The Mulroney Government and the Third World

The Mulroney Government and the Third World DAVID R. MORRISON This special issue on Canada's relations with the Third World marks the end of the Trudeau era and the beginning of at least four years of Progressive Conservative rule. The government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has come into office at a time when the "North-South dialogue" is being conducted in scarcely audible whispers, when the debt crisis has driven a number of newly-industrializing countries from hope to despair, and when the plight of hungry millions in Africa has raised yet further questions about how far we have advanced in working out ways to achieve development with justice and dignity. Our neighbours to the south have given the world four more years of Ronald Reagan and the prospect not only of greater East-West tensions, but also of their continued insertion into Central America and other parts of our hemisphere. We can also expect four more years of simple-minded assertions from the White House about the magic of the market-place as the key to development. It is not a moment that can give much rise to optimism about the future of the developing world. While Canada will of course remain a marginal player in shaping that future, many Canadians, the authors of the essays in this collection among them, want to see our role strengthened and made more progressive. Views clearly differ on the specific details of an agenda for desirable change, but students of Canada's relations with the Third World share a broad consensus on a number of propositions. First, official Ottawa (often echoed by the media) has been too self-congratulatory about this country's record and somewhat too prone to take at face value diplomatic praise from Third World politicians and bureaucrats . Secondly, with occasional exceptions such as Trudeau's two initiatives on international development and his last on peace and disarmament, Canada has not been living up to its potential as an ''honest broker'' or responsible middle power. Indeed, even Trudeau's campaigns and other efforts aimed at giving this country a pivotal role in North-South affairs were somewhat quixotic and unsustained . Thirdly, and closely related to these observations, there has been a sizable gap between the rhetoric of Canadian policy and the reality of policies and the ways they have been implemented. Fourthly, Canadian policies and practices in the spheres of trade and finance have been more attuned to short-run commercial advantage than to long-term economic and strategic interest and even less to a coherent strategy for promoting international development and peace. Finally, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), however much a repository of public sector goodwill towards developing countries, has suffered from such intense conflicts of interest among domestic economic and foreign policy objectives, bureaucratic politics, and external pressures that its performance Journal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 19, No. 4(Hiver1984-85 Winter) 3 has been sadly lacking when it comes to promoting sustained development that benefits the poor majorities of the world. Can we expect to see much altered under the new government? Tied Aid Perhaps one area where we can expect some change is in the relationship between official development assistance (ODA) and domestic commercial objectives. It is a change that could reduce the "rhetoric-reality gap," although not necessarily in a way that enhances our capacity to promote development. As Roger Young notes in his essay, "consensus decision-making," the continual need to work out bureaucratic compromises among competing domestic and foreign policy objectives, has created ''trade-offs for policy-makers and aid bureaucrats'' that "can become so internalized that policy-makers and administrators can easily conceive of a mutuality of interests between Canadian and Third World governments." He and other critics have carefully documented that in practice this means that much of our development assistance falls short in terms of any criteria for assessment one might want to apply - success in meeting foreign policy or domestic economic objectives, or in making a genuine contribution to human betterment. There is some evidence to suggest that the Tories are not happy to leave things in such a muddle. In an election campaign that was...