Foreign Policy

A little thin, isn't it?

Brian Dijkema

May 4, 2012

I've read the report, and its content is not what makes it noteworthy. I'm reasonably certain that you could find a bunch of similar-calibre papers from C-range students in first year political science courses in universities across the country. No, what makes it noteworthy, and the reason it made front page news, is that it was produced by something described as a Christian church.

The United Church of Canada's recent report on Israeli and Palestinian policy made front-page news this week. But Shimon Fogel's ...

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The Race to the Top

Brian Dijkema

April 18, 2012

Take, for instance, the Canadian Auto Workers Union. Yesterday, the CAW launched a major paper entitled "Re-thinking Canada's Auto Industry: A Policy Vision to Escape the Race to the Bottom." The report outlines policy recommendations including "buy Canadian" measures, direct government investment in the auto industry, Central Bank tampering with monetary policy to lower the Canadian dollar and encourage exports, and a host of other measures intended to "protect Canada's share of this industry." The first community whose head gets stepped on is workers in developing economies.

The race to the bottom is a full-contact sport full of cheap hits and thuggery. The thugs, however, are not always easy to spot.

Take, for instance, the Canadian Auto Workers Union. Yesterday, the CAW launched a major paper entitled "...

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From the Personal to the Public to the Political

Richelle Wiseman

March 19, 2012

I attended his lecture at the University of Calgary. He was in the city to collect this year's Calgary Peace Prize, awarded by the university's Consortium for Peace Studies. His name is Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, though he is more commonly known now as "the Gaza doctor", whose life was shattered when the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) shelled his home during Operation Cast Lead in 2009, killing four family members.

For me, there was one bright light in last week's dismal omnipresent verbal trench warfare in the political sphere.

I attended his lecture at the University of Calgary. He was in the city to collect this year's Calgary Peace Prize, awarded by the uni...

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Look At Those Cavemen Go

Peter Stockland

March 13, 2012

This August, barring catastrophe, a robotic rover named Curiosity will be climbing a mountain on Mars. The six-wheeled explorer will parachute down to the Martian surface, cross a plain and ascend a mountain slope, sampling rocks and atmosphere as it goes. Though each day's new robo-call revelation is revealed to us as the gravest imaginable threat to Canadian democracy, at summer's end we will certainly have been provided whiffs of equally ominous instances of corruption and depravity.

As Canada's media and political exhibitionists scandalize themselves with tales of robo-dialed phone calls, real robotics overhead have humanity on the further edge of wonder.

This August, barring catastrophe, a robotic rover named Curiosity w...

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Condemnations, contradictions, and rich ironies

Brian Dijkema

February 24, 2012

Some see the plant's closure as just another example of blood-sucking foreign companies who come into Canada, ignore our unions, buy our plants, and leave the workers, the provinces, and the country to clean up the mess. Ken Lewenza, the head of the union representing the workers at the EMD plant, suggests that the closure "open[s] a door for multinational corporations to feel confident they can do whatever they want, to destroy communities and the lives of people and get away with it." A commodities boom has driven the Canadian dollar from a 62¢ U.S.

The talk about last month's move of the Electro-Motive Diesel plant from London (Ontario) to the United States reveals much about the way we treat economics in Ontario and in Canada.

Some see the plant's closure as just another example of blood-sucki...

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Don't let the smallness confuse you

Robert Joustra

February 3, 2012

And while panicked lobbies have been misreading last year's rotting leavings for an absent social agenda, quietly—incrementally—the Prime Minister has been outlining a smaller picture of Canadian federalism, both at home and abroad. It will come, as with all important things in our consumerist times, through the back door of the federal budget.

The hamsters are whirring on Parliament Hill, quietly squeaking, softly padding . . . but peek inside a cage or two and you will see a busy bunch of bureaucrats and wonks scampering for what pundits suspect is the first, outright articulation of Prime Minis...

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The Virtue of Small Charities

Ray Pennings

February 1, 2012

the top 1% account for 59% of revenues received; 42% of the charities have revenues of less than $30,000 and collectively account for just 1% of revenues; 40% of charities have no paid staff 37% have just 1-5 employees 64% of charities operate in local communities with local mandates Last week Cardus submitted a brief to the House of Commons Finance Committee regarding tax incentives for charitable giving.

Of Canada's 161,000 incorporated non-profit and voluntary organizations . . .
the top 1% account for 59% of revenues received; 42% of the charities have revenues of less than $30,000 and collectively account for just 1% of revenues;...

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Union Metaphors

Robert Joustra

January 25, 2012

In closing: "When you're marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails. When you're in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one nation, leaving no one behind." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

President Obama opened and closed last night's State of the Union with a series of auspicious military metaphors. In opening, "These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness and teamwork of America's Armed Forces. At a time when too many of...

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How we think of religious freedom

Brian Dijkema

January 12, 2012

The irascible Gerald Caplan's article begins well. There is "much work for Canada to do" with regard to championing religious freedom. Caplan highlights a short list of religious persecutions, violence, and ignorance around the world, taking particular delight in a fight between monks wielding brooms in the church of the Nativity.

Well, it didn't take long for articles about religion in the public square to make their way back into the news cycle. In the span of a week—in what must be the most bang for the buck ever seen by a government office with no staff, no structure, no plan, an...

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There can be no peace, after Westphalia

Robert Joustra

January 6, 2012

The politics of Epiphany can be easily forgotten, a forgotten feast drowned out by the pounding of a cultural Christmas hangover. But it is striking how political Epiphany, and its attendant liturgy can be. Oliver O'Donovan recalls the same in the prologue of The Desire of the Nations, quoting the second stanza of the Te Deum:

Epiphany is here, and on it we remember the Magi, the wise, and the powerful, bending the knee as one to the Christ. Its opening sentence in the lectionary is from Isaiah 60:3, "Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising."...

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Hidden Costs of Prosperity

Brian Dijkema

December 15, 2011

Mr. Crowley proposes a planned disintegration of North American borders in favour of integration of economies. To wit:

Brian Lee Crowley's piece in yesterday's Financial Post is the most provocative piece I have read in some time. It not only contains one of the most open challenges to Can...

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Another Evangelical Conspiracy, The Office of Religious Freedom

Robert Joustra

December 9, 2011

And of course there are plenty of reasons to be bitter at the government. Despite holding broad consultations (on the true breadth of which we have only their words of assurance), very little on this Office has been promoted or even talked about. There is, naturally, the indignation of religious communities and non-governmental associations that were not invited in these first rounds, upset partly because of the important appearance of inclusivity but mostly because they didn't get invited to the parties. This especially shouldn't surprise anyone at Amnesty International, given its recent and public exchanges with Minister Jason Kenney. Their invitation probably didn't get lost in the mail.

The CBC seems to be alleging there is yet another evangelical conspiracy afoot, since Prime Minister Harper's government continues to disappoint conspiracy enth...

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Foreign Affairs, Version 2.0?

Robert Joustra

November 25, 2011

No longer. Moving Minister John Baird onto the Foreign Affairs file was a clear signal that the Conservative government was going to get more serious about foreign policy. If legacy issues weren't at stake, at least the prudential management of the slow, international economic collapse was bound to push this government global.

At least, that's what The Mark is calling the political and bureaucratic churn on the Hill this Fall. For the Conservatives, foreign affairs has been a relatively straight forward series of policies in...

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Is all foreign policy missiology?

Robert Joustra

November 9, 2011

The secularization thesis was premature, though not impossible. It didn't just get the empirical data wrong, but it was based on a wrong-headed slate of assumptions. The most significant poor assumption is that secularism implies a morally and ontologically neutral way of understanding the world. So, then, I beg the question: is all foreign policy, all extension of statehood and state interests, really a kind of missiological projection of liberal moral order? Is liberal state building—schools, roads, markets—a work of conversion? Is, in fact, the work of secular foreign policy really not so secular at all, but a kind of evangelical mission to defend and transform the world into a Westphalian moral order? .

God is back, or so the pundits say. The real question, though, is not whether or not God is back, by why we ever thought he went away.

The secularization thesis was premature, though not impossible. It didn't just get the empirical data wrong, but it...

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