Prime Minister Mark Carney suggested Canada could be open to peacekeeping as he spoke about the need to ‘enforce’ Ukraine’s national security.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Lloyd Axworthy was Canada’s foreign minister from 1996 to 2000 and is the current chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council.
During his recent trip to Ukraine, Prime Minister Mark Carney suggested that Canada might once again put peacekeeping on the table. He noted that, at least in the medium term, Ukraine’s national security will need to be “buttressed” and “enforced.”
“We are working through with our allies and the coalition of the willing, and with Ukraine, the modalities of those security guarantees on land, in the air and the sea, and I would not exclude the presence of troops,” he said, framing any deployment as part of a broader effort alongside our European allies.
It was a cautious statement, but significant. After decades of retreat from peacekeeping, even a hint of openness marks a shift.
The Canadian public appears ready for it. An Angus Reid Institute survey found that a clear majority supports sending Canadian peacekeepers to Ukraine. Six in 10 respondents said they would back sending personnel, while fewer than three in 10 opposed it.
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If these stirrings signal a renewed interest in peacekeeping, it would represent a welcome return to a role Canada once played with distinction, but has since abandoned.
The numbers tell the story: in 1993, more than 3,300 Canadian uniformed peacekeeping personnel served in UN missions from Bosnia to Cambodia. Today, just 29 Canadians wear the UN blue helmet, ranking Canada 74th in global contributions.
Even well-publicized initiatives have faded. The 2017 Elsie Initiative for Women in Peace Operations was launched to boost female participation in peacekeeping. The following year, Canada launched a mission in Mali that lasted until 2023, and reached 25-per-cent female deployment. But by May of this year, The Canadian Press reports, only two Canadian women remained in UN peacekeeping operations – a record low.
What explains this collapse? Defence budget cuts, to be sure, and the diversion of resources to NATO and Afghanistan. But there is a deeper reason: a cultural aversion within the Canadian Armed Forces itself. Many senior commanders have long shared the American conviction that soldiers should be warriors, not peacemakers.
I saw the beginnings of this bias during Canada’s 1996 aborted mission to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Our generals relied on flawed American and British aerial intelligence that declared a refugee crisis to be over, despite evidence from the ground that showed otherwise. When Canada pulled out, the resulting security vacuum left millions of Congolese vulnerable to violence that continues to this day.
The bias peaked under Rick Hillier, the now-retired general who famously declared Canadian troops were sent to Afghanistan to take out terrorist “scumbags.” “We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people,” he stated bluntly in 2005. Under his influence during the Stephen Harper years, peacekeeping was effectively orphaned. The world-renowned Pearson Peacekeeping Centre in Nova Scotia was closed in 2013, while resources were shifted to the costly and inconclusive Afghan mission. Such rhetoric reshaped Canadians’ understanding of our military role – away from peacekeeping and toward combat.
If Mr. Carney and Defence Minister David McGuinty are serious about reviving Canadian peacekeeping, they must confront this entrenched mindset. The billions already pledged in new defence spending should include resources to modernize Canada’s peacekeeping capacity – through training, technology and rapid-response capabilities.
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Walter Dorn, a peacekeeping expert at the Royal Military College, has proposed exactly this kind of modernization: using drones, satellite imagery, and data-driven systems to make peacekeeping both more effective and less dangerous for personnel. His voice, and others like his, deserve a public platform – through a parliamentary committee, not just behind closed doors in yet another defence review.
Canada has an opportunity to lead. A world shaken by war, climate disruption, and mass displacement needs credible, impartial peacekeepers more than ever. Canadians, for their part, want their country to play that role.
Rebuilding our peacekeeping capacity would not just revive a proud national tradition – it would demonstrate that Canada can think independently, act creatively, and help shape a new world order.