Politicking and associated activities

This morning I received a notice that Siobhan Coady, the Liberal MP for St. John's South-Mount Pearl, would be speaking about Canadian foreign policy at Dalhousie this afternoon. Though the notice was somewhat last minute I decided that the event might be entertaining and worth attending.

I can't say that things started well, as one of the first comments during Ms. Coady's introduction was to point out that we would be in for "a hopefully great presentation." Talk about a ringing endorsement.

The talk then started with a somewhat off-subject anecdote/joke about Halifax being close to God. We then quickly moved on from locally flavoured anecdotes to a range of criticisms of the current government. "Bad diplomacy" on the part of the Conservative/Harper government was blamed for Canada's failure to win a UN Security Council seat as well as the loss of Camp Mirage in the United Arab Emirates. These failures were contrasted with the proposals supported by the Liberal opposition. It was, not surprisingly, suggested that these Liberal approaches would solve many of the problems that had been previously outlined.

I guess I shouldn't forget that a few characterizations of Canada were also provided: Canada "a trading nation," Canada as the "most international society," and the acceptance of the view of Canada as a middle power (whatever that means). There was also a fair bit of stuff about Canada's tradition as a peace-keeping nation (and our current deficiencies in this regard).

All-in-all, the talk was fine and Ms. Coady was a very effective speaker. I was particularly impressed with her ability to handle the audience's questions and comments, some of which were clear attacks on Liberal policy while others were just a little harder to grasp.

That being said, to at least some extent, the talk disappointed me. I guess it was just that whole thing had much more of a campaign speech feeling than I expected. Liberal policy proposals were praised and Conservative policies criticized. I just wish that in advance I had known that that was what I was in for, though I guess this is as much my fault as anyone else's as I don't think that there is much else that I could reasonably have expected to have happened at such an event. At least I will know that the next time I head to hear a politician speak, even if the event is sponsored by an academic institution, that I should expected a partisan campaign speech.