Canada and Latin America: 150 years later

ABSTRACT

The article examines Canada’s long-standing relationship with the Americas since Confederation. It focuses on various Canadian governments and their policies/initiatives toward the region. It also outlines the various explanatory reasons for why Ottawa has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the hemisphere. Lastly, the submission offers some policy suggestions to the present Trudeau government on how best to craft an effective Americas policy.

RÉSUMÉ

Cet article examine la longue collaboration du Canada avec les Amériques depuis l’établissement de la Confédération. Il explore particulièrement certains gouvernements canadiens et leurs politiques/initiatives vis-à-vis de la région. Il met aussi en lumière ce qui explique pourquoi Ottawa a eu une relation en dents de scie avec l’Hémisphère. Enfin, il offre quelques suggestions au gouvernement Trudeau pour la réalisation de la politique la plus efficace possible vis-à-vis des Amériques.

KEYWORDS:

• Latin America
• Canadian foreign policy
• engagement and dialogue

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Peter McKenna is professor and chair of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. He has published widely on Canadian-Cuban Relations and Canadian-Latin American Relations. His most recent scholarly publication in this area is an edited collection, Canada looks south: in search of an Americas strategy (2012).

Notes

1. For the early history of Canada’s involvement, including its missionary work, in the Americas, see Ogelsby (1976).

2. Having morphed into Brookfield Assets Management today, it is still a major foreign investor in Brazil and in other parts of the region.

3. In July 2015, Scotiabank announced that it would be expanding its operations in Panama and Costa Rica. It already has a substantial corporate footprint in Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile. See Berman (2015). Canadian foreign direct investment in Latin America, which has doubled since 2007, totalled some CAN$163 billion in 2012. That is three times what Canadians invest in Asia and makes Canada the third largest investor in the Americas (Government of Canada 2013).

4. For a fuller treatment of those relations, see (Rochlin 1994, Stevenson 2000, McKenna 2012).

5. For a fuller treatment of Canada’s involvement with the PAU and the OAS, see McKenna (1995).

6. Up until 1972, there were no CIDA officials on the ground in Latin America, while there were 286 technical advisers in French and Commonwealth Africa. It was also the case that civil society in Canada was becoming engaged in the region through Oxfam, the United Church, CUSO and the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, to name a few.

7. It is instructive to note that a small domestic community of Latin Americans living in Canada was created with the influx of political refugees from the region in the 1970s and 1980s.

8. For Harper’s Latin America gambit, see (Graham 2010, Heinbecker 2010, Mace and Thérien 2012).

9. This two-way trade figure was calculated from the various Country Fact Sheets from the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Development Canada. The population of Latin America is almost 600 million and the region has undergone significant economic reforms, has a growing middle class, and is an attractive place to do business.

10. On the positive side, there were reciprocal visits of deputy ministers from both Canada and Brazil in 2009–2010. Furthermore, there is some effort on the part of Global Affairs Canada (GAC) to develop bureaucratic expertise in the Americas. And the political leadership must do a better job of listening to the advice coming from Canadian diplomats and bureaucrats.

11. In the words of Harper’s then-chief spokesperson Dimitri Soudas:

Our government is strengthening its development assistance programs in the Americas because this is our neighbourhood, where we have significant interests and the ability and influence to make a difference. Our assistance is helping to build the basis for sustainable prosperity and security and strengthening democracy and the rule of law.

Quoted in Saunders (2009). According to Canadian officials, Canada’s total development assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean has, since 2007, exceeded CAN$5.4 billion. See, Government of Canada (2014). However, there is some evidence to suggest that development assistance did not dramatically drop off for Africa (Macdonald and Ruckert 2015).

12. It is interesting to note, however, the amount of governmental attention and financial resources earmarked for Canada’s relations with Ukraine – when compared to the relative neglect of a more important region like Latin America. See Chase (2015a).

13. Harper's, Chile speech, 2007, pp. 12–13.

14. These visits are definitely important, but they need to be undertaken regularly (every six to eight months) – outside of the Summit of the Americas gatherings – by a prime minister who is dedicated to establishing strong working relationships with many political leaders in the region.

15. For more scholarly treatment of this subject area, see the work by Liisa North, Tim Clark and Todd Gordon.

16. This is not to suggest that Canada sacrificed its independence or autonomy in every policy decision involving the Americas. But Ottawa did have to do a cost–benefit analysis, and weigh the advantages and disadvantages, of taking a position that was contrary to that of Washington’s. See McKenna (1999).

17. During the 2012 Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, Prime Minister Harper angered the Argentines by siding with the United States (against all the rest of the countries in the Americas) and blocking a resolution on the Falklands/Malvinas islands from coming to the floor for debate.

18. At the March 2013 funeral for Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, the Canadian delegation was led by a junior parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs – which was noticed and poorly received by the Venezuelans. Many of the countries of Latin America were represented by their head of state.

19. The fact that Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff was willing to make an official visit to Washington in June 2015 – in the wake of damaging revelations about the American National Security Agency (NSA) tapping her phone – and not to Ottawa probably says something about the poor state of Canada–Brazil relations today.

20. One obvious way would be the two countries aligning themselves against the United States in global economic matters – as we saw in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations on auto parts operations in North America. See Chase (2015b).

21. See Blanchfield (2013). It is worth mentioning that the Trudeau government finally rescinded the visa requirement for Mexican travelers in late 2016.

22. For a recent treatment of Canada’s efforts in the 1960s to spy on behalf of American intelligence agencies in Cuba, see Muntin (2015).

23. To its credit, the Globe and Mail newspaper did assign Stephanie Nolen, who operates out of Brazil, to cover Latin America in 2013 (Nolen 2013).

24. Bringing back the Chretien government’s move to create the think tank, the Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL), would be a good start (should the Liberal government be interested). Though it was disbanded in 2011 by the Harper government for ideological and financial reasons, something along the lines of FOCAL could still serve a very valuable role in bringing together interested academics, members of the public, foreign service officers and representatives from the NGO community to discuss matters of common interest.

25. I first made this point as a graduate student in 1991, when my essay on Canada and the Americas was chosen as the best by the Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL). I’m still making the same point today.

26. It is worth mentioning that Canada, at least historically speaking, has not always responded positively to Latin American petitions for this country to play a larger role in Latin America. This was particularly the case with respect to Canada’s admission to the OAS.