Quiet Helpful Fixer or Boisterous Norm Advocate? Canada as a Mediator

Abstract

Though Canadians have long thought of their country as an international mediator, the reality is somewhat different. While Canada has invested in developing mediation capacity at the UN and elsewhere, it has rarely undertaken a leading role as a mediator. Evidence exists of a desire on the part of some within Global Affairs Canada to see if Canada’s efforts in this area could be developed. But the road is not an easy one. The peacebuilding space is undergoing a profound debate over what mediation should be. Moreover, Canadian Governments, at the political level, are historically more comfortable as boisterous public advocates of favoured norms and causes (though these differ between the Liberals and Conservatives) as the foundation of their approach to peacebuilding than they are acting as quiet mediators.

Executive Director of the Ottawa Dialogue, an organization which runs Track 1.5 and Track 2 dialogues around the world and Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. The author wishes to thank the editors and reviewers of this volume, Patricia Fortier, Gordon Venner and several others (who commented on the basis of anonymity) for their feedback on drafts of this paper. The author is solely responsible for the contents of this paper.