The Trump administration’s disruption of traditional U.S. policies in both its bilateral relations with Canada and its approach to the world has prompted a flood of suggestions that Ottawa consider action in various well-honed policy frontiers.
These include reducing interprovincial trade barriers, bolstering national defence and security and international relations, and changing government procurement plans to favour domestic suppliers.
But Canada should also look to the Caribbean Basin to help find its new global purpose. Specifically, Ottawa should maximize its longstanding relationship with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to restore and burnish our middle power status and preserve the internationalist principles we helped institute nearly a century ago.
Ottawa can take four steps to achieve that goal: expand access to our domestic market for CARICOM service and investment sectors; exempt vulnerable CARICOM businesses from direct competition with more powerful Canadian competitors; revamp our temporary foreign worker programs; and stop the practice of deporting convicted criminals to their countries of birth.
From acting in unison to finding a new path
Since the early 20th century in general and the post-Second World War period in particular, the Canada-U.S. relationship displayed unusually high levels of symbiosis toward strategic partners elsewhere in the world.
Recently, however, Canada and the U.S. have had distinctly different geo-strategic postures toward the pan-American region.
U.S. foreign policy is uncharacteristically aloof from the Caribbean Basin because of more urgent strategic commitments in Europe and Asia.
Also, the U.S. has exhibited unprecedented aversion to regional involvement – excepting the Venezuelan-Guyanese border dispute, and its pledge to expand its presence at the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the Panama Canal – despite mounting humanitarian crises that are likely to increase in frequency and severity.
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The Caribbean Basin thus offers numerous opportunities for revitalizing Canada’s foreign policy in a world that is polarizing in both political and economic terms.
Predicated on political, economic and cultural linkages, the longstanding special Canada-CARICOM relationship – recently rechristened a strategic partnership – is teeming with potential to affirm the waning principles of liberal internationalism.
For starters, the strategic partnership is an embodiment of once-widely revered principles such as democracy, the rule of law, human rights and a rules-based international order.
Four steps forward
To strengthen that bond, the next federal government should take four immediate steps.
First, Canada should enhance access to its domestic marketplace for businesses domiciled in CARICOM member states, particularly those dealing in services and investments because current bilateral agreements pertain only to goods, not services.
Second, this should be complemented by explicit recognition of vulnerable CARICOM business sectors requiring exemption from direct competition with their Canadian competitors.
In free trade talks, manufacturing and service sector inputs were identified as requiring trade facilitation and promotional assistance to compete with transnational Canadian competitors. Doing so would not only buy goodwill toward Canada but would also contribute toward alleviating CARICOM’s growth and development constraints.
Third, Canada should commit to overhauling its temporary foreign worker programs, which have been dubbed a breeding ground for modern forms of slavery. This includes ramping up enforcement against non-compliant employers as well as Amnesty International’s many recommendations to federal and provincial governments.
Last but not least, Canada must take a new approach to its longstanding policy of deporting landed foreign nationals convicted of criminal offences. This couldn’t be more timely given the imminent threat of mass U.S. deportations of illegal immigrants and the problems that CARICOM countries already face in handling this influx when they already have other crises facing them.
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I recently argued that the geopolitical gains resulting from these steps would greatly outweigh any associated economic costs. That’s still true, arguably more so than ever at a time when the 90-year project of greater North American economic integration seems to be coming apart at the seams.
For Canada, this is a critical juncture requiring radical domestic market revisions and the geo-politicization of trade. It is also an auspicious moment of soul–searching for its CARICOM partners amid the increasing tenuousness of traditional alliances and the enduring reverence for the aspirational principles espoused by the waning liberal order.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a special affinity for Canada’s relationship with CARICOM, as exemplified by various high-level climate collaborations with Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley and Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
To review Canada’s international purpose and restore its middle power status, the next prime minister must build on that momentum.
This may be the last best stab at salvaging the principles that enabled “Canada’s century.” Whatever happens, one thing seems certain: whether or not we celebrated the principles of liberal internationalism in their heyday, we’re all going to miss them if they become a dead letter.
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