For a Conservative politician who managed to avoid making a trip to China for nearly three years after taking office — vowing he wouldn’t sell out Canadian values to “the almighty dollar” — Stephen Harper is a late convert to what some call dollar diplomacy. But he’s making up for the lost time, in spades.

Like former Liberal prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, Harper now sees the value in aggressive Team Canada trade missions abroad, though they are never labelled as such. He is fiercely proud of his new trade pact with the European Union, and his free-trade deals, investment treaties and aviation agreements with scores of nations. Canadian aid, too, has been enlisted to help support our business ventures.

Now Canada’s entire $6.3 billion spending on diplomacy, trade and aid is being fully pressed into the service of business with Trade Minister Ed Fast’s announcement on Wednesday of a so-called Global Markets Action Plan. Its stated goal is to ensure that “all of Canada’s diplomatic assets are harnessed to support the pursuit of commercial success by Canadian companies and investors.” This appears to rebrand Canada’s entire diplomatic and foreign aid corps as trade ambassadors. Fast calls it a “sea change.”

That may overstate the case. This isn’t the first time Canadian diplomats have been told to shake their pinstriped booties for the economy. In 1970, Pierre Trudeau’s key foreign policy priority was “economic growth.” And in 1995, Chrétien put “promoting prosperity and development” first. We’ve been here before.

With a $1.8-trillion economy, Canada exports $530 billion in goods and services, most of it to the U.S. and Europe. But our performance has declined in recent years, hobbled by the 2008 global economic crunch and the weakness of our major markets. Our oil and gas exports have surged in recent years, but other exports have slumped.

Nor does it help that “Canadian companies aren’t as aggressive as they might be in seizing export opportunities,” Fast says. It’s a long-standing concern.

Harper wants Canada’s diplomatic corps to help at the margins by networking for Canadian business, pushing Canada’s industrial capabilities and using their contacts in places like China, India and Brazil to “open doors, generate leads and resolve problems.” That’s no more than American, European and other diplomats do.

That said, Ottawa won’t say whether it intends to beef up spending on diplomacy and trade; whether it intends to step up our presence in target countries; or whether existing staff and resources will be shuffled around. So it’s hard to see the impact just yet.

But the Conservatives need to understand, as Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Chrétien did, that the world expects more of Canada than contracts for Alberta crude, gold mining, agribusiness or banking services. Our diplomats can’t just be “closers.” Canada needs professionals who can provide intelligence and input, not simply on our economic interests but also on pressing issues of international peace and security, democratic development and human rights.

Harper’s own experience in office should confirm that. Canada has been called on to fight terror in Afghanistan on his watch, and to provide aid, at a cost of $20 billion and many soldiers’ lives. Ottawa also earmarked $60 billion to help defuse the global economic crisis. We have engaged with allies in places such as Libya, on Iranian sanctions and in Syria. We have contributed $1 billion to help Haiti rebuild from an earthquake. And Harper takes pride in his $2.85-billion mother and child health initiative.

Part of a diplomat’s job is to sell business. But Canada’s broader interests won’t be served if Ottawa hobbles and distracts them to the point where they can’t forge alliances at the United Nations, provide input from powerful foreign capitals, give early warnings of crises in a violence-plagued world, work with allies to contain genocide, terror and other evils, and oversee programs to fight poverty and help disaster victims. The job has never been just about selling wheat.

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