Canada and the United Nations: Rethinking and Rebuilding Canada's Global Role

Abstract

The global order built after the Second World War is fraying and the United Nations is facing unprecedented challenges. The Advisory Panel on Canada and the United Nations, comprising multiple former Canadian UN ambassadors, therefore asked whether the UN should remain a central focus for Canadian foreign policy. The Panel concluded in its 2023 report “Canada and the United Nations: Rethinking and Rebuilding Canada's Global Role” that a well-functioning UN can offer the universality and predictability Canada needs to advance its national interests. This article summarizes the chief conclusions of that report, examining how Canada can rebuild influence at the UN. Too often, multilateral cooperation is an afterthought in Canadian foreign policy today and Canada's presence at the UN is under-resourced. The Panel and this article make a series of recommendations aimed at achieving a more functional, interest-based approach to Canada's UN engagements in the current global context.

Introduction

The United Nations (UN) is facing unprecedented challenges. The global order built after the Second World War is beginning to fray, with more actors demanding an equal voice at international tables, more states turning away from international solutions, and disruptive powers, such as China and Russia, making multilateral solutions more difficult. ¹ And yet, Canadian leaders throughout our history, from Lester B. Pearson to Brian Mulroney to Justin Trudeau, have spoken of the UN as the cornerstone of Canada's foreign policy.

In this increasingly competitive and contested international environment, the central question of our study was: Does the United Nations remain vital to Canada's foreign policy? We conclude that it does and should be. Notwithstanding its many limitations, a well-functioning UN can offer the legitimacy, universality, and predictability Canada needs to protect and promote its national interests.

Why Canada needs the United Nations more than ever

Canadians’ prosperity relies heavily upon an open, fair, and rules-based economic system. A world divided into rival economic blocs, a vision gaining support under the auspices of “friend-shoring,” risks being a less prosperous one. ² Even more concerning are the international security implications of intensified geopolitical competition. A new Cold War is not in the Canadian national interest. A world of multiple, competing global power blocs is a more dangerous one, within which Canada would have significantly less leverage. Recent experiences with hostage diplomacy and steel and aluminium tariffs are illustrative of the implications for Canada of a world where the constraints on big states are loosened. Notwithstanding its frustrations, which are many, multilateralism serves as a constraint on the naked exercise of power by the largest states.

From this perspective, multilateralism is both a means of furthering Canadian self-interest and an end in and of itself. There is a misconception among some that multilateralism is idealistic. While international organization can advance a values-based agenda, it is the self-interest of states that has always driven cooperation. ³ Canada needs a seat at the multilateral tables where key global norms and rules are being formulated, particularly in such a dynamic international environment. Agencies such as the International Telecommunication Union, the World Meteorological Organization, or the World Trade Organization bring real day-to-day benefits to Canadians.

The UN remains the centrepiece of global multilateralism. Without it, the broader system loses its coherence and functional core. It is the world's “operating system.” Other international and regional institutions, inside and outside of the UN system, rely on the UN legally and normatively. ⁴ Efforts to weaken the UN, therefore, eat away at the global structure that underpins Canadian interests.

As power becomes more dispersed within the international system, the universality of the UN is a counterweight to polarization. It is the one institution that can bring the world together with an eye toward a common cooperative enterprise. In a period of wickedly interdependent problems of global proportions, no other institution offers a plausible alternative. The UN is the only global game in town.

Even for those who look upon the UN with suspicion, it is in Canada's interest not to leave the field to those countries with radically different values and priorities.

Canada and the United Nations today: punching below its historic weight

Canada has a distinguished history of engagement within the UN. It was an active player at the San Francisco Conference in 1945, has been elected to the UN Security Council (UNSC) six times, and has done much to further the mission of the organization over the past 78 years. ⁵

Notwithstanding the fact that it has consistently fielded highly skilled diplomats to the UN, Canada is a less influential UN player than it once was. Canada's two consecutive losses in elections to the UNSC—in 2010 and 2020—are illustrative of a broader decline in Canadian relevance. While Canada has fielded strong delegations to UN bodies, they are small by G7 or G20 standards and often not provided the resources necessary to “walk the talk.” Canadian international assistance lags significantly behind global benchmarks. Canada ranks sixty-ninth in troop contributions to UN peacekeeping.

Sources of declining influence

Canada's UN influence has been in decline. Declining influence is derived from internal and external challenges.

Internal: The first challenge is that, internally, Canada's UN diplomacy and policies lack coherence. The UN system is expansive, with dozens of specialized agencies, funds, and programmes governing cooperation and setting standards. Canadian participation in these highly autonomous bodies is divided across dozens of domestic agencies and departments, which have minimal direct connection to each other on UN questions. Within Global Affairs Canada (GAC), responsibilities for UN issues have also traditionally been fragmented, with separate branches responsible for different parts of the UN agenda, little attention paid to many of the UN specialized agencies, and the lead on some international priority issues, such as climate change, environment, and global health, passed on to domestic departments because of GAC budget cuts. Some of this fragmentation within GAC may be addressed by recent internal machinery changes; however, GAC is still poorly positioned to serve as a whole-of-government coordinator of Canada's overall UN engagement.

The implications of these gaps in governance are many. Fragmented national policy-making diminishes capacity to set priorities. Fragmentation makes it difficult to establish linkages across issues or institutions, affecting coherence and effectiveness. It also reinforces problematic silo-ization in Ottawa. Domestic departments prioritize their substantive policy agenda in UN negotiations, inadvertently causing collateral damage to other parts of the UN system or to Canada's relations with other UN partners. This leads to missed opportunities for strategic collaboration.

Because there is no system-wide view, Canada has limited ability to achieve beneficial issue-linkages. Poorly integrated structures in capital can prevent valuable information from flowing across bureaucratic divides, hurting Canadian negotiators and negotiations. Information on the domestic constraints or priorities of other governments, gleaned from one institutional setting can often have relevance in other multilateral negotiations. A lack of internal coherence undermines Canada's ability to take advantage of such opportunities.

Poor integration also makes it difficult for the government to ensure that Canadian positions are aligned fully in different UN contexts. For issues that cross multiple institutional domains, such as climate change, where relevant bargaining occurs in dozens of separate UN bodies, fragmentary policy guidance can undermine Canadian diplomacy. Some UN member states insert problematic “agreed language” within one UN setting and then transplant that language to other settings. A lack of internal coherence makes it difficult to combat such tactics.

External: The second major challenge facing Canadian UN diplomacy, largely external to the government, is the increasingly peripheral position the country occupies within intergovernmental networks. Some of this shrinkage owes to factors that are outside of Canada's control. For example, the coherence of the European Union as a bloc within the UN has diminished Canadian centrality within the Western European and Others (WEOG) regional grouping. Other factors, however, are a consequence of Canadian diplomatic choices. Successive Canadian governments have failed to consistently cultivate countries in the developing world with important implications for Canada's UN diplomacy. High-level visits to these countries have been uncommon and UN issues are seldom prominent within Canada's bilateral diplomacy.

Relations with the developing world, once buttressed by links within the Commonwealth of Nations and La Francophonie, are today less salient in Ottawa. Due to relative limited multilateral capacity at Canada's respective missions, the Canadian government has failed to take effective advantage of the convening power of both organizations. While useful for their own sake, bilateral, regional, and other links should be more consistently operationalized as means of multilateral influence.

There are many reasons behind Canada's repeated failure to gain a seat at the UNSC, chief among them the reluctance to announce Canada's candidacy sufficiently in advance and an inability to communicate Canadian priorities outside of New York. To do so would have required making long-term policy choices and having a better tactical understanding of how UNSC elections work. Also, the failures reflect a lack of consensus on UN policy among political parties in Canada. In a polarized domestic context, governments are reluctant to campaign ten years out only to win the seat for a future government formed by the opposition. Successive governments have also been reluctant to run for election on other UN bodies, though the decision to contest a seat on the Human Rights Council for 2028–2030 is encouraging.

Relatedly, the government has positioned itself as a preference outlier on key UN debates, at times favouring domestic political positioning at the expense of its UN objectives. Canada's stances on UNSC reform and Middle East issues, for instance, have alienated key UN members. Unless backed by careful diplomacy and the requisite resources, Canada's advocacy on social issues, including elements of the Feminist International Assistance Policy, can come across as patronizing. Similarly, too often recent Canadian domestic political debate has framed diplomacy with autocratic states as anathema. Earlier periods of Canadian diplomacy were characterized by governments (of all political parties) that understood the world to be more nuanced and that “talking to enemies” was seen as a pragmatic instrument to influence behaviour. While a principled foreign policy is essential, the UN provides multiple channels for dialogue, and, at times, quieter approaches can do more to achieve progress than public shaming. Finally, there is a tendency to make alignment with like-minded countries, particularly the US, the default stance, without first articulating what Canadian policy should be.

Canadian delegations’ ability to position Canada at the centre of international networks is hampered by understaffing. Smaller missions can find it difficult to keep up with the host of meetings occurring. The government's recent commitment, as a part of Canada's Future of Diplomacy initiative, to better staff its UN missions is a start, but this will need to be implemented and sustained.

Canadian credibility at the UN can be further enhanced through high-level visits. Yet, Canadian high-level visits to the UN throughout the year, particularly at the ministerial level, are uncommon relative to other governments. Visits even to UN bodies based in Canada, such as the International Civil Aviation Organization or the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, have been uncommon. While in the past Canada's multilateral objectives featured prominently in bilateral discussions, high-level officials now regularly seek the inverse: to capitalize on UN meetings as an opportunity for “pull-asides” on bilateral issues.

Compared with the unipolar moment of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, where ties with the leading political power mattered most, a world of increasing multipolarity demands new strategies of connection. No one country—or group of countries—can shape the international system in its own image. In this context, the ability to forge coalitions of states is a prerequisite. Canadian diplomats must deepen ties with non-traditional partners. Interactions within comfortable groups of likeminded states are unlikely to yield non-redundant information or uncover openings in global talks. While Canada's UN delegations do seek to expand Canada's multilateral links, they are restricted by the limited network of connections the government has sustained over the medium-to-long term. ⁶ Canada has neither effectively identified priority bilateral relationships, nor maintained bridges across regional divides. Such contacts can bring information and allies to Canadian negotiators that help to construct multilateral coalitions.

Policy capacity

Canada has traditionally been a supplier of ideas and initiatives, such as those associated with human security, disarmament, violence against women, maternal and child health, and environmental law. ⁷ Good ideas create opportunities, affording convening and agenda-setting power. Unfortunately, the supply of ideas has been less consistent in recent years, in large part because of reluctance to commit resources to bolster new initiatives and growing risk aversion at both the bureaucratic and political levels. As a result, Canada has largely become an “agenda taker,” rather than an “agenda maker.” On emerging issues where there are serious gaps in international norms, Canada is not filling the void.

Bright ideas are rarely the product of eureka moments. Instead, often they are innovative mid-range solutions to concrete policy dilemmas that emerge through information obtained, and interactions within, well-cultivated networks. The policy capacity of GAC has been diminished through successive budget cuts or has moved to other government departments. Canadian missions abroad and headquarters divisions are so severely understaffed that strategic engagement—and thinking—has been hampered. In this way, a limited supply of new ideas is both a cause and a consequence of Canada's less central network position.

Recommendations

We group our analysis and the resulting recommendations into internal and external actions that can rebuild Canada's UN influence. Our recommendations are not about preserving the UN status quo and Canada's traditional place in it. The world has changed, and the UN is a different body than when it was created. Our recommendations thus focus instead on achieving three things:

A more functional, interest-based approach by Canada to its UN engagements;

Greater Canadian capacity to exercise influence at the UN, and;

Greater Canadian presence at its UN missions.

Internal

1. Develop a formal United Nations strategy

Many of Canada's closest allies regularly develop national security strategies or foreign policy statements. Canada has not done so since 2005. While a full foreign policy review might be preferable, the government should, at a minimum, develop a focused UN strategy. This strategy should be public and benefit from civil society engagement. The intergovernmental process of composing such a strategy is as valuable as the eventual document, forcing the government to examine key assumptions and clarify its policy preferences. Public consultations ensure that Canadians have a better understanding of why and how the UN serves Canada's interests. The process should include all government departments with substantial involvement in the UN and engage with provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, as well as Canadian civil society, academia, and the private sector.

The strategy should then guide the international engagements of all government departments. Such a UN strategy would be more confident in its promotion of Canadian interests, and be more targeted to those areas of the UN system. It could identify partners that can help Canada advance its interests. It would focus on filling normative and policy gaps where Canada has something to bring to the table. It would be strategic.

2. Identify a short-list of UN priorities

One element of a new UN strategy should be to establish Canadian priorities at the UN. Priority-setting provides a focus across government and adds coherence to Canada's UN engagements. The number of priorities—perhaps limited to five or six—should be numerous enough to demand a level of ambition appropriate of a G7 country, yet sufficiently limited to allow Canada to emerge as a top five contributor of ideas, and financial and programme support in these areas. Our advisory panel offered the following priorities as ‘food for thought’: sustainable development (including food security); climate change; refugees/migration; global health; and peace and security (including cyber, artificial intelligence, space, disarmament/non-proliferation, and democracy/human rights).

The chosen priorities would provide a focus for Canada's voluntary contributions to UN bodies and for the expenditure of political capital. Possible election onto relevant intergovernmental bodies should be viewed through this prism. Programme review should assess the efficacy of UN agencies and the value-added of heightened contributions. This assessment should not facilitate a reduction in resources but should target increased impact through focus.

As part of its priority-setting, Canada should also undertake a detailed analysis of partner countries that can help it build coalitions inside the UN. While Canada has a cross-regional network of partners, it does less well in identifying priority relationships to strategically strengthen over time.

At the core of Canadian UN policy is the question of Canada's relations with rising global leaders and with developing countries generally. Gaining the support of these countries is the best way to nurture the rules-based international order. Too often, Canada's domestic social priorities have preoccupied its foreign policy agenda and successive governments have spent too little time listening to what the rest of the world has to say. Success will depend on Canada's capacity to understand developing countries’ perspectives and identify solutions that take their concerns into account without sacrificing Canada's own objectives.

Canada's interests also lie in strengthening the international rules that were the raison d’être for building the UN. In recent years too many states have turned away from the web of rules put in place since WWII. New technologies give rise to ungoverned spaces that pose global challenges. Canada's UN priorities should include normative gaps at the UN on issues that are not yet regulated, such as outer space (where Canada is an industry leader), cyber, pandemic cooperation, or Artificial Intelligence.

Finally, Canada should focus on areas where rules have been fraying and where it has credibility, such as human rights/democratic resilience and non-proliferation/disarmament. ⁸ Canada's shortlist of UN priorities must also include those “global commons” issues that directly affect its sovereignty and economic well-being.

3. Improve internal governance to bring more coherence and visibility to Canada's UN engagements

Canada's UN policies are hampered by a lack of bureaucratic coherence. The current structure that has grown over time was not purpose-built and needs to be reworked through the lens of Canada's multilateral priorities. Dozens of government departments are engaged in UN questions. A proliferation of informal institutions and trans-governmental networks outside the UN system has only deepened fragmentation. ⁹ Today, effective multilateralism must be coherent multilateralism.

Traditionally, GAC has been a policy department with multiple centres of expertise, spread across multiple assistant deputy minister (ADM) portfolios. This can be a strength provided there is adequate expertise, sufficient coordination, and a culture of ideas-generation. However, many of these traditional elements of GA's corporate culture have withered. There is no one machinery fix that can solve these challenges. However, some machinery changes could improve coherence both within GAC and between GAC and other departments. Recent machinery changes within GAC to bring all UN governance issues under the ADM for International Security may improve coherence but there are still many areas within GAC and across government where better coordination and an overall strategic vision are needed. Additional measures to enhance government-wide—and UN system-wide—awareness could include dedicated reporting streams from multilateral missions and an annual in-person retreat of senior leadership of multilateral missions to enhance strategic policy exchange and to track successes in implementing priorities. Above all, the development of a dedicated UN strategy would work across government to create coherence.

External

4. Put forward Canada's fandidacy for the next uncontested WEOG UN Security Council seat

Canada's losses in 2010 and 2020 for a non-permanent seat on the UNSC have been conspicuous. While Canada's UN engagement is much broader than whether it occupies a seat on the UNSC, participation is in Canada's national interest. The UNSC remains the world's most significant international security venue, taking decisions on global trouble spots. Canada has an interest in how these issues are resolved.

Membership would boost Canada's centrality within UN networks. A decision to contest a seat on the UNSC should be accompanied by a broader strategy concerning Canada's UN priorities. Election to the UNSC should be considered in relationship with possible membership on other intergovernmental bodies. Canada should evaluate the potential benefits of contesting the Presidency of the UN General Assembly and other UN offices.

Strategic placements of Canadians in junior and mid-level positions should be funded, including via secondments of Canadian officials, to create a “feeder system” for election to higher positions. Moreover, given the vote swaps required to obtain elected positions, all candidacies should be evaluated within a ten-to-fifteen year planning cycle. Vying for leadership positions within the UN must be multi-partisan national projects, not an effort to win domestic political trophies.

5. Build the multilateral capacity of Canada's foreign service

For Canada to be better able to anticipate and respond to a world of strategic surprise, it must do a better job at multilateral diplomacy. Doing so means growing and retaining a professional diplomatic corps: recruiting people with multilateral knowledge and networks and then deploying them strategically. The generalist model of diplomacy does not adequately build this skillset.

While multilateral diplomacy demands some of the same knowhow as bilateral diplomacy, there are differences. Negotiations in contexts with hundreds of states can generate significant complexity, as well as distinctive coalitional dynamics. Network building assumes an altogether different character in horizontal, multilateral environments.

Professional diplomats understand issues, countries, and regions in-depth. This specialized knowledge allows them to identify early opportunities to influence and lead. They use the relationships they have built over time to turn opportunities into action. By rebuilding multilateral diplomatic capacity, there is scope for Canada to re-emerge as a chief supplier of innovative ideas.

A multilateral foreign service career stream would be a subspeciality of the current Foreign Policy and Diplomacy stream. New foreign service officers would spend most of their early career postings at multilateral organizations. Work in Ottawa should focus on Canadian policy toward UN institutions. Regular secondments should take place between GAC and other government departments that engage with UN issues. This system would help to create a cross-government network of multilateral diplomats who understand the broader context. This would contribute to greater unity of outlook and deeper ties to those working on UN issues across government.

Facilitating collaboration with other countries could further boost multilateral expertise. For examples. the government could seek to embed Canadians within the UK or US missions for UNSC work. While Canada does attempt to burden-share with Australia and New Zealand, it has not fully leveraged these partnerships.

6. Expand and focus Canada's diplomatic presence in priority UN bodies

The government should expand its diplomatic presence within UN agencies, funds, and programmes, including building the multilateral capacity of “hybrid” Canadian embassies/high commissions that house Canadian representatives to UN bodies.

Canada's permanent UN missions are understaffed relative to other G7 and G20 countries. More robust staffing would enable Canada's UN mission to be more proactive. New staffing should extend to all of Canada's other UN missions, particularly hybrid bilateral/multilateral missions within Canadian embassies.

Staffing increases should target better representation from departments outside of GAC. Given the specialized character of many negotiations, some missions already feature such arrangements, but more are needed. Representation from partner departments to GAC should be increased, while easing the logistical and financial burden of these positions for home departments.

Staffing levels should reflect priorities identified in a UN strategy. For instance, if environment and climate change are priorities, staffing increases should include positions focused on environment in New York and Nairobi. In the latter case, a dedicated deputy permanent representative would increase Canada's profile within the UN Environmental Assembly. This decision must be taken in tandem with a significant reinvestment in expertise on environmental questions within GAC at headquarters. GAC needs to get back in the environment game.

7. Expand engagement with the Canadian public on UN issues

The work of civil society organizations, including academia, advocacy groups, and thinktanks, enriches policy discourses, spurring innovation. A culture of government openness and exchange, entailing regular consultations, would bolster policy capacity. Civil society groups serve as useful amplifiers of Canadian soft power and public diplomacy.

Public outreach on UN issues should extend beyond specialists. The government could increase support for the United Nations Association of Canada. The government should encourage UN officials to visit the country with greater frequency.

To the extent possible, outreach should be expanded to all Canadian political parties to establish a baseline consensus for Canada's UN involvement. This effort would help avoid having major Canadian initiatives and candidacies at the UN undermined by changes of government.

8. Appoint more Canadian nationals to UN secretariats

The government should develop a more robust system to support the appointment of Canadian nationals to senior UN posts and expand its support for Canadians entering the UN Junior Professional Officer (JPO) programme.

Currently, Canada funds a small number of JPO positions, chiefly targeting UN bodies with a development focus. While Canadians are well-represented within the UN secretariat overall, the government should expand its support for the JPO program. Over and above a more modest desire to “renew” Canadian participation in the program, we recommend substantial and strategic reinvestment. If recruits rise through the UN ranks, their presence will be a resource for Canada. If they return to government in Canada, their experience, knowledge, and networks are an asset. In expanding participation, the government should take a strategic perspective by focusing on positions of greatest importance to Canada's interests.

Also, the government should develop a better approach to enable Canadians to obtain high-level appointments within the UN. The current system provides career disincentives for such moves and handles applications on a case-by-case basis. The government should strengthen its appointment processes, helping to ensure that excellent candidates bolster UN bodies.

Conclusion

The above recommendations are intended to articulate a strategic vision for Canada at the UN, setting out a policy vision that allows us to rebuild our influence and focus our diplomacy on issues that respond directly to Canada's interests and that enable us to project our values. The UN has its flaws and limitations. But Canada thrives in a rules-based international system where intergovernmental decisions are largely made through agreed norms and procedures. A system where all states have rights and opportunities to influence collective action. In short, it is in Canada's interest to help reinforce a UN that can shape the future Canada wants.