Maple Leaf takes a beating abroad

December 17, 2009
SAS Flight 501 (only two hours late departing, thanks to last night’s snowstorm)

After four hours sleep and a 5 a.m. trip in from Malmö, Sweden, I’m exhausted. So forgive the lack of eloquence in a couple of closing observations:

• The past few days I’ve had to see my Denmark in a strange and abnormal light. While I usually find a large city like Copenhagen (of 1 million) a bit disconcerting with the pace and pulse of people, helicopters patrolling the skies and lines of army and police along the streets (apparently 6, 000 of the country’s 11, 000 police are in Copenhagen) adds a whole other sense of scary. The Danes have put up with it all admirably, but this is not the Scandinavia I know and love.
  
  We’ve been trying to get as much news as we can—particularly in the past day or two, with escalating arrests—and this might be the first time I’ve ever said this, but here CBC has been quite disappointing in its coverage.
  
• If it sounds as though I haven’t been in the thick of things at the COP, that’s right. It’s partly a logistical problem—authorities closed access to the Bella Center—and partly a structural one: who on Earth thinks 10, 15, or 50, 000 people can assemble in one place and reach a treaty? (Anyone who has been to a department meeting can tell you it’s easy for 20 people to disagree for hours!)
  
  The volume is because there are really three prongs or streams at work here. The political delegations and negotiators for the nearly 200 countries, who—while at least in Canada’s case, may seem insensible to public opinion—are the few who are actually participants in the COP and international convention. Then there are the NGOs and activists who hope to influence those negotiators; they generally agree on the need to limit emissions and keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, but beyond that are large in number and diverse in emphasis or cause.  And finally—and this was the surprising bit to me—there is a substantial discussion among industry and business about opportunities for environmentally-related innovation, like the tidal turbine in the Bay of Fundy. They’ve all converged on Copenhagen at one moment, and at least they’re all concerned with environmental quality, but we should recognize the different approaches at work here.
  
• So what have I been doing, if not telling Jim Prentice what to do or meeting with His Royal Highness Prince Frederick? On Monday I took the train over to Århus, Denmark’s second largest city—and home to its second-largest university—about three hours away. (The train may have been Canada’s national dream, but we envy its daily reality in Europe). Århus is home to a Canadian Studies centre, part of a worldwide network traditionally (but decreasingly) funded by DFAIT as part of its mandate to raise Canada’s international profile, which is how I connected to Denmark in the first place. In a little over 24 hours I also met with representatives from the National Environmental Research Institute, the business school (about to launch an MBA in sustainability), and the ad hoc climate change secretariat; and from Aalborg University the director of the Culture, Communications, and Globalization MA program.
  
  While Dalhousie and Århus have an exchange agreement, there is a lot of interest in expanding these relationships: through transatlantic studies or environmental research particularly in terms of Arctic and marine issues. NERI, for example, has a series of research stations on Greenland that have been tracking the effects of climate change. Whereas the current Harper administration has placed significant emphasis on using a military presence to assert Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic, I think it has underplayed the environmental discussion and the opportunity this brings for (peaceful) transnational collaboration. A stronger academic voice—and not just from the sciences—is called for in federal deliberations.
  
• On that note, I was dreading being recognized as a “tar-sands Canadian” (although to be fair, no province is without fault. At home in Halifax I’ll look across the harbour to an oil refinery that has been operating since the First World War, and more often than not there will be off-shore drilling platforms pulled alongside for repair). Born and raised under a Trudeau internationalism—my dad did the Eurorail thing in 1970, I did it 30 years later —it’s abhorrent to me that we can’t expect to be welcomed abroad now. We’re supposed to be “the nice Americans”! This state of affairs is unprecedented; I can’t think of another moment in the country’s history when Canada has been viewed so negatively by the rest of the international community.
  
  And while I believe strongly in national unity and, in the past, have been highly suspicious of the devolution of powers, it is heartening to see provincial and municipal delegations subtly disassociate themselves from Ottawa’s position in subnational negotiations, to present themselves as more rigorous in environmental standards. I hear people speaking of the stance of “the Harper government” or “Ottawa,” rather than Canada. 

Well, we’re about to land in Heathrow. I think back to something I wrote earlier; that this event is really part of an ongoing discussion, not a one-off. I’m grateful I had the chance to join in, as a teacher, and I hope to see Dalhousie take the lead in this discussion at home. It really is the issue of our times.

Historian Claire Campbell is the Director of Canadian Studies at Dalhousie and teaches first-year classes in the Environment, Sustainability and Society program.