Abstract
Reviewed by: Steven Seligman (steven.seligman@dal.ca ), Dalhousie University, Canada
The United Nations (UN) celebrated its seventieth anniversary in 2015, a milestone that inspired the Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University to convene a one-day conference of scholars, government officials, and civil society activists to examine the rich history and turbulent present of Canada’s engagement with the UN. Canada and the United Nations: Legacies, Limits, Prospects is an edited volume comprising several of the papers presented at that conference. It offers an informative, albeit only partial, overview of an important topic that is particularly timely following the election of the Justin Trudeau Liberals, which has raised expectations that Canada will reinvigorate its engagement with the world body following the decade of darkness in Canada–UN relations produced by the Harper Conservatives.
Written mostly by historians, but with interdisciplinary appeal, the book is the inaugural title of a new series by McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “Rethinking Canada in the World.” It is a well-researched and sympathetic account of Canada’s internationalist contributions to the UN that reveals much to admire while acknowledging the limitations of Canada’s efforts. It laments, and sometimes derides, the Harper government’s disdain for the world body, but wisely eschews viewing the pre-Harper era through rose-coloured glasses. Hence, as the editors write in the introduction, the contributors give “varying grades to Canada’s historic contributions to UN-related initiatives and to the effectiveness of the UN as a whole,” but are “united in viewing the Harper government’s policy toward internationalism and the world body as something new, as a wilful dismantling of Canada’s legacy of peacekeeping, multilateralist internationalism, and UN leadership” (6). Addressing topics such as economic trade, official development assistance, children’s rights, and peacekeeping (among others), the book reveals government rhetoric that promoted humane internationalism but was not always matched by the needed policies and funding, and domestic civil society actors that often pressured the government to do more than it was willing or able to accept. But the sincere internationalism of many civil servants and members of civil society nevertheless shines brightly in these stories.
The book is organized around three main themes: Canada’s history with the UN, the engagement of ordinary Canadians with the UN, and Canada’s present approach to the UN. These themes are explored with “considerable methodological breadth: some contributors focus on the ‘high politics’ of UN-nation-state interactions; others look at the role of nongovernmental actors; several employ cultural and postcolonial analyses to wrestle with such issues as gender, class, and race, approaches that have moved very slowly into assessments of Canadian international relations” (9).
Hence, David MacKenzie’s chapter examines Canada’s involvement with international organizations before 1945. Suzanne Langlois discusses the collaborative efforts of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) to produce pro-UN “propaganda” films for Canadian audiences from 1944–1947. David Webster assesses the role of Canadians during the “first wave” of UN technical assistance, highlighting those who promoted economic development in the Global South during the UN’s first decade. Tarah Brookfield examines the role of Canadian women in supporting various UN initiatives from the 1940s through the 1970s, focusing on the UNRRA, the United Nations Association (UNA) in Canada, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Kim Richard Nossal examines how different prime ministers have used the General Assembly podium as a bully pulpit to advance what Allan Gotlieb has called the “romantic” vision of Canadian foreign policy. Greg Donaghy assesses Canada’s foreign economic policy during the rise and fall of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) debates of the 1970s and early 1980s. Finally, two chapters discuss what is no doubt the most iconic Canadian contribution to the UN: peacekeeping. Colin McCullough discusses how a “progressive tenor” of peacekeeping was embraced by government and civil society alike to construct a particular vision of Canada’s national identity and role in the world from 1957 to 1997, while Kevin Spooner soberly reminds us that Canada’s actual contribution to UN peacekeeping began to decline significantly in the mid-1990s (i.e., ten years before Harper). The book also contains a foreword by former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy and an afterword by current president of the UNA in Canada, Kathryn White.
While each chapter does a solid job of examining its subject matter through the lens of one or more of the book’s three main themes, the editors’ case study selection process is not particularly clear. The book is not intended to provide comprehensive coverage of Canada’s seventy-year relationship with the UN, and is comparatively sparse on events from the twenty-first century. Perhaps the editors could have included a chapter examining Canada’s historical and contemporary engagement with the Security Council, a topical issue in light of the Harper government’s failed diplomacy regarding the UN’s most important organ. Likewise, a chapter on Canada’s often problematic approach to UN debates about indigenous peoples could have provided additional insights into the challenges facing the state as it struggles to pursue internationalist goals while working to safeguard the national interest and manage competing domestic societal preferences. Chapters on global environmental diplomacy or the UN’s human rights institutions would have helped expand the book’s coverage.
Still, the book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of Canada’s relationship with the UN. It persuasively shows that while Canada’s ideational commitment to UN internationalism and the country’s efficacy to enact global change have not always lived up to the familiar and self-serving clichés, there is nevertheless a proud legacy of Canadian engagement with the UN that scholars should continue to research and that government officials and ordinary Canadians should continue to uphold.