This thesis asks a simple question: what is the state of Canada’s sanctions practice since 1990? In a post-Cold War environment, sanctions have become one of the most commonly applied tools of statecraft. Sanctions are commonly applied to address all manner of crises be they interstate aggression, intrastate humanitarian crises, civil wars, illegal seizures of power, arms proliferation, and international terrorism. There has been no sustained analysis of Canada’s use of sanctions since Kim Richard Nossal’s book Rain Dancing, which only investigated Canada’s application of sanctions in comparison to Australia’s until 1990. Therefore, there is a significant gap in the general sanctions literature and, more worrisome, Canada’s foreign policy literature. This thesis conducts an investigation into Canada’s use of sanctions since 1990 to establish when, why and with whom Canada has applied economic sanctions. / October 2015