Canada Among Nations 2017: Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy by Norman Hillmer and Philippe Lagassé, eds.
| Author | Leah Sarson |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702019831660 |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
have prevented the Air India disaster. If the ‘‘dissident’’ in the title is appropriate, it
applies to the last years of his diplomatic career and those that followed.
Readers will find Warden’s memoir a beautifully written, thoughtful, insightful,
and often humorous account of the life of a Canadian diplomat from the early
1960s through the late 1980s, decades when it was thought Canada still ‘‘punched
above its weight’’ in global affairs.
Norman Hillmer and Philippe Lagasse
´, eds.
Canada Among Nations 2017: Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 310 pp. $49.99 (cloth)
ISBN: 978-3-319-73859-8
Reviewed by: Leah Sarson (leah.sarson@dal.ca), Dalhousie University
After the switch from publisher McGill-Queen’s to Palgrave Macmillan, and a mi ssing
2016 edition, the 2017 Canada Among Nations: Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign
Policy, edited by Norman Hillmer and Philippe Lagasse
´, offers a strong foray into its
nascent titular scholarship. The overall picture is of a government struggling to bal-
ance its multilateral obligations and bilateral fealty to Washington with a foreign
policy still directed at a domestic audience. The accessible overviews of key issues in
Canadian foreign policy mean that this volume will likely maintain the series’ status as
an effective entry point to the study of Canadian foreign policy for students at many
Canadian universities. That said, inconsistencies in tone and the absence of an over-
arching narrative make it difficult to discern whether this was indeed the editors’
intent.
Despite his face on the cover, as the editors rightly note this volume is less about
Mr. Trudeau and more about US president Donald Trump. Roland Paris, former
senior adviser to Trudeau, argues that Trudeau manages an ‘‘activist’’ foreign
policy that is simultaneously in Canada’s interest and responsive to changes in
Washington. Kim Richard Nossal parses through Trudeau’s foreign policy prom-
ises made during the 2015 election—promises that Paris helped implement—to
assert that Trudeau moved quickly to secure Canada’s interests as international
circumstances shifted.
While neither scholar interrogates the phrase ‘‘Canada’s interest,’’ both com-
ment on the Trudeau government’s struggles to communicate its foreign policy
intentions to Canadians. Indeed, as noted by both Andrea Lane and Ste
´fanie
von Hlatky and Jeffrey Rice, Trudeau’s communication skills have failed him on
arguably two of Canada’s biggest defence files: replacing Canada’s CF-18s and the
light armoured vehicles sale to Saudi Arabia. More effective have been the Trudeau
government’s efforts to differentiate itself from its predecessor—in tone, if not
always in substance. On the refugee, gender, climate change, and UN files, this
government has articulated policies that sound remarkably different from those of
former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as Debora Van Nijnatten, Rebecca Tiessen
and Emma Swan, Julie Gilmour, and Andrea Charron respectively demonstrate.
182 International Journal 74(1)
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