Canada has actively incorporated human security into its foreign policy framework ever since the first articulation of human security in the 1994 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Annual Report. The Canadian Government has been at the forefront of promoting the concept internationally, thereby identifying Canada as one of the leading 'humanist-activist' states. This thesis, however, takes a more skeptical approach towards the emancipatory claims of Canada's human security discourse. It argues that, despite its overarching humanistic tone, the question of who is secured through the language and operationalization of human security remains problematic. In examining Canada's human security discourse in reference to this central question, this thesis analyses the promotion and operationalization of human security within Canada and abroad. The central argument of this thesis is that with its overwhelmingly statist and liberal language, Canada's interpretation of human security is far from being a challenge to the traditional ontological claims of security as being the provider of political order. The Canadian human security agenda is driven by a traditional fear of national insecurity. It aims to secure national unity and identity in Canada, and its national and economic security abroad, by promoting the ideals of liberal democratic peace. Drawing upon the insights of critical security studies and post-structuralist approaches to international relations, this thesis reveals several meaning-producing effects of Canada's human security discourse. First, domestically, it perpetuates the truth claims of the discourse of Canadian identity by naturalizing the idea of Canadian goodness. Canada's human security discourse enhances the social control of the population by masking 'human insecurities' within Canada. Second, by framing 'failed' and 'fragile' states as a threat to Canadian security and liberal international order, the Canadian Government perpetuates the constant struggle between the zones of peace and the zones of chaos, and overcodes human security with simultaneously a statist and universalist language that aims to control as well as emancipate the 'borderlands' Third, while Canadian discourse on human security claims to encourage a bottom-up approach to security, it works ironically as an elitist policy which endorses an ideal form of governance in Canada and abroad.

The purpose of this study has been to address an imbalance existing in the historiography relating to American-Canadian relations in the period between 1919-1924. Relying primarily on American sources, this study has attempted to argue that the Canadian government had a unique opportunity to inititiate and execute an independent foreign policy by exploiting her position within the British Empire as well as her close relationship with the United States. In contrast to a number of Canadian studies which have argued that the United States impeded Canada's diplomatic growth in the post World War I period, this work maintains that the United States tried to encourage Canada to assume a more autonomous position because it was in America's interest to do so. Canada's similar attitudes with the United States towards the questions of the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Asian immigration and Article Ten in the League of Nations' Covenant convinced the United States that the Canadian government was potentially useful to the American government in helping to protect its international interests in institutions where it was not represented. The evidence presented in this study maintains that it was the Canadian and British governments that were reluctant to carry out the final steps of appointing a separate Canadian representative to Washington in the early 1920s. As a result, Canada lost her opportunity to establish an independent policy because the United States found alternative methods of protecting its international interests. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

On 4 April, 1957 Egerton Herbert Norman, Canada's Ambassador to Egypt, committed suicide in Cairo. Norman's death was a direct result of sustained American allegations that he was threat to western security. The controversy surrounding his suicide was rekindled in 1986 with the publication of two biographies of Norman. James Barros contends in No Sense of Evil that Norman should have been removed from his high position in Canada's Department of External Affairs because he constituted a security risk. Barros hypothesises about the possibility of a DEA cover-up of Norman's Marxist past (Norman had briefly been a member of the British Communist Party when he was a student at Cambridge) and indeed suggests that Minister of External Affairs, Lester B. Pearson might have been Moscow's ultimate 'mole' who, by defending Norman, was protecting his espionage ring. In Innocence is Not Enough, author Roger Bowen takes issue with such interpretations of Norman's life, scholarship and career. Although Norman had been a Communist, Bowen concludes that no evidence exists to suggest that he was disloyal to Canada. Norman was caught up in a maelstrom of anti-communist hysteria which caused him to be unjustifiably vilified and harassed by the agents of McCarthyism in an era of Cold War paranoia. Instead of choosing a side in the current debate, I have sought to widen it by approaching the story of Norman as a case study in Canadian foreign policy. An examination of Canadian internal security policies in the postwar era, Canada's relationship with the United States and Great Britain, and of Norman himself reveals that the issue at hand is far too complex to be amenable to easy analysis. This thesis was written with the achievement of a more objective analysis as its primary goal. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

This paper examines events surrounding Canada's negotiations on the question of recognizing the People's Republic of China in 1949 and 1950, and the reasons why the negotiations failed. The focus is on the work of officials in the Canadian Embassy in Nanking and External Affairs in Ottawa, particularly External Affairs Minster Lester B. Pearson. Both Nanking and External Affairs, Ottawa, strove to promote recognition, which was approved in principal by the Canadian government but never actualized. Pearson and his department, spurred by Canadian officials on the ground in China, chiefly Ambassador T. C. Davis and his second-in-command, China specialist Chester Ronning, favoured early recognition, as a means of influencing the Communist government away from total dependence on the Soviet Union. The Canadian government weighed the desirability of recognition against what it saw as the necessity of solidarity of the North Atlantic alliance with the United Kingdom and the United States, in particular, against what they perceived as the machinations of the Soviet Union in its perceived drive for world domination. In the final analysis the Canadian government, fearful of alienating the United States, opted for solidarity of the Western Alliance on the recognition question. The focus of the essay, based in large measure on External Affairs documents and the Pearson Papers, is to look at the recognition question and how it played out, in Canadian domestic terms, rather than in terms of Great Power relationships, which is largely the preoccupation in the historiography. A brief window of opportunity occurred in late 1949 and early 1950, when Canada might have recognized without potentially serious repercussions on Canada-US relations. That moment passed quickly and the outbreak of the Korean War and China's entry in the conflict against UN forces, essentially destroyed any opportunity for Canada and Communist China to develop normal relations. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

Belief in human rights is a value central to the Canadian self-image. Canadians view the development of Canada's international peacekeeping role and overseas development assistance program in the post-1945 era as the foreign policy manifestation of this belief. It has led to the national myth of the country as a "Humanitarian Middle Power". Canada's response to Indonesia's oppressive occupation of East Timor (1975 - 1999) contradicted this national myth. The concept of meta-narrative, of political mythmaking, is used to examine the reasons why the Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments in Ottawa during this period perceived Canada's national interest in maintaining a strong economic relationship with Jakarta over the protection of human rights in East Timor. These "Official" meta-narratives were countered by Canadian human rights activists, such as the East Timor Alert Network, who stressed the primacy of human rights in foreign-policy decision-making. Ultimately, this debate represents a conflict of values in Canadian society. The "Official" meta-narrative has developed since World War II in active support of the capitalist world-system dominated by the United States, whereas the "Counter" meta-narrative challenges the morality of that system. The "Humanitarian Middle Power" myth, which is at the core of the Canadian identity vis-a-vis the international community, is not completely invalid, but it is greatly limited by the firm adherence of Canadian governments to the world economic structure. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

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