Canada Should Get Closer to the non-Western BRICS Economic Alliance

 

The outcome of the American election underscores Canada’s economic and intellectual dependence on the U.S. market and the consequences of it.

A renewed Trump administration has vowed an aggressively protectionist economic and trade policy, and that has been estimated by Toronto-Dominion Bank to lead to an approximately 2-per-cent drop in Canadian GDP.

This is not a good position for Canada to be in. To get out of it, trade diversification targets must be met while Canada regains its traditional role as interlocutor among powers, both great and emerging.

With this objective in mind, it is time for Canada to explore observer status in the BRICS, in which Canada would attend BRICS meetings and further multilateral relations with its members. The aim? To engage strategically with the many BRICS members positioned between the West and the Global East.

In this way, we can better understand the aims of the latter, while walking a tightrope with the United States and other long-standing Western partners. This step will advance our interests and help us play our traditional role as reconciler in a more multipolar world requiring engagement with democracies and nondemocracies – as well as the many countries sitting in between.

While uncomfortable to many, engagement with these BRICS members is paramount as the world becomes resolutely multipolar and dangerous. The idea behind membership in BRICS is that it is better to engage directly in this forum than to keep a distance, which almost surely promises increasing dependence on America and a negligible Canadian role in geopolitics.  (more...)

Canada Should Get Closer to the non-Western BRICS Economic Alliance