Nine years ago, not long before Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was replaced by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, retired diplomat Paul Heinbecker penned a brutal takedown of Canadian foreign policy.
To Heinbecker, Harper’s appointment of five foreign ministers (and two more acting foreign ministers) over nine years indicated his government didn’t take the file seriously. That lack of seriousness helped explain why American presidents only visited three times between 2006 and 2015, leaving Canada “on the margins of global relevance.”
Heinbecker concluded disparagingly:
