Ep. 477: Canada: The World is a Hard Place
Guest: John Rapley, University of Cambridge
In the diplomatic spat between India and Canada, a rising India shows Canada that money is power, says John Rapley, a political economist at the University of Cambridge.
He goes on to say that Canada is finding the world a hard place, and points out that it comes as a shock to Canada, namely because of its sense of itself.
Canada has historically been dominant – one of the world's biggest economies, a founding member of the world's most powerful military alliance, and a rich country whose aid programs gave it considerable leverage over developing countries. But as Ottawa squares off with New Delhi over the recent alleged assassination of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil, Rapley says, “It is being left largely to fight its own battle.”
In other words, Canada has stranded itself diplomatically at a time when the U.S. and U.K. have been building the so-called “quad” with Australia, India and Japan, as a safeguard to rising tensions with China. It gets worse, Rapley says. “Not only does Canada now occupy a less significant geopolitical space, but the country is a notorious shirk, or as an ally, with a recently leaked Pentagon paper revealing that Canada's NATO partners no longer consider us as a serious member of the alliance.”
We invited John Rapley to join us for a Conversation That Matters about Canada's shrinking reputation internationally.
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Check out their profile on our partnered program, Careers That Matter!
