Canada should make climate change part of Security Council bid

By Chris Penny

Canada’s United Nations Security Council bid presents an extraordinary opportunity to highlight the global security threat posed by climate change, not only advancing this issue within the UN’s most powerful body but also distinguishing Canada from rival candidates.

Prime Minster Justin Trudeau recently announced that Canada is seeking a two-year Council term beginning in 2021, kicking off a multi-year election campaign. To win, Canada cannot simply claim it deserves a seat. Instead, it must show why. This necessitates continued attention to hard security concerns and, likely, a larger Canadian peacekeeping presence. However, campaigning for further council engagement with climate change could provide an important additional platform.

Dron’t Panic! What to know about Canada’s use of drones

By Stephanie Carvin

Last week there was a lot of attention in the media that Canada is considering purchasing drones that would have the capability to be armed.

This should not be a surprise – Canada has used drones in Afghanistan for surveillance and has considered procuring them under the Joint Unmanned Surveillance and Target Acquisition System (JUSTAS) program for over a decade. Further, there are clear financial reasons. Where a Reaper drone costs approximately US$17 million, the cheapest model of the F-35 starts at about US$98 million. (Although some armed drones, such as the Global Hawk can cost up to US$222 million each.)

Armed drones immediately conjure up worrisome ideas about the CIA program that has operated overseas. This is seemingly at odds with the new global vision that the Trudeau government has been touting.  But Canada purchasing drones would not make it a global exception. A recent global survey of the technology reveals that over 90 countries have military drones of some kind. Of these countries, 27 have “advanced drones” that can spend at least 20 hours in the air, fly 16,000 feet and weigh at least 1,320 pounds. Ten countries had armed drones as of 2015, but it is expected that many more are acquiring them going forward. Last year Nigeria and Pakistan used drones against armed insurgents in their borders.

Dilma’s soft auto-coup

By Jean Daudlin

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is handing over effective control of the government to her mentor and former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. While on Thursday she formally named him head of the government’s non-military affairs (chefe da Casa Civil) — though a judge attempted to prevent the appointment, even temporarily —  it is clear to all that he is now in charge and has become de facto president of the country. Rousseff, who was re-elected barely 18 months ago, thus becomes a figurehead devoid of real power. Institutionally, this development makes short shrift of the Brazilian Constitution, putting supreme executive power in the hands of a man who holds no elected office whatsoever.

Four developments have produced this astonishing turn of events.

The first is the utter dereliction of Rousseff’s popularity and power. Since her election, and in fact since the large demonstrations of June 2013, she has been unable to effectively govern the country, her utter political weakness in the face of a divided and ever-restive Congress paralyzing the government.

Five reasons Canada faces an uphill battle in its anti-ISIS efforts

By Stephanie Carvin

Whether you agree or disagree with its reasoning, the Liberal government has taken Canada’s Iraq/Syria strategy in a new direction. Despite the criticism (much of which I share), the new policies are far from a disaster. Canada is making a clear commitment to provide aid in one of the most complex emergencies the world has seen. And we are keeping key military capabilities in theatre to assist our allies, such as refuelling and reconnaissance planes. Significantly, Canada will be putting more troops in theatre, including our Special Operations Forces, who have an international reputation for their effectiveness.

But announcing a policy is one thing; implementing it and achieving the goals the Liberals have set out is another. Indeed, there remain several challenges that the government faces in implementing its new policies that could threaten the success of its new strategy.

1. Incongruent interests between Canada and the Kurdish Peshmerga will likely trump training efforts.

Breaking down Canada’s military training mission in Iraq

By Steve Saideman

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The past week has been pretty interesting in Canadian defence and foreign policy as the Prime Minister announced Monday that Canada would focus on training in Iraq while taking out some (not all)* of the planes dedicated to the bombing effort.

There have been many questions raised about the training effort and many opinions offered. So, I’d like to offer a few answers. To be clear, I am not an expert on the specific skills to be transmitted or the nature of the training exercises, except in terms of the broadest categories.

* I had been advocating that the government keep at least the recon (Aurora) and refuelling (Polaris) planes as they are, in the military jargon, low-density/high demand enablers.  In other words, there are few of them and they have much valued added. Glad to see the government keep them there, even if it adds a soupçon of incoherence since they are integral to the bombing effort.

Q: Does this mean this is a combat mission?

Three ways Canada can influence the Asia-Pacific region

By Steve Saideman

It is easy to understand why Canadian political leaders tend to focus on Europe rather than Asia/Pacific. Because of the various institutions in Europe, especially the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, we know how Canada fits in. We know what Canada’s role is in Europe, but we have a hard time imagining how Canada can make a difference in the vast waters of the Pacific and among the huge populations of Asia. The answer, to preview, is for Canada to do what it does best.

I recently spent a week in Japan, on a trip organized and paid for by that country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so you can take what I say with a grain of salt. However, what I suggest below can advance Canadian interests, be true to Canadian values and not blow out the budget.

There are two clear realities: That Canada cannot make much of a difference in any military kind of way; and North Korea is someone else’s problem. The Canadian Navy is simply too small and currently too stressed to do much. Same goes for the Air Force. North Korea is the most immediate threat with its nuclear-weapons development, missile tests and awful regime, but Canada will have to rely on others to address North Korea. Canada simply lacks the tools to influence North Korea or provide security for the neighbourhood. So, we need to focus on what Canada can do as the region faces the growing pains of China.

Development experts’ heads are stuck in the manufacturing sands

By Jean Daudelin

Try to forget industrialization: it’s essentially over and it won’t happen again. The challenge is to grow rich and not too unequal with service economies.

When you have time, check this podcast from Brookings,[1] which features one of their fellows, John Page, a former Chief Economist for Africa at the World Bank. Its hook is that about 85 million of China’s “bottom-end” manufacturing jobs will have migrated away by 2030 and that Africa’s challenge is to capture as many of those jobs as possible. The point is to plug a book by Brookings, UNU-WIDER and the African Development Bank called “Learning to Compete in Industry.”

Now, in 2030, there will be 1.6 bn people in Africa, about half of whom will be older than 15 years old. Among the latter, assuming participation rates similar to todays (70-80%), the region’s labour force will be about 600 million strong. This means that while 85 million jobs look like a lot, if Africa were to capture ALL OF THOSE JOBS–an extremely unlikely outcome–that would still represent only 13% of the region’s labour force. Adding those jobs to the current paltry levels of industrial employment, in other words, would just not make African countries “successful industrializers.” Most likely, in fact, these economies will morph—some already have—from mining and agricultural primary goods producers to service economies, without the historically “standard” industrial episode in the middle.

Can Brazil’s Olympics survive the Zika emergency?

By Jean Daudelin

Three recent developments are changing the Zika crisis: global media awareness, new possible vectors, and doubts — at the epicentre of the crisis — about Brazil’s capacity and honesty. Together, they threaten the upcoming Rio Olympics.

At the end of November 2015, I peddled a piece about the Zika/microcephaly crisis that was already severe in Recife, the large Northeastern Brazilian city where I am currently working. No one but this site, OpenCanada.org, would have it: not The Globe and Mail, not The Huffington Post, not Foreign Policy, no one else. Worse still, it took a few more weeks for the global media to catch up: The New York Times, measure of “all things fit to print,” published its first piece on Dec. 29.

Today, Zika is front-page news every day the world over. This is mostly good as it keeps prodding governments and the increasingly nimble global infectious disease community. As usual, the danger is that, were the epidemic to be less serious than currently speculated, the overblown coverage could lead to public cynicism and, subsequently, less urgency from politicians, less money for research, and public nonchalance when a truly severe one hits: call this the “swine flu” scenario. Fortunately, public health organizations and experts have become very adept at balancing warnings with caveats. In the face of global infectious diseases, panic is not the default mode any more.

What should Canada’s portfolio for private sector engagement in development look like?

By Shannon Kindornay

In my first blog on private sector engagement in Canadian development cooperation, I highlighted some of the overarching lessons for Canada’s engagement with the private sector in development cooperation based  on my years of research in this area. In this blog, I take a closer look at Canada’s current approach to private sector engagement and offer some lessons which could inform a consolidated and expanded approach in the future.

Canada’s current approach to private sector engagement

The Canadian government does not have an overarching policy that sets out the objectives of and mechanisms for private sector engagement in development cooperation. Global Affairs Canada (GAC) has a website which does however articulate some of the key elements of Canada’s approach. It notes that Canada “pursues strong results” in the following areas: coordination, investments, partnerships and innovations.

Canada’s development finance plan: How to go beyond low-hanging fruit

By Aniket Bhushan

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his coterie of eloquent ministers went to considerable lengths last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos to rebrand Canada and double down on the “Canada is back” message. While it was good to see that innovation in development financing was one of the many areas the government targeted, its focus on one relatively small initiative is problematic.

In a joint release, Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Minister of International Trade, and Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of International Development, welcomed the launch of a “new Canadian initiative [that] will support investment in emerging markets.” The initiative is a platform called Convergence and it will be run out of Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District. Canada is investing $23.5 million to get Convergence started, and the expectation is that this relatively small investment will lead to projects worth $10 billion over the next five years.

This is great and very welcome. Except it is not new.