OTTAWA -- One of Canada's leading international jurists warned the Liberal government on Tuesday to shun nostalgia and partisan politics after Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion rebranded the government's foreign policy.
Louise Arbour, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and one-time lead prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in The Hague, said there was a lot to like about Dion's speech at a University of Ottawa conference in which he offered a label for Canada's new Liberal foreign policy: responsible conviction.
In a speech that put his own stamp on foreign policy and added some philosophical gravitas to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's mantra that Canada "is back" in world affairs, Dion said the phrase is the guiding principle for the approach the Liberal government has adopted towards the world.
The minister said the concept explains the incorporation of a few old Conservative ideas, but also aims to reverse the previous government's "disengagement" approach to global affairs.
Arbour said as much as she admires the contributions that former foreign ministers such as Lester Pearson and Lloyd Axworthy made to peacekeeping and the advancement of human security, the current Liberal government must do more than invoke the past as it seeks to re-engage internationally.
She also hinted that the Liberals might want to extend an olive branch to those not inside their political tent.
"The danger is nostalgia, cheerleading, speaking only to the like-minded," Arbour told a panel discussion. "This is not the way to go. ... We need to talk to people who disagree."
Arbour, who left her mark internationally when she indicted former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes in the 1990s, offered her own label for Canada's new foreign policy direction.
"I think it's a kind of principled pragmatism that's going to allow us again to punch above our weight," she said.
Dion also said the Office of Religious Freedom, a creation of the former government, will die when its mandate expires on Thursday. But he said the Liberals will continue to defend freedom of religion and belief "tooth and nail."
He reiterated the new focus on multilateralism and the United Nations, re-engaging the United States, fighting climate change, talking to Russia and Iran, opposing the death penalty for Canadians in prison abroad and a different approach to fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Dion said his concept also explains the common ground the Liberals continue to share with the former government, including carrying on its maternal and newborn health initiative -- while adding money for abortion and family planning -- as well as continuing to sell billions in military hardware to Saudi Arabia.
"This formulation means that my values and convictions include the sense of responsibility," Dion said.
"Our government shares the same conviction as the previous government, but it assesses the consequences of its chosen method of promoting this conviction differently."
Dion used that rationale to defend the controversial decision by the Conservatives to sell $15-billion in light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. The Liberals are upholding the deal despite loud protests about Saudi Arabia's crackdown on dissent and its subjugation of women.
Dion said cancelling the contract would put thousands of Canadians out of work and harm the country's international reputation in other ways.
He said the government intends to ensure that future export permits conform to Canadian interests, including the promotion of human rights. He also said if Canada doesn't sell military hardware to the Saudis, others will.
"I think this export permit system might be the ultimate guarantor of at least some comfort that this will not be misused," Arbour told reporters, "But this argument, that if we don't do it somebody else will do it, I find frankly the least convincing."
Dion said Canada will have its eyes open as it re-establishes communication with authoritarian regimes such as Iran and Russia.
The speech echoed much of what Dion has said in the House of Commons in recent months in reply to Conservative attacks on the government's approach to those two countries, as well as its decision to withdraw fighter jets from the anti-ISIL coalition in favour of adding more special forces trainers on the ground in Iraq.
Dion also recast Canada's so-called honest broker role in foreign policy, which the Conservatives scorned as a sign of weakness.
"Since the classic concept of the honest broker is now too often confused with moral relativism or the lack of strong convictions, I prefer to say that Canada must be a fair-minded and determined peace builder."
