Column / Don Newman

The atmosphere is deceptive although not surprising. An election deemed unnecessary by many produced a House of Commons barely distinguishable from the one that preceded it. That has left a feeling in Ottawa that when Parliament resumes on November 22^nd there will just be more of the same. The danger is that it may be true. For it not to be correct members of all parties will have to stop their scandal mongering and start doing some serious thinking and work. There are serious problems facing the country and Parliament is going to have to deal with all of them in this minority model that Canadians have chosen to maintain. 

The most important issues going forward were barely discussed in the election campaign. It was only when the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia announced that they had entered a new defence agreement to supply nuclear powered submarines to the Australian Navy to curb the expanding influence of China, that defence, security and intelligence issues briefly were pushed to the front of the campaign focus. Until then, all the political parties seemed to assume that Canada somehow exists in a vacuum, free from any encroachment from the outside, increasingly hostile world. 

After the announcement of the AUKUS agreement, the immediate question was, “Why was Canada left out?” The answer, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, was because it was about nuclear submarines, and Canada is not interested in acquiring any “any time soon.” While that answer was not wrong, it was disingenuous. The navy is standing up a committee to explore replacing the aging conventional submarines we bought from Britain 20 years ago, and Department of National Defence sources say that nuclear submarines are among the options being considered. 

The overriding foreign policy issue that will overshadow almost everything else in the next decade and perhaps beyond is the US-led Western effort to counter China’s illiberal expansionism. Canadians already know this. Two of our countrymen spent almost three years in Chinese prisons as collateral damage after being arbitrarily detained in retaliation for Canada arresting Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecom giant Huawei. The case was resolved after the election by a deferred prosecution agreement in Washington, and Meng and the Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, were allowed to return to their respective countries.

But that is not the last Canadians will hear about Huawei. The detention of the “two Michaels” for the past three years has paralyzed this country’s dealings with China. Any wrong move, any strong condemnation to annoy the Chinese was avoided for fear of endangering the Canadians held captive. But now that they are free, Ottawa will have to decide whether to go along with the other allies in the Five Eyes intelligence group and ban Huawei from its 5G super-fast telephone networks. The US has led the exclusion on the rationale that Huawei could act as an agent of the Chinese government and implant spy softwear in the equipment it installs, or to set up the system so that Beijing could shut down crucial communications in the event of a confrontation. The other members of the Five Eyes—the UK, Australia, New Zealand—have excluded Huawei. If Canada does not now go along it will be partially, or almost totally, excluded from the intelligence-sharing group.

That would be a far bigger problem for this country than not being included in AUKUS, which is essentially a regional security agreement thousands of kilometres away, where a nuclear submarine deal with Australia makes eminent good sense. The Americans needs greater support patrolling the Pacific, particularly in the South China Sea, where China has built a number of forward military bases. 

Canada is one of 30 members of NATO, which is the principal Western security bulwark against both Russia and China. And Canada already has a long-standing bilateral security arrangement with the US. The North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) was established in 1957 to detect and deter Soviet bombers from flying over the North Pole to attack Canada and the United States. Canada and the US are the only members of NORAD. Its mandate was expanded in 2006 to include maritime surveillance and now it is to be renewed and updated again. 

That will be only the beginning of the military expenditures Canada will have to make if it wants to stay in a democratic alliance to stand up to Beijing.  

Contributing Writer and Columnist Don Newman is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a lifetime member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. He is Executive Vice President of Rubicon Strategy, based in Ottawa.