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The myth of Canada as the great peacekeeper is one of the more fanciful delusions under which Canadians live. It's time to let the myth die.

Peacekeeping, for Canadians, is indelibly linked with Lester Pearson, who as secretary of state for external affairs won the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his concept of armed peacekeeping - specifically, the United Nations Emergency Force, which was deployed to end the Suez crisis. As Pearsonism permeated the psyche of average Canadians, a national myth was born: Canada as compassionate, middle-power peacekeeper.

On the surface, the myth seems true. According to the Department of National Defence, Canada has been involved in more than 40 UN and non-UN sponsored peacekeeping missions (some sources put the number as high as 90) since 1948. More than 100,000 personnel have been committed to these missions, during which time the Canadian Forces has suffered more than 100 casualties. The cost to the taxpayer has been tens of billions of dollars. Added to these figures is a much-ballyhooed government statement that Canada has been involved in every peacekeeping mission.

According to a 1999 DND survey, 92 per cent of Canadians "believe it is important for the CF to be able to protect human rights in fragile democracies." In fact, even in the glare of the Somalia and Rwanda conflicts, Canadians see Canada's military role as that of a benign peacekeeper rather than a fighter.

But the perception withers when confronted with facts. Early in 2002, Paul Heinbecker, Canada's then-ambassador to the UN, asked members of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs where Canada ranked as a peacekeeper. Most of the audience assumed that Canada was among the top 10 nations. Mr. Heinbecker revealed that Canada was 31st. By March of 2004, Canada had slipped to 38th.

The myth runs counter to the actual history of Canadian military operations since the end of the Cold War: the 1991 Persian Gulf war; the 1993 battle of the Medek pocket in Croatia; the 1999 invasion of Kosovo; and Afghanistan in 2003.

Yet, the myth of Canada as peacekeeper has been reiterated by many of the respondents to the 2003 federal initiative known as the Canadian Foreign Policy Dialogue. Most citizens who took part in the project put a huge emphasis on Canadian peacekeeping. Sean Maloney of the Royal Military College says: "Canadians are ceaselessly inundated with the ideology that Canada doesn't fight wars, that Canadians are peacekeepers ....."

Policy emphasis on peacekeeping, meanwhile, perpetuates the myth that Canada's military mainly does peacekeeping, that we are good at it and that we gain international respect for it.

Are we good at peacekeeping? No, we're not.

Canadian soldiers do a superb job with what limited support they get from Ottawa and DND. But this is rarely co-ordinated. It's the professionalism of the troops rather than a solid, integrated policy that has allowed Canadian governments to maintain the peacekeeping myth.

Canada's rating of 38th in the world in 2004 is based on actual military and civilian police personnel commitments. Critics of this rating argue that it's not the quantity but the quality that counts, but such a perspective is ill-informed. Consider the actual numbers of personnel committed to missions: for most, Canada has commited few personnel. Between 1948 and 2003, there have only been seven UN or non-UN missions to which Canada sent more than 1,000 troops. Canada didn't contribute anyone to another seven missions. For 31 missions, we committed fewer than 100 military and civilian police (many of these missions had fewer than 10 people). Only 19 missions had between 100 and 900 personnel. After the mid-1990s, Ottawa policy dictated that Canada would only commit to specific missions rather than all UN peacekeeping missions.

In 2002, the year the bulk of Canada's deployable military capability was in Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of NATO's Stabilization Force, Canada had only 314 UN peacekeepers. During the same year, Bangladesh committed 6,029, India 2,843, Ghana 2,575, and Nepal 1,111. That year, Canada represented less than 1 per cent of the nearly 48,000 troops committed by nations for UN peacekeeping.

Nor can it be argued that Canada was busy in the Balkans. Of the nearly 40,000 troops committed directly or indirectly to the region by NATO, Canada's force was less than 1 per cent of the total.

As of June of 2004 - thanks to our short-term commitment in Haiti - 726 Canadian personnel were on UN missions. In that same time, Brazil had committed 1,351 troops, Germany 3,306, India 2,928, South Africa 2,365 and Uruguay 1,908.

One reason for this disparity is that many developing nations use UN deployments to generate hard currency. The UN pays countries that commit to its missions $1,000 (U.S.) per UN soldier per month, and these soldiers still take home their regular pay.

Clearly, given Canada's limited commitments, we cannot claim to be the world's leading peacekeeper. In terms of UN operations, countries such as Ghana or India or the Scandinavian states are far superior in terms of their long-term commitments and the professionalism of their troops. Unlike Canada, countries such as Norway and Australia have integrated foreign, defence and aid policies when pursuing the peacekeeping paradigm.

The fundamental problem for Canada is that the conceptualization of Pearsonian peacekeeping is an anachronism. True, the number of boots on the ground is a major factor in effective peacekeeping and peace enforcement. Experience has shown that the presence of a robust combat-capable force does deter violence and allows non-governmental organizations the protection they need to do their work. As retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie has noted, modern peacekeeping missions must have well-trained, equipped and armed soldiers who may be required to kill to protect themselves and others. In the post-Cold War era, peacekeeping is more about peace enforcement; at its extreme, it might be thought of as war by other means. Canadian policy simply has not adapted to this reality, and this has very much been driven by public opinion.

The public clings to the notion that our peacekeeping role has brought us international respect. But there's no evidence that Canada's limited commitments to peacekeeping have any effect on how other states deal with us. Peacekeeping has always been an ad hoc process for the military and the government.

The most recent folly related to the peacekeeping myth is the Liberal government's announcement that it would create a 5,000-person "UN peacekeeping brigade." The only way this can be achieved without more funding, or raising the manning levels of the Canadian Forces, would be to strip the navy and the air force of personnel. Even then, it is doubtful that more than 1,000 to 2,000 troops of dubious peacekeeping quality could be committed.

What the government of Paul Martin has proposed is akin to what the Germans were forced to do toward the end of the Second World War as they ran out of combat troops: They put ill-equipped air force and navy personnel into front-line roles.

For its part, the UN will not care. At the end of the day, Bangladesh or Ghana can still put more boots on the ground than Canada.

Sunil Ram is a professor of military history and land warfare at American Military University, where he also teaches peacekeeping. He is also the author of the UNITAR training program for peacekeeping in the Balkans and is currently revising the UNITAR program on the modern history of peacekeeping. A former Canadian soldier, he holds a UN Global Citizen Award for furthering awareness of peace and peacekeeping.