Canada mulled using ‘Brand Trudeau’ to help pitch world on peacekeeping return

[Tennis]

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...ng-return.html

OTTAWA—Canadian bureaucrats pondered using the personal “brand” of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to sell the world on the merits of the country’s return to peacekeeping, The Canadian Press has learned.

Using the prime minister’s personal appeal was seen by senior foreign ministry officials as one of the possible “framing” techniques for explaining Canada’s decision to devote more military resources to United Nations peacekeeping operations.

Documents obtained through Access to Information detail the early government planning to reboot Canada’s return to peacekeeping.

Once a traditional role for the Canadian Forces, it was all but abandoned in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States when the military focused on counterterrorism and war-fighting in Afghanistan.

Trudeau promised during the 2015 federal election that Canada would focus more on UN peace operations, and the government has since committed 600 troops and $450 million to an as yet unspecified mission or a combination of deployments.

In January, officials at Global Affairs Canada — the newly renamed Foreign Affairs Department — convened a daylong strategy meeting with government officials and experts on how to turn that promise into policy.

Documents for the meeting said the first session focused on “Framing the Canadian engagement.” They said participants would try to “identify ‘filters’ or lenses through which Canada’s contributions to UN-led, or UN-authorized peace operations could be viewed.”

The documents listed eight possible “frames,” including “Building on ‘Brand Trudeau.’ There is significant enthusiasm at the global level for the messages conveyed by the Prime Minister. Canada could capitalize on this enthusiasm by investing in inclusivity, including through a robust National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security.”

An expert on the use of branding in politics says there’s nothing new about successive governments trying to imprint Canada on the international stage.

But what’s new is how Trudeau has become a personal brand, and how public servants embraced that in their peacekeeping discussion, said Alex Marland, a political scientist at Memorial University in St. John’s, N.L., and author of Brand Command.

Marland said the upside is it draws attention to Canada’s policies on a crowded world stage — an argument Trudeau himself has advanced. But focusing too much on one person — the prime minister — may have implications for parliamentary democracy.

“What are you supposed to do? Spend billions on advertising to get them to pay attention to Canada, or is it easier to use Justin Trudeau’s Twitter account?” Marland asked.

“But the more attention that we pay to the prime minister as an individual, the more power is concentrated in that person.”

All of that raises the spectre of too much power concentrated in the Prime Minister’s Office, and the “reduced relevance of Parliament as an institution,” he added.

“And these are the exact things that the Liberal party of Canada was concerned about in the election campaign.”

Trudeau addressed that criticism in his year-end interview with The Canadian Press, suggesting the brand belongs to Canadians as a whole, not just him.

“What I’m seeing around the world is that Canada is looked at as a place where people are smart and get it and have good values,” he said.

“So that uplifting of Canadians and what it is that we do well, diversity being a strength, being part of it, is, I think, where the brand is making the biggest impact on the world stage.”

Trudeau noted the issue of Islamophobia has surfaced in Canada as it has elsewhere.

“I reassure people on the world stage that Canada is not somehow some magical land where the same forces as there are elsewhere simply don’t exist.”

In separate interviews, two of Trudeau’s most-travelled cabinet ministers — Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion and Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland — said their boss’s personal brand has made their jobs easier. Both said it has helped them push the merits of pluralism, women’s rights and universal rights.

“It opens all the doors,” said Dion, adding he mentions Trudeau near the top of every speech just to remind people he is “part of the same gang.”

Trudeau’s personal appeal is connected to long-held Canadian values and goes to “the heart of our agenda,” said Freeland.

She said it will “attract investment, will attract wonderful immigrants from around the world, generating a lot of jobs and growth for middle-class Canadians. So I think there is a very virtuous circle.”

Very interesting strategy and kudos to our bureaucrats for thinking outside the box.
It certainly shows how popular Mr Trudeau is for this idea to even be considered.

What do you think? Would this be a route you would recommend?

[breadisfunny]

yes i wholeheartedly endorse thinking outside of the cereal box. this idea has the breadisfunny seal of approval.
wait a minute it says justin treadeau is part of some gang.....

[Rennadrel]

Honest Canadians don't give a damn about peace keeping missions, it just makes us look weak, save that sort of thing for the small countries of the world. All of the veterans of WW1 and WW2 must be ashamed at how pathetic our military prowess is these days because we have such a joke of an army. Our country was a world leader on the military front in both wars and since we have done little of note militarily, other countries laugh at how pathetic our army is to the point where we couldn't defend our own borders were we to get invaded. #MakeCanada'sArmyGreatAgain

[Total Crica]

Honest Canadians don't give a damn about peace keeping missions, it just makes us look weak, save that sort of thing for the small countries of the world. All of the veterans of WW1 and WW2 must be ashamed at how pathetic our military prowess is these days because we have such a joke of an army. Our country was a world leader on the military front in both wars and since we have done little of note militarily, other countries laugh at how pathetic our army is to the point where we couldn't defend our own borders were we to get invaded. #MakeCanada'sArmyGreatAgain

do you think you will be invaded?

[Masark]

do you think you will be invaded?

Of course not. We're supposed to invade people. Be like the USA and chuck a dart at a map of the middle east to choose a county to Nation Build in so we can piss away a few hundred thousand lives and trillions of dollars.

[Cybran]

Canada wants to be world police. Fucking hysterical. Castro's bastard son will be the name bearer on to of it.

[monkmastaeq]

Yeah let's spend more money on helping police the world and ignore our at home issues like first nations neglect

[GreenJesus]

LUL.. posting in a canadian micro-penis stroking thread.

infracted - minor spam

[Total Crica]

Of course not. We're supposed to invade people. Be like the USA and chuck a dart at a map of the middle east to choose a county to Nation Build in so we can piss away a few hundred thousand lives and trillions of dollars.

How did Canada become Canada? Was it always Canada? Or did Canadians have to invade the land in order to create Canada?

[Rennadrel]

do you think you will be invaded?

We already are, thanks to Turdeau

[breadisfunny]

Yeah let's spend more money on helping police the world and ignore our at home issues like first nations neglect

just be glad you don't live in the u.s. and have actual healthcare....

[Tennis]

Yeah let's spend more money on helping police the world and ignore our at home issues like first nations neglect

We are focusing on indigenous peoples much more under the current gov. Nice try.

[Rennadrel]

just be glad you don't live in the u.s. and have actual healthcare....

Healthcare? Top kek mate. Our healthcare system is imploding on itself due to lack in funding for more equipment and more technicians. Unless you are going to fucking die, you have to wait half a year for a damn MRI because there aren't enough machines not enough people to use them.

[Total Crica]

Healthcare? Top kek mate. Our healthcare system is imploding on itself due to lack in funding for more equipment and more technicians. Unless you are going to fucking die, you have to wait half a year for a damn MRI because there aren't enough machines not enough people to use them.

At least you are on a list of hope. In USA, you can be denied a place on the list of hope.

[Rennadrel]

At least you are on a list of hope. In USA, you can be denied a place on the list of hope.

Yeah, but the problem with your system is that money buys you treatment, our taxes buy ours but you gotta wait. Hospitals already are over crowded, wait times for surgeries that are non life threatening are over a year waiting, but the whole system of you only get treated quickly is if you are dying or are really sick. Meanwhile people (read, foreigners) who don't know how to treat a common cold clog up ER waiting rooms.

[Skroe]

Trudeau should focus less on Canada's peacekeeping hobby and more on it's warfighting bread and butter. It must militarily modernize with the rest of NATO.

[oxymoronic]

isnt this the guy that hurts women in public?

why isnt he impeached? what is wrong with canada?

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, but the problem with your system is that money buys you treatment, our taxes buy ours but you gotta wait. Hospitals already are over crowded, wait times for surgeries that are non life threatening are over a year waiting, but the whole system of you only get treated quickly is if you are dying or are really sick. Meanwhile people (read, foreigners) who don't know how to treat a common cold clog up ER waiting rooms.

and people with a simple broken arm going to the ER...

ER is for emergency people, life or death shit. stop going for a little booboo

[Socialhealer]

LUL.. posting in a canadian micro-penis stroking thread.

infracted - minor spam

funny this was infracted, when this is basically what tennisace does, post threads 3 times a week on how amazing Trudeau is, and how the rest of the world should act and do as he does, he's the ultimate new age thinking outside the box trend setter and canada is basically heaven while the rest of the world is a shithole.

[Total Crica]

money buys you treatment.

And without it, you are denied.

[Tennis]

Trudeau should focus less on Canada's peacekeeping hobby and more on it's warfighting bread and butter. It must militarily modernize with the rest of NATO.

Hahha it must?

Bullying might work on the Euros but Canada is fine where it's at and the U.S. can't do anything