The process of admitting new members to the United Nations has historically been contentious and contradictory. This paper examines new membership through the lens of recognition, focusing on the historical case of Canada’s role in this debate between 1955 and 1962. Canada led the initiative to grant membership to 16 members in 1955 and supported new membership for 17 others (including former French colonies) in 1960. Simultaneously, it opposed resolutions in the UN General Assembly supporting Algerian independence from France . The concept of recognition helps explain this inconsistency, while this case also reveals much about recognition itself. I argue that recognition, both thick and thin, can be multidirectional, in that granting recognition to another state is part of that state’s own struggle for recognition. In 1955 and 1960, Canada granted thin recognition to new members, which had implications for its own struggle for thick recognition. With Algerian independence, this was a debate about thick recognition for Algeria and for France; Canada’s complex struggle for thick recognition also drove its resistance to recognizing Algeria.

This article examines the ways in which the Sino-Canadian relationship has shaped Canadian legal structures and vice versa. The Canadian state’s anxieties about Chinese foreign policy have led to the “securitization” of various domains of domestic law, whereby the state has emphasized the national security implications of legal concepts, decisions, and regimes. This securitization may fuel discrimination towards Chinese Canadians, and the article suggests reforms that the Canadian state can adopt as it seeks to simultaneously implement a robust China strategy and avoid the mistreatment of Chinese Canadians.

Close relations with Europe, especially but not only with the United Kingdom, have long been a consensual tenet of Canadian foreign policy, which has supported European integration since the 1970s. The UK's withdrawal from the European Union threatens to upset this consensus. While Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has consistently cast Brexit in a negative light, Conservative leaders Andrew Scheer and Erin O'Toole have commented positively on the UK's leaving the EU. Did their polarized views resonate in the population? To answer this question, this article analyzes the results of an original survey of voting-age Canadians. Findings show a strong degree of correspondence between positions expressed in party discourse and preferences in the Canadian population. This raises the possibility that the difference between two models of transatlantic relations, which we call Eurosphere and Anglosphere, could emerge as a new fault line in Canadian foreign policy.

All Canadian governments say that Canada must look to its friends and allies and like-minded partners to achieve greater cooperation on global issues. But who are these countries exactly? To gain a better understanding of where Ottawa stands in the world, with whom and under what conditions, we analyze Canada's voting patterns in the United Nations General Assembly from 1980 to 2017. We find that Canada's overall record tends toward that of Western European states. We find no evidence of greater affinity with US positions either when the Democrats are in power in Washington or when the conservative parties are in power in Ottawa. We identify a sharp pro-US turn in the Harper years and also confirm that the government of Justin Trudeau started off by maintaining rather than reversing this trend.

Canada has long claimed the Northwest Passage as its “internal waters,” while the United States and other countries argue it is an “international strait.” The latter “free sea” position originates in Hugo Grotius, often styled the “father of international law.” However, Grotius later qualifies his own position by granting to coastal states the right to regulate maritime traffic. Grotius's works also inspire the English School of International Relations: an “international society” approach that Canada has historically followed in its overall foreign policy. Hence, a twenty-first-century Grotian vision might suggest a compromise amenable to Canada: Canada would grant passage to conforming American vessels, thus facilitating international trade, but Canada would also gain powers of effective jurisdiction, allowing it to secure and conserve the fragile environment. Canada might thus re-envision sovereignty not as a zero-sum contest for status symbols but as the exercise of functional jurisdiction for the common good of international society.