Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, left, signalled on Monday that Mark Carney's government is prioritizing defence, security and 'being good allies and partners in NATO and NORAD.'DAVE CHAN/AFP/Getty Images
The world was not waiting with bated breath for Canada’s Prime Minister to weigh in on the Trump administration’s latest Gaza peace plan, which surprised the international community (in a good way, for once) as a serious and credible blueprint for ending the war.
Mark Carney nevertheless shared Canada’s position on U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan, released after a Monday meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a social-media post.
“Canada welcomes President Trump’s historic new Middle East peace plan, and we urge all parties to help it realize its full potential,” Mr. Carney wrote on X. “We will continue our close co-ordination with international partners to build a just and lasting peace that builds on today’s progress, with a sovereign, democratic, and viable State of Palestine building its future in peace and security with the State of Israel.”
Talk about getting ahead of yourself. The Trump plan, detailed as it is, says nothing about democracy in Gaza – probably because the whole world knows that restoring basic security and infrastructure in the territory must come before anything else. The peace plan alludes to the “entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.”
A “credible pathway” to Palestinian statehood, the plan states, can only be created if all other elements of the proposal are implemented, beginning with the mobilization of an international stabilization force in Gaza, likely for several years to come.
This is where the hard truths facing Gaza and the diplomatic fantasies that inform Canadian foreign policy collide. While the U.S. and its partners were hammering out a peace proposal in recent days, Canada was grandstanding on the world stage, recognizing the State of Palestine and demanding that the Palestinian Authority organize free and fair elections in Gaza and the West Bank in 2026.
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It is no coincidence that Israel remains the only democracy in the Middle East, albeit a “flawed” one according to The Economist’s criteria. Any Canadian foreign policy predicated on near-term Palestinian elections is either a cynical gimmick intended to placate a domestic political audience or a seriously naive negation of the recent past. (See Hamas’s win in Gaza in 2006 or the Muslim Brotherhood’s victory in Egypt in 2012.)
Mr. Carney clearly enjoys pontificating on the global stage, perhaps too much for the liking of Canadians who voted Liberal in April because they thought he would stand up to Mr. Trump and reduce their cost of living. His five trips to Europe since being sworn in as Prime Minister in March have produced plenty of pithy quotes, but precious few actions.
Even Mr. Carney’s move to boost Canada’s defence spending to 2 per cent of gross domestic product this year, instead of by 2032 as planned, largely involves pressing a few buttons on a computer keyboard to raise the salaries of existing military personnel. The truly gruelling work of rebuilding Canada’s defence capabilities – and reaching the new NATO target of 5 per cent of GDP by 2035 – is still just a pledge on paper.
In New York last week, Mr. Carney suggested that Canadian troops could be deployed as part of a multinational effort “in Palestine to enforce a peace and drive that process forward.” In August, he raised the possibility of Canadian soldiers participating in a “coalition of the willing” peacekeeping force in Ukraine as envisioned in proposals to end the war in that country. The truth is, the Canadian army would struggle to take on a single new mandate abroad, much less two.
If there is one country where the Canadian military could immediately play a critical role in helping end the violence, it is in Haiti, which is in our hemispheric backyard and with which Canada shares deep ties through the Haitian diaspora here.
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Canada last week pledged $60-million to fund a multilateral security-support mission in Haiti and a maritime security initiative in the Caribbean. But Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand insisted Canadian troops would not participate in either operation. That should serve to put Mr. Carney’s hypothetical musings about sending soldiers to Gaza and Ukraine into perspective.
Ms. Anand did signal, in a Monday speech before the United Nations General Assembly, that the Carney government has reordered Canada’s foreign policy priorities, putting defence and security and “being good allies and partners in NATO and NORAD” at the top of the list. She appeared to suggest that preaching Canadian “core values” of human rights and sustainable development abroad – the leitmotif of former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government – would now take a back seat to economic and security concerns.
Ms. Anand’s speech outlined the contours of a more serious Canadian foreign policy, one that recognizes that our allies need Canada to be a reliable partner, not a pontificator. The world already has enough pontificators.