Dreamland: How Canada's Pretend Foreign Policy Has Undermined Sovereignty

by Roy Rempel
Foreword by Hugh Segal

McGill-Queen's University Press
190 pages, softcover
ISBN 1553391187

This slim book, by one of Stephen Harper's policy advisors, lays out a hard-nosed program for reforming Canadian foreign affairs.  We need to shake off our deluded national self-image as global do-gooders, Rempel argues, and tend to our citizens' practical needs. 

MQUP describes the work and its author as follows:  

"Roy Rempel argues that the past decade has been marked by an ideological and domestically driven foreign policy agenda that has lost sight of the national interest. As a consequence, Canada's policy options are narrowing, national sovereignty is eroding, and the country risks evolving into a protectorate of the United States. Dreamland analyzes how Canada's foreign policy has subverted the myths that Canadians believe about themselves and their place in the world.

Rempel champions the development of a non-ideological foreign policy that puts the security and prosperity of Canadians first. He shows that a true partnership with the United States can lead to a pivotal bilateral relationship that would be to Canada's international advantage. Dreamland makes it clear that a renewal of Canada's foreign policy can occur only if the conditions for a serious strategic culture are established with national institutions capable of setting clear policy priorities and objectives based on the country's national interests.

Roy Rempel, senior policy advisor, Breakout Educational Network, is the author of Counterweights: The Failure of Canada's German and European Policy, 1955-1995 and Chatter Box: An Insider's Account of the Increasing Irrelevance of Parliament in the Making of Canadian Foreign and Defence Policy.

For Jennifer Welsh's LRC review of Dreamland, click here.

Discussion questions:

1.    Dreamland holds that preserving Canada's good relationship with the US should be our single greatest foreign policy consideration, given how closely the two countries are economically and geo-politically connected.  Do you find this argument compelling?

2.    Rempel claims that knee-jerk preference for cooperation with other countries through multilateral organizations runs counter to Canada's real interests.  What do you think of the UN, for example, and do you agree with Rempel's recommendations regarding how we should participate?

3.    In Chapter 5, Dreamland makes the case that we need to focus on more clearly defined development goals in fewer countries if we want to ensure that Canadian international aid is effective and transparent.  How should Canadians make the hard choices about whom to help, and in what way?  Which projects or places do you think should receive aid? 

4.    Rempel argues in Chapter 7 that Canadian foreign policy is too often determined by the personality and short-term political goals of whichever prime minister is in office; instead, Rempel proposes a "more democratic" foreign policy with greater input from experts and from parliament.  Do you agree?  More generally, how can Canada strike the right balance between heeding public, expert and political opinion in foreign affairs?

5.    Throughout Dreamland, Rempel emphasizes what he sees as a frequent clash between Canadian "interests" and "values" - for example, that we might have to sacrifice economic advantages for our country while attempting to protect human rights abroad.  After reading the book, how much weight do you think interests and values should each carry in shaping foreign policy?