Trudeau a fresh face for Commonwealth
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets his fellow Commonwealth leaders at their summit meeting in Malta this week, the talks will likely focus on terrorism, the refugee crisis, climate change and economic problems facing many of the organization’s 53 member countries.
But beyond the agenda items, what freshman leader Trudeau will find in Malta is a Commonwealth at a crossroads: facing a slide into irrelevance or a leap into a renewed, vital place on the world stage.
Those seeking change — real change — will be looking to Canada to lead the way when the three-day meeting begins later this week. Trudeau is seen by some as a young, charismatic leader who just might make a difference.
Crucially, Trudeau and his fellow leaders will choose a new secretary general at the Malta summit to succeed Kamalesh Sharma, a former Indian diplomat who has been at the helm of the organization since 2008.
Sharma ran afoul of Stephen Harper’s government for refusing to move the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting from Sri Lanka, plunging relations to their lowest point in Canadian-Commonwealth history.
Harper refused to attend the Sri Lankan gathering, saying doing so would effectively be an endorsement of the country’s appalling human rights record. He sent a low-level delegation and pulled $20 million in discretionary funding from its Commonwealth contributions. (Canada is the second-highest contributor, after the United Kingdom).
With a government change in Sri Lanka and the promise of a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission, it’s one issue Trudeau won’t have to deal with.
Trudeau should be an ideal fit for the Commonwealth, says former Conservative senator Hugh Segal, who was Harper’s special Commonwealth envoy and saw the breakdown of relations first-hand.
“We have a government now that is interested in soft power — development, education, human rights, education and all those important priorities,” said Segal.
“The Commonwealth is a nonmilitary, soft-power organization with tremendous potential,” he said. “It is an important instrument for development and reflective of a kinder, gentler approach to foreign policy, which appears to be where this government is headed.”
Commonwealth scholar Derek Ingram, co-founder of the Commonwealth Journalists Association, sees the prospect of a fresh-thinking secretary general and a dynamic Canadian leader as capable of fuelling a new direction.
“I’m optimistic,” said Ingram. “The landscape is looking brighter, but the Canadian role is very important.
“Canada has played a major role in the Commonwealth,” he said. Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau “was a tremendously good and positive force within the Commonwealth, but a lot of innovation that came with him has been allowed to evaporate.
Justin Trudeau “is a new face but brings his father’s and Canada’s Commonwealth history with him,” said Ingram. “In Malta, he can bring Canada back as an influential force in the Commonwealth. I hope he will.”
The Commonwealth, once an integral part of Canada’s foreign policy, has a combined population of more than two billion — almost one-third of the world’s population — and encompassing every major religion, as well as some of the world’s richest and poorest nations.
It is an organization composed mainly of former British colonies, although in recent years Rwanda and Mozambique, two nations with no connection to Britain, have become members.
It is also a consensus organization, meaning that all its leaders officially have an equal voice.
The first Commonwealth secretary general, Arnold Smith, was Canadian, and a succession of Canada’s federal governments have used the organization — or, better put, affiliation — with significant success.
Most notable in modern Canadian-Commonwealth history was the push by Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark to successfully rid South Africa of apartheid in the face of fierce opposition from then-British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives followed a Commonwealth trail blazed by Trudeau Sr., who hosted the second Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 1973 and succeeded, ever so diplomatically, in taking a fusty, overly bureaucratic group by the scruff of the neck and shaking off its dust.
Pierre Trudeau was initially indifferent to the Commonwealth but became one of its most effective champions.
During the Ottawa summit, he whisked all his fellow leaders to Mont-Tremblant where they met informally in what became known as The Retreat. It has been an influential fixture at the biannual leaders meetings ever since.
It is at the retreats, without delegations, that Commonwealth leaders have made some of their more important decisions.
Key to any productive future between Canada and the Commonwealth, Segal said, will be the choice of secretary general and whether leaders plump for someone who will offer them the status quo or a new direction.
Climate change will be high on the CHOGM agenda, and Trudeau will meet leaders whose countries are literally sinking into the ocean — notably small island states in the Pacific that, as Sharma has pointed out, have done nothing to cause climate change but are suffering the most from its impacts.
Canada’s renewed focus on climate change could give Trudeau an important voice at both the official conference table and at the informal retreat.
Trudeau will also meet many influential leaders who have been in power for decades and managed to win every election they contested.
Canada has a minister of state for La Francophonie (Marie-Claude Bibeau) but no equivalent for the Commonwealth. Trudeau should appoint one to help address the Commonwealth’s sunken profile in Canada, said Segal.
“It would be a good thing to have a minister of state travelling the country engaging Canadians about the Commonwealth,” he said, “and more younger Canadians should be going abroad to Commonwealth countries (on better funded scholarships).”
Commonwealth history has shown that leaders’ personal relationships can determine a country’s influence as a bloc, but as former Canadian foreign ministers Joe Clark and Lloyd Axworthy have told the Citizen in previous interviews, the potential is significant.
“We tend to think of the Commonwealth in terms of its British origins,” said Clark a few years ago, “but we forget that the organization also includes Islamic superpowers — Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Tanzania and Malaysia. These are countries who are very much interested in Islam being a constructive force in the world.”
And a point often overlooked is the dynamic of an international organization to which the United States does not belong and over which it has no direct influence.
“Because the Americans are so big, their very attendance at a meeting tends to result in a subconscious deference to them,” said Axworthy.
“That often leads to the neglecting of options that should be explored. In the Commonwealth, that doesn’t happen.”
London scholar and author Ingram said the time is ripe for Canada to resume its leadership role in the Commonwealth.
“Too many Commonwealth organizations aren’t doing enough,” he said. “But the machinery is all there. It just needs re-generating.”
A surprise call came to Sussex Drive … asking if Mr. and Mrs. Trudeau would mind if Her Majesty popped over for a nightcap.