bout de papier, Vol. 15, No. 2 (1998) — Summer 1998 // Été 1998, pp. 16–18
From an Address to the CIIA, Ottawa Branch March 16, 1998, by Peter M. Boehm, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the OAS
We Canadians like to make the point that we and the Americas are geographically linked, yet historically distinct. Like all truisms, this is true.. up to a point. Canada is certainly part of the Americas, but a distant part. Some regions of Canada are actually closer to Europe than to South America. On the other hand Havana is actually closer to Toronto than Toronto is to Vancouver.
Historically, Canada’s connections to the Caribbean, Mexico and Central and South America are considerable. Ships from the Maritime provinces regularly traded south in the 18th and 19th centuries, exchanging cod and beer for rum and sugar. Canadian investors rushed to Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Havana at the turn of the century so that at one point, next to the United States, Canada was actually the major foreign investor in Mexican mines, where many young Canadian mining engineers started their careers.
Also at the turn of the century the Royal Bank of Canada opened a branch in Havana the same year it opened its first one in Toronto. And politically, Canada established missions in Mexico, Brazil and Cuba at about the same time it was setting up embassies in most of the capitals of Europe, in the 1940s.
There were cultural ties as well. As early as 1853 Canadian Catholic missionaries arrived in Chile, while since the 1950s many Latin American and Caribbean families have chosen Canadian schools for their children. There was even an important sports connection: in the former International Baseball League the Toronto team — then the Maple Leafs – were arch rivals of the Havana Sugar Kings. In fact one spring Fidel Castro came up to Toronto to pitch the first ball in the opening game!
These connections had, until recently, diminished in content if not in form. Links between Canada and our southern “almost-neighbours” were not born yesterday, as the fruit of some great artificial policy flourish, nor are they unnatural. I believe that we are beginning another “Americas” phase of our foreign relations. Interestingly enough in the present exchange between north and south today it is Canadian women who are leading the cultural invasion in South America — Céline Dion, Alanis Morrissette, Sarah McLachlan, Shania Twain – with Margaret Atwood not far behind
Canadian relations with the Americas do not take place in a vacuum. Canada is a country with strong transatlantic traditions and growing transpacific interests. Immigration and trade, politics and security, have until recently bound us closely to Europe, as our participation in two world wars indicated. The Cold War helped define the way Canadians looked at the world – east or west or north, but not south – or rather, not farther south than the United States. And, of course, these policies brought us close to the United States.
In practice, which is perhaps more important than policy, Canada tried to balance its connection with the United States, so near, overwhelming and similar, with an assiduous devotion to multilateralism. Multilateralism, of course, involves the United States, but a United States whose interests are balanced with those of others. From the Canadian point of view that is highly desirable. It corrects our northern astigmatism, our “American squint”, one might say. We have often been criticised, even in Canada, as the world’s foremost practitioner of “joiner-itis” or, in the words of one of our former Prime Ministers, as the world’s “helpful fixer”
On the positive side, however, our interest in multilateral institutions has meant that Canadians genuinely try to make them work — it is our occupational or protessional deformation. Sometimes that must make Canadian diplomats seem very tedious to the outside world
By coincidence, the end of the Cold War occurred at the same time that Canada joined the Organisation of American States (OAS). The achievement of democracy in central and eastern Europe coincided with a wave of democratic reform in Central and South America. Europe, though still close to Canada for a variety of reasons, was no longer as urgent as a focus for our policy. The Americas were no longer as distant, politically, as we once imagined them to be.
When the precursor to the OAS, the Pan American Union, was established in 1910, a “Canada” chair was created at the headquarters’ conference table in Washington in anticipation of our eventual membership. We did not, however, join and in fact we waited another 62 years before doing so as a Permanent Observer.
In the meantime we did join many of the other Inter-American agencies, such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), in 1965 and the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) in 1971.
Canada finally joined the OAS in 1990 for several reasons: the spread of democracy improved prospects for strengthening human rights and more open societies encouraged major economic reforms, thus creating new opportunities for Canadian business. Emerging non-traditional issues, such as drugs and the environment, meant that Canada could no longer afford to be excluded from the hemisphere’s foremost political forum.
Canada is now a committed member of the Inter-American system. One of the indications of our expanding relationship with the region is in the area of trade. As the western hemisphere’s second-largest economy, Canada depends on trade for approximately 40 percent of its gross domestic product. The fast-growing, liberalising economies of Latin America, with their structural reforms and extensive privatisation of key sectors, have created important new trade and investment opportunities for Canadian businesses.
This past January ’Team Canada ’98” led by Prime Minister Chrétien with the provincial Premiers and over 500 business men and women, went to Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. The results were very gratifying: many of our businesspeople and our government leaders gained a greater understanding of concerns in this area of the world. Added and tangible benefits were 306 signed deals worth an estimated $1.78 billion. Over 90% of the deals signed were done by Canadian small and medium enterprises.
Already Canada’s two-way trade with Latin America and the Caribbean is more than double what it was five years ago. Canada’s strong interest in advancing free trade in South and Central America through the Free Trade Area of the Americas and Mercosur has, in many respects, flowed from its positive free trade experience in North America, in terms of both the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA. In addition to trade benefits; NAFTA has directed our commercial and integrative gaze southwards and shown us the benefits of dialogue between two important partners that in many respects transcends a strict interpretation of commerce between nations. Our conviction that all of this activity was to the good led us to enter into a Free Trade Agreement with a hemispheric partner even further to the south: Chile.
The Road to Santiago is not just paved with good intentions on the part of our government, the public also believes that universal integrative activity in our hemisphere is a good idea. A recent poll showed 93% of Canadians surveyed supported the FTAA.
In December 1994, Canada participated at Miami in the First Summit of the Americas. This was the first full meeting of the western hemisphere’s leaders since the 1967 meeting in Punta del Este, where Canada participated as an Observer. The Miami Summit was also the first one to involve all 34 democratically-elected leaders.
At Miami’s historic meeting, the leaders released a Declaration of Principles and a Plan of Action highlighting four major themes: preserving and strengthening democracy; eradicating poverty and discrimination; guaranteeing sustainable development and promoting economic integration and free trade.
Summit participants agreed that the 1998 Santiago Summit should focus on issues where nations can make realistic progress within 2 or 3 years. They want organisations in the Inter-American system, such as the OAS, the IADB, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and PAHO to expand their role in implementing the Summit’s Action Plan. Much will fall to the OAS.
Canada’s priorities at the OAS range from institutional renewal to democratic development, human rights and hemispheric security. We have also used OAS membership to promote sustainable development, drug abuse control, trade liberalisation, economic integration and the elimination of poverty through a strengthened technical co-operation regime.
Since becoming a full member 8 years ago, Canada has accomplished much. We have also contributed much — and not just financially, although we are the second largest contributor to the OAS. In 1997 we provided 12.6 million, or 12.36% of the annual budget of the organisation.
Among our many accomplishments in this time two stand out in particular. Within our first year of membership, Canada initiated the establishment of the Unit for the Promotion of Democracy. The UPD is a unique OAS mechanism for the promotion and reinforcement of democratic institutions in the Americas. Along with the UPD, Canada works with non-governmental organisations on a variety of projects that bolster democratic development in the Americas. Well as a state
Last year, Canada strenuously promoted a General Assembly resolution on the eventual creation of a western hemisphere Anti- Personnel Landmines-free Zone, in support of broader efforts towards a global ban. A total of 33 of the 35 OAS states signed the APL Treaty in Ottawa in December.
Canada has also contributed funding to a program sponsored by the OAS Unit for the Promotion of Democracy and the Inter- American Defence Board in 1992 to clear the Central American region of all landmines by 2000. The de-mining program is already underway in Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala and has already cleared the area of 28,000 mines.
Canada played a constructive role in the negotiations last year for the ground breaking Inter-American Convention on the Illicit Traffic of Firearms. This Convention is the first of its kind in the world and illustrates OAS members moving decisively to combat the illegal trade in firearms.
In 1998 our main focus will be on improving the structures and institutions at the heart of the Inter-American system, integrating the OAS with the amorphous Summit Implementation Review Group, and clarifying the Organisation’s mandate so that it can reduce waste and duplication among hemispheric organisations. This is a rarefied atmosphere of regional multilateralism, with latino traditions, Caribbean rhythms, Uncle Sam omnipresent and the Canadians helpfully scurrying around trying to fix everything in sight!
Many of the developments I have mentioned are incremental and unspectacular as they should be. They are signs of a system that functions well, though never perfectly. They must be supplemented by public and political initiatives. For this the approaching millennium is, I suppose, heaven-sent.
As we approach the millennium various events will direct Canadians’ attention to the south. For example: April 1998 Chile hosts the Summit of the Americas in Santiago; Winnipeg will host the Pan-American Games in 1999 – the largest multi-sports event outside of the Olympics (no ice hockey thank fully!) and in 2000, in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of our joining the OAS as a full member, Canada will host the OAS General Assembly.
Events such as these will bring home to Canadians and, we hope, symbolise to our partners in the Americas, Canada’s growing connection to our neighbours. Neighbourhood is a state of mind as well as a state of geography. It is politics and economics as well as history. It is interaction among our publics as well as discussion among diplomats. It is trade and immigration as well as high politics and grand conferences.
When one of my successors addresses the CIA twenty years from now, she or he will say that Canada’s connections to its hemisphere are historical, geographical, political and economic, but most important, strong, significant, and positive. Our government’s endeavour has been, is and will be to make it so.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 15, No. 2 (1998) — Summer 1998 // Été 1998, pp. 16–18. Read the rest of this issue →
