The following address on Canadian foreign policy by Dalton K. Camp, National President of the Progressive Conservative Association of Canada, was made to the Montmorency Conference, August 10, 1967

Document: The following address on Canadian foreign policy by Dalton K. Camp, National President of the Progressive Conservative Association of Canada, was made to the Montmorency Conference , August 10, 1967. The consideration of policy by an opposition party is something of an unequal task. The government party has the manifest resources of its establishment, the bureaucracy and access to unlimited expertise. We, on the other hand, must steer by the lights of conscience, conviction, supposition and perhaps intuition, and we can only be helped in this hazardous passage by ·our friends in the academic and professional community whose special talents and interests can be of substantial help if they will give it and if we will only invite it. I think I ought to say, then, how much we welcome this, and how much we welcome them. Mr. Goodman and his associates have asked me to speak about the world. They are prudent to limit my terms of reference to that modest subject . I have spent enough time sitting in on the committee on this subject to realize that what I have to say reflects something less than the consensus view, or the majority outlook, of that committee. One is encouraged however by Mr. Lambert's remark that we are not gathered here under any compulsion to agree, but to express our views in order to clarify alternative areas of decision. The ultimate judgment, in any event, is not ours to make. I must say that my own attitudes toward foreign policy objectives become stronger as those of the present government become weaker. As a freely-confessed amateur, my luck has been astounding when I consider the number of times that my own intelligence apparatus, which is informal and highly improvised, seems to produce superior estimates and more accurate ones of things to come. When Mr. Martin says, as he did about a fortnight ago before the recent suspicious visit of the President of France, that Franco-Canadian relations were seldom better, 46 and I know he is exactly wrong, one concludes that one's own sources of information, however casual they might be, are, if nothing else, better than Canada's Foreign Minister, which may be saying something or nothing. I believe that in the immediate future foreign policy will be of greater significance to the nation , and, therefore, of greater importance to a political party than it has been in the last decade . I do not mean to say that it has been unimportant , but one's experience would testify to the fact that, of all the areas of national policy which parties give their study to, foreign policy has been, in the past few years, a neglected area. I have been interested in foreign affairs even longer than I have been interested in politics. For a long time I had the belief that the discussion of foreign affairs was not appropriate for politicians - at least in Canada. As a result, this being true, too many are timid about expressing a view and, of course, there are some who do not yet accept its importance. Laurier wrote to a friend in 1904 about the business of politicians, including some of the less ennobling aspects, and he said this: In politics, the question seldom arises to do the ideal right. The best thing that is generally to be expected is to attain a certain object, and for the accomplishment of this object, many things have to be done which are questionable and many things have to be submitted to which, if rigorously investigated, could not be approved of. My object is to consolidate Confederation and to bring our people, long estranged from each other, gradually to become a nation. This is the supreme issue. Everything else is subordinate to that idea. Canadians are at least as concerned in the vital issues of war and peace as any other people save those, of course, who are immediately involved in conflict. Canadians are also concerned about the uncertain question of their sovereignty. I am not speaking of sovereignty in the historic, classic sense, because most of us accept the view that technology, geography, economics and history all have played their part...