Canada First, Not Canada Alone

By Adam Chapnick and Asa McKercher

Oxford University Press/October 2024

Reviewed by Colin Robertson

January 13, 2025

There’s no shortage these days of excellent books on Canadian foreign policy – former foreign ministers Lloyd Axworthy and Marc Garneau have recently penned their very readable memoirs – but until now we have lacked a purposely designed textbook. Amply filling this gap is Canada First, Not Canada Alone, which Royal Military College (RMC) Professor of Defence Studies Adam Chapnick has co-authored with fellow scholar Asa McKercher.

Chapnick’s previous books on Canada in the world include the biography Canada’s Voice: The Public Life of John Wendell Holmes and Canada on the United Nations Security Council. McKercher is Steven K. Hudson Research Chair in Canada-US Relations at the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government at StFX and editor-in-chief of International Journal.

Canada First, Not Canada Alone is magisterial in scope, comprehensive in its research and meticulous in its references. Importantly, it is rigorous in its evaluation of events and personalities and the environment, domestic and foreign, in which decisions were made.

The authors start with an excellent introductory chapter on the ideas and antecedents of our foreign policy ‘bed-rocked’, they argue, by our borders, national unity, and the United States. Our independence is always relative, given: our reliance on trade and our susceptibility to global economic upheaval; the challenge of exercising sovereignty over our vast geography, especially in the Arctic; and our relatively small but diverse population. We’ve relied for our security first on Britain and then, after a series of meetings between Mackenzie King and Franklin Roosevelt, on the United States. This ended the threat of invasion or absorption into the Republic, although recent threats of absorption from President-elect Donald Trump have spiked Google searches for ‘manifest destiny’.

Like our Confederation itself, our foreign policy evolved not through ‘great leaps forward’ but mostly through ad hoc, cautious evolution. Our federalism means that the provinces have constitutional responsibilities in foreign policymaking when it comes to trade, resources and immigration. Business and labour also play a role as does, increasingly, civil society and our diaspora communities.

Canada First, Not Canada Alone begins with an examination of the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935 and the return of William Lyon Mackenzie King as prime minister. Our diplomats at the League of Nations in Geneva advocated active engagement to contain Italian imperialism in Ethiopia (then Abyssinia). But mindful of implications for national unity – Quebec ministers opposed our activist approach – our senior diplomat in Geneva, Walter Alexander Riddell, was reprimanded for acting independently of Ottawa.

The episode remains one of the more contentious and controversial chapters in our diplomatic history. Many of the questions around collective security and sanctions posed then have current application to those posed today by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For Canadian historian James Eayrs, the Abyssinian crisis encapsulated his description of the period as ‘a low dishonest decade’, a phrase borrowed from W.H. Auden. Lester Pearson would later write that the “failure of the members of the League of Nations, including Canada, to stand up to a single aggressor, had much to do with the world war in 1939.”

The ensuing 10 chapters offer the same kind of insight, chronicling the seminal events, issues and foreign policy experiences of our subsequent prime ministers.

Their first case study is the refusal of the King government to allow the MS St. Louis, carrying 900 Jewish refugees, to land in Canada. Irving Abella and Harold Troper would title their book on Canada’s failure to welcome the persecuted Jews of Europe during this shameful period None Is Too Many.

Each chapter has a a thematic title that is expanded on in the subsequent narrative illustrating different aspects and issues in our foreign policy For Mackenzie King it is “the evolution of Canada’s global posture”. For Louis St. Laurent it is “the expansion of the Canadian foreign policy realm”, with case studies including the Suez Crisis and Hungarian revolution.

The voyage of the Manhattan through the Northwest passage opens the chapter on Pierre Trudeau and the “reimagination of Canada First”. Brian Mulroney “transforms” Canadian foreign policy with the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and Acid Rain Accord. For Stephen Harper, it is conservative ‘values’ and a discussion of the Muskoka Initiative on Maternal Health while Justin Trudeau confronts an “increasingly dangerous world” during Trump’s first term through the renegotiation of NAFTA.

CGAI’s Global Exchange podcast episode on Canada First, Not Canada Alone, with Colin Robertson and Adam Chapnick/CGAI

Thankfully, Chapnick and McKercher make no attempt to boil the ocean. Instead, each chapter has its own selection of further references that is judiciously comprehensive in offering different perspectives and opinions from practitioners as well as scholars.

The book’s title comes from John Holmes, one of that coterie of post-war Canadian diplomats who believed a rules-based system supporting international peace and security best served Canadian interests and values. As then assistant undersecretary Holmes put it “Canada first, not Canada alone…Free and friendly collaboration, based upon a due regard for the rights and the responsibility of others” benefited both the state and its people.

I met Holmes as an undergraduate when he spoke to the Winnipeg branch of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs (now the Canadian International Council). We later served briefly — he the most senior advisor and me the most junior — during the 1977 UN General Assembly, while Canada was a non-permanent member of the Security Council. I wanted to pursue multilateralism, but Holmes told me we needed more officers who understood the United States, the relationship that would matter the most to Canada. Holmes later gave a series of lectures published as Life with Uncle: The Canadian-American Relationship.Its insights endure and I keep it in the front row of my bookshelf.

In their appraisal of our foreign policy, Chapnick and McKercher offer a series of astute observations. For them, national unity is now defined more broadly to include, for example, Indigenous issues. Gender-based analysis plans are now as integral to foreign policy as is recruitment diversity in selection of the foreign service.

While Canada’s basic geography has not changed, they point out our demography has, although not sufficiently to mitigate our reliance on trade and the “importance of good relations with the United States”, no matter how difficult the administration.

They recognize the international environment is changing with the erosion of the post-war liberal rules-based order, the rise of revisionist powers who would return to spheres of influence and “might makes right”. There are also new challenges, including climate change, rising migration, threats posed by money laundering, disinformation and foreign interference, the need for better cybersecurity and research security, keeping up with technology and the use of artificial intelligence.

Our leaders should also take heed of Chapnick and McKercher’s summary observations. They argue that Canada is too small a power to go it alone, so we need to recommit to multilateralism. They warn our commitment to helpful fixing was “grounded in a mixture of national interests and values” but that, over time, “humility was overtaken by a level of self-assurance that, at its worst, veered dangerously into national chauvinism.”

They also warn of “the activist impulse, at times admirable, but too often driven by the arrogant belief that the world needed more Canada.” As they note, this has led to a tendency to “speak loudly and carry a bent stick”.

They conclude that “however ad hoc it might be” future Canadian foreign policy will continue to be a balancing act of the “practical, idealistic, and political international priorities” but that “standing alone” will not work. Useful advice for our next government.

Canada First, Not Canada Alone should be read by anyone interested in Canada in the world. It should be the basic text for students and a primer for foreign service officers.

Contributing Writer Colin Robertson, a former career diplomat, is a fellow and host of the Global Exchange podcast with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute in Ottawa.