Canadian opposition charts path to power through Turtle Bay

One cardinal rule of American political campaigns is that singing the praises of the United Nations is a sure fire way to lose votes. But in Canada, the leader of the opposition Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff, is making a wider role in U.N. affairs a centerpiece of his quest to lead the country.

The son of a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, Ignatieff claims that Canada’s recent failed campaign for a seat on the Security Council — the first time it failed in such a bid since 1948 — marks the most embarrassing moment in the country’s modern history. The only way to recover Canada’s standing in the world, he argued, is to show a renewed commitment to the U.N., specifically to its peacekeeping missions. "Canada must wear the blue beret again, and restore our commitments to make the world a safer place."

"We are not the Canada we thought we were," Ignatieff said in his first major foreign policy speech since the conservative government of Stephen Harper mounted an ill-conceived attempt to gain a temporary seat on the Security Council. "We don’t have as many friends as we thought we did. We don’t command the same respect that we once took for granted."

Ignatieff is gambling that Canada’s perception of its role on the world is so deeply entwined with the United Nations that the government’s U.N. loss will trigger a national re-thinking of its role in international affairs. "This was a wakeup call for all Canadians," Ignatieff said in his speech. "The world forced us to look in the mirror, and we don’t like what we see."

Ignatieff recalled the central role that U.N. peacekeeping has played in Canada, which participated in every Cold War peacekeeping mission and which has a U.N. blue helmet on its $10 currency note. "But things have changed. Canada used to deploy more than 3,000 troops to U.N. missions each year. Last year we sent 57," he said. "We are not the peacekeepers we once were. We must return to U.N. peace operations — to a role that is written into our values and our traditions, a role that is ideal for a country of our size and strength."

Stewart M. Patrick, director of the program on International Institutions and Global Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Canada provides a lesson in contrasts to American political campaigns, where presidential hopeful John Kerry was pilloried for suggesting that President George W. Bush had failed a "global test" of international legitimacy by launching a war against Iraq without a U.N. imprimatur.

Although Canada is currently governed by conservatives, "the political center of gravity is to the left of the American center of gravity, and that could play a role in support for the Liberal’s internationalist policies" said Patrick. "Generally putting multilateralism as the center piece of foreign policy would resonate in a way you couldn’t imagine it resonating in the United States. There is much less of the neuralgia about losing freedom of action and a greater willingness to see the benefits of collective action."

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