In 2016, at a United Nations conference in London, then-minister of national defence Harjit Sajjan made a pledge to fellow representatives from 70 countries: that Canada was prepared to deploy as many as 600 members of the armed forces to support future international peacekeeping operations.
Combined with the existing 133 military and police personnel already in the field by December of that year, Canada’s peacekeeping contributions were primed to reach a 20-year high, not seen since the drawdown of deployments to the Balkans in the mid-1990s.
“Canada is committed to leading international efforts in peace support operations,” Sajjan said in a 2016 statement about the conference.
“I’m confident that our unique whole-of-government approach will make tangible contributions to peace support operations around the world.”
Data from the UN shows that in the seven years since the London conference, Canadian peacekeeping has not met Sajjan’s pledge.
And according to personnel totals from July of this year, there were just 57 Canadian peacekeepers active globally, split between missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, South Sudan, Haiti, Cyprus, Kosovo, Lebanon and the Golan Heights.
UN totals for peacekeeping personnel may vary from those counted by the contributing nations, as they typically reflect the number of individuals whose expenses were reimbursed by the UN.
For example, the most recent UN numbers list 29 members of the Canadian Armed Forces active in peacekeeping operations, but in response to a CTV News inquiry, Canada’s Department of National Defence tallied 28 service members in that role, with an additional 57 personnel engaged in non-UN peace missions.
In a written statement to CTV News, Defence Minister Bill Blair underscored Canada’s contribution of “personnel, military capabilities and funds,” as well as training, to the UN’s efforts abroad.
Blair highlighted the December 2021 announcement of $85 million in contributions and related projects “to continue responding to the needs of UN peace operations and peacebuilding.”
“For decades, Canada has played a key role in supporting United Nations Peace Operations – and that will continue,” the statement read.
But to retired lieutenant-general and former senator Roméo Dallaire, who served as force-commander for UN peace operations preceding and amid the Rwandan genocide, Canadian peacekeeping has changed greatly.
“This country is failing miserably in taking the lead,” said Lt.-Gen. Dallaire in an interview with CTV News. “We used to; we’re not doing it now.”
Walter Dorn, a professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) and the Canadian Forces College, says the country lags behind not just its own past peace efforts, but those of dozens of its fellow nations today.
“For so many decades, Canada was the go-to source. We were the only country to have provided peacekeepers to every single UN mission of the Cold War,” he said in an interview. “Now, the UN can’t depend on us to provide anywhere near those kind of numbers.”
More recent comments from the prime minister and cabinet officials have underscored Canada’s financial and policy supports for peacekeeping, including inclusivity efforts for women and a set of guiding principles coined at 2017’s UN conference in Vancouver.
“The Government of Canada continues to support efforts to make peacekeeping more effective and more inclusive,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement this August. “Canada’s leadership in peacekeeping is a source of national pride.”
Dorn says it doesn’t measure up to prior commitments.
“The rhetoric remains lofty on paper and in speeches but the Canadian government has yet to match its words with deeds,” an ongoing analysis by Dorn of Canadian peacekeeping reads. “Canada defaulted on its promises and is not leading by example.”
Peacekeepers dwindling for decades
The recent lows are the latest in a decades-long decline in Canadian peacekeeping.
UN figures show a 30-year peak of more than 3,000 active personnel in the early 1990s, the majority of which deployed to the Balkans during and after the breakup of Yugoslavia as part of the United Nations Protection Force.
But by the end of 1997, listed personnel counts had dropped by more than 90 per cent, to 254 troops. Brief increases followed at the turn of the millenium, amid conflict in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and in the mid-2000s, as part of political stabilization efforts in Haiti.
But in 2006, amid withdrawals of peacekeepers from the Golan Heights, personnel counts fell below 200, where they would plateau for the next decade.
In a 2019 review for the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, Graeme Young of the University of Glasgow describes “politics of disengagement” through the Harper years, as Conservative governments pursued a “Canada First” approach that saw increased militarism amid the American-led “War on Terror” after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but the disappearance of peacekeeping from party platforms.
“[Harper’s] government’s turn away from liberal internationalism and concerted efforts to reorient Canadian foreign policy around the use of force … embodied fundamental lack of commitment to peacekeeping as a public good in the international system,” Young wrote.
The Liberal government that followed campaigned on the promise to “recommit to supporting international peace operations with the United Nations,” but as Dorn notes, declines in peacekeeping continued.
“Before his election in October 2015, Trudeau criticized the Conservative government of Stephen Harper for a decline in [the] number of uniformed personnel (rank 66th on the list of contributors),” Dorn’s analysis reads. “Surprisingly, under the Trudeau government, the contribution [would] fall further for over two years until Canada reached its lowest rank in history: 81st.”
At the most recent significant increase in 2018, Canada deployed peacekeeping forces to Mali, as part of Operation Presence. The following year, however, personnel would begin departing the country, leaving a standing roster of 10 peacekeepers, as of this year.
Canada once a leader in the field
As of this July, Canada ranks 66th among participating UN countries for its peacekeeping contributions, down from its December 1992 standing as third in the world, behind France and the United Kingdom.
Lt.-Gen. Dallaire says it is a matter of priorities shifting away from lasting peace globally, and more to domestic self-interest.
“During the Cold War, peacekeeping was really a rich country’s sort-of arena,” Lt.-Gen. Dallaire said. “When the big powers didn’t need all those small countries anymore, and the dictators, many of them, took over; the frictions of the past exploded. We ended up in an era, which we’re still stumbling through, of imploding nations and failing states, mass atrocities and even genocide.”
The path to lasting peace, the former force-commander said, is an altruistic one — beyond any contributing nation’s self-interest. That sense of responsibility to protect others, he said, had been a Canadian strong-suit, but mindsets have changed.
“What we’re still seeing now is a reticence of taking risks, of fear of casualties, and not providing the level of resources and people capable of not just stopping a conflict, but actually preventing conflicts from happening,” he said.
“That, I fear, is a long way down the road, still.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
