Liberals want to turn back clock on foreign policy

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Michael Ignatieff is proposing to bring Canadian foreign policy forward to the past.

In a wide-ranging speech Tuesday afternoon to the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations, the Liberal Leader offered a starkly contrasting set of priorities to those of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper for Canada in the world.

Citing this country's failure last month to secure a seat on the Security Council, Mr. Ignatieff asserted: "The world forced us to look in the mirror, and we don't like what we see."

The Liberals are hoping to exploit the embarrassment of that failure to propose a major shift in Canadian foreign policy - in essence returning it to where it was when Jean Chrétien was prime minister.

In his speech, Mr. Ignatieff proposed:

» a renewed commitment to peacekeeping operations, which Canada largely abandoned to concentrate on the war in Afghanistan ("Canada must wear the blue beret again," Mr. Ignatieff maintained);

» spearheading efforts to ban cluster bombs (just as previous Liberal governments were at the forefront of the effort to ban landmines);

» repudiating the Conservative government's refusal to repatriate Omar Khadr from his Guantanamo prison (the government agreed this week to bring him back as early as a year from now);

» renewing Canada's commitment to limit global warming to within 2 degrees C. (The Conservatives have refused to move on climate change unless and until the United States acts);

» increasing the number of African countries receiving aid;

» rebalancing the emphasis on the Middle East to place a greater emphasis on promoting the rights of Palestinians;

» in general, increasing the emphasis on diplomacy and development, rather than concentrating primarily on defence.

In sum, Mr. Ignatieff proposes dismantling much of what the Conservatives have emphasized in foreign policy over the past four years.

But the Liberal approach is somewhat lacking in historical memory. Previous Liberal governments were quite happy to leave Mr. Khadr languishing in Guantanamo. Paul Martin, not Stephen Harper, began Canada's shift toward a more overtly pro-Israel approach. The Conservatives have cut aid to some African countries, but increased it in others. It was the Liberals, not the Conservatives, who committed Canada to Afghanistan, at the expense of peacekeeping priorities. And on many issues, such as expanding trade with China and India, fighting terrorism, and defending Arctic sovereignty, the Liberals and Conservatives actually agree, though neither prefers to admit it.

Nonetheless, the Liberals do propose a major break from the direction the Conservatives have been taking Canada's foreign policy.

If Mr. Ignatieff were prime minister, it would be 1999 all over again.