Mennonite Central Committee

Are we still peacekeepers?

From the mid-1950s till quite recently, Canada has seen itself as a peacekeeping nation. After Canadian Lester Pearson proposed United Nations peacekeeping in response to the 1956 Suez crisis, Canada has regarded its military role in the world as one of supporting such peacekeeping missions.

For many years Canada ranked within the top ten of all countries contributing troops to UN peacekeeping missions. In 1992-93, under a Conservative government, Canadian participation in UN missions accounted for more than 90 percent of what the country spent on military missions overseas.¹

However, Canada has been shifting away from this peacekeeping identity over the past decade. During the Gulf War in 1991, Canadian CF-18 fighter planes escorted U.S. jets dropping bombs on Iraq. In 1999, Canada supported a NATO-led operation against the former Yugoslavia by providing fighter jets for bombing missions. Canadian jets flew a total of 682 sorties and dropped 530 bombs. Today, Canada spends less than 3 percent of its international military operations budget on UN peacekeeping missions.²

Canada’s involvement in the “war on terror” in Afghanistan also reflects the change. Its military involvement was initially described as peacekeeping in 2001, but it shifted to combat-oriented counter-insurgency in 2006. Over 2000 Canadian soldiers are now serving in Afghanistan; half of them are engaged in combat with Taliban insurgents.

 

 

¹Polaris Institute, "It’s Never Enough: Canada’s Alarming Rise in Military Spending," (Ottawa: Polaris Institute, 2005), p. 2.

²"It’s Never Enough," p. 2.