On the Side of the Angels: Canada and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights by Andrew H. Thompson (review)

On the Side of the Angels is a welcome contribution to a growing body of historical scholarship on international human rights law. Drawing on newly declassified archival evidence from Canada's Department of External Affairs, it offers a meaningful evaluation of the Canadian government's contributions to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (unchr) from its creation in 1946 through to its dissolution sixty years later.

Andrew Thompson balances his clear support for the intent of the organization with a measured assessment of its shortcomings. Similarly, inasmuch as he recognizes positive Canadian efforts to advance the universalization of human rights in more recent times, he does not hesitate to criticize the conservative approach of Canada's diplomatic corps, its political elite, and, in particular, its Department of Justice during the commission's early years.

The Canada that emerges from Thompson's analysis is consistent with the general thinking of diplomatic historians over the last two decades. Typically, Ottawa has meant well. Its representatives in New York and Geneva have made valuable, subtle contributions to the development of human rights law thanks in large part to their reputation as professionals and their ability to grasp the intricacies of diplomacy and the importance of compromise. Yet, at its core, Canada's diplomatic posture has been grounded in a clear, and at times ruthless, conception of the national interest. Canadian governments have refused to compromise domestic political imperatives to further global justice. Thompson's conclusion that Canadian conduct has, on the whole, been a source for good (hence the title, "on the side of the angels") is only convincing by comparison to the conduct of much of the rest of the United Nations community.

The book begins with the Canadian effort to undermine the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the late 1940s. Canada was the only liberal democracy to abstain from supporting the document in its early stages. "The initial position of the Department of Justice," Thompson notes, "was that Canada had little to gain and much to lose by becoming a party to the covenant" (24). This conservative attitude helps explain Ottawa's reluctance to seek membership on the unchr until the early 1960s.

By then, Canadians had come "to see themselves more and more as rights-bearing citizens" (38). Such thinking led Ottawa to advocate a more progressive approach to the 1965 International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Still, Canadian diplomacy was hardly ambitious. Certainly, the Diefenbaker and Pearson governments supported the establishment of international human rights norms and standards. They were less willing, however, to promote measures that might compel state adherence to the emerging global regime.

After a lengthy hiatus, in 1976, Canada rejoined the unchr and stayed for nine years. This period included the Department of External Affairs's Yves Beaulne's tenure as chair of the commission and the general elevation of Canada's reputation for human rights leadership. Nonetheless, dysfunction within the unchr meant that Ottawa emerged with little to show for Beaulne's activism. Instead, by the early 1980s, when the commission created the Working Group on the Rights of Indigenous Populations, the Canadian government embraced the obstructionist tactics it had so recently criticized through its refusal to acknowledge the mistreatment of its own First Peoples.

Ottawa's final stint on the commission began in 1989 and lasted fourteen years. Taking full advantage of the diplomatic capital it had acquired thanks to the Mulroney government's recent efforts to advance the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Canadian officials performed admirably in advocating against South African Apartheid and in support of the advancement of the rights of women. Again, however, successive Progressive Conservative and Liberal governments could not escape charges of hypocrisy when Canada's own Indigenous communities drew critical global attention to their mistreatment.

At the onset of the...