The Missing Link: Canada's Security Interests and the Central American Crisis

Abstract

The Central American crisis has occasioned a great deal of discussion in Canada over the past half-decade, and there is no reason to assume that the coming years will see any abatement of the public interest in the region and its problems. If anything, one can foresee an increase in concern over Central American issues and for reasons other than the likely growth in the proportion of the Canadian population with Central American roots or affinities. It is revealing that the Special Joint Committee on Canada's International Relations discovered that more Canadians wanted to talk more often about Central American issues than about problems in any other single region of the world,1 and this notwithstanding Canada's very real and expensive alliance commitments to Western Europe and the United States commitments that presumably should have betokened a vibrant public attentiveness, at least to Western Europe, as a region of Vital' Canadian interest. Yet despite the demonstrably high level of public concern with Central America, the debate within Canada both over the causes and implications of the crisis and over the logic of Can-