20375: Lemieux: Toronto Star:National interest of Canadians tied to failed states like Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

 Toronto Star
Mar. 14, 2004. 01:00 AM


National interest of Canadians tied to failed states like
Haiti


GRAHAM FRASER

OTTAWA—It was an unusual and revealing moment when Paul
Martin rose in the House of Commons last Wednesday and
asked Joe Clark a question. A serious one, not a barbed,
rhetorical in-your-face quip with a question mark.

Prime ministers usually don't stick around for debates in
the House of Commons and, when they do, they don't ask
questions. But Martin did, and it is worth quoting in its
entirety.

"Given his experience, does he believe that if Canada were
to develop and co-ordinate its great expertise in
institution-building, whether it be judiciary, police or
how a democracy should, in fact, operate, is this an area
that Canada should invest in far more heavily as part of
our overall foreign aid development?" he asked. "There are
a number of failed states; we have seen what happened in
Liberia. Does he in fact believe that there really is a
niche where Canada can play a very important role if we are
able to co-ordinate the skills we have?"

It was both a fine parliamentary exchange and a policy
statement. In his tentative, interrogative way, Martin was
laying out a foreign policy agenda.

Clark made it clear he thinks this is a role that Canada
can and should play. Coincidently, on Friday night, Michael
Ignatieff fleshed out what this could mean.

Ignatieff is the Carr professor of human rights policy at
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and in the O.D.
Skelton Lecture, he set out a foreign policy agenda for
Canada under the rubric, "Peace, Order and Good
Government": the defining mantra of the British North
America Act in 1867 and Canada's answer to the American
national mission of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

A foreign policy cannot be based simply on values,
Ignatieff pointed out; it must defend the national interest
and Canada's greatest national interest is maintaining
national independence.

Independence is not just an interest; it is a value
Canadians have died defending.

"Independence also works," Ignatieff said. "One lesson of
our history is that when we pursue an independent foreign
policy — over Cuba, over China — we both serve values and
we also serve our interests."

>From that point, he described how the ideas of peace, order
and good government are not just a cluster of values but
intertwine in a way that defines our national interest and
establishes a precondition of our national independence.

On that basis, Ignatieff argued, Canada should engage with
the world by focusing on what it does best.

"My suggestion is that Canada needs to do something about
the long-standing, but now decisive crisis in state order
that is sweeping the world, undermining `peace, order and
good government' in as many as thirty of the world states."

Ignatieff stressed that failed states are, in fact,
security threats to Canada.

This is not the current wisdom at Foreign Affairs. Last
month, James Wright, assistant deputy-minister for global
and security policy, was asked at a Commons committee if
the crisis in Haiti represented a security threat to
Canada.

No, he replied, adding it did not even represent a security
threat to the region. It was a humanitarian crisis.

But a failed state like Haiti is, in fact, a security
threat. It is a way station for drug traffickers, a
humanitarian black hole, a potential source of a tidal wave
of refugees, and its collapse could create a breeding
ground for disease. When Toronto could fall victim to an
epidemic with origins in a Chinese food market, no one
should think we are safely isolated from Haiti's human
tragedy.

The challenge of repairing a damaged society is huge.
Democracy-building is critically important work that many
Canadians are engaged in and the government has been slow
to pay attention to it.

Now, Haiti is clearly the first item on Martin's new
institution-building agenda.

But the solutions are not obvious. Canada hardly
contributed to strengthening democracy by choosing, like
the United States and France, to stand by while
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the legitimately elected president,
was forced out of office by armed thugs. We are now deeply
committed, and for a long time.

However, trying to save Haiti does not make a foreign
policy. To make institution-building a Canadian trademark,
Canada needs to organize, co-ordinate and focus its
resources.

How do we choose where to act? Sri Lanka, where
pre-election violence and inter-Tamil killings have broken
out? Algeria, which has emerged from a decade of violence?
Governance-challenged Nigeria? When does
"institution-building" merely reinforce a corrupt regime?

Recognizing that establishing good governance and the rule
of law protects Canadian security is a good step. But it's
just a first step.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graham Fraser is a national affairs writer. He can be
reached at


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