If Brexit happens Canada could offer help to manage UK exit

[Prime Minister David Cameron speaks during an EU referendum related visit to a small family business in south London on Tuesday. AP/PA/Adrian Dennis]

If the United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union, Canadian diplomats could offer their help in managing the transition — while working their contacts to figure out implications for their own country, two experts on Canada-Europe relations say.

This Thursday the UK will hold a referendum on leaving the EU. The political battle over a potential British exit, or Brexit, has come down to a “very close” race that has proved to be vitriolic and even lethal. Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered last week in a reportedly politically-motivated shooting.

If Brexit happens, it will happen in the face of advice from British Prime Minister David Cameron, UK economic institutions, the Bank of England, the United States, China, Canada’s prime minister, Canada’s top diplomat to the UK and many others.

That means “there will be a bit of attitude” from the winning camp, which includes former London mayor Boris Johnson and UK Justice Secretary Michael Gove, in their triumph over so many voices, said former Canadian ambassador Ferry de Kerckhove.

Canada will have to acknowledge there has been a legitimate vote in the UK, and the outcome will have to be respected, said de Kerckhove, who is now a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa after a career in the Canadian foreign service.

After that, “there’s going to be a period of wait-and-see, and a lot of searching as to the implications” of Brexit’s impact on Canada, he said.

“In a way, the reaction from the Canadian diplomats will be, ‘Listen, we’re going to try and help you, David Cameron, manage that transition in a way that doesn’t hurt our collective interests.”

The Quebec connection

Part of Canada’s job at that point would be to assure the UK that Canada is understanding of the situation that the UK faces, said Amy Verdun, a professor of political science at the University of Victoria and the Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam who studies European politics and public policy.

“I think the Canadians could reach out to the United Kingdom and say, ‘We’re here for you, we feel for you, we’ve had these issues ourselves; happy to help,” Verdun said.

Canada’s Quebec referendum in 1995, she said, exposed similar fractures that didn’t automatically heal after the vote. Canada was able to mollify, to some extent, sovereigntist aspirations since the vote, she argued.

In addition, Canada would not bring any hegemonic power to the table as perhaps the U.S. or China, she said, in any discussions about how to move forward.

Others see reverberations for the current sovereigntist movement in Canada. National Post columnist Andrew Coyne recently wrote that “a successful Brexit could offer new life to the moribund Quexit movement.”

2-year period will test CETA

If Britain votes to leave, it won’t immediately be freed from the clutches of the EU.

The minimum period for members to leave is two years, during which Britain would still be subject to EU laws, the BBC reports. The country would have to negotiate a withdrawal agreement and set the new terms of any future Britain-EU relationship, the news service added, and negotiations could get dragged out.

That means that if Britain votes to leave, a good chunk of the rest of the Trudeau government’s mandate will be spent dealing with the fallout. Canadian diplomats, whose role it is to continuously assess the ongoing implications for Canada of any major issue, will have to keep the long game in mind.

“A key question from the Canadian government’s perspective is to make sure that our guys, both in London and in the EU, follow very, very closely, from their inside contacts, what are the implications,” said de Kerckhove. “There’s going to be a lot of research being done.”

Canada’s foreign affairs department is doubtless already doing so, he said, but a pro-Brexit vote would crank this process up considerably.

Chief among the implications for Canada is what will happen to the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) that has been negotiated for years. Talks over the deal and a legal review are finished, but it is still awaiting translation and final approval.

It’s unclear if Brexit will completely unravel CETA; former Canadian ambassador Derek Burney and Carleton University chancellor’s professor Fen Osler Hampson recently wrote that “Europeans could use Britain’s exit as an excuse to revisit negotiations or even put the agreement on the shelf.”

A key question, said de Kerckhove, is how extensive the Brexit itself will be in terms of trade relations, and thus where negotiations for any new deal would have to begin.

On this score, nothing would be in play, Verdun said. It would be a blank slate, at which diplomats would start chipping away.

Related to CETA is the larger issue of global trade and its impact on the working class. One element that Brexit has highlighted — one that won’t be contingent on the vote’s outcome — is the sense of economic desperation that many voters in Britain feel, she said

“It’s so close and it’s so concerning that clearly something has to happen in the area of integrating various peoples within the United Kingdom,” she said.

In that sense, Brexit has come to illustrate some of the same dynamics currently playing out in the U.S. presidential race.

Multilateral diplomacy

Another aspect for Canadian diplomats to consider is how the ground would shift after Brexit in terms of political and regional allegiances.

Diplomacy at organizations like the United Nations and the World Trade Organization is often carried out via groups of like-minded countries forming blocs on various issues.

“If the United Kingdom were to be its own entity and not part of the European Union, then everything you would normally expect to talk to the Brits through the EU about, you now have to develop bilateral relations with the United Kingdom,” Verdun said.

The UK would hold on to its position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, de Kerckhove pointed out.

“We’re not going to build a new special relationship with the UK out of the EU,” he said.

Canada is no longer the country of former prime minister John Diefenbaker who campaigned hard against UK membership in the European Common Market, the EU’s predecessor.

“It’s an entirely different ballgame.”