Statesmen, Strategists, and Diplomats: Canada's Prime Ministers and the Making of Foreign Policy ed. by Patrice Dutil (review)

Reviewed by: Statesmen, Strategists, and Diplomats: Canada's Prime Ministers and the Making of Foreign Policy ed. by Patrice Dutil Raymond Blake Dutil, Patrice, ed. – Statesmen, Strategists, and Diplomats: Canada's Prime Ministers and the Making of Foreign Policy. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2023. 390 p. Patrice Dutil, a professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University, is Canada's leading scholar on the history of Canadian prime ministers. He has edited and authored six books on different prime ministers and is completing two others on what is clearly becoming his major field of research, one to examine former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and his cabinets and another to investigate the life of Mackenzie King to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth in 2024. Dutil has also contributed a large number of scholarly articles and book chapters on the subject while being an active public historian on those individuals, contributing articles to newspapers across Canada and through his contributions to the public discourse as a senior fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary History at the University of Toronto and a senior fellow at the Ottawa-based think tank, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Dutil has also been active in reminding Canadians that history is complex and complicated and that the ahistorical discussion that has taken place in the last few years about historical figures, such as John A. Macdonald, Canada's much maligned first prime minister, must be countered by historians. In his contribution to Canadian history and in trying to understand Canada's 23 prime ministers, Dutil has often turned to Canada's leading political historians to contribute to his innovative projects. He did so very successfully with his The Unexpected Louis St-Laurent: Politics and Policies for a Modern Canada, and he does so again with Statesmen, Strategists, and Diplomats. This book includes contributions from both established and emerging scholars examining how prime ministers were involved from 1867 onward in the management of international relations, broadly defined in the book to include a variety of subjects from fish to boundaries, from the leadership style of prime ministers, to the structures they created to facilitate international relations, and to their personal relationships with their cabinets and with other world leaders. The book is extensive in its range, exhaustive in its scope, and impressive in its scholarship and insight into Canada's political leaders since 1867. [End Page 182] Canadians often believe that, unlike their neighbours to the south, foreign relations play a minor role in the policy life of Canada's prime ministers and their governments, and when it does intrude into the policy agenda, it does so because of its implications for domestic politics. What Statesmen, Strategists, and Diplomats demonstrates is that, for prime ministers, foreign policy is of greater importance and occupies more time than Canadians would assume, and yes, foreign policy in Canada—as elsewhere around the world—has implications for domestic politics. The book, perhaps the first to consider how all of Canada's prime ministers dealt with external relations, leaves little doubt that prime ministers are central to "determining the tone and tenor of Canada's foreign policy" (p. 4). In fact, Dutil contends that they "have the greatest single influence on the foreign policy agenda and in determining how policy will be implemented and evaluated" (p. 5). It is prime ministers who shape Canadian foreign policy, and it is they who define Canada's place in the world during their term in office. There are, as Dutil and the contributors point out, few exceptions to this statement. We learn, too, that foreign policy matters in Canada's elections. That was clear even before Confederation in 1867 and it has remained so. The Fenian incursions into Canada in 1867 consolidated support for the 1864 Quebec Resolutions that led to Canada's creation, and even as recently as 2015, Prime Minister Stephen Harper lost support among many Canadians in that campaign for his insouciant attitude toward refugees fleeing the war in Syria. It was also the case that in many elections since 1867, how prime ministers dealt with foreign policy factored into the outcome of the vote...

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