Canada’s functional principle: 75 years on

Defining Canada’s functional principle

Moving beyond the over-simplified definition of the functional principle provided above is not easy. Wrong’s ideas underwent a significant transformation as they evolved from his first note to the under-secretary of state for external affairs (deputy minister), Norman Robertson, to the policy announced by King and then later revisited by his successor, Louis St. Laurent. In 1942, Wrong was struggling with how to preserve Canada’s international influence in the aftermath of the decision of the United States to intervene in the Second World War. He feared that America’s entry would prevent Ottawa, still a significant contributor to the military effort, from having its voice heard on issues of real significance. The principle, he explained, was that “Each member of the grand alliance should have a voice in the conduct of the war proportionate to its contribution to the general war effort. A subsidiary principle,” he added, was “that the influence of the various countries should be greatest in conjunction with those matters with which they are most directly concerned.” ⁷ In the words of Wrong’s colleague Lester Pearson, whose job it would be to sell the idea to the political leadership: “The principle we wished to see adopted… was [that] membership on bodies and committees would include those, but only those, who had a very real and direct interest in the work and could make an important contribution to it.” ⁸

As was his prerogative, Mackenzie King massaged the public service advice to suit his own political purposes. When he addressed the House of Commons on 9 July 1943, he spoke, as had Wrong, of the need to prevent the so-called great powers from seizing complete control of the future world order. In establishing representation on bodies tasked with global governance, he too maintained that “Representation should be determined on a functional basis which will admit to full membership those countries, large or small, which have the greatest contribution to make to the particular object in question.” But King then went on: “Some compromise must be found,” he maintained, “between the theoretical equality of states and the practical necessity of limiting representation on international bodies to a workable number. That compromise can be discovered, especially in economic matters [my emphasis], by the adoption of the functional principle of representation.” ⁹

Eighteen months later, on 18 January 1946, in an address to the United Nations General Assembly, the acting foreign minister, Louis St. Laurent, added further nuance to the Canadian argument. “Our government has always attached great importance to … what has been called the functional principle,” he noted.

It is not really an abstract principle at all, but a commonsense prerequisite for the success of the [United Nations] Organization. We believe that special responsibilities within the framework of the Organization should be entrusted to those nations which have the means and the will [my emphasis] to make the greatest contribution to the solution of the special problem in hand, and that is not because of any selfish interest in the application of the principle involved. It is because we wish to see the greatest possible measure of achievement, believing, as we do, that the interests of our country can best be served by that which best serves the whole community of nations. ¹⁰

It is significantly easier to identify what Canadian functionalism was not. First, in spite of their shared etymology, Hume Wrong’s functional principle was not an offshoot of the former British foreign service officer David Mitrany’s functionalist theory of International Relations. As James Eayrs has explained,

The functional theory supposes that the problems connected with the building of a peaceable and prosperous states-system are best approached by dealing, through appropriate international institutions, with economic and social shortcomings, rather than by a head-on and headlong assault upon political grievances. ¹³

Second, at least in its inception, Canada’s functional principle was not, as has often been implied, ¹⁶ linked directly to the concept of middle power. As John Holmes, one of Wrong’s protégés in External Affairs, has noted, during the initial formulation of the functional idea, there was little

to suggest a preconceived idea of that moderate, mediating, middle-power role which was later to be identified with Canada. In fact, there was little, if any, talk about a role at all. Canadian diplomacy was making headway but it was not yet self-conscious. ¹⁷

The origins of Canada’s functional principle

Even though the development of the functional principle is generally attributed to Hume Wrong, Canadian prime minister Robert Borden expressed similar feelings at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Borden, having likely been encouraged by his diplomatic adviser Loring Christie, was concerned that Canada might not be able to “hold our own with Patagonia” ²⁰ in the postwar negotiations. He therefore sought to ensure that, in spite of its dominion status, Canada was recognized by the international community for its independent contribution to the Allies’ military victory. Two years later, his successor, Arthur Meighen, made a similar, albeit ultimately unsuccessful functional-type case at an imperial conference. “In spheres in which any Dominion is particularly concerned,” he proposed, “the view of that Dominion must be given a weight commensurate with the importance of the decision to that Dominion.” ²¹

Wrong might have been exposed to such thinking through Christie, who served with him in the Department of External Affairs in the late 1930s. He might also have had access to Mitrany’s writings in the early 1940s. More convincing, however, is historian Jack Granatstein’s argument that Wrong arrived at his functional principle independently, based in large part on his long-time belief that Canada had an obligation to play a more active role in the world. ²² That obligation became urgent when, thanks to the United States’ decision to join the Second World War, the Canadian position as Britain’s senior North American ally was downgraded to minor partner. The creation of the US–UK Combined Chiefs of Staff in early 1942 meant that, on wartime matters, Ottawa would no longer be permitted to communicate with Washington directly. As a secondary partner and Commonwealth country, its messages would have to be funnelled through London. Wrong found the new set-up bizarre, and contemplated five policy options to preserve Canadian power and influence, all of which were inspired by his functional theory. ²³ Two of the options – obvious non-starters – envisioned Canada, the US, and the UK as equal wartime partners. Next was the difficult, yet most genuinely “functional” approach of demanding Canadian representation on bodies that dealt with Ottawa’s most critical concerns. Easier, and therefore preferable, was Wrong’s fourth option: a partnership with the UK and strengthened position within the Commonwealth. Finally, but again not feasible, Canada could lobby the UK and the US individually. When London refused to countenance any cooperative relationship with Ottawa that did not give the British prime minister ultimate authority over all significant decisions, Wrong endorsed the more independent-minded option three.

Over the next eighteen months, Wrong, Robertson, and Pearson socialized the new thinking increasingly successfully at the political level. As the historian Hector Mackenzie has documented, the functional principle was first invoked as Canadian policy well before Mackenzie King proclaimed it in the House of Commons. In 1942 and 1943, Ottawa advocated, somewhat inconsistently and unevenly, a Canadian place on a series of Anglo-American combined boards, and then more aggressively in negotiations to create the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Whether the functional argument – as opposed to the personalities of the main players, not to mention the national interests of the great powers – best explains what moderate successes Ottawa did achieve is unclear. ²⁴ No matter, by the fall of 1943, functionalism had become firmly entrenched in the Canadian foreign policy lexicon.

Functionalism: An assessment

There were a number of reasons for the political establishment in Canada to embrace the functional principle. For one, it was intuitively appealing: by limiting its requests for influence to particular organizations and issues, Ottawa was not asking other states within the international community for more power than it had earned or deserved. There was a humility implied in the Canadian argument that seemed both firm yet also non-threatening. ²⁵ Second, the functional approach made strategic sense. In the words of one analyst, “Functionalism legitimized the application of issue-specific strengths and skills possessed by individual countries. On the basis of [these] criteria, Canada could marshal its time and energy” efficiently and effectively. ²⁶ The strength of the Canadian economy in 1942 meant that Ottawa negotiators did have leverage when advocating the positions that they ultimately secured on the Combined Production and Resources Board (CPRB) and the Combined Food Board (CFB). ²⁷ Later on, the Canadian contribution to atomic energy research all but guaranteed Ottawa a place on the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. ²⁸ Third, functionalist advocacy was consistent with trends in popular thinking in Canada at the time. As one former diplomat recalls, “‘contribute’ was an ‘in’ word in the Ottawa of the late 1940s.” ²⁹ Arguments that promoted Canadian global influence resonated. Finally, as King’s and St. Laurent’s nuanced changes made clear, the principle was sufficiently malleable so as to meet the government’s political needs – whether that meant limiting Canada’s global commitments, as King was wont to prefer, or expanding them, as Wrong had intended. ³⁰

Nonetheless, in retrospect, the functional principle was ultimately a profoundly flawed approach to Canadian foreign policy. Most obvious, by rewarding influence to particular states based on their functional capacity, the principle validated and aimed to perpetuate inequalities, or what A.J. Miller has called “discriminative influence,” ³¹ within what was presumably meant to be a liberal democratic system of global governance. Moreover, as scholars of international development assistance have demonstrated convincingly, ³² by privileging producers, or suppliers, over recipient states in the development and implementation of international policy, the functional argument precluded the sorts of jointly empowered global partnerships that are best able to achieve real results. ³³

The assumptions of Wrong and his colleagues about the nature of the contemporary world order were also both overly optimistic and naïve. The Canadians were convinced that the logic of their arguments would lead to global influence. They failed to anticipate that the great powers might privilege their own national interests over those of the international community, or that allies like the United States and the United Kingdom might use their clear military superiority as leverage in negotiations focused on the non-lethal elements of international organization. Indeed, in spite of the concessions made to Canada on the relatively minor CPRB and CFB, it is unclear whether American and British authorities ever conceded the Canadian principle’s general validity. Canadian thinkers also seemed to assume that the great power element of the international order was static. According to the functional principle, the great powers would always be great, and no other state could ever join them. Such thinking undermined Canada’s diplomatic leverage. If the great powers could never be held to account, why would they accommodate the lesser states? ³⁴

Finally, Wrong and his colleagues were too hopeful in assuming that the Department of External Affairs would be staffed sufficiently so as to seize every opportunity to invoke the functional principle, and that Ottawa would embrace such opportunities wholeheartedly. As one of Mackenzie King’s most internationalist cabinet ministers said to the House of Commons on 18 April 1944, “We can apply the functional principle too far. We cannot be on every board there is in the world.” ³⁵ Moreover, Ottawa quickly learned that there were times when having a voice that could not fundamentally shift great power thinking was more trouble than it was worth. As a result, the Canadian government came to invoke the functional principle selectively, leading critics to justifiably accuse Ottawa of hypocrisy. ³⁶

The lessons of history

What relevance does Canada’s experience with the functional principle have for contemporary practitioners? First, words can have more than one meaning, and in the realm of external relations, they often hurt as much as they help. One can certainly praise Minister Dion for the transparency of his comments, but their long-term value is more suspect. Assuming that Dion’s advocacy persists under Minister Freeland – admittedly, one cannot be sure that it will – how “responsible conviction” is interpreted, and then reinterpreted, over time will have a significant impact in assessments of the Trudeau Liberal government’s success, or lack thereof, on the global stage. Put differently, if Dion’s efforts to frame the Canadian foreign policy narrative so explicitly continue under his successor, the new minister risks abdicating influence over critical assessments of her government’s conduct.

Second, outspoken commitments to a certain way of doing international business are dangerous in a world that cannot be controlled, and during a political cycle that all but demands compromise. Although there appears to be enough wiggle-room in Minister Dion’s comments to allow for significant policy shifts, thanks to the “responsible conviction” speech, dramatic changes to Canada’s global posture will be questioned much more aggressively by Canadians and foreign policy experts. The attention that Dion attempted to draw to his government’s planned way forward will magnify failures just as much as it might promote successes.

Finally, even the most reasonable ideas can lead to unforeseen and unintentional consequences. Pursuing functionalist thinking to its extreme in the late 1940s would have left the Department of External Affairs depleted of both influence and political capital. Canada would have alienated the great powers through its persistence, and the smaller ones through the aggressive neglect of their interests. Perhaps, then, it might have been prudent for Minister Dion to delay the declaration of his commitment to responsible conviction until after his team in Ottawa had a series of foreign policy achievements to announce.

In conclusion, neither responsible conviction nor the functional principle are particularly bad ideas. Moreover, offering up a recipe for Canadian conduct on the world stage should make the work of Canada’s diplomatic corps, not to mention Government of Canada public affairs officers, that much easier. But like any significant government announcement, promoting self-described principled approaches to international conduct in an unforgiving world also has its costs. It will be up to future analysts to determine whether the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau manages the consequences of Minister Dion’s comments effectively.