A Global Positioning Strategy for Canada in Asia

June 9, 2010

The Canadian International Council (CIC) has just released a report on Canada’s place in the world and strategies for enhancing Canadian influence on global issues. Open Canada: A Global Positioning Strategy for a Networked Age is an unconventional and at times iconoclastic review of the international policy challenges facing Canada. It provides a frank (and generally upbeat) assessment of Canada’s assets and offers fresh ideas for Canadian policy on security, trade and investment, international development, multilateralism, people movements and the machinery of government.

As a member of the Global Positioning Strategy (GPS) Project Panel, I had the pleasure of working with a group of “next generation” leaders who are not the “usual suspects” in Canadian foreign policy, but who work in areas that connect deeply with international policy and Canada’s place in the world. The chair of our group was Edward Greenspon, former editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, who provided not only intellectual leadership, but also his formidable writing ability and sense of humour. GPS was the brainchild was Jennifer Jeffs, President of CIC, who provided both the vision and the means for the project to happen.

The report cites the rise of Asia, particularly of China and India, as a key “game changer” in the global economic and governance landscape. At the same time, the report observes that “Canada remains curiously underdeveloped as a Pacific nation, especially given our rich human connections with China and India.” It offers a number of key recommendations for deeper engagement with Asia. These include:

• Negotiating an Economic Bridge Agreement with China that includes a strong human connection component, including promoting the first ever dual-citizenship arrangement with China.

• Cooperating with Beijing to develop social services in China as the country faces growing social pressures to bridge the rural-urban divide and appease a burgeoning middle class.

• Negotiating an Economic Bridge Agreement with India that promotes high-level research collaboration and educational exchanges.

• Expanding the Pacific Gateway strategy to encourage Chinese and Indian companies to station their headquarters and distribution centres in BC to effectively turn Vancouver into North America’s premier Asian business hub.

‪These bold ideas will be familiar to those who follow closely the work of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. Our research on Canada-China human flows, on Canada-India education initiatives and on the Asia Pacific Gateway provide a more detailed case for why these initiatives are important for Canada and how they might be implemented.‪ ‪

The inclusion of these ideas in the CIC report underscores a key point about the importance of Asia for Canada – that Asia’s rise matters for all of Canada, and that an Asia strategy should be central to Canadian public policy as a whole, rather than a niche activity for a few line departments that deal with “international” issues. In the words of the report, “Asia is high on anybody’s list.”

That Asia matters for domestic policy as much as it does for international policy comes out clearly in a number of the other recommendations in the GPS report, for example:

• The need to boost innovation by attracting talent to Canada and by tapping into Canadian human capital networks abroad.

• Investing in a pipeline to the west coast that will allow for the export of energy products to Asia, thus creating an alternative market to the United States.

• Liberalizing restrictions on foreign investment in Canada and creating a new agency that is focused on promoting inbound investment rather than on the regulation of capital inflows.

There is much more in the report, which may be found at http://www.onlinecic.org/opencanada. Ed Greenspon summed it up nicely in his preface: “Canada will never be the most powerful nation on Earth. But we live in a digital age, where might is measured in knowledge rather than muscularity. If we keep building on our openness – attracting the best and the brightest citizens, generating and exchanging new ideas and new ways of doing things and welcoming investment in our economy – Canada can position itself at the centre of the networked world that is emerging in the 21st century.”

The GPS panel was clearly able to locate Asia in its “global positioning” exercise. It is now up to Canadians to decide if they will steer in that direction.