stocks. At homeand abroad, the environment, the economy, and security are inextricably linked. In the search forenvironmental security, we cannot solve our problems alone. The major problems Canada facesdirectly - degraded water supplies, depleted commercial fishing stocks, acid rain, and toxic waste- require cooperation from other states to ensure that Canadian communities are sustained.

Canada cannot enhance its security by acting alone. Cooperation with other nations and otherpeoples is the only way that we can protect the quality of our life and environment, create andenhance opportunities for Canadians, and guarantee our security. The security of Canadians restson our capacity to cooperate with others to design solution to common problems. In all itsaspects, our security is common.

The Council feels strongly that Canada must develop policies for preventive action toaddress the underlying causes of conflict. We must complement our long-standing commitmentto peacekeeping with strategies that address continuing rapid population growth

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CANADA 21: A MOMENT AND A MODEL 11

in the poorest regions, severe economic disparities, environmental degradation, and scarcity ofcritical resources. A commitment to preventive diplomacy has serious implications for the wayCanada decides to allocate its limited resources.

The CANADA 21 Council concluded that Canada must draw on a wide range of instrumentsand resources if its policies are to be effective and efficient. Fiscal constraints are real and thegovernment cannot be expected to do more with less. It can, however, do more if its resourcebase is expanded and its policies are different. The government must reach out to new strategicpartners within society and use its economic, scientific, and cultural resources, and its social,human, and intellectual capital - as well as its military assets - in protecting Canadian and pro-moting common security.

The Council also explored the threads that weave together the strands of common security inCanadian Foreign Policy. When security includes economic, environmental and cultural security- as well as security from attack at home and abroad - the tight connections among generallyseparated policies become dearer. The emphasis on prevention makes the interconnections evenmore important.

International trade policy, for example, is closely connected to international assistance,human rights, sustainable development and to the economic security of Canadians at home.Defence policy is closely linked to collective security, to peacekeeping and peacemaking, tohumanitarian assistance, and to the economic and environmental security of our maritime andaboriginal peoples.

Contradictions as well as complementarities exist among the components of Canada’sforeign and defence policies. When resources are constant or diminishing, it is imperative to lookat policies within this broader context, identify complementarities, and face the trade-offssquarely.

CANADA 21 conceives of security as broad and deep. It is broad in the agenda it generatesand in the engagement of society as well as government. It is deep in the interconnections that itidentifies among components of policy. To meet these broad and deep challenges, thegovernment must deploy the resources that it mobilizes to ensure maximum effectiveness.Canada cannot be everywhere and do everything. If it attempts to do so, it risks dissipating itsresources and sliding into policies of mediocrity. Canada must define its priorities, identify areasof comparative advantage, develop “niche” policies, and focus its resources so that Canadacontributes distinctively across the broad spectrum of common security.

Sovereignty Strategic Alliances, Peacekeeping, and Defence

The five papers published in this issue of Canadian Foreign Policy are a subset of the researchpapers commissioned by the CANADA 21 Council2 They focus on security and share theoverriding assumption that Canada must act in concert with others to address challenges throughpreventive action and assure its own security. The five authors accepted the common disciplineof fiscal restraint: given

2. The remaining research papers on the global economy, the global environment, and Canada’srelationship with die South will be published in the next issue (Vol.2, No.2) of Canadian Foreign Policy.

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12 CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY

Canada’s financial constraints, recommendations had to fit within the existing envelopes ofbudgetary expenditures. Pressing problems, the CANADA 21 Council insisted, could not besolved through increased government spending. Canadians and their governments have to faceand make difficult and far-seeing choices.

Franklyn Griffiths focuses on Canada as a sovereign state and our government’s capacity forautonomous choice in the post-cold world. His is a provocative analysis of two different types ofchallenges to Canadian sovereignty. He argues that protecting and promoting Canadiansovereignty is less the familiar problem of enforcing writ or title against foreign intruders – thekind of challenge that has dominated Canadian thinking about security throughout its history.Meeting this kind of challenge requires the mobilization of a basket of assets and instrumentsthat need only to be focussed and used effectively.

The principal challenge today is rather to maintain control over what happens within Canadain the context of an increasingly interdependent world. In a porous world where transnationaland international flows cross borders effortlessly, Griffiths argues, Canada must make wisechoices about where and how Canada will be open to the international surround. We cannot doso, he insists, unless we have the capacity to give voice to values and purposes that unite us.Canadian sovereignty in the post-Cold War world, Griffiths concludes, is ultimately a function ofpolitical culture.

John Lamb examines Canada’s relationship with the new Russia that emerged from the ashesof the Soviet Union. He observes that Canada’s relationship with Russia throughout the longCold War was subordinate to larger strategic considerations. Now that the Cold War is over,Canada is free to begin building new relationships with our northern neighbour that serve ournational, regional, and global interests. Canada has not yet seized the moment in its relationshipwith Russia, Lamb argues, to take advantage of new opportunities to enhance Canadian securityand prosperity. Canada should invest now in preventive diplomacy. Russia, he concludes, has anunparalleled ability to endanger Canadian security and an untapped capacity to benefit Canadianinterests.

John Halstead focuses on the continuing relevance of two international security institutions –the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Conference on Security andCooperation in Europe (CSCE) – that have traditionally been important to Canada. Canadianshave long recognized the value of rule-based multilateral regimes and the increasing importanceto Canada of the Asia-Pacific region, the Arctic, and Latin America. He argues, however, thatNATO has an important role to play in bringing Russia and Eastern Europe into the stablesecurity system and in providing the United Nations (UN) with well trained, cohesive, andsuperbly equipped forces. Halstead concludes that Canada should press NATO to transform itselfinto a collective security organization that can meet the new challenges.

David Cox examines Canada’s stake in the United Nations as it moves to redefinepeacemaking and peacekeeping in the aftermath of the Cold War. The

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demand for peacekeeping has grown exponentially, and Canada now finds itself unable, withinits present force structure, to meet the requests that it receives. Cox argues that Canadianparticipation in peacekeeping has given Canada influence at the UN and elsewhere far beyond itsrelative position in the hierarchy of states. UN participation serves both Canada’s nationalinterests and contributes to common security. However, Cox concludes, the UN requiressignificant reform to improve its operational capabilities. Canada, for its part, can lead inpressing for reform and in providing stand-by forces for peacekeeping.

Douglas Bland proposes a considerable restructuring of the Canadian Forces to fit thechanged strategic environment. The target of repeated budget cuts over thelast several years, the Canadian Forces risk losing their effectiveness unless they can definespecific roles and missions that are appropriate to the new strategic context and maximize theireffectiveness. Bland details the inefficiencies of the present structure, outlines two approaches toforce structuring, and recommends a specialized force structure that is capable of defendingCanadian sovereignty, aiding civilauthorities, and responding to new international challenges. A restructured Canadian Forces ofthe kind he proposes, Bland concludes, would be more efficient and would better complementthe other instruments of Canadian Foreign Policy.

The Beginning of the Debate

The full set of these research papers fed the intensive debates in the CANADA 21 Council asit considered the new requirements of Canadian and common security. The careful reader of theCANADA 21 report will note differences between the conclusions of individual researchconsultants and the Council that was committed to exploring the linkages among policies, facingthe difficult choices, and making the trade-offs.

A critical debate on foreign and defence policy is now beginning in our country. We aregrateful for the opportunity to publish these research papers and enrich this discussion. We hopethat Canadians will join in the conversation, for out of this discussion will come choices that, asthe CANADA 21 Council argues, will shape our daily lives well into the foreseeable future.

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