We Lost the Security Council Seat. Does it Matter?

Yeah, it does.  I recall back in 2010, when I was a Liberal MP, how the opposition parties howled when Stephen Harper’s Conservatives lost their own bid for a vacant temporary seat on the Security Council.  Much was made of Harper’s lack of sophisticated foreign policy, his loss of interest in the developing world, especially in places like Africa.  Liberals believed they possessed the history, the savvy, the wherewithal, to have taken that seat if they had been in government.

Well, they have now been the national government for five years, four of them in a majority situation.  They knew this vacancy at the UN was coming and they knew it was important.  But they, too, were late to the game.  Despite the government’s self-congratulatory rhetoric about truly understanding the world and that Canada had returned to esteemed stature, it appears a good number of nations didn’t vote for that assessment.

But this isn’t just about how the world see us; it’s about being at the big table so that we as a nation can shape the global future.  This is where we truly lost out.  Global order has been flailing for a number of years and we had the opportunity to reverse it from likely the biggest global table in existence.

It’s not just some kind of popularity contest.  True, neither Harper or Trudeau were sufficiently prepared, but there’s a lot of competition for the selection.  Dedicated efforts of global lobbying take place prior to the voting process and those making the vote are more often driven by their own wants than what the world truly requires.  Yet this isn’t new, or a surprise.  It’s helpful to get started early, years in advance, make a lot of friends, and invest in many of those from whom you hope to gain support.

There’s been much written and reported on in the last few days detailing the steps in the Liberal failure.  Yet the timing of both bids – Harper’s and Trudeau’s – were pivotal on both occasions.  Harper’s efforts came on the heels of the Great Recession and the need to refine the world economy.  Trudeau’s bid occurred during a global pandemic that brings with it the opportunity to renew the global order, invest anew in global cooperation, foreign aid and development, and move this country from voicing a good policy to actually delivering on it.  Much of that opportunity is now lost with our inability to secure the Security Council seat.  Canada announced back in 2015, with the Liberal victory,  that it was back following years of attrition and lack of global imagination, but this Security Council loss will likely make a mockery of that claim to many.

The reality is that that governments are now fixated on domestic pressures and if they seek an ongoing mandate, those demands will transcend everything else – even the loss of a UN seat.  The lack of institutional importance and influence in the prosperous nations has left the fate of important responsibilities like foreign aid or refugees up to the whims of individual citizens who tend to be more interested in their own needs over those who have nothing.

The loss of global influence despite Canada’s lofty language and past reputation as a needed middle-power player is a sad reality and a troubling portend of the future.  Nevertheless, the greatest tragedy in all this fallout from failure to secure the UN seat is the loss of potential and hope among the world’s neediest populations.  They watched as the Harper government put Canadian business before everything else and combined the forces of diplomacy, aid and corporatism into a super kind of ministry in order to improve our domestic pursuits as opposed to global necessities.  And they watched again as the present prime minister launched his feminist policy for foreign interactions but never overturned his predecessor’s predilection for power and wealth, leaving the feminist agenda dwarfed and lost in favour of other pursuits.

The reality is that Canada’s influence has been on the wane for years, decades even, and over the tenure of many governments.  Former diplomats and political sages have warned us to reverse course and get back in the game of shaping world events rather than just reacting to them.  We didn’t heed their advice and this most recent loss of a UN seat has brought us face to face with our loss of prestige and influence.  There is yet time to recapture the vigour and reach of our earlier diplomatic and development efforts, but that would take a reset of political direction.  You can't take a seat if you won't make a stand.  Canada has yet to relearn that lesson.