Can Trudeau muster a helpful foreign policy shift?

Emmanuel Samoglou tells us what we can expect from the new Canadian prime minister and his foreign policy.

Justin Trudeau is set to remould Canada as the kind of moderating middle power that the majority of Canadians appear to want their country to be. Nicholas Kamm / AFP

Justin Trudeau is expected to be sworn in as Canadian prime minister today and the 42-year-old former schoolteacher has grandiose plans to “restore Canada as a leader in the world”.

Shortly after his election victory last month, Mr Trudeau was reported to have told Barack Obama that Canada intends to deliver on a campaign promise to pull its six fighter jets out of the anti-ISIL coalition in Iraq and Syria. The country will focus on humanitarian efforts instead.

Mr Trudeau’s election message struck a chord with plenty of Canadians nostalgic for the times when a bold country asserted itself as a “peacekeeper”, while also being unafraid to take contrary positions to its allies.

For instance, Canada played a role in resolving the Suez crisis in 1956.

The country also granted refugee status to American draft dodgers while the US was embroiled in the Vietnam War. Interestingly, Stephen Harper, Mr Trudeau’s predecessor, refused to do the same for American “conscientious objectors” of the 2003 Iraq war.

In 1976, Justin’s father and former prime minister, the late Pierre Elliot Trudeau, spent three nights in Havana, becoming the first Nato-bloc leader to visit the country after the US economic embargo was implemented in 1960. (Fidel Castro would later travel to Montreal in 2000 for the funeral of the elder Trudeau and serve as an honorary pallbearer.) More recently, Canada refused to participate in the US-led war in Iraq.

Now, Mr Trudeau is set to remould Canada as the kind of moderating middle power that the majority of Canadians appear to want their country to be.

There are several areas where Mr Trudeau could muster a real foreign policy shift.

Given Canada’s notable pro- Israel stance under the Harper government, how the new government handles the conflict will be one of Mr Trudeau’s first tests. Will he adopt a nuanced stance on the Palestine-Israeli conflict and extend Canada’s hand to the Palestinians? Additionally, Mr Trudeau’s Liberal Party made a pre-election pledge to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2015. But how will this plan materialise as Canada withdraws military forces from the battle against ISIL and as more Canadian youth join the extremist group?

This month, Mr Trudeau is expected to travel to Turkey for the G20 summit, where he will surely be asked to elaborate on these and other foreign policy pronouncements.

Mr Trudeau will have many opportunities to play the middle role he promised during his campaign. Canada could take a role in conflict mediation on the Syrian civil war and a greater part in the continuing crisis in Ukraine, especially given Ottawa’s favourable position in Nato.

Whether he will be able to realistically change the course of Canada’s foreign policy remains to be seen, but Mr Trudeau can find an example of what failure looks like across the border, where Mr Obama has struggled to coherently translate his sloganeering into effective policy on the ground, resulting in the prolonging of simmering conflicts.