COLLABORATION
Reframing Canada's Global Engagement
Summary —
“Democracy after COVID19: What Lessons Can Canada Offer and Learn?” addresses the ramifications of the pandemic upon governance in Canada through practically-oriented and policy-relevant comparative research.
Canada’s last International Policy Statement, framed in the wake of 9/11, is almost two decades old. During this time, the world has evolved in fundamental ways that unsettle many of the assumptions Canadian policy-makers and citizens have operated with for more than half a century. Dramatic environmental, technological, demographic, economic, and geopolitical changes, and now the COVID-19 pandemic, are reshaping the global landscape, as well as the traditional approaches and tools for advancing Canada’s interests and values.
This project addresses the following shifts in particular:
A global power shift, in which economic and political power between Western and non-Westerns states is being rebalanced, most notably as a result of economic growth in Asia and the changing nature of US leadership, and in which the density and importance of interactions among countries of the Global South are increasing.
The retreat of democracy, in light of both reversals in political participation, freedom and rule of law in new or fledgling democracies, and the challenges to established democracies emerging from rising inequality and dissatisfaction with what existing institutions are delivering.
A fracturing multilateral system, due to major powers’ conflicting interests, lack of leadership from key players both regionally and globally, particular weaknesses of institutional enforcement and design, and continued under-representation of key states and non-state actors.
The changing nature of conflict, in which the prospect of great power war is greater than at any time since the end of the Cold War, and in which civil wars are both longer and particularly lethal for civilians – generating unprecedented levels of forced migration and leading to huge reversals in development gains.
A digital transformation, which, despite tremendous benefits, has produced a digital arms race between market-driven models developed in the United States and government-linked models emerging from China, as well as generated risks to critical infrastructure and core democratic rights and freedoms.
An intensification of catastrophic risks, particularly through accelerating climate change, the weakening of systems to manage the proliferation and use of weapons of mass destruction, and the rise of lethal pandemics.
