Canada's Quiet Progress in the Americas

Nature abhors a vacuum. So does diplomacy. At a time when the U.S. vision for hemispheric relations is facing the most significant challenge since the Cold War, and there is little consensus in Washington on broad hemispheric priorities, Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, is leading ground-breaking efforts to expand his nation’s reach and influence in the Americas. Given political constraints on U.S. policy affecting matters of high importance to the region, Canada’s emerging hemispheric consciousness has arrived right on time. With the United States struggling over trade expansion and immigration reform, Canada’s new enthusiasm for the Americas is a timely force multiplier supporting the vision and values that North Americans share.

 

Canada’s strategic surge into the hemisphere has been impressive. Within the last six months, the prime minister has publicly laid the groundwork by asserting Canada’s collaborative vision with partners in the Americas based on trade and investment expansion, energy resource leadership, peacekeeping and political engagement. He has visited Colombia, Chile, Barbados and Haiti—where Canada continues to participate in a significant way in multi-national peacekeeping operations. Cabinet ministers and the governor general have also toured the region echoing this message. Additionally, the Canadian government announced this summer the launch of free trade negotiations with Colombia, Peru and the 15 nations of CARICOM, while also expressing interest in negotiating trade agreements with the Central American Four (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua). Clearly, something is going on.

 

Canada has a proud history of friendship and partnership when the international community needs help. Whether in times of military conflict, peacekeeping or humanitarian relief, Canada frequently punches above its weight. But these actions in the Americas show much more: a long-term vision, paired with resources and a commitment to solidifying a leading position in the hemisphere.

 

Of course, Canada’s primary hemispheric interests have always been, and will remain, the North American relationship. Canada’s international touchstone is the United States. We are Canada’s largest trade and investment partner, shared border, security and energy relationships and social connection. Political interest naturally follows such integration into the fabric of Canadian consciousness. Canada’s first free trade relationship was with the United States, a bilateral agreement that in 1994 lead to the North American Free Trade Agreement including Mexico. Since that time, all three nations have had to digest the changed political and economic circumstances that NAFTA unlocked, even with the understanding that NAFTA has successfully done what it was designed to do: increase trade and investment among the three parties involved. Nonetheless, it has also become clear since NAFTA entered into force that additional steps would need to be taken to increase North American economic competitiveness in response to the challenge increasingly posed by the rise of China, India and other emerging markets.

 

With that in mind, the three governments launched a process early in 2006 to increase security and also prosperity within North America. As well, they made the astute observation that without the active engagement of the three respective private sectors, they would be unable to receive guidance as to the most pressing issues to address in their efforts to increase competitiveness.

 

Thus was launched the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, as well as the North American Competitiveness Council, a trilateral private sector advisory body that has made numerous recommendations to the governments in such areas as cross-border facilitation, energy and regulatory reforms. Most recently, the three North American leaders converged in Montebello, Canada, in late August to receive the recommendations of the NACC and also to discuss next steps in the overall North American relationship. Nonetheless, despite these important collaborative efforts, the three countries of North America appropriately maintain their own individual national priorities, decisionmaking and sovereignties. Pragmatic collaboration to improve competitiveness in a global environment, yes; common borders, common currencies, supra-national institutions and wacky conspiracies, no.

 

And this sense of collaborative engage­ment based on the individual national inter­est prevails in the hemisphere, as well. In the U.S., President Bush came into office looking to build a historic U.S. re-orienta­tion toward Mexico and, more broadly, the Americas. September 11 put paid to that. In Mexico, President Felipe Calderón has also emphasized strengthened relations with other Latin American peers as a priority for Mexico. Nonetheless, such actions remain on hold as he and his new government grapple with critical domestic issues including a frontal as­sault on drug, gangs and militias that pose a serious and pressing challenge to Mexico’s institutions and development. 

Within this context, and building upon the pioneering efforts of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney almost two decades ago, Canada under the minority Harper government is redis­covering the Americas, stepping into a region in a manner consistent first and foremost with Canadian interests, but also consistent with the broader North American view. As a nation where commitment to open market democ­racy based on the rule of law is its organiz­ing framework and can serve as an effective model for others, Canada’s engagement in the Americas is a welcome strategic shift.

The prime minister’s commitment to the region promises increased opportunity for the private sector. Canada’s regional foreign direct investment already reaches some $100 billion in sectors including min­ing, financial services, telecommunica­tions, transportation and education. Given Canada’s global energy leadership, other sources of opportunity in the hemisphere include oil and gas as well as alternatives. And if projected trade agreements with Latin America and the Caribbean successfully conclude, Canadian exporters of goods and services will enjoy favorable new access to a compound market of approximately 140 million people which currently represents about $6 billion of bilateral trade.

Under normal circumstances, we might consider these efforts on trade to be a chal­lenge to U.S. interests and indeed, without continued progress on the trade front, the United States will begin to lose more and more commercial opportunities to both our friends and others in the hemisphere. None­theless, nothing energizes the United States political establishment more quickly than when our “lead” is threatened. In the 1950s it was Sputnik. In the 1960s, the Alliance for Progress was a direct response to the Fidel Castro/Che Guevara vision. In the 1980s, Soviet and Cuban adventurism drove U.S. interest in the Americas, while a fear of Japan drove U.S. economic decisions.

Now, it’s China and India on the economic side, with global reach terrorists on the se­curity side. In the Americas, the challenge of the so-called Bolivarian revolution is real enough. When we begin to lose commercial advantage in the hemisphere to Canada, how­ever, as we did with Chile before the United States passed our own bilateral FTA, alarm bells begin to ring. And that is good. Because it means that we recognize we cannot take the region for granted, and that we have to remain economically and politically engaged, no matter what might happen in Iraq.

Of course, there is one area in hemi­spheric affairs where U.S. and Canadian approaches differ, namely Cuba. In fact, how­ever, the ultimate goal remains the same: a free, democratic Cuba that respects the will of its people and looks to re-insert itself into the global community as a responsible, positive force for prosperity. Nonetheless, the status quo in Cuba will likely prevail so long as Fidel Castro remains alive, and in the meantime, other areas for engagement and collaboration in the hemisphere remain plentiful.

With the U.S. presidential election season already underway, and official Washington consumed by politics and Iraq, there’s little to think that the United States will re-emerge in the near-term with a hemispheric vision backed up by resources and bipartisan po­litical support. That spells opportunity in the south for our friends to the north. And they are proving willing, and ready, to respond.