Canada’s Continuing Engagement with United Nations Peace Operations

This article begins by describing how Canada’s current commitments to the United Nations are located within a long tradition of providing for international peace and security. It discusses the framework that has defined Canada’s approach to UN security issues since the 1950s, and suggests that an underlying set of ideas about the importance of human security and civilian protection has survived the recent so-called revolution in Canadian security policy and continues to help shape Canada’s current commitments to the United Nations. These contributions, examined in the second part of the article, are discussed in relation to four separate categories related to peace operations: deployment of troops; policy support; operational cooperation, including training, capacity building, and police; and financial support. These forms of Canadian support for UN peacekeeping remain robust—vibrant reminders of the country’s longstanding contribution to the UN’s multilateral security apparatus. Building on this conceptual framework and the country’s existing commitments would give Canada an important and re-invigorated UN role as Ottawa searches for a new international security policy following its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011. This is not to say that Canada should always seek to safeguard the country’s peacekeeping myth, or act primarily in the interests of the global community, or engage with the United Nations simply because it has traditionally done so. Rather, increasing Canada’s commitment in areas where the United Nations needs peacekeeping help is in line with Canadian strategic goals of constraining transnational terrorist and criminal groups by bringing about peace and development in conflict areas and addressing the problems faced by fragile states