The Paul Wells Show - Ranking Canada's Prime Ministers on Foreign Policy

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

How do Canada’s Prime Ministers measure up when it comes to foreign policy? Political scientist Patrice Dutil polled some colleagues to come up with a ranking. They placed Trudeau right near the bottom, alongside his predecessor Stephen Harper. Dutil joins Paul to break down the rankings and make the case that foreign policy needs to be taken more seriously in Canada.  Patrice Dutil is the editor of Statesmen, Strategists and Diplomats: Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Making of Foreign Policy.

Imagine, all you wanted to do was run Canada, and then the world keeps intruding. Too often, do we reduce foreign policy to the personality? You know, how so-and-so behaved with so-and-so. It's a lot more complicated than that. Diplomacy is not to be diminished. Today, a new book on Canada's prime ministers in the world. I'm Paul Wells, the journalist fellow in residence at the University of Toronto's Munk School. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show. I'm so old, I remember when Justin Trudeau was elected in 2015.

Big majority, talented new cabinet, but his staff, well, okay, they seemed like a talented new cabinet at the time. Anyway, his staff was really frustrated back then, and they weren't shy about saying so, because he managed to get elected just before summit season, the fall string of international head of government meetings that every national leader is just expected to attend. And they're in weird places all over the world. G7, G20, Asia Pacific, Commonwealth, it just goes on and on. And the last thing a new government wants to do is to ship the prime minister out of the country for weeks on end. If it's any consolation to Trudeau, he might as well have stayed home, because a new book about Canadian prime ministers and their foreign policies ranks Trudeau near the bottom. Sorry, I don't make

the news, I just report it. Blame this week's guest, Patrice Dutille, who's a political scientist at Toronto Metropolitan University and the editor of Statesmen, Strategists and Diplomats, Canada's Prime Ministers and the Making of Foreign Policy. He joined me from Toronto. Petrus Dutille, thanks for joining me. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. I was perhaps almost as surprised as you were to realize that there hasn't been a book that surveys Canadian prime ministers' foreign policy records until yours. How do you think that happened? Oh, you know, I want to give a shout

out to Lawrence Martin, who did a book 40 years ago that systematically looked at prime ministers and their relationship with American presidents. And that's as close as we got to sort of a character by character breakdown of foreign policy. That book's as close as we got to sort of a character by character breakdown of foreign policy. That book's 40 years old, and it was very much focused on the United States. It hasn't happened for a variety of reasons, I suspect. Number one, there aren't too many people who write about Canadian foreign policy. Number two, when they do write, they sort of spread out the territory as much as they can to try to cover all the topics that are important in foreign policy, such as military presence, military spending, defense policy. But nobody's ever looked at the character themselves, the prime minister themselves, and how their views of the world evolved, how their views of the world affected policy.

And I thought it was high time. I wanted a book like this, exactly like you. I said, well, why do I not have that book on my shelf? And as with all things, well, if you can't find it, then, you know, you do it. And I was able to get a small army of excellent contributors who were very kind and generous and who plowed their fields. And, you know, each came up with a fascinating chapter,

a new look at foreign policy. So when you combine biography and combine policy and the way I approached it, the way I asked my contributors to approach it, which was more systematically in the sense that they had to look at structures. How did the prime ministers affect structures, the foreign policy structures? How did they actually create policy? Did their policy have an element of innovation? Was it a lasting legacy? That kind of question. And last but not least, their personal diplomacy.

Too often, do we reduce foreign policy to the personality? You know, how so-and-so behaved with so-and-so. It's a lot more complicated than that. Diplomacy is not to be diminished. It's not to be overlooked. It's vital. It's an incredibly important part of being prime minister, but it's not the only thing. I think that many prime ministers have had a longer

impact on foreign policy by taking care of structures, by formulating policy in a way that was responsive to the world, either as it shaped Canada, as it was likely to impact on Canada, or vice versa, where Canada had an opportunity to shape the world around it. So it is an effort to move beyond anecdote. I love anecdote, but it's an effort to move beyond anecdote and to look at the deeper meanings of a foreign policy role. Okay. I've often had the impression that prime ministers are surprised by having to deal with foreign policy. Nobody runs on foreign policy with isolated exceptions. And I on foreign policy with isolated exceptions. And I opened my book with you in the interview you did with Stephen Harper, because Stephen Harper told you that he was surprised by how much time he was spending.

Oh, I did my research, Mr. Wells. And it always struck me when I first read it, gosh, 12 years ago, 13 years ago, I said, this is a good one. This is a good one. I'll tell you, you're an excellent researcher if you can find an interview that Harper gave me because after 2008, I believe, he never gave me another one because he decided that he preferred to give interviews to my boss, Ken White. Yes, yes, yes. I was out of luck after that one year quoting.

It took me a long time to find it, believe me. That's why I remember it so well. But he did tell you that he was surprised at how much time foreign policy took. And I sort of turned it around. I said, well, you know, he shouldn't have been surprised because one of the reasons why the Canadian prime minister is so powerful, and I elaborate this in my introduction, we do have a prime ministership that is immensely powerful in this country. When you compare it to other prime ministers in Westminster systems, not presidential systems, but in Westminster systems, our prime ministers are extraordinarily powerful. Why is that? Well, in large part, not in large part, but in a substantive part, it's because of the exclusive role the prime minister in our country has played in

defining foreign policy since 1867. I'm not talking about post-war here. I'm talking going back to Sir John A. Macdonald, who's single-handedly handling the relationship with Great Britain, eventually with the United States, and as my great contributor Barbara Messamore elaborates in her chapter on Sir John A. Macdonald with the First Nations in the Canadian West, in the prairies, when he undertakes the negotiation of the first numbered treaties. So John A. Macdonald, as in so many things, sets the tone, sets the pattern. And when you look at institutional histories, that moment of inception is always the most defining moment. And so we have to be mindful when we're thinking about foreign policy.

You know this as well as I do. You got to look at precedents. You got to look at what's happened before. There are no prime ministers that have been revolutionary. They all start with, no, what did my predecessor do? What's the history on this? But they do evolve. And that's what makes it fascinating. The book also gets in various ways into the relationship between prime ministers and their foreign ministers.

So the foreign minister is a relatively recent innovation in Canadian politics. and their foreign ministers. The foreign minister is a relatively recent innovation in Canadian politics. King was the first prime minister to appoint a foreign minister rather than simply, or actually after he had spent many years doing what his predecessors did,

which was just do the job himself. And then finally he decided he had to give this new guy, Saint Laurent, something to do. So he made him foreign minister. Well, foreign policy had become so much more complex in the post-war period. And Mackenzie King realized that there are a lot of young bucks in the bureaucracy who wanted to get things done differently. He appointed Louis Saint Laurent thinking that he could be a buffer, that Saint Laurent could look after the more minor affairs issues in foreign policy while he could focus on the important ones.

But what happened is that Louis Saint Laurent has a mind of his own, it turns out, and Louis Saint Laurent is deputy minister. So the highest ranking officer in external affairs was no one less than Lester B. Pearson. Combination of Pearson, Louis Saint Laurent is absolutely atomic in a newly atomic age. And Mackenzie King can't resist anymore. I mean, he has to yield power to a certain degree. And it's through foreign policy that Mackenzie King's influence in that portfolio starts to erode at his own position as prime minister starts to erode. Because, as I say, the young bucks want a different kind of foreign policy for Canada. And, you know, of course, Mackenzie King is aging. He finally sees in Louis Saint Laurent an heir, somebody who can pursue the liberal legacy in Canada.

And in 1948, he'll eventually yield. He will resign. And Louis Saint Laurent will take over in the fall of 1948. And, of course, give the position of Minister of External Relations to Lester B. Pearson. Minister of External Relations to Lester B. Pearson. Pearson and Saint Laurent, while King was still Prime Minister, found him timid, constraining, too bound to the habits of a pre-war Canada and not really understanding of what this new Canada was becoming. Yeah.

Mackenzie King was too much of a conservative in foreign policy, too much of an isolationist. He had real trouble with NATO. He had trouble with recognizing Israel. He had trouble with Vietnam because Vietnam becomes a really important issue. The government of Canada is invited to join the United Nations effort to monitor things in Vietnam in 47, 46, 47. Mackenzie King says, away from me, all this stuff. There is no way Canada is getting involved in Vietnam. We have nothing there. Louis Saint Laurent says, no, we have a role to play. We have a role in Lester B. Pearson, the same thing. We need to be involved. This is an era in Canada, in Canadian foreign policy, when, as I said, those people in the foreign policy bureaucracy are ambitious. They want to make sure that Canada's position in the world is relevant,

that it is involved, that Canada is not isolated either with Great Britain or with the United States. It's an effort to multiply the Canadian presence. You know, people called it a utilitarianism. I hate that term. I fundamentally hate it. But there it is. It was this idea that Canada really could not put its eggs in one or two baskets, that its place in the world belonged far beyond its borders.

And so, strangely enough, I mean, it's important to remember that it was ultimately Vietnam that convinced Mackenzie King that his time was done. The world is a kind of a tough nut for Canada to crack. We are isolated from almost the entire world. We are famously free of the sort of, at least since 1814, we don't face a lot of the sort of existential border threats that most European countries have faced all the time. And it has led Canada to develop a reputation, I think it's fair to say, as a flighty country, a country that will offer all assistance short of help, a country that changes its priorities from minute to minute. And lately, for the last several years,

a country that changes its foreign ministers very often. Oh, this has become tragic, yes. Is that a sort of an uncurable bug of the Canadian condition that we're not, we're barely in the world and so we're not too much of it? God, I hope not. Yeah. This country has so much to offer. This is the ninth largest economy in the world, and so we're not too much of it? God, I hope not. Yeah. This country has so much to offer. This is the ninth largest economy in the world.

We have relations around the world. We have a capacity. And I say this, I mean, there's a caveat for all of these, but we certainly have the potential. We've gone down a path over the last 25 years, I would say, maybe even longer. Maybe we could trace it back to Mr. Chrétien's tenure. Even though he had his successes in foreign policy,

structurally, he did enormous damage, whether he intended to or not, enormous damage to the Canadian foreign policy apparatus. The 95 budget and the budgets that followed sabred into the foreign affairs budget, sabred into assistance, international aid, sabred into peacekeeping, sabred into defense, and we have not recovered from that. We lost enormous capacity. And I tell you, we could go down a whole bunch of anecdotes to demonstrate how Canada's ability to formulate foreign policy, which was acutely felt under Paul Martin,

but the very ability to say, what is it we want in the world, has been impaired. So, you know, I think that Mr. Harper, for again, for all the good that he was able to do, was unable to articulate that position. He was much more of a realist, one could argue, in a sense that he really wanted Canada to be focused on the United States, focused on its key neighborhood issues, focused on trade, because trade is a vital aspect of Canadian foreign policy, focused on the military. Got to give Mr. Harper some credit there for raising the military budget. But in terms of an articulation of foreign policy,

as you're sort of giving echo to, I mean, in terms of our little poll amongst ourselves, the contributors to this book, Mr. Harper ranked very, very low. In fact, the only people who ranked lower or in the same neighborhood are Justin Trudeau, who's had enormous problems articulating a consistent foreign policy. And as you say, an expression of that has been the rotating window, the rotating door of ministers of foreign affairs. Now that goes back to the late Trudeau years. Pierre Trudeau shifted cabinet ministers on the external affairs file quite a bit, but it's continued through. I mean,

there have been some exceptions. There have been some exceptions, but most of the time, I think I calculated at one point, the average tenure for a minister of foreign affairs is two years. Now, when you consider that there are precious few people who are elected to the House of Commons with foreign policy experience. We are inevitably saddled with utter neophytes who will take at least a year to find out what exactly is Canadian foreign policy and why the heck am I in this portfolio? And then realize, hey, you know, this is important, and then they're gone. So the power, again, the power remains in the office of the prime minister in the PCO because there's just not enough time for a minister to develop the expertise, the contacts, the vital contacts, the networking that is necessary to be an effective diplomat for Canada. That takes at least a year, if not longer.

And the constant rotating of ministers shows that the prime minister is still at the center, still running foreign policy, and that those ministers are accessory and can be replaced at the drop of a hat. And that's a terrible thing. Sounds like it. My pet theory about why Melanie Jolie is still the foreign minister is simply because she was the one left standing when the music stopped. Like at some point, Trudeau had to stop shuffling his foreign ministers every 18 months and she's it. So she gets to keep it for a bit longer. That's my best guess. I mean, she is no better trained or prepared than anybody else in that caucus.

I, you know, there's just nobody else there. So yeah, I agree with you. She's the last one standing. Procedural interlude. You didn't write this book or you didn't write big chunks of it. You did the Tom Sawyer trick of getting every kid in town to paint the fence.

Oh, but I've got great kids. How did you recruit colleagues and how did you task out the work of this book? Putting an edited book like this does take a lot of thinking. I wanted people who, number one, were expert, people who know stuff, people who know the foreign policy file and or who know the prime minister in particular very well who know the literature who know what's been written i like to get people who are broadly representative i've got some 80 year olds in this i've got some 30 year olds in this book men and women from across the, so that the reader is exposed to a variety of different perspectives. I also wanted to have people who have something to say.

I mean, that's not a petty thing. I want people who have something to say. And every one of these chapters reveals an author that has, I dare say, sometimes of a contrarian perspective. If you go through every one of these chapters, there's a contrarian view. People, for example, I come back to Johnny MacDonald, you know, MacDonald had nothing to do with foreign policy or, or even worse, was nothing but a blind imperialist. What utter nonsense. Barbara Messamore shows that McDonald's policy was very clearly thought through. He was responsive. He was active. He worked. The chapter on Wilfrid Laurier brings out the realism, the realpolitik of Wilfrid Laurier's positions. A chapter that I wrote on Robert Borden shows him as an innovator in the theory, call it that, of conservative internationalism. The chapter on Bennett demonstrates that R.B. Bennett, who was again considered to be asleep at the switch when it came to foreign policy, was nothing but. The chapter on Louis Saint Laurent is called The Transformation of Foreign Policy Under Louis Saint Laurent.

The chapter on Pearson shows that we talk of Lester B. Pearson as all glory and fireworks. Well, no, there's a lot of failures in Lester B. Pearson's foreign policy. John Diefenbaker, au contraire, has always been criticized for being a mediocre foreign policy prime minister. It's actually revealed to be actually quite consistent with things in the past. So on and so on and so forth. Brian Mulroney, the chapter on Brian Mulroney, So on and so on and so forth. Brian Mulroney, the chapter on Brian Mulroney, talks a great deal about the unity of purpose he shared with Joe Clark, one of the longest standing ministers of foreign relations, of external relations. They had arguably, I would argue that they shared a lot of that conservative internationalism model in mind. Jean Chrétien caused a lot of damage. Paul Martin brought a lot of confusion.

Stephen Harper, as I said earlier, a lot of realism, but very much focused on trade and not a whole lot else. And Justin Trudeau, I mean, the book was written, was completed when Trudeau had finished five years in power. So it's not the final story. It's a rather short chapter. But again, each chapter is furnishing a new perspective on these prime ministers. It's not just a question of repeating what's been known before.

Let's talk a bit more about Mulroney because he just passed away. And because a lot of the discussion of his legacy does focus on his foreign policy record. What should we keep in mind as we think about Brian Mulroney this week? In terms of his foreign policy? Yeah, I think the scholars have been pretty, what's the word I'm looking for? Positive. I'll say positive. The first book that came out on Mulroney's foreign policy came out in the early 2000s. And it was very positive. It was a very bullish account of Mulroney's foreign policy.

And that's continued. The record is there. And why is the record there? Well, because he did take it seriously. For the kid from Baie Cuomo, he really took the world by the lapels and started to shake it. He had great fortune in a sense that, you know, we all make, and I think you're old enough to remember the shamrock summit I certainly have oh yeah you're not that old but a lot of people made fun of the shamrock summit this again to remind your your listeners you know when when Mulroney and and and Reagan started singing what's

it called Sonny Boy and I forget the song. When Irish House is Smiling. When Irish House is Smiling, yes. God, Mulroney was out of tune. Well, yeah, and Reagan barely voiced it. But it showed something important. Talk about personal diplomacy. Mulroney was vulnerable. He took a huge chance.

There's a huge audience out there, and he starts to sing in celebration of a, I mean, really, let's tie it up, you know, really distant, distant Irish inheritance. But anyway, the point here is that he found a way to cross generations. He's much younger than Ronald Reagan. He has nothing in common with Ronald Reagan, absolutely nothing, except that tenuous little link to old Ireland. He milks it. He uses it. And Reagan is utterly seduced. I mean, there's no other word for it. When people say, you know, oh, you know what, the prime minister of Canada is killing us with this stuff about

acid rain. What is Reagan's response? Do it for Brian. Do it for Brian. Our lakes are dying from acid rain. Do it for Brian. Okay. That's how you move. But it goes beyond that. When you think of Mulroney, I think of Mulroney making full use of the diplomatic apparatus of empowering the ambassador to Washington, to break the mold, to start socializing with members of Congress in a manner that had never happened before. Before that, it was gray Canada. We stay in our place

and that's all we do. Alan Gottlieb, who's the ambassador to Washington, says, I want something completely different. Mulroney says, go ahead, knock yourself out. There's no budget here. You entertain whoever you need. We need to get influence in Washington, break the mold, do something different. That's remarkable. That's remarkable.

When I talk about a structural impact, that's what I'm talking about. It's making sure you get the right people at the right time. Small things, but these things matter. And Alan Gottlieb, I think, is one of the great heroes of the Mulroney foreign policy. Derek Burney, a key mind in external affairs, is brought into the prime minister's office. I mean, again, to try to harness that energy and external,

bring some of that wisdom in, Mulr does it he you know he does what's necessary so i mean there's that there's a relationship with the united states that leads to the uh the various uh environmental treaties the free trade agreement no no small coup again bringing in simon remissman you know the architect of the auto pact uh especially you know it's again it's important to remember that malroney was not in favor of free trade. He campaigned against free trade with the United States, but he sees the light. He's open enough. He's flexible enough. He knows that the business opinion is leaning towards free trade in a way that in the past,

the views of businessmen in Canada militated against foreign policy overture to the United States in terms of trade. He's open to that. He responds to that. It says a great deal. Then on top of that, you have his remarkable relationship with François Mitterrand, with Margaret Thatcher, with a whole litany of leaders around the world. He's able to manage transitions. Margaret Thatcher leaves, John Major comes in. It's a smooth transition for Mulroney. He's the man for all seasons. He is the ultimate diplomat. Where did he learn this? People always said he'd kiss the Blarney Stone as a young kid, whatever. I think that his international

experience helped him. I think that his many, many years in labor negotiations helped him. But, you know, there are a lot of people who are labor negotiators, but they don't wind up on the international stage. He was unique in that regard, being able to translate his personal experience into an international stage. And he was remarkable at it. And, you know, in our little survey, he ranks very, very highly, largely because of that, but not only because of that.

He's also the guy who greatly improved the defense budget, invested in the military, invested in peacekeeping, made sure that Canada had a presence in, I'm not going to say all parts of the world, but in many parts of the world. So, yeah, on the day after his death, I think it's important to give Brian Mulroney his due.

He really did shine on the international stage. Let's talk about the ranking. Essentially, you polled your colleagues. What's your sample here? How many people did you- Oh, it's 13 people, Mr. Wells. It's 13 people. It's a formidable sample.

Well, you know, in my defense, yeah, it's a small sample. Okay. It's a very small sample, but in my defense, it is a sample of people who really know what they're talking about. Well, look, I mean, I've spent my life as a political columnist. My sample size is usually me. Well, I could have done that myself, but I thought you've seen these rankings of prime ministers. We've had three of them over the last 20, 25 years. You know, they're subject to change, but at the same time, I think they're a lot of fun. It breaks open cocktail conversations. You know, there's nothing more fun at the dinner table with colleagues and to talk about rankings. And I said, why don't we do this in terms of the foreign policy? So, yeah, it's a small sample, but it was structured.

I asked each of my contributors to answer 10 questions. answered 10 questions, again, focused on how prime ministers did in terms of creating structures or adapting structures, formulating foreign policy in an innovative or, you know, in a way that was responsive to the global environment. And last but not least, in terms of their personal diplomacy. Some people did really well in structure, they didn't do so well in terms of their personality, Some people did really well in structure. They didn't do so well in terms of their personality and others, you know, vice versa. Pierre Trudeau, for example, is always known as a diplomat who got enormous name recognition. But if you ask the experts, a whole bunch of other people were far better at it. And again, in time than he was. And he lost a lot of points because in terms of structures, he didn't do particularly well. And in terms of his policy, there's a lot of inconsistencies. So, you know, for the historians and political scientists who are writing in this book, that had an impact. But yeah, so to answer your question, though, it's a small sample. I dare you and I dare anybody listening and my colleagues in academia to come up with something better.

And then let's have a fight as to who got the better results. This is an opportunity to reflect on it and invites people to say, oh, I disagree. I mean, I think that John Diefenbaker was a fabulous foreign policy agent. And, you know, let's have a discussion. These books are meant to create discussion. That's why we write, to create discussion. I actually do think Diefenbaker comes out a little lower than my sense of how he did given the time that he was acting in.

But let's look at the top of your list. Yes. First of all, there's not a huge gap between the very top and the very bottom of the list. I mean, nobody since Confederation got Canada invaded. So I guess you can't fail this test. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. And even the top of the scale were people who had mixed results.

But the top of the scale is King, Saint-Laurent, and Mulroney. Yes. How come? Louis Saint-Laurent comes out ahead by a nose on William Lyon, Mackenzie King, in large part because I think that the contributors to the book perceived in Saint-Laurent a dexterity that just wasn't there with Mackenzie King. They see in Saint-Laurent somebody who was innovative. Let me explain. I mean, it's under Louis Saint-Laurent that Canada gets involved in peacekeeping. It's under Louis Saint-Laurent that Lester B. Pearson gets involved in the Suez crisis. It's under Louis Saint-Laurent that Canada gets involved in the police action in Korea. Louis Saint Laurent, that Canada gets involved in the police action in Korea. It's under Louis Saint Laurent that we experience a massive arms buildup that includes an aircraft carrier,

by the way. The last time Canada ever commissioned an aircraft carrier was under Louis Saint Laurent. Louis Saint Laurent innovates in terms of international aid. He will be the first man, the first prime minister, to launch international aid. That's no small thing. Massive efforts in various ways of observation around the world in terms of bearing witness to elections, peacekeeping, a whole variety of things. It's a massive contribution. Louis Saint-Laurent is at the same time a cold warrior, and there's no hesitation here. Louis Saint-Avon hated communists and fought communists. He put his money on the line.

He put his word on the line. Canada rebuilt its military and fought in the war. At the same time, this is the man who says that Canada's foreign policy should be guided by moral principles, by legal principles. And he articulates famously in 1947, while he's still Minister of External Relations, formulates that speech at the University of Toronto that defines… This is the Gray Lecture. Known as the Gray Lecture, that's right. The Gray Lecture, famous lecture, where he articulates those five points.

There is no better, more crystalline expression of what Canada's foreign policy could ever be. That puts him way ahead of everybody else. Well, again, ahead of Mackenzie King. Mackenzie King, and I actually distinguished, I asked my contributors to distinguish the Mackenzie King of the 1920s and the Mackenzie King of the late 30s and 40s, because it's two different people. And it's the King of 35 to 48 that comes out second, and last largely because of succeeding

in fighting the Second World War, where King is responsive to the demand for defense, for a contribution to the Allied war effort, where his diplomacy is effective in dealing with the North Atlantic Triangle, a concept that was invented by John MacDonald, of course. But King is very effective in that. And then, of course, the first steps in terms of the Cold War, Mackenzie King has that flexibility, that pliability that shows a very mature and assured foreign policy. After that, yeah, you wind up with people like Mr. Mulroney, who ranks almost the same score. I mean, actually, he, in terms of general foreign policy, ranks equal to Mackenzie King

for reasons we've talked about already. Those are the people at the top. You have people who have surprised me. Lester Pearson got a 3.92, so he's just a bit lower. He's still a top guy. Wilfrid Laurier did very, very well. And we've, you know, Canadians generally have forgotten about Wilfrid Laurier did very, very well. And we've, you know,

Canadians generally have forgotten about Wilfrid Laurier, but in his day, the guy was an international, gosh, an international rock star. He just

bowled the British over. Here was this guy, this French Canadian, and, you know, he's meeting the Queen and he pledges fidelity to the empire,

but at the same time, he's rough and he says, Canada has got to play an important role and Canada will not be bullied. And, you know, then he goes to France, he goes to France and here's this Canadian prime minister, you know, who addresses people en français, they can't believe it. You know, what's going on here? And, you know, he plays an important role. He really puts Canada on the map internationally. He broadens our links. The free trade agreement with the United States,

unfortunately, that fell apart. I say unfortunately, unfortunately for him, because he lost an election on it. But that was an important coup for him. The whole relationship with the United States was a constant process of improvements over the Great Lakes, on trade, on a whole variety of issues, the Pacific, the panhandle, the Alaskan panhandle issue, a whole bunch of things where panhandle, the Alaskan panhandle issue, a whole bunch of things where Laurier and the Roosevelt administration, namely Elihu Root, his Secretary of State, really forged something important.

So, I mean, Laurier, unfortunately, is forgotten, but he also played a very, very important role. Robert Borden plays a role. I mean, I wrote the chapter on Borden. I think that his impact deserves to be reappraised because I think he did bring a great deal of innovation to foreign policy, but it was earned through blood and guts. We've often referred to it as the colony to nation kind of experience. Borden felt this profoundly. I mean, this guy went from offering cash to the British government so that it could buy dreadnoughts to saying by the time he leaves the prime ministership that Canada is a power on its own on the international stage.

It's going to sign its own treaties. It's going to conduct its own relations with the United States without any impact, any hindrance from Britain. We have earned it. The guys in the field have earned it. And it's never going to be the same. He makes that transition and he will lay down a new philosophy, again, what I call a conservative internationalism, that will inspire his successors until Louis Saint Laurent.

So he plays an important impact. He has an important role to play. Now, let's talk, because it is 2024, about Justin Trudeau. Okay. What do you and your 13-member panel of hanging judges have against the guy? He comes to power. One of his slogans is Canada's back. He has a dinner at the Museum of History

across the river here with hundreds of guests for Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations. And when he and his minister, Stéphane Dion, go over to the Foreign Affairs Department headquarters at Fort Pearson, they are cheered in the lobby by the public servants. That's a pretty good way to start your prime ministership. What happened after that? It all went downhill. That's how it starts. And I think to the great shame of the staff at

External Affairs, who had no business applauding a prime minister like that when I read about that I was disgusted that's not what the public service is supposed to do it serves loyally it served Mr. Harper loyally it had a duty to serve Mr. Trudeau loyally had no business applauding or jeering anybody really I think that that showed that was the first clue of how things have gotten rotten in external affairs. I'm sorry if I'm not being very polite here. No, no, no.

I just want to interject and add that the deputy minister at the time, Ian Shugart, the late Ian Shugart, when he left Fort Pearson to become the clerk of the Privy Council, he wrote a farewell letter to his colleagues, which was generally quite gentle and charming as Ian was. But he said, don't ever do that again. Even from within the department, it was seen as unseemly. It was appalling. No, I think that Justin Trudeau, again, things can change And he may reveal himself as a master of diplomacy,

but there have been massive inconsistencies. I think that he was uniquely unprepared for the job in that regard. Jocelyn Coulon's memoir of his years working with Stéphane Zion, biased as it is, still deserves a great deal of respect. I think he opened, he lifted the veil on the thinking in the prime minister's office, a veil that has been, that has remained lifted by everybody else who's written a memo, a book on their experience, namely that Mr. Trudeau is certainly not at ease in these files and is reliant on others. Again, every prime minister does that, but he's done it too much.

He's had, undeniably, he's had great successes. I think that the negotiation of a trade agreement with the Trump administration was nothing short of a coup. was nothing short of a coup. And yet, my colleagues and I gave Mr. Trudeau the lowest score, with the exception of John Diefenbaker, but a score tied with Mr. Harper. Why? Because he hasn't been able to follow through.

It's been a question of, again, Canada being all sorts of things to all sorts of people, making promises left, right, and center, not showing up when the money is required. Again, you know, there's no denying that Mr. Trudeau has increased the military budget tremendously. The problem is that that effort has not translated into real procurement. There is no real philosophy of external relations, of Canada's place in the world coming out of the Trudeau administration. It's basically trying to be things to all people. We know we go into Mali, but we go in with basically a medevac unit. Should Canada play a bigger role in helping countries in distress? I'm thinking of Mali. I could, of course, think of Haiti. In both cases, we have strong affinities in terms of language, in terms of legacies,

in terms of a past Canada's relationship with Cameroon, for example. Another example of, again, a country that is so similar to Canada with its bilingual nature, the long tradition of a Canadian presence in Cameroon. Canada, you know, Madame Jolie has offered a number of occasions to help negotiate, you know, the various factions inside that country. And the last time I heard, we were openly rebuffed, saying, you have no business here. Stop being colonialists. Again, Canada sending diplomats to the Russian embassy a few weeks after the invasion of Ukraine. Come on. You'll say that that really should not reflect on Mr. Trudeau.

This is the garden party. Yeah. Yeah, there was a summer reception at the Russian embassy and a mid-ranking official from the department went over and attended that reception. Yeah. I'm sure he had no idea this was happening. And had he been asked, he would have said no, but it still looks on him. And then there's the whole debacle over India. A debacle that basically goes back to his earliest years as prime minister

when he decided to dress up and Modi never forgave him for that. You know, a lot of people have told me unofficially about how bad the relations were between those two on a personal level. I don't know anything about that, quite frankly, it hasn't been documented, so I'm not going to say anything further. But, you know, the performance last June, when Mr. Thuddu was in India, he did not meet with the Prime Minister, Prime Minister Rebuffton. We had just crafted a South Asian strategy. Like, tell me this is working. Madame Jolie is going on bragging about this new South Asian policy. The first moment it's tested, it's blown out of the water.

And, you know, we have an Africa policy. The fact is that over the last 30 years, Canada's role in Africa has diminished to practically nothing. Now, should we have a presence in Africa? You know, I would love to have a candid discussion to see Ottawa say, look, the reality is that distance, needs, relations makes it that we really do not have a positive role to play in Africa beyond symbolism and whatnot. So let's not make a fuss about it. Let's focus on what things we need to focus on for the prosperity and the safety of our country, or the opposite. I'm just speculating here. But come up with a statement that is logical, that is consequential. And I think that because Mr. Trudeau has not been able

to articulate anything like that, he gets a very low score, just like Mr. Harper. Again, an inability to articulate, because I think people think that this is not important. And yet, I mean, I make the point in the introduction to my book that I think that Canadian foreign policy does matter, that Canadians can be convinced that it does matter. We've had election after election focused on trade issues. That's foreign policy. And Canadians have voted on it. We've had elections over war.

We had a leaders debate in 2015 on foreign policy. And then we dropped it. Like, come on, media, you should be insisting. You know, this book, if nothing else, reminds us that the prime minister has a unique power, an untrammeled, uncontested power in foreign policy. This is where the prime minister can make or break a file. And yet we think it's a secondary thing. It's not. It's an important thing.

I will point out on the foreign policy debate in 2015, the organizer of that debate, Rudyard Griffiths from the Munk debates, was super interested in having another debate in 2019 but he couldn't get justin trudeau to come out for it yeah and so uh because justin trudeau had invented this little bizarre in-house debate commission scheme that uh that they introduced after the 2015 election and i think that don't get me started about that no No, no. But Mr. Griffith's argument should have been echoed. And we should be insisting on it.

And we should, because we do have a foreign policy. And I'll recognize the fact that Canadians do not list this as a top of mind item. That in many cases, a lot of Canadians really don't care that we spend any money on defense. They'd rather not. But it is important. As a sovereign country, we do need a foreign policy that is logical, that is coherent.

And the people who do this in our country are the prime ministers. Unless we start changing our structures and it's not going to happen, this is how it's going to be. So we need to know, if somebody says, I want to be prime minister,

I'm running for leadership, or I'm leading this party into the next election, we need to know what are their views on foreign policy, and we should be insisting on quality, and we should be judging them if they fail in terms of delivering foreign policy. This matters. So that's the questions that we put to the people who would lead the country. I wonder how it goes the other way. This is the question that popped into my head. You just produced the first serious survey of Canadian prime ministers and their foreign policy efforts. What have you heard? What reaction

have you got from the current prime minister or those who would replace him? About my book? Yes. Well, you're being very kind in asking me such a question. You seem to have forgotten that I'm a very low-key academic with no reach whatsoever. And so I would never expect anybody in Ottawa to contact me on anything like that. And none of them have. And I think that my lot is exactly the lot of practically anybody in this field. I'm not aware of anybody. I would have been shocked. So I applaud your modesty and I get it.

It's easy to get. I too would not expect, well, I'll tell you, there was a lot of interest at 24 Sussex when I wrote a book about a prime minister a decade ago. But anyway. Well, it was a very good book. It was a very good and very personal book. And I read it. Thank you. Thank you. You're a man of great insight and judgment. But this notion that academic study of how these people do their works is, of course,

ignored. That's not the way it is all over the world. And it's not the way it used to be. Presidential scholars absolutely get invited to the White House and quizzed mercilessly by sitting presidents. And I remember when Robert Young at Western University wrote a book about how secession would happen 30 years ago. Bob Young was a mentor of mine. And a great scholar. Just a fantastic academic. Within three weeks after that book was published, he was in Quebec City briefing the PQ caucus on his analysis because they took their work seriously. And I'm, I got to say, man, if I was sitting in an office within 80 feet of any national party leader,

sitting in an office within 80 feet of any national party leader, I would sure be interested in a careful study about how prime ministers do foreign policy. And I would maybe take the risk of inviting you to Ottawa to ask you some questions about it. But I guess I live in a dream world. Yeah, you do. You do, Paul. And I'm flattered to no end. And I'll be repeating your words until people really start hitting me. But, you know, number one, prime minister studies in Canada do not exist. And I am forever jealous of presidency studies in the United States. I had a great opportunity 10 years ago to spend time in Washington, D.C., and I interviewed presidency scholars every opportunity I had because I've been inspired by their work. And the work I've done on prime ministers has been influenced by their work. This is my fourth book on prime ministers. I suffered a lot of political scientists slash historians who care about political history. We are ignored in Ottawa. We are also ignored by the media. It's my lament, but this is the truth. This is the truth. I mean, we feel in this country as though we can afford to ignore the past and the people who conduct programming, who direct programming,

who orient programming, whether it's the CBC or CTV or global or anyone, are not reproached for not involving scholars. I mean, I do interviews. Whenever I've been asked, I'm very happy to do interviews, but it just doesn't happen. And, you know, again, that just goes to show how the world of academia is simply not top of mind. This is not new. It's always been like that. And that's really the lot of Canadian political scientists and Canadian historians. And I happen to be in both camps. So I feel as though I can confidently talk

about both. The reality is that unless they are, you know, carefully attuned to a very, to an emerging reality, nobody's interested in perspective. And I think that there is a general arrogance that perspective on issues like this, as one public servant from Ontario once told me, is nice to know. Oh, that's nice to know. No, it's not nice to know. It's actually vital to understanding precedent. It is unique to the field of politics to have the arrogance to think that everything they're doing is being done for the first time. You have to be just simply ignorant.

But again, this is the way it is. And, you know, I'm happy to have my book read. I'm happy. Again, I'm very grateful, very, very grateful to the scholars who generously gave of their time and genius for this book. I'm very grateful to UBC Press that published the book that went through the peer review process. This thing takes time. It takes money. It got a small subsidy from the Assistance to Scholarly Programming program in Ottawa. I'm very grateful for that. I'm very grateful to the C.D. Howe Foundation for helping to print this book. This is how many people have to get involved to have a book like this. And I'm very grateful to you, Paul, for inviting me to talk about this. It makes my day. Well, I am happy to help and a little embarrassed on behalf of the rest of this town,

but we'll see if we can shame them into paying some attention. Patrice Dutille, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it. My great pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica in partnership with the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Our producer is Kevin Sexton.

Our executive producers are Laura Reguerre and Stuart Cox. Our opening theme music is by Kevin Bright and our closing theme music is by Andy Milne. Go to paulwells.substack.com to subscribe to my newsletter. You'll also get a premium version of this show with bonus content. We'll be back next Wednesday.