Dollars and sense? The Harper government, economic diplomacy, and Canadian foreign policy
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| Author | Leah Sarson,Asa McKercher |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702016662794 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
International Journal
2016, Vol. 71(3) 351–370
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702016662794
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Scholarly Essay
Dollars and sense?
The Harper government,
economic diplomacy, and
Canadian foreign policy
Asa McKercher
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario
Leah Sarson
Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario
Abstract
Over its near-decade of governance, Canada’s Conservative government developed an
international agenda that narrowly construed international engagement as economic
diplomacy. Rooted in the Conservatives’ desire to establish themselves with voters as
shrewd stewards of the Canadian economy, economic and commercial calculations took
precedence, trumping even military spending and the Arctic, both defining portfolios for
Prime Minister Stephen Harper. We demonstrate the economic essence of the
Conservative government’s international agenda and examine outcomes related to
trade, the extractive resource sector, and the Canada–US relationship. We argue that
the dramatic overhaul of Canada’s public diplomacy, strategic and security agendas, and
global cooperation initiatives was a result of a limited conception of foreign policy that
prioritized economic and commercial objectives. The legacy of economic diplomacy
is a renewed focus on the question of international engagement as a means to a
Canadian end as a new Liberal government contends with the consequences of eco-
nomic diplomacy.
Keywords
Canada, economic diplomacy, foreign policy, Stephen Harper, international trade,
Conservative Party of Canada
Corresponding author:
Asa McKercher, McMaster University, Department of History, Chester New Hall, Hamilton,
ON, L8S 4L9, Canada.
Email: mckercha@mcmaster.ca
Lester Pearson was fond of quipping that ‘‘Foreign policy, after all, is merely
‘domestic policy, but with its hat on.’’’
1
Certainly, Canadian prime ministers
have been no strangers to according importance to domestic factors in foreign
affairs: Mackenzie King’s isolationism was driven partly by a desire to preserve
national unity; John Diefenbaker castigated Soviet imperialism to win ‘‘ethnic’’
votes; and Pearson was not alone among postwar Liberal prime ministers in adopt-
ing policies toward the United States to appeal to cultural and economic nation-
alists. It should be no surprise, then, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was as
much of a diplomatic haberdasher as his predecessors. Harper sought out
issues—Israel, Sri Lankan human rights violations, religious freedom—on which
to appeal to certain voters, whether from various ethnic groups or the Conservative
base. Guided by these political calculations, as well as a values set that cribs from
neoliberal and neoconservative playbooks, the Harper government faced criticism
for having both ‘‘aggressively narrowed Canada’s official international policy’’ and
led ‘‘a retreat from spheres ...in which Canada once led the planet.’’
2
Now with the
Harper government out of power, scholars can begin to examine the changes that it
wrought to Canada’s place in the world.
A number of excellent analyses of the Conservative ‘‘counter-revolution’’ in
foreign policy emerged during Harper’s premiership, but among them there was
little focus on the Tories’ overall trade policy, nor the manner in which an eco-
nomic agenda drove Canada’s engagement with the world.
3
As we suggest, par-
ticular fiscal values and an effort to portray the Conservatives as deft managers of
the economy were significant drivers of Harper’s foreign policy. The result was a
narrow ‘‘economic diplomacy.’’ Former international trade minister Ed Fast used
the term in a November 2013 speech, made appropriately enough to the Economic
Club of Canada, in which he announced a Global Markets Action Plan (GMAP)
that would ‘‘ensure that all diplomatic assets of the Government of Canada are
harnessed to support the pursuit of commercial success by Canadian companies
and investors.’’ As he emphasized, GMAP marked a ‘‘sea change in the way
Canada’s diplomatic assets are deployed around the world.’’
4
On the one hand,
GMAP is a sound and sensible roadmap befitting a ‘‘trading nation’’ in a world
where economic power is diversifying.
5
On the other hand, with its indication that
1. Lester Pearson, Words and Occasions: An Anthology of Speeches and Articles Selected from His
Papers by the Right Honourable L.B. Pearson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 68.
2. Joe Clark, How We Lead: Canada in a Century of Change (Toronto: Random House, 2013), 5;
Mark MacKinnon, ‘‘Harper’s World,’’ Globe and Mail, 26 September 2015, F1.
3. Adam Chapnick, ‘‘A diplomatic counter-revolution: Conservative foreign policy, 2006–2011,’’
International Journal 67, no. 1 (Winter 2011–12): 137–154; Heather A. Smith and Claire Turenne
Sjolander, Canada in the World: Internationalism in Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: Oxford
University Press, 2013); Alan Bloomfield and Kim Richard Nossal, ‘‘A Conservative foreign
policy? Canada and Australia compared,’’ in James Farney and David Rayside, eds.,
Conservatism in Canada, 139–164 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013).
4. DFATD, ‘‘Address by Minister Fast to the Economic Club of Canada,’’ 27 November 2013, http://
www.international.gc.ca/media/comm/speeches-discours/2013/12/11a.aspx (accessed 5 July 2016).
5. Michael Hart, A Trading Nation: Canadian Trade Policy from Colonialism to Globalization
(Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2002); Geoffrey E. Hale, ‘‘In pursuit of leverage:
352 International Journal 71(3)
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