Back in mid-June, I wrote a retrospective piece entitled “Rebranding Canada: From the Siege of Sarajevo to Rio Plus 20”. In that essay I tried to highlight the extent to which Canadian foreign policy has been transformed over the past several decades, and argued that although gradual and in large part unnoticed, the reorientation has in fact been profound.
The one-time cheerleader for North-South cooperation, environmental sustainability and world peace has morphed into something quite different.
Canada is now the tough talking, free-trading, warrior nation, extolling the victories attained in long forgotten wars, and investing in the preparation for new ones.
At the level of political rhetoric, and as expressed even more convincingly in terms of allocating resources in favour of the military, this is very much the new script.
It may be time for a re-write.