Fisher: Canada playing bigger role on world stage, at last
BERLIN — One persistent Canadian myth is that the country has a marvellous international reputation. It is true that Canada for many years did all it could to be on the side of the angels. But such eagerness to please has barely registered overseas. To find out what the world really thinks, just Google "Canada most boring country" and see what turns up.
Canada's elites have often viewed such banal depictions as compliments, rather than slurs. Whatever the case, it no longer fits to describe Canada — one of the world's most affluent, dynamic trading nations — as a tedious non-entity.
There was surprise — even alarm — among the Pearsonian chattering classes when Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his finance minister, Jim Flaherty, recently lectured Europeans about their financial incompetence.
But why were eyebrows raised? Canada has already left much of Old Europe behind economically. Over the next 25 years it will likely surpass France and Britain.
Every Canadian knows our dollar has been doing better against almost every other currency. The International Monetary Fund reckons that Canada's gross domestic product moved ahead of the U.S. by about $3,000 on a per-capita basis last year.
Canadian banks are the most stable in the world. Few Canadian homeowners are losing their homes to foreclosure. Driven by oil, potash and once again wheat, our economy has outpaced most other western countries for some time. In a quiet acknowledgment of these facts, the governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, was appointed as the new chief of the Financial Stability Board, a group of top fiscal experts trying to keep the global house of cards from collapsing.
That Canada has been establishing a bolder, more confident persona, was evident in the pride, jingoism and sky-high expectations of Canadians at the Vancouver Olympics, the quiet acceptance by most Canadians of the key military roles that the Martin and Harper governments undertook in southern Afghanistan and Libya, the global growth of Bombardier, SNC-Lavalin, ATCO, Research In Motion Ltd. and the scores of Canadian resource companies with big operations in places as distant as Mongolia, Siberia, Zambia and Colombia.
Tracing Canada's growing reach and rising stature in a tumultuous world was a big part of the compelling assignment that Postmedia boss Paul Godfrey offered when he asked me to become the chain's ranging foreign affairs columnist. We begin that venture with this column.
As well as elaborating on major breaking international news, I hope to see how some of the two million Canadian expatriates — business people, diplomats, soldiers, aid workers, pilots, technical specialists and clergy — are proving that many of the conceptions that their compatriots and others have about Canada are outdated or plain wrong, and to compare how other countries with bright futures, such as Australia and Brazil, sort out similar problems.
As Canada becomes more prosperous at home and a more significant competitor abroad, vital interests will need to be protected and nurtured. Prime Minister Harper has declared that he intends to pursue a brawnier, more hard-nosed foreign policy. What that means is not yet entirely clear but there have been hints aplenty. Canada hastily left a military staging base in the Middle East rather than accept an aviation agreement that clearly was lopsided. New trade deals and links with the Americas, the Pacific Rim, India and Europe have been completed or are in prospect. There has been a major shift on relations with China that has been clearly designed to enhance trade. Travel and trade between Canada and the U.S. will become easier.
The Harper government opted out of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change because it would have badly hurt Canada economically by cutting our greenhouse gases while some of the world's major polluters would not have been obliged to do so. Because the Alberta oilsands are essential for Canada's economic future, the government has strongly backed their development in the face of well-funded, ferociously well-organized foreign environmental lobby groups.
None of this means Ottawa has become quarrelsome. What it signals is that for the first time in decades a more confident Canada intends to live up to what has until recently been largely a fantasy — that it is an important world player. It will be fascinating to see how Canada tries to escape from its own shadow.
fisherrmatthew@hotmail.com
Canada's elites have often viewed such banal depictions as compliments, rather than slurs. Whatever the case, it no longer fits to describe Canada — one of the world's most affluent, dynamic trading nations — as a tedious non-entity.
There was surprise — even alarm — among the Pearsonian chattering classes when Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his finance minister, Jim Flaherty, recently lectured Europeans about their financial incompetence.
But why were eyebrows raised? Canada has already left much of Old Europe behind economically. Over the next 25 years it will likely surpass France and Britain.
Every Canadian knows our dollar has been doing better against almost every other currency. The International Monetary Fund reckons that Canada's gross domestic product moved ahead of the U.S. by about $3,000 on a per-capita basis last year.
Canadian banks are the most stable in the world. Few Canadian homeowners are losing their homes to foreclosure. Driven by oil, potash and once again wheat, our economy has outpaced most other western countries for some time. In a quiet acknowledgment of these facts, the governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, was appointed as the new chief of the Financial Stability Board, a group of top fiscal experts trying to keep the global house of cards from collapsing.
That Canada has been establishing a bolder, more confident persona, was evident in the pride, jingoism and sky-high expectations of Canadians at the Vancouver Olympics, the quiet acceptance by most Canadians of the key military roles that the Martin and Harper governments undertook in southern Afghanistan and Libya, the global growth of Bombardier, SNC-Lavalin, ATCO, Research In Motion Ltd. and the scores of Canadian resource companies with big operations in places as distant as Mongolia, Siberia, Zambia and Colombia.
Tracing Canada's growing reach and rising stature in a tumultuous world was a big part of the compelling assignment that Postmedia boss Paul Godfrey offered when he asked me to become the chain's ranging foreign affairs columnist. We begin that venture with this column.
As well as elaborating on major breaking international news, I hope to see how some of the two million Canadian expatriates — business people, diplomats, soldiers, aid workers, pilots, technical specialists and clergy — are proving that many of the conceptions that their compatriots and others have about Canada are outdated or plain wrong, and to compare how other countries with bright futures, such as Australia and Brazil, sort out similar problems.
As Canada becomes more prosperous at home and a more significant competitor abroad, vital interests will need to be protected and nurtured. Prime Minister Harper has declared that he intends to pursue a brawnier, more hard-nosed foreign policy. What that means is not yet entirely clear but there have been hints aplenty. Canada hastily left a military staging base in the Middle East rather than accept an aviation agreement that clearly was lopsided. New trade deals and links with the Americas, the Pacific Rim, India and Europe have been completed or are in prospect. There has been a major shift on relations with China that has been clearly designed to enhance trade. Travel and trade between Canada and the U.S. will become easier.
The Harper government opted out of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change because it would have badly hurt Canada economically by cutting our greenhouse gases while some of the world's major polluters would not have been obliged to do so. Because the Alberta oilsands are essential for Canada's economic future, the government has strongly backed their development in the face of well-funded, ferociously well-organized foreign environmental lobby groups.
None of this means Ottawa has become quarrelsome. What it signals is that for the first time in decades a more confident Canada intends to live up to what has until recently been largely a fantasy — that it is an important world player. It will be fascinating to see how Canada tries to escape from its own shadow.
fisherrmatthew@hotmail.com
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