A Farewell to Cannon

Usurped by an NDP newcomer, Lawrence Cannon bids the international cocktail circuit adieu.

The Conservatives might have won a majority, but they lost their foreign affairs minister along the way. Whichever MP fills Lawrence Cannon's spot has a tough job ahead of him or her, predicts Tim Harper in the Toronto Star. “Under Cannon, the foreign affairs file devolved into a domestic dossier in which world views were used as wedge issues for partisan purposes at home,” writes Harper, with Canada's failure to secure a seat on the UN Security Council the nadir of Cannon's term. Harper sees Jason Kenney, whose outreach to immigrant communities across the country put the Tories into majority territory, being rewarded with one of the most sought-after positions in Ottawa.

But just because we don't have a foreign minister doesn't mean the world's waiting for us, warns Michael Byers in The Globe and Mail. This week, Greenland plays host to the eight-country Arctic Council, a body that brokers multilateral talks on northern matters such as mineral exploration, shipping routes, and indigenous rights. “Canada, which takes over as the chair of the Arctic Council in 2013, will wish to advance Ottawa as a possible host city for the permanent secretariat,” writes Byers. “But it will be difficult to make the case effectively without a senior minister in attendance at the Greenland summit.” Byers offers that the prime minister ought to represent Canada, as Stephen Harper's presence at the summit would show how seriously Canada takes its role as a steward of the North.

The new minister's job will be made somewhat easier by the NDP inching rightward on international issues, suggests the National Post's Kevin Libin. The party's long-standing pacifism was absent from the unanimous vote in Parliament on Libya; it wants more funding for Canada's navy; and two of the party's most senior members, Pat Martin and Thomas Mulcair, are solidly pro-Israel. These not-quite-hawkish views could “alienate the most radical, peacenik rump of the NDP base,” writes Libin. “But having so far won such political success while doing precisely that, it's hard to see why Mr. [Jack] Layton should care.” Liberals reeling from last week's drubbing ought to take heart: Imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery.