Canada’s pursuit of UN Security Council seat comes at a cost

[Ban Ki-moon. Paul Chiasson / La Presse Canadienne]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government will take another shot at a seat on the UN Security Council, a move experts say is difficult but needed if Canada wants to re-assert its place in the international system.

The last attempt by the Canadian government to join the UN’s top body ended in defeat in 2010 as the country lost out to Portugal for a two-year term on the council.

The loss to a country with just one-third the population and one-eighth the military spending of Canada was seen as an embarrassment, and former prime minister Stephen Harper was accused of misplaying his country’s hand in the run-up to the vote.

John Trent, who heads University of Ottawa’s political science department, said in an email that despite a shifting international order, a seat on the security council is a great way for Canada to make its mark on the world stage.

“Whenever Canada has punched above its weight it is because we have been present at the table, whatever that table might be,” he said.

“The security council table is the most powerful. But, more importantly, it gives us access and information, and that is what counts in diplomacy.”

Trent said Trudeau still has work to do in laying out his foreign policy, but has made important early signals such as the rebranding of the Department of Global Affairs.

At a news conference with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday, Trudeau said that Canada will again pursue a seat on the security council as he seeks to re-orient the government’s foreign policy toward multilateral co-operation.

“I highlighted to the secretary general that part of Canada wishing to re-engage robustly with the United Nations and in multilateral engagement around the world includes looking towards a bid for the UN Security Council,” he said.

“We’re looking at a number of windows in the coming years. We are going to evaluate the opportunities for Canada to mount a successful bid.”

Mark Kersten, a research fellow at University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, said Trudeau’s rhetoric had focused on the traditional conception of Canada as a mediator and peacekeeper.

“The message he’s sending is that we’re back,” he said.

A seat on the security council puts Canada in elevated discussions and meetings, he said, and makes the country a conduit for its allies looking to have their ideas heard.

The 10 rotating two-year spots don’t have as much power as the five permanent, veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council — China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Kersten said that the veto power makes headlines, but many decisions on the council are made by a majority vote.

“When the veto isn’t used, those non-permanent member countries become really important,” he said.

Getting a seat requires a lengthy and concerted campaign, and there are expectations that the member states involved at that level will contribute to UN initiatives, spend more on foreign aid and participate in international peacekeeping missions, he said.

“It’s like an Olympic bid,” he said. “They have to put a plan forward, and there’s a cost to that — human capital, policy capital — to win.”

The challenge, he said, is that Trudeau can’t over promise on what Canada can and will achieve with its seat.

“We can’t promise the world to the world,” he said. “We have to make promises on the commitments that we can credibly make, that we can fulfill and implement effectively, based on our resources.”

The 2010 loss was the first time in more than half a century that Canada had lost an election for one of the 10 elected seats on the council, which is voted on by the UN-member states.

Critics cited Harper’s unwavering support for Israel, his cuts to African aid projects and his skepticism of climate change as out of step with the international consensus.

Harper later skipped a chance to address the UN General Assembly in September 2013, sending then-foreign affairs minister John Baird in his place. Harper had previously spoken before the general assembly in 2006 and 2010.

Ferry de Kerckhove, a former diplomat and ambassador who was a key driver of Canada’s last security council bid, said being on the council would elevate Canada’s stature.

“It’s a place where you can make a difference,” he said. “That’s a position of strength, and usually we’ve done pretty well in the security council when we’ve been on it.”

He pointed to former Canadian ambassador to the UN Robert Fowler’s work on the diamond trade during the country’s last term on the council, from 1999 to 2000, which led to the 2003 international agreement on the Kimberley Process for identifying and stemming the trade of conflict diamonds.

While some could look at the sometimes torturous process of horse-trading and cajoling that goes into a campaign for a security council seat as not worth the resources, de Kerckhove said Trudeau could see it as just the opposite.

“He could consider gaining the security council as the payback for the effort he’s going to make in terms of involvement in the UN,” he said.

The question for Trudeau now, de Kerckhove said, is moving beyond rhetoric and into explaining the nuts and bolts of Canada’s role in the world.

“There isn’t great clarity about how Trudeau is going to go about it,” he said. “They don’t have a foreign policy that says what country we are, what we want to be, what role we want to play in the world, and therefore we need to do such and such. It’s a new government, but we need to know what it wants to put into practice.”