The passing year was a turbulent year for the community of nations in general and the Commonwealth and Canada in particular.
As a major economy in the Commonwealth, Canada braved many storms, particularly, in the areas of changing and rapidly evolving geo-politics albeit its economy is resilient to the devastating global pandemic and that it emerged out of it relatively stronger than many economies in the Commonwealth.
According to the former adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Gerry Butts, some of the major challenges that Canada would face are a polarized United States, a strained relationship with China and potential COVID-19 rebounds.
Gerry Butts, now vice chair at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, recently said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg that there are little policymakers in Canada, could do “domestically to ease global economic pressures, due to the size of the country’s economy.”
Double-whammy
He defined Canada’s global dilemma as a “double-whammy,” with “a world that has no cohesive global leadership and a fractured United States.” , or divided states of America.
In addition to the above challenges, Canada has a still-tense relationship with China stemming from the 2018 arrests of Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig following Chinese tech executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada.
Deeply divided US
Butts also pointed out deep divisions in the US following the midterm election and that the polarized politics in the US will remain unto the next Presidential Election.
Although some of those trends have seeped into Canadian media and movements like the Freedom Convoy that occupied Ottawa last year, Butts argued that Canadian politics has overall resisted the deep divisions that have manifested in the U.S.
On the one hand Canada resisted against divisive political trends and on the other hand, it maintains a progressive immigration policy as opposed to that of the USA which seems to perceive migration in a negative manner with a political resistance, particularly, South of the border and in Europe.
“I always describe it as Canada’s secret sauce, the fact that we’ve been able to maintain immigration as a third rail of Canadian politics, that neither the left nor the right has organized an anti-immigration political movement, is one of the very best things we have going for us as a country.” Butts observed.
Butts, particularly, observed the possibility of rebounding COVID-19, could not be ruled out and that spilling effects of such a scenario would adversely affect global supply chain and would create massive supply chain disruptions.
“If we end up in a situation where large manufacturing regions of China have to be shut down because people are sick and can’t go to work, that’s going to create all supply chain problems that we lived through during the height of the pandemic,” he said.
Commonwealth Union and opportunities
The re-invigoration of the Commonwealth as a Commonwealth Union is in keeping with the geo-political developments in the recent past. With the outbreak of the war in Ukraine against the backdrop of China emerging as a global super power and the defacto second largest market of the world, the old unipolar world order led by Bretton Wood institutions and the UN seem to be slowly, but definitely fading away from the horizon.
Multipolarity
In its stead, a new world order emerges out of the mist with regional grouping playing a major role to protect and foster their political and economic interests. Josef Borell (2021), Vice President of the European Commission, describes the transition of the world order as;
“Over the last three decades, we have seen a rapid transformation in the distribution of power around the world. We went from a bipolar configuration between 1945 and 1989 to a unipolar configuration between 1989 and 2008, before entering in what we today could call ‘complex multipolarity.”
What is obvious in the multipolarity is the pivotal role that the regional groupings such as the Commonwealth play in the international affairs. Re-invigoration of the Commonwealth as a Commonwealth Union is, in fact, a need of the hour, particularly, after the Brexit. Needless to say that the Brexit offers unprecedented challenges as well as golden opportunities for the UK to re-network itself as a major trading partner.
Through bi-lateral and multi-lateral trade agreements Canada could not only reduce its risks, but also could immensely benefit from the Commonwealth with regional super powers like India as its prominent members. The renew enthusiasm in the Commonwealth is poised to bring prosperity to all, while creating wealth, new markets and millions of gainful employments along the value chains across the Commonwealth. Such activities, eventually, would lead to the creation of a custom union and common market.
