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Canada’s campaign to win a two-year temporary seat on the Security Council will also be under scrutiny with many questioning whether it is even feasible given the energy being expended to save the North American Free Trade Agreement.

New statistics tabled in Parliament this past week show Canada is behind the pace of campaign spending it set in the 1990s when it last won a seat.

Global Affairs Canada says in response to a written question that the government has spent $532,780 since 2016 on its campaign to land a Security Council seat — well behind the pace of the $1.9 million Canada spent over four years to win its last two-year term in 1999-2000.

It's disappointing especially because they set the bar so high for themselves with all the rhetoric before the election campaign

Overall, the government’s foreign policy record is underwhelming, and Trudeau didn’t do himself any favours with his “Canada is back” pronouncements, says Thomas Juneau of the University of Ottawa.

“It’s disappointing especially because they set the bar so high for themselves with all the rhetoric before the election campaign and early on — 2015 and early 2016 — and all the attitude and swagger that went around that.”

Though the government is pushing to ratify the re-booted Trans-Pacific Partnership this fall, and has its comprehensive free trade deal with Europe up and running, its other trade ambitions in Asia — making inroads with economic giants China and India — have stalled.

Trudeau’s trip to India was a failure not because of the much-ridiculed photo ops of him in local garb, but because Canada’s trade interests with the country are going nowhere, said Juneau.