Ep 477 - Canada: The World is a Hard Place

Guest:  John Rapley

By Stuart McNish

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.

You can see the interview here https://www.conversationsthatmatter.ca/

Learn More about our guests career at careersthatmatter.ca