After a week of jaw-dropping accusations, the quaint world of 2015 seems far away

Nine years ago this fall, the leaders of the three major federal parties at the time gathered on a stage in Toronto for a debate on foreign policy. The resulting discussion seems a bit quaint now.

The topics covered — Canada’s contribution to the fight against the Islamic State, a refugee crisis in Syria, the Conservative government’s anti-terror laws — were not exactly trifling. But India received only a glancing reference. Donald Trump, who had announced his candidacy for president of the United States four months earlier, wasn’t mentioned at all. Neither was China.

Literally and figuratively, it was a different time.

Canada’s relationship with China was defined by “panda diplomacy,” not “hostage diplomacy.” “Foreign interference” had not yet entered the popular lexicon. And there was no reason to ask the party leaders how they would respond if they learned of accusations that a nominal ally had propagated a campaign of violence and extortion against Canadian citizens on Canadian soil.

The last nine years should humble anyone who thinks they can predict what will happen in the next nine. But the remarkable revelations and accusations of the past week — from the expulsion of six Indian diplomats to the prime minister’s challenge to the Conservatives at the foreign interference inquiry on Wednesday — underline how the world has become a more dangerous place for Canada, in part due to national leaders who feel little compunction about acting aggressively toward this country and its citizens.

“The world is more uncertain and less safe than it ever has been and the answer that Canada needs to give is to double down on the rule of law and on the international rules-based order that protects us all,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at the foreign interference inquiry this week.

Even if the prime minister’s comments verged on hyperbole — the world surely was more unsafe during two world wars — it’s fair to say Canadians are dealing now with threats that were not foreseeable in 2015. Coming to terms with that reality continues to prove difficult.

The challenges posed by an uncertain world

There is, for instance, an odd tendency in our politics and punditry to assume — whenever Canada finds itself in a dispute with another country — that it’s Canada that is somehow in the wrong, or that Canadian officials need to apologize and make amends. The last nine years — from Donald Trump to China to India — have pushed that very Canadian reflex past its breaking point.

Regardless, Conservatives would surely say the Liberals have failed entirely to meet the challenge. And Liberals might have to admit that they were not ready for what has unfolded — or unravelled — in recent years.

But the Liberals can fairly point to their efforts to minimise the threat posed by Trump through the renegotiation of NAFTA. The Liberal government also eventually rallied an international coalition to publicly shame China over its imprisonment of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

Most of the infrastructure that now exists to deal with foreign interference was put in place by the Trudeau government. And it was the Liberals who created a national security committee of parliamentarians — something the Harper government resisted doing.

The Liberals also can say that the foreign interference inquiry has failed to find the massive cover-up that the government’s critics rushed to allege. But the inquiry has still revealed significant shortcomings in information-sharing and a political system that hasn’t fully come to grips with the threat.

For months, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been content to point fingers and lob heavy accusations. But by refusing to obtain the security clearance that would allow him to review classified information himself — while arguing that doing so would somehow limit his ability to pursue the government — he left himself open to the sort of attack that Trudeau levelled on Wednesday.

If foreign interference is a threat to the Conservative Party — the national security committee’s report in June included an allegation of interference by India in a Conservative leadership race — the Conservative leader should want to know the details. And while Trudeau might now be accused of politicising the issue of national security, his testimony before the commission also challenged Poilievre to face up to one of the very real challenges of this moment.

Canada and the new global disorder

Those challenges seem unlikely to disappear magically when Trudeau leaves office. And even if it’s unwise to try to predict how the next nine years will unfold, it seems prudent to plan for further uncertainty.

Adam Chapnick, a defence and foreign policy scholar at the Royal Military College of Canada, suggests the challenges of this era might be viewed through two possible frames.

On the one hand, he suggested, it may be that there is simply less respect for international norms and institutions and a greater willingness on the part of some powers to run roughshod over mid-sized countries.

On the other, he added, it may be that Canada’s place in the world has diminished to the point where “more powerful countries with different interests than ours no longer take us seriously enough to fear that running roughshod over us would constitute a violation of any international norm.”

There may be some truth to both ways of looking at the situation. Either way, the current state of affairs would seem to demand more from Canada — not only better safeguards for Canadian institutions and citizens but also more robust contributions to the world at large and the maintenance of strong alliances.

All the while, of course, the consequences of climate change will continue to bear down — likely leading to new migration and refugee crises.

The world beyond our shores has become harder for us to view as a secondary concern. The problems posed by that world have become trickier to navigate.

It all demands more of Canada’s leaders — starting with the ability to view classified information. And that gives federal party leaders much more to discuss whenever they next gather on a stage to debate foreign policy.