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William Hogg is a PhD candidate at McGill University and a sessional professor at Bishop's University. This paper was first presented at the conference White Papers: Foreign Policy Management Tools? held in Quebec City, May 2004. author would like to thank the organizers of that conference for the opportunity to present the findings of this paper. The first comprehensive overview of Canadian foreign policy appeared in a speech given by Louis St Laurent, the SSEA, in Toronto in 1947. Thereafter, it was a question of amendments and redefinition, although some historians claim that the original formulation has never been bettered.(1)INTRODUCTIONIn 1947, the Canadian secretary of state for external affairs, Louis St Laurent, outlined five core values and interests for Canada in foreign affairs (national unity, political liberty, the rule of law in international affairs, the centrality of Christian values, and the need to understand Canada's international responsibility).(2) Since then, there have been multiple efforts by government actors to define and redefine Canada's role in the world. white paper has been the most common administrative tool used to do this. While St Laurent's speech was not itself a white paper, successive governments have outlined foreign policy (1968, 1970, 1973, 1995), defence policy (1949, 1964, 1971, 1987, 1994), international economic and development assistance (1945, 2002), and other sectors, including immigration (1966, 2003) in white paper form. There have been multiple other government in the form of green papers.(3)Given the effort put into the formulation and publication of foreign and defence white papers, it is clear that the Canadian government must place some purchase in the process, and that there should be some sort of perceptible resultant benefit. But do white papers matter in the formulation of foreign policy?This article argues that the effort invested by Canadian governments in foreign policy white papers is, to a certain extent, misspent. This is because, in foreign affairs (and to a lesser extent the companion departments of defence and development assistance), due to specific domestic--but more importantly--international constraints, foreign policy white papers can only serve as snapshots in time, a brief exposure of Canada's tenuous position within an ever changing and turbulent world. These constraints, both domestic (Canadian strategic culture) and international (anarchy and distribution of capabilities) limit white paper usefulness in the development, execution and management of foreign policy in Canada.The article makes this argument in three sub-sections. First, it examines the role of white papers in public administration, and how this relates to the management of foreign policy. Secondly, it examines the content of foreign policy white papers, using such examples as Trudeau's 1971 Foreign Policy for Canadians and Chretien's 1995 Canada in the World. I argue that there is a high degree of continuity between white papers (and between policy undertaken by Liberal and Conservative leaders since 1945) and trends in Canadian foreign policy in general. In essence, foreign policy in Canada does not change, even when international and domestic contexts do. question that arises is whether white papers serve as efficient management tools. In the everyday (micro) functioning of the department of foreign affairs, does the white paper matter? Finally, the paper asks why foreign policy does not change. It examines the role of strategic culture in the formulation of Canadian foreign policy and its interaction with the international-level constraints of anarchy and distribution of capabilities. I conclude by briefly looking at the role of white papers in the development of Canadian foreign policy.WHITE PAPERS DEFINEDWhite papers are statements of policy [that] often set out proposals for legislative changes which may be debated before a Bill is introduced. …

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