Once a leader, Canada's peacekeeping efforts dwindling for decades, experts say
CTV
At a London summit in 2016, Canada's government pledged to send more than 600 additional peacekeeping personnel abroad. In the seven years since then, headcounts for Canada’s peacekeepers have dropped to double-digits.
In 2016, at a United Nations conference in London, then-minister of national defence Harjit Sajjan made a pledge to fellow representatives from 70 countries: that Canada was prepared to deploy as many as 600 members of the armed forces to support future international peacekeeping operations.
Combined with the existing 133 military and police personnel already in the field by December of that year, Canada’s peacekeeping contributions were primed to reach a 20-year high, not seen since the drawdown of deployments to the Balkans in the mid-1990s.
“Canada is committed to leading international efforts in peace support operations,” Sajjan said in a 2016 statement about the conference.
“I’m confident that our unique whole-of-government approach will make tangible contributions to peace support operations around the world.”
Data from the UN shows that in the seven years since the London conference, Canadian peacekeeping has not met Sajjan’s pledge.
And according to personnel totals from July of this year, there were just 57 Canadian peacekeepers active globally, split between missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, South Sudan, Haiti, Cyprus, Kosovo, Lebanon and the Golan Heights.
UN totals for peacekeeping personnel may vary from those counted by the contributing nations, as they typically reflect the number of individuals whose expenses were reimbursed by the UN.