The world has changed. Canada needs a serious foreign policy

If we are serious about our foreign policy, Canada could play an outsized role in contributing to Europe’s collective defence and security.

The Russian Federation’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine is the most significant European war since 1945. It is a serious violation of international law that poses not only a threat to Europe, but to peace and security the world over, including Canada’s.

This attack — coming on the heels of an autocratic pact between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, which affirmed that, “Friendship between (Russia and China) has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of co-operation” — threatens the rules-based international order that has existed since the end of the Second World War.

Canada was instrumental in establishing this international order, which ushered in the longest period of relative peace and prosperity in modern times. Efforts to dismantle these rules are an attack on our peace and security here at home.

Conservatives support the actions taken by the Government of Canada to date. Parliamentarians are united in support of Ukraine against this attack on a European democracy.

However, more needs to be done to counter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats. The government should expel Russian diplomats responsible for espionage here in Canada, as the United States did last week. Canada should seek to isolate Russia internationally, by pushing for its removal from organizations like the G20 and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

It is necessary to isolate Putin’s regime because diplomacy did not work to deter his aggression. In fact, President Putin has taken advantage of western countries’ efforts to engage in good faith, in order to seed disinformation and pursue his expansionist ambitions.

The federal government should direct the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to adopt a new policy, denying licences to state-controlled broadcasters that spread disinformation and propaganda, so that RT (Russia Today) is permanently removed from Canadian airwaves, as well as other authoritarian state-controlled broadcasters operating here in Canada. We must get serious about the disinformation and propaganda spread by proxies of Russia and China.

Ukrainians should be allowed to travel to Canada without requiring a visa, as member states of the European Union have already done.

While the measures announced by the government and the ones proposed above are a good start, we must be clear-eyed that Canada alone cannot stop the invasion of Ukraine. We must be realistic about the capabilities that a middle power like Canada can bring to the table to counter the threat from President Putin and his regime.

But if we are serious about our foreign policy, Canada could play an outsized role in contributing to Europe’s collective defence and security in two significant ways.

First, we must recognize that energy is a vital national security interest. Russia understands this. So does the European Commission, which in 2015 called for a strategic energy partnership with Canada. Unfortunately, our government has not come to realize the strategic importance of our energy reserves.

Russia supplies 40 per cent of Europe’s natural gas and uses its leverage to intimidate Europe and Ukraine. If Russia cuts energy supplies to Europe, people will freeze, factories will shutter and Europe’s economy will grind to a halt.

There is no reason that the Putin regime should be allowed to blackmail our European allies. Canada is the fifth-largest natural gas producer in the world, but we cannot get gas to tidewater to assist European democracies because we cannot get pipelines built.

Getting natural gas to Atlantic tidewater is vital not only to our economic interests, but to our security interests, as well. It’s also consistent with the environmental goal of using natural gas in the transition to non-emitting sources of energy.

Second, we must understand that Putin considers the Arctic a core strategic interest. He has spent considerable resources there in recent years. Canada, like Ukraine, shares a border region with Russia; ours is the Arctic Ocean. We can no longer afford to take our security in the region for granted.

We need a robust plan to defend Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and security that includes purchasing F-35 jets, modernizing NORAD’s early warning system, fixing our national shipbuilding program, joining the U.S. ballistic missile defence program and forging closer ties with our Scandinavian and American allies in the Arctic.

The world has changed irreversibly in the last week or so. It is time for Canada to get serious about foreign policy, including the threats posed by autocrats in countries like Russia and China. That starts with treating energy as a vital national security interest and developing the means to defend our sovereignty and our security in the Arctic.