bout de papier, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2014) — Winter 2014–15 // Hiver 2014-2015, pp. 28–29
HOW WE LEAD — CANADA INA
CENTURY OF CHANGE, by Joe Clark,
Random House Canada, 2013, 273 pp.,
$30 CDN.
For many of us, there is not much to cheer about these days in Canadian foreign policy, but we can’t say it’s boring. Blogs, newspaper editorials and op-eds clang with the vigorously opposing views of those denigrating or praising the Harper world vision. There is no shortage of books assessing our foreign policy. Some of these are excellent. For example Paul Heinbecker’s convincing dissections and persuasive prescriptions in Getting Back in the Game (Key Porter Books). An earlier book, Andrew Cohen’s While Canada Slept (2003, McClelland and Stewart) reminds us that the decline of Canadian foreign policy (for those who subscribe to the “decline” view) began before Stephen Harper. But none have been written with the salience and authority of Joe Clark’s How We Lead — Canada in a Century of Change.
Although Mr. Clark sees many shadows ahead, he finds none of them daunting. Asked by the media what he hoped his book would achieve, the author responds that he hoped it would stimulate constructive debate about Canada and international affairs. This seems to be working as there have been three re-printings in hard cover, a paperback edition and a French language edition Agir de concert: le Canada dans un monde en mouvement since the book was released in November of 2013. Almost a year after its publication, a second look is in order as Canadians consider how to engage effectively in a world growing less capable of listening and more dangerous.
Mr. Clark is, of course, the Progressive Conservative who defeated Pierre Trudeau in 1979 and one of Canada’s longest serving and most successful foreign ministers (1984-91) — a period of his life, about which he once confessed, he had learned more than at any other time. Under Mr. Mulroney, he was also minister responsible for constitutional affairs. Re-elected in Calgary in 2000, he left politics in 2004.
led election observation missions, usually in countries with dark and dodgy electoral histories. He has been involved in pioneering overseas business. As vice-chair of the Global Leadership Foundation (a group composed largely of former heads of government and former foreign ministers), Joe Clark has been engaged in mediation and mediation advisory work. In several ways, but much less visibly, he occupies a niche as a highly respected international activist similar to that of former President Jimmy Carter. Appropriately, he is a member of Jimmy Carter’s “Friends of the Inter-American Democratic Charter”, a democracy monitoring and advocacy group for Latin America and the Caribbean. His work with these and other organizations keep him abreast of the shifting dynamics of the international landscape.
Joe Clark’s book would have been more fun if it had been written as a memoir. He has a fund of fascinating and often hilarious anecdotes — only one of which is on display in this volume. However, he has chosen, in his words, to write “a reflection and a prescription of who we Canadians are and have been, and an invitation to envisage what we might become…”. The result is an exceptionally well informed and unusual work of positive advocacy.
As co-architect of many of Canada’s international achievements including the dramatic rescue of US diplomats from Iran and, with Mr. Mulroney, practical diplomacy in war-torn Central America, East- West negotiations that helped build foundations for the reunification of Germany, and the Commonwealth pressure that facilitated the non-violent collapse of apartheid in South Africa, Clark understands better than most the mechanics of international success and failure. He also recognizes that central to our credibility in many parts of the world is the Canadian model of inter-ethnic civility. That may be obvious. Less obvious but equally important is his identification national equation: the communications revolution, the non-state actors such as the Gates Foundation, Transparency International, Am other NGOs that wield more influence and often do more good than most sovereign countries. He points up the remarkable role of smaller players like Rotary International.
This is an optimistic book. It achieves a difficult balance between passion without hyperbole and practicality without cynicism. Like Dr. Paul Farmer, the remarkable physician who committed his human and medical skills to Haiti, he believes that the world can be made, of course not perfect, but better — and that this takes energy, dedication, discipline, common sense and optimism. Optimism is the product of the author’s vision of who we are and why we are who we are. He explains how “foreign policy can help us understand and define who we are as a country — not simply because that is our team in the field, wearing Canadian colours, but, more fundamentally, because the things we do in the world reflect and affirm who we are at home. Traditionally, we Canadians have become citizens of an understated country, proud enough of our accomplishments, but quiet about them…. When we describe Canada’s qualities or identity, we tie ourselves in “nots” — we are not Americans, not British, not French, not aggressive, not a superpower, not a problem. Most of the world takes a far more positive view of Canada — they see us as a complex and successful society that respects and celebrates diversity, a developed country still trusted in the developing world, a strong economy rich in human and physical resources, a free society, an innovative and accomplished population…. Clearly Canada is not the only country with some of these assets, but our combination of capacity and reputation sets us apart from most other nations.
The reasonableness of his case is made more compelling for the reader by the author’s admission of his own past mistakes and the points he awards to Stephen Harper for getting a few things right. However, Mr. Clark does make clear that Canadian stature and the perceptions set out above have been eroded by Mr. Harper and that not much reinvigoration is possible until the narrowness, the ideological tangents, the inwardness, the pontification and the “almost adolescent tone” of the present government’s policies are replaced. Working with a country that stood among the first rank of middle nations, respected for the agility, common sense and consensus building skills of its world view, Clark shares with many Canadians the discomfort that we have slipped off the podium.
Clark joins a chorus of other commentators including two former Clerks of the Privy Council — Mel Cappe and Alex Himmelfarb, the latter complaining that the government’s distrust of the public service leads to “layers of costly and stifling control and to a culture of fear”. Since the fiasco at the United Nations Security Council, probably nothing speaks more vividly about the condition of our foreign policy than the decline of our influence with our North American partners. It took eight months for President Obama to replace his ambassador in Ottawa. The Mexican ambassador speaks openly about the unsatisfactory state of the bilateral relationship. Referring to the Middle East Jeffrey Simpson strikes a mournful note in the Globe and Mail (February 22): “Harper has so marginalized Canada (in a region where it seldom had much influence to begin with) and distanced itself from traditional Western allies that nobody notices or cares any more about what it says.”
There is another fairly recent change in our political culture that casts a shadow over the Clark vision. The space that divides the two parties of the centre-left from the party of the right is unusually and alarmingly large for a country that for many years prided itself that all of the main parties shared overlapping core values. Formerly an inestimable asset for the exercise of foreign policy, indications that this consensus has frayed pose a major handicap.
Some have criticized the book as being an exercise in nostalgia. But that view is an abdication of vision and surely it is more than nostalgia to look forward to at time when the term “bipartisan” can rejoin our diplomatic lexicon. Mr. Clark has not written a wistful book. He has written a wake-up call.
John Graham is a retired Foreign Service Officer and member of the Editorial Board.
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2014) — Winter 2014–15 // Hiver 2014-2015, pp. 28–29. Read the rest of this issue →
