A recent Wall Street Journal editorial suggested Canada should sit at the kiddies table in the NATO alliance instead of with the adults. This is because as a share of GDP our defence spending is seventh lowest among NATO’s 31 member nations. It’s also lowest among the G7, which prompted the Journal to question whether we are still willing to accept our responsibilities as a member of the G7. It concluded that if this country “doesn’t want to play that role, then the G-7 should consider a replacement.”

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Philip Cross: The Wall Street Journal asks a good question — does Canada belong in the G7? Back to video

Wall Street Journal editorials have an impact. In January 1995 the paper’s editorialists drew global attention to our looming debt crisis by calling us “an honorary member of the Third World.” Their suggestion today that Canada could lose its G7 membership should therefore be taken seriously, especially since our inclusion in the group in 1976 owed less to our merits and more to U.S. concerns about left-wing European nations (France, Germany, Italy and pre-Thatcher Britain) having too much weight.

Great nations, institutions and people achieve greatness by aspiring to it. Max Mason, president of the University of Chicago, said in 1929 the institution “must be outstanding or nothing. There is no reason for its existence as just another university.” Chicago met that challenge, since garnering the most Nobel Prizes in economics of any institution. For a nation to be great, however, aspiration must extend beyond its leaders. President Kennedy, when touring NASA headquarters early in the 1960s, asked a cleaner why he was there. The worker replied, “Mr. President, I’m here to put a man on the moon.”

Canada is not a leader on the international stage. In his 2012 book Every Nation for Itself, global affairs expert Ian Bremmer wrote that: “Leaders have the leverage to co-ordinate multinational responses to transnational problems. They have the wealth and power to persuade governments to take actions they wouldn’t otherwise pursue. They pick up the checks that others can’t afford and provide services no one else will pay for. On issue after issue, they set the international agenda.” Name the last time Canada did any of those things.

Partly because of a decade of weak economic growth, Canada is no longer a serious player in the world economy. And we are unlike the rest of the G7, none of which is little brother to a big brother next door. Our relationship with the U.S. is more like Austria’s or Holland’s with Germany. Unless we prove we deserve a seat at the adults’ table, we should be talking with other middle powers about how to live next door to an elephant. Canada will not regain its stature on the world stage until renewed economic growth provides the money needed to rebuild our military capacity and the economic heft that makes others covet access to our markets.

Canada is limited by more than our relatively small population and economy, however. We are also constrained by the mindset that “people in Canada don’t think big,” as art historian Barbara Dodge put it. Canada today strives to be nice and progressive rather than great or strong. The Wall Street Journal editorial quoted from Justin Trudeau’s mandate letter to the minister of defence in 2021, establishing it as a priority that she “build an inclusive and diverse Defence Team, characterized by a healthy workplace free from harassment, discrimination, sexual misconduct and violence.” As the Journal editorialists sarcastically remarked, “See how that cultural manifestation works on the Ukrainian front lines.”

Michael Wilson’s posthumous 2022 memoir, Something Within Me, bluntly warned Canadians that “Yes, we are nice people, but let’s not try to be too nice … The emphasis on niceness represents a danger … of the Justin Trudeau’s government approach to international relations. We’re not here to build a nice country. We’re here to build a strong country — strong in our values, our economy, our technical achievements, and our influence in the world. You can’t build a strong country by just working to be nice to people. We have to step out in front and play a leadership role in matters where mid-sized countries can exert influence.”

In 1904 Wilfrid Laurier said “the twentieth century shall be the century of Canada and Canadian development … For the next hundred years, Canada shall be the star towards which all men who love progress and freedom shall come.” Laurier’s ambition for his country was laudable but his prophecy was spectacularly wrong: the 20th century clearly belonged to the United States, not Canada. Being potentially great is not enough. At some point potential must be realized, or Thomas Philippon’s observation about Brazil will also describe us: “the country of the future — and always will be.”

Philip Cross is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.