ABSTRACT
Canada’s foreign policy history has been both indelibly shaped by her relationship with the UK and yet steered in very different directions by the influence of, among other things, Quebec within and the US without. It has also attempted to navigate between two competing impulses. The first is idealism1 and the public’s tendency to be, as Rhoda Howard-Hassmann has called them, ‘compassionate Canadians’ (Howard-Hassmann 2003), and to want to be seen that way abroad. The second is the deep pragmatism that comes with being a middle-power. So for instance, Pratt has observed that ‘If Canada is unlikely to be able to exert much leverage on the domestic policies of aid recipients . . . then [it has not] sought significant policy leverage through its development assistance’ (Pratt 1996a: 7). In addition, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) occupies a place in the foreign policy-making hierarchy that is much weaker than that of the DfID in the UK (though stronger than that of AusAID in Australia, covered in the following chapter). This has constrained its ability to act as an independent advocate for development without being colonized by the priorities of other actors in the foreign policy-making apparatus.
