Canada and the United Nations General Assembly (1994–2015): continuity and change under the Liberals and Conservatives

Abstract

How important are political parties in shaping Canadian foreign policy? Do Liberals and Conservatives do foreign policy differently? Academic analysis of Canadian foreign policy has not focused much on these questions even while conventional wisdom insists that party differences matter a great deal. This paper examines Canada’s voting record at the United Nations General Assembly on selected resolutions from 1994 to 2015 to assess the impact of political parties on Canadian foreign policy. It finds that Canada’s record was marked by a high degree of continuity on all policy issues except one: The Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Overall, the paper concludes that while political parties do not differ much on foreign policy, the differences that do exist are significant enough to warrant greater scholarly attention.

Résumé

Quelle est l’importance des partis politiques dans l’élaboration de la politique étrangère canadienneLes libéraux et les conservateurs conduisent-ils la politique étrangère de manière différenteLes analyses académiques de la politique étrangère canadienne ne se sont guère penchées sur ces questions, bien que la sagesse conventionnelle insiste sur le fait que les différences entre les partis ont une grande importance. Cet article examine le relevé des votes du Canada à l’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies sur une sélection de résolutions adoptées entre 1994 et 2015 afin d’évaluer l’impact des partis politiques sur la politique étrangère du pays. Il révèle que les votes du Canada ont témoigné d’une forte continuité relativement à toutes les questions de politique, à l’exception d’une seule : celle du conflit israélo-palestinien. Globalement, l’article a pour conclusion l’hypothèse selon laquelle bien que les partis politiques ne soient pas très différents en matière de politique étrangère, les différences qui existent sont suffisamment importantes pour justifier que l’on s’y intéresse de plus près.

Keywords:

• Canadian foreign policy
• United Nations General Assembly
• political parties
• Liberal Party of Canada
• Conservative Party of Canada
• Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Acknowledgements

For helpful comments and suggestions, the author wishes to thank the journal's three anonymous reviewers, as well as the participants at the Canadian Foreign Policy panel at the 2016 annual conference of the Canadian Political Science Association, where an earlier version of this paper was presented.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Steven Seligman is assistant professor in the department of political science at Dalhousie University. His research interests include international relations, Canadian foreign policy, the United Nations, human rights and Sri Lanka.

Notes

1. Although the World Conference against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, had a fairly comprehensive agenda, the debates about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict dominated much of the conference, and thus shaped many states' view of the entire event.

2. The quotation cited appears to be a paraphrasing of comments made by Bell to Paul Heinbecker and Bessma Momani.

3. Note that the excerpted passage was originally posted online in the summer of 2011. The current version (as of 13 May 2016) remains identical to cached versions obtained via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

4. However, similar to what Heather Smith found regarding climate change policy, differences of style can be seen in the two statements, as the Conservative government included critical remarks about Iran and North Korea whereas the Liberal government discussed the issue in more general terms.

Additional information

Funding

This work was not supported by any funding or grant-awarding bodies.