OTTAWA—For two hours they talked, an unlikely pair in a hotel bar in Japan.One night after G20 meetings in Osaka, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sat down over beers with a world leader whom aides say he greatly admires: German Chancellor Angela Merkel.At a time when government leaders in the United States, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and beyond, are upending or defying rules-based international relations, Merkel remains a champion of multilateralism and the global institutions that support peace, security and liberal democracy — all touchstones of Trudeau’s foreign policy.So perhaps Trudeau was channelling Merkel in his big foreign policy speech Aug. 24 in Montreal when he curiously quoted other world leaders and experts who counselled him that “the world has changed, and quickly.”“2019 looks very different than 2015,” he said.That’s an understatement.Canada’s own Global Affairs bureaucracy did not foresee the election of the “America First” President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s tightening grip on power, Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections, the Brexit vote, the poisoning of former agents on British soil or the brazen and brutal murder of a Saudi journalist in an embassy in Istanbul.Yet, foreign policy isn’t usually seen as a vote-driver in Canada. An Angus Reid Institute survey of 2,000 people last week said only 31 per cent of uncommitted voters cited Canada’s role on the world stage as among their top priority issues. When asked to pick just one priority, the number dropped to 1 per cent who said it mattered most.“At this stage in the campaign, foreign policy and Canada’s place on the world stage is not the issue that it was four years ago,” says Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute. But that could change. Kurl and others say global politics is unquestionably a factor when voters lo ...
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