DREW FAGAN
Tuesday, April 15, 2003

If it's Tuesday, it must be Vancouver. Wednesday, it's Whitehorse.

Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham isn't on the diplomatic whirl overseas. He's travelling the nation, talking to Canadians about international relations. Participants are handed a 20-page foreign policy booklet suggesting "questions for discussion" but offering little worth asking about -- particularly on Canada's stumbling relationship with the United States.

Should Canada have a moral foreign policy? How moral? What about economic interests? Should those be a factor in our view of the world?

Someone should tie a yellow ribbon around Ottawa's Fort Pearson. Bring Mr. Graham home. There, he could be forming real strategies for how Canada remakes itself in a world where the United States looms over everything, and where being a middle power means little. His booklet -- A Dialogue on Foreign Policy -- is a grab bag, filled with empty conceits about Canada's global importance. "A better world might look like a better Canada." Sounds great, but not filling.

As former diplomats Bill Dymond and Michael Hart note in a recent paper for the C. D. Howe Institute, Canadian foreign policy suffers from inherent weaknesses. "Chief among these is the predominance of sentiment over interest and a propensity for declaratory foreign policy without serious and sustained commitment."

Ottawa hasn't produced a rigorous response to the groundbreaking National Security Strategy issued by the Bush administration last fall. But Canada was quick last week to denounce a massacre in eastern Congo; left unsaid once again was that the United Nations recently asked Ottawa to lead an expanded peacekeeping force there and was rebuffed for lack of resources.

It has come to this: Canada is disappearing internationally. And relations with its one crucial ally have crumbled to the point where a state visit by the President has been cancelled. Is this bottom?

Certainly, there's reason to think that change is in the works, based on the appointment last week of senior bureaucrat Peter Harder as deputy minister of foreign affairs. And that relates particularly to a re-examination of Canada-U.S. ties.

Canadian policy needs to be focused on the nation's interests and on areas where Canada can make a real impact. Above all, Ottawa needs to right Canada's pre-eminent relationship. This country can ill-afford to allow relations with Washington to drift (as they have done for a decade) or be hurt by self-inflicted wounds (as they have been in recent weeks).

It's not that Ottawa can't act in ways different from Washington. It's just that, when it does so, it must manage any consequences. It must be mindful of the realities of sharing a continent. Canada has little reason to be anti-American; the two countries share so much. And Canada must never mistake contrariness for policy.

Bridges need to be mended, then overhauled. The key issue of the post-Chrétien era is clear: How can Canada best take advantage of being integrated economically with the United States, while also maintaining the independence to go its own way when the federal government feels it must -- say, over Iraq.

Paul Martin's team is considering a ministry of U.S. affairs. That won't work; most decisions Ottawa makes have implications for Canada-U.S. affairs. But it's a start. More fresh ideas are needed.

Ottawa should respond to the new U.S. Department of Homeland Security by examining the establishment of a mirror institution. That doesn't mean mimicking U.S. laws; it means better co-ordination of resources and strategies. The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency is so Sept. 10 -- the border hasn't been about revenue since Duran Duran.

It's time to look at ways to build on free trade -- regulatory co-ordination, investment liberalization, more freedom for Canadians and Americans to work in either country. Perhaps a security perimeter approach, maybe a customs union in all but name.

Mr. Harder has looked at these kinds of issues as deputy minister of industry. The North American Linkages project produced studies on things such as a continental common market. The work went largely unnoticed, but it is one foundation for the "grand bargain" concepts now circulating.

The next government may have little stomach for this. It's only 15 years since Canada went through the free-trade debate. Who wants to relive that?