The late Pierre Trudeau, former Canadian prime minister, once remarked that the relationship between Canada and the United States was like a mouse sleeping next to an elephant. Dwarfed as they are by the behemoth next to it, it is easy for Canadians to feel like they are minnows in the global sea.
Canada is seen rather differently in the Caribbean. With the renewed wave of Canadian investment in the region, Jamaicans more than anyone know that Canada is not a lightweight. And in the last couple of years, the Canadian government has reflected this interest by signalling its own renewed commitment to the Caribbean.
As participants in a conference this week at UWI, Mona, were reminded, Canadian involvement in the Caribbean goes back a long way. The Bank of Nova Scotia opened a branch in the region before it did so in Toronto.
In the 1970s, friendly to Fidel Castro and Michael Manley, Mr Trudeau provided a flamboyance to Canada's policy towards the Caribbean. By and large, though, in keeping with its foreign-policy tradition, Canada has generally preferred to remain low-key and pragmatic.
But if the country doesn't shout loudly, it is speaking with a clear and increasingly strong voice. At a time when the United States is growing more insular and more suspicious of trade, Canada has announced it would like to negotiate a free trade agreement with the Caribbean. Equally, it has announced an ambitious, and long-term, foreign aid package.
Caribbean out of pace
Implementing all this will tax the ingenuity of policymakers in both Canada and the Caribbean. It amounts to a rapid ramping up of aid absorption and trade negotiating for a region that has, at times, moved at a rather relaxed pace. As the opening presentation pointed out, over the last decade, the developing world has seen dramatic gains in its share of global output, trade and investment. The Caribbean has not quite kept pace. And it is not clear that the level of interest currently being shown to the region will persist indefinitely.
There may be times when we in the region like the idea of being unnoticed and left alone. But, as we are reminded, whenever price shocks or trade disruptions occur, ours are open economies. Therefore, we have to swim in a global sea that is growing ever more competitive.
Identifying policies
Trying to identify the policies that will enable the Caribbean to take advantage of this new dispensation, and to exploit whatever opportunities lie in this new Canadian partnership, is one of the challenges of the day. Traditionally, when trying to find a way forward, the approach has been to assemble some of the elder statesmen from the region for a consultation.
The Mona conference, co-hosted by the university and the Canadian High Commission, took a novel approach. In keeping with an emerging practice of nurturing bright new talent, the conference supplemented the wisdom of experience by drawing upon young scholars from both the Mona campus and across the region.
The result was an interesting and lively discussion that ranged across a number of topics, from growth and crime, to education and governance. By and large, the theme was one of cautious optimism.
Yet, there may have been a more ominous subtext to the proceedings. It was that if the Caribbean fails to take advantage of a propitious moment to insert itself on to the regional - and global - agenda, the opportunity may not knock again for some time. In a world of rapid change and dynamic economies, complacency will get punished harshly. There is no time like the present. There may never be so again.
John Rapley is president of Caribbean Policy Research Institute(CaPRI), an independent think tank affiliated to the UWI, Mona.
