Prime Minister Mark Carney has taken initial steps aimed at shoring up relationships with China and India.STR/AFP/Getty Images
Jeff Mahon is director of geopolitical and international business advisory at consulting firm StrategyCorp. He previously served as deputy director at Global Affairs Canada’s China Division.
Mark Carney’s meteoric rise to power unearthed a neglected fact of politics in the 21st-century: international relations matter.
The Trudeau Liberals did not understand this and governed according to the outdated maxim that “all politics is local.” And that has come up against the violent flux of a complex world where geopolitics and commerce are increasingly intertwined.
The heel-turn of the United States, a long-time trading partner and ally, has forced a recognition that good governance requires tactful design and maintenance of global interdependencies.
The Prime Minister didn’t waste any time travelling to Europe to shore up the transatlantic relationship and signal an intention to deepen security ties. And Mr. Carney went into this week’s G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta., with great ambitions of building energy security and partnerships for infrastructure investments – “to meet challenges with unity, purpose and force.”
These are welcome developments, but Europe and the rest of the industrialized world will not provide the economic engine to drive diversification – the Indo-Pacific will play that role. The government must now make tough decisions and sacrifice limited domestic political capital for the country to reap economic rewards from the region, particularly China and India.
Mr. Carney has taken two positive initial steps on each of these relationships. The announcement this month that Canada and China will restart the defunct Joint Economic and Trade Commission signals that the Carney government is ready to find a negotiated solution to the current trade dispute. Shortly thereafter he invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the G7 Leader’s Summit.
However, these initiatives are only the start as much more work remains to be done.
For too long, foreign policy was treated as fodder for domestic politics. Specifically, formidable challenges with China and India – the world’s two largest countries – were met with theatre and diplomatic negligence. When nuance was needed to balance interests, the government opted to follow rather than lead.
Now Mr. Carney has a technocratic tool kit that stands unrivalled amongst recent Canadian leaders. But meeting the moment will require more than knowing which levers to pull and dials to turn. Wayward foreign policy damaged relationships with key growth markets critical for any meaningful trade diversification strategy, most importantly China and India. Fixing this will require reconciling the tension between values and interests.
This isn’t to say that these countries are without fault. The challenges presented by China and India are real, albeit different. Both are accused of transgressing Canadian sovereignty, but Canada is guilty of not handling these alleged transgressions in a tactful manner. The government’s overtly public approach eschewed diplomatic norms and invited collateral damage. It politicized foreign policy and sacrificed the national interest for short-term domestic political points. It also fanned the passions of the Canadian public raising the political costs for course correction.
Leadership requires making tough decisions that will upset different factions of society. When contradiction arises between values and interests it’s natural for some individuals to coalesce at the extremes. They’ll see compromise as antithetical and will vehemently oppose it. Given that both China and India expect Canada to take the initial steps – a mea culpa of sorts – to improve relations, Mr. Carney will need to spend political capital to secure economic interests.
Finding the right approach on China will be difficult as Canada will have to balance domestic development issues alongside managing U.S. concerns about Ottawa building inroads with Beijing. Mr. Carney will unlikely be able to deliver on China’s biggest demands – removing tariffs on Chinese EVs, steel or aluminum – for these reasons so it will need to be creative in finding new modus vivendi for managing trade relations.
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With respect to India, Canada will need to soon offer up something concrete to deepen ties. Canada should return to the negotiations for an Early Progress Trade Agreement that was put on hold in response to Canadian allegations that the Indian government was involved in a political assassination on Canadian soil.
Executing on these approaches requires a new brand of leadership that recognizes nuance, can explain it to the public, and not demur when confronted by loud absolutist voices. Nuanced vision is needed because the world is complicated and resists simplistic circumscription into Manichean opposites. Rather, each relationship is more akin to a matrix that contains a multitude of vectors representing different issues or aspects. Some of these may be in close alignment or they could clash, others may be somewhere in between.
Looking at international relationships this way opens opportunities for engagement that meets Canadian interests even when there are sources of disagreement. Canada should not recoil when faced with a clash between values and interests; it should be treated as an opportunity for Canadian diplomacy to mature and support an independent Made-in-Canada foreign policy.