The 2015 Canadian Federal Election Debate on Foreign Policy: The Munk Debates

By Stephen Harper, Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau squared off on September 28, 2015, in Toronto, for the first-ever federal election debate on Canada’s foreign policy.

Too often, foreign policy issues have been afterthoughts in federal election campaigns. Now, for the first time, Canadians will have the opportunity to see the three federal party leaders recognized in Parliament defend their foreign policy visions for the country in a nationally televised debate. From the war against terror to Canada-U.S. relations to challenges and opportunities of international trade, the Munk Debate on Canada’s Foreign Policy will provide the public with important insights into how our next prime minister will defend and project Canada’s interests and values on the global stage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anansi Digital
• Release date: Oct 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781487001223

Stephen Harper

STEPHEN HARPER teaches Media Studies in the School of Film, Media and Communication at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His research has addressed the media representation of mental health as well as television and film images of war, conflict and trauma. He has written numerous journal articles and book chapters on these and other subjects and is the author of several books, including Madness, Power and the Media (Palgrave 2009), Beyond the Left: the Communist Critique of the Media (Zero Books 2012) and Screening Bosnia: Geopolitics, Gender and Nationalism in Film and Television Images of the 1992-95 War (Bloomsbury 2017).

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CONTENTS

Introduction by Rudyard Griffiths

The 2015 Canadian Federal Election

Debate on Foreign Policy

Acknowledgements

About the Debaters

About the Editor

About the Munk Debates

The 2015 Canadian Federal Election Debate on Foreign Policy

Stephen Harper vs. Thomas Mulcair vs. Justin Trudeau

September 28, 2015

Toronto, Ontario

THE 2015 CANADIAN FEDERAL ELECTION DEBATE ON FOREIGN POLICY

RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. My name is Rudyard Griffiths and I am the chairman of the Aurea Foundation. I want to welcome our audience here this evening. Let’s get our debaters out here and our debate underway. It’s my pleasure to welcome Mr. Thomas Mulcair, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada; Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada; and finally Mr. Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Well, gentlemen, we are glad to finally have the three of you here on stage. You’ve all agreed to the guidelines of this debate in advance and I want to remind you of the rule that leaders will respect each other’s right to speak in order to make points uninterrupted. So let’s get started.

Right now, the world is witnessing the largest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War, as the conflict in Syria and northern Iraq rages on. Mr. Mulcair, you’ve pledged that, as prime minister, you would pull Canada’s military forces out of the international coalition fighting ISIS. If the threat the Islamic State represents doesn’t justify a military response, when would an NDP government use military force?

THOMAS MULCAIR: Canada does have a role to play in fighting the horror that is ISIS. We can help stop the flow of arms, help stop the flow of funds, and, of course, help stop the flow of foreign fighters. There are more than sixty countries involved in the coalition. The NDP would keep Canada in that coalition, but only twelve countries are involved in the combat mission.

For me, it’s important to remember this evening that we are in the same room where we finally laid Jack Layton to rest. I will continue Jack’s work, and I will take the same Québécois and Canadian values — values of solidarity and sustainable economic development — out into the world. We don’t want a Canada that pollutes and goes to war; we want to be a Canada that respects values.

We all know that there are certain things that a prime minister has to get right.

This election is about change and there’s no area where Canadians want change more than in that of our foreign affairs. A prime minister has to maintain a good relation with the U.S. — Mr. Harper has lost the respect of the White House. We have to make sure that we have a place on the world stage — we missed our turn on the Security Council. We have to take care of the defining issue of the age, which is climate change — and we’re the only country to have withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol.

I’ll defend your values — Canadian values — on the world stage. Where Mr. Harper has failed, we’ll get it done.

RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Let’s now bring Mr. Harper into the debate for a one-on-one with Mr. Mulcair on the topic of intervention. Mr. Harper, what’s your opinion on this subject?

STEPHEN HARPER: Our response to this crisis in the region is generous and balanced. We’re bringing additional humanitarian aid to the region and we’re also obviously participating in any international military effort against ISIS.

Why are we doing that? Not simply because ISIS threatens to slaughter literally hundreds of thousands of people and create millions of additional refugees, but because this is an organization that wants to use parts of Syria and Iraq as an international base for terrorist operations, not just in the region, but also against this country. That’s why we’re there with our allies and that’s why there is broad international support for this intervention.

THOMAS MULCAIR: It’s important to remember that this is not a NATO mission or a United Nations mission. And to get back to your initial question, Rudyard, the NDP voted for air strikes in Libya under the United Nations’ duty to protect because it was a UN mission. When that started to morph into something completely different, we withdrew our support.

So to answer your question is we understand that there will be times when we will have to use force, either under the NATO charter or under our international obligations at the UN, and we won’t shy away from that.

But the real question here: is that the only thing we can do? Mr. Harper always takes the same approach. And when your only tool is a hammer, then all problems resemble nails. This is a complex situation, though; it’s one that has deep roots in many years of divisive conflict in the region. And there is one area where Canada is completely failing, and that is in dealing with the refugee crisis.

My own family, the Irish side of it at least, came over during the potato famine in the 1840s. In Quebec City, people went down to the docks, even though a lot of them were getting sick, and took in the most miserable in the world.

That’s Canada; that’s who we are. My wife, Catherine’s, family, Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain, were taken in by Muslim countries in the Ottoman Empire, now Turkey. That’s the kind of open world we can always aspire to.

Two million refugees live in our NATO-allied Turkey and we’re not doing enough to help. There are requests from the United Nations to take in 10,000 refugees by Christmas. Mr. Harper is not even going to get near that number. The UN wants 46,000 refugees taken in between now and 2019; the NDP government will get it done.

STEPHEN HARPER: If I could maybe correct a couple of facts here: all of our NATO allies are supportive of