OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will leave the world stage with a legacy of promoting feminist causes and focusing on Asia, along with criticism that Canada’s actions fell short of the government’s rhetoric.
“There has just been such a disconnect between what they say and what the actual results are on the ground,” said Roger Hilton, a Bratislava-based fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
Trudeau announced Monday he will resign after the Liberal party holds a leadership race at an unset date, while proroguing Parliament until March 24.
Hilton noted that Trudeau took office in 2015 at a time when Europe was rocked by Russia’s invasion of Crimea and its shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines passenger flight over Ukraine.
Hilton said there was a “craving to have more Canada on the international stage” to shore up the international rules that Moscow was challenging and to collectively fight climate change.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has driven up inflation globally and tested the solidarity of European countries, who have faced sabotage and covert assassinations.
“The world is really on fire,” he said. “There are so many different reasons about why Canada needs to strengthen either its cyber infrastructure or its supply chains. And there’s just always a reason why it doesn’t happen.”
Hilton said Canada has made a difference by leading NATO’s military deployment in Latvia since 2017, by training Ukrainian troops and by championing Ukraine in international forums.
“Canada has contributed significant financial aid; they’ve been one of the loudest spokespersons on the global stage,” he said.
Yet Hilton said many Europeans felt Ottawa could have done more to counter Russia’s influence. The most common lament is Canada’s failure to meet the NATO defence spending target of two per cent of GDP, and insufficient military aid for Ukraine.
Ottawa ranks high among allies for humanitarian aid but relatively low for military support.
“The elephant in the room on defence spending has really done us harm in terms of being credible with allies,” he said.
“They were very late on basic investments on Norad,” he added, referring to the joint U.S. air defence of North America.
The Liberals released an Arctic foreign policy just weeks ago. They recently promised to finally release an Africa strategy, after years of deliberating whether to proceed and temporarily downgrading that project to a framework.
The Senate has warned that Canada risks losing its historical reputation as a trusted partner in Africa, whose demographics and resources put the continent on track for an economic boom.
Vina Nadjibulla, the research vice-president for the Asia Pacific Foundation, says Trudeau boosted Canada’s focus on the Indo-Pacific region, but struggled to follow through on some of his stated goals.
“It has been a mixed bag when it comes to Canada’s standing on the world stage,” she said. “It would be a difficult period to navigate for any government.”
Nadjibulla said the government has astutely diagnosed the complexities and threats Canada faces, but has a mixed record in implementing and resourcing its responses.
On India in particular, Canada’s relationship is “at an all-time low,” in large part due to allegations Indian diplomats were behind murder and serious crimes in Canada, but also due to long-standing issues such as trade irritants.
Trudeau’s 2018 visit to India was widely seen as an embarrassment, with his family cloaked in ceremonial garb and a scandal after Trudeau’s team invited a man with a serious criminal record to events during the trip.
In Southeast Asia, Canada has bolstered ties with economically booming countries, partnering in fields like nuclear power, naval security and fisheries management.
But Ottawa has also grappled to find its place there amid rising competition between China and the U.S., and has struggled to establish a stable relationship with Beijing after the years-long detainment of two Canadians.
Those tensions were most visible at the G20 summit in November 2022, when Chinese President Xi Jinping rebuked Trudeau in a filmed encounter in Indonesia.
Trudeau’s government never issued an overarching foreign policy strategy, Nadjibulla noted.
“The Western bloc and the G7 is having to contend with a lot more fragmented world. So, our overall soft power and standing in the world has declined,” she said.
“We’re still not investing enough in building relationships and understanding how complex certain countries have become, notably India, China, of course, but also Brazil and others around the world, these growing middle powers.”
That likely contributed to the Liberals failing to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council in 2020, years after criticizing their Conservative predecessors for doing the same in 2011.
Robert Huish, an international development professor at Dalhousie University, said that in part stems from a lack of focus on development issues, with Canada seeking to help with a manifold of problems on the world stage instead of clearly defined priorities.
He added that the government’s opaque handling of alleged foreign interference by China may have emboldened transnational repression by countries like India.
“It left a salty taste for Canadians, but it also showed our weakness on the world stage with some other adversaries and allies to follow suit,” he argued.
Huish said Trudeau is among the last standing Western leaders who were in office before the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted economic challenges that have led to many incumbents being voted out of office.
“When Mr. Trudeau came in, we were the star of the show,” Huish said. “It was really replaced by kind of a defensive stance, that has put Canada in a really tough spot internationally.”
Still, Trudeau’s government has been praised by development organizations such as the Equality Fund for focusing on women and LGBTQ+ people in aid projects abroad, and encoding gender issues into trade agreements.
Canada is hosting the G7 this year, which Nadjibulla says is a “tremendous opportunity to exercise leadership and advance our interests” — if political leaders can spare enough energy from the political tumult, and do the preparatory work.
That will require whoever is in office to have a coherent strategy on issues like harvesting critical minerals and managing the U.S. threat of imposing damaging tariffs.
“Given the turmoil that we’re facing, it’s important for Canada to have a government and a political leadership that has a strong mandate from Canadians, and that’s what others are also watching.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 6, 2025.
