A new chapter?

Abstract

In the spring of 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canada would reengage with Latin America. Led by Assistant-Deputy Minister Alex Bugailiskis, one of Foreign Affairs’ most experienced Latin America hands, a small team was charged with developing a new strategy for the Americas. Eighteen months later, no document has yet been released, but a free trade agreement has been signed with Peru, a second one is in the offing with Colombia, and negotiations are underway with the Caribbean. Notable is Prime Minister Harper’s July 2007 trip to Latin America, where he visited old partners, like the Caribbean and Chile, and, a first for a Canadian prime minister, stopped in Colombia, where he delivered a strong message of support to embattled president Fernando Uribe. As Deputy Minister Leonard Edwards puts it in the preface to this issue, the government intends to engage in a “focused and sustained” effort, seeking a real and lasting impact on the region. Is some kind of new age dawning – again – for Canada’s relations with Latin America? The collection of articles in this special issue of Canadian Foreign Policy is meant to provide some background to this flurry of activity. This special issue emerged from a conference, Canada and the Americas: Defining Re-engagment, held in March 2008 in Ottawa, which brought together a large group of experts, union and NGO representatives, business people, public officials, and members of the diplomatic community to discuss the new initiative. The sessions were lively, even as their tone was often skeptical, given the sorry fate of previous iterations of such “re-engagements” with the Americas. There was also criticism from some quarters, especially over the heavy focus on trade agreements and this new enthusiasm for a Colombia that is still very much at war. Nevertheless, participants were both sympathetic to and supportive of the government’s willingness to seriously engage the Americas beyond its traditional focus on the United States. Before introducing the articles themselves, we would like to briefly outline some of the main challenges and opportunities that a Canadian re-engagement is likely to meet. The first is the quick pace of change in the region and in the world. Over the last few months, the political dynamics in Venezuela have grown more tense, violent confrontations have left bodies in the streets of Bolivia, and Argentina’s economic and political situation has deteriorated to the point where investment is pouring out of the country. Latin America’s recent bout of prosperity has been driven by record-high commodity prices and inflows of foreign investment, both of which are now under threat as the US financial crisis threatens to engulf the world – scaring investors and driving down the price of commodities, beginning with oil. The reaction to those events, in Latin America and in the United States, may be just as significant. Led by Brazil and Chile, South American countries have taken the lead in trying to calm things down in Bolivia, highlighting a growing suspicion towards extra-regional “interventions” (see Max Cameron and Catherine Hecht, infra). In the United States, the 5