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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then-U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden arrive at a state dinner in Ottawa in 2016. During Biden's visit, he said he expected Trudeau to be a leader of internationalism during now-former president Donald Trump’s term.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

Five days before the Canadian federal election, three of its closest intelligence-sharing partners – the United States, Britain and Australia – announced a new military pact meant to counter the power of China. Dubbed AUKUS, the deal envisions sharing a range of defence technologies, starting with a project to build nuclear-powered submarines for Australia.

But no one told Canada about the agreement until shortly before it was publicly announced. On the campaign trail, Justin Trudeau shrugged this off: It was just a deal for a few nuclear submarines, which Canada “is not currently or any time soon” interested in acquiring.

To his political rivals, Mr. Trudeau’s absence from the discussions confirmed their criticisms. “He’s not getting called by other countries because Canada is becoming irrelevant,” chided Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole.

Hanging on to power in Monday’s election has positioned Mr. Trudeau to become dean of the Group of Seven later this fall when German Chancellor Angela Merkel retires. His ability to drive world events, however, remains an open question. The Prime Minister has won plaudits for deterring former U.S. president Donald Trump’s economic protectionism and committing Canada to tougher climate change targets.

But he faces criticism that, on some files, his foreign policy making is non-committal. Mr. Trudeau entered a tense diplomatic standoff with China, yet declined to be as confrontational with Beijing as other Western allies have. His efforts to steer a middle course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict earned consternation from both sides. Historically low contributions to United Nations peacekeeping helped thwart a bid for a temporary seat on the Security Council.

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Those close to him insist Canada has remained dedicated to the international liberal order over the past six years, a time when others have moved away.

“It’s been challenging, obviously, not only because of the growth of authoritarian trends from countries like Russia and China, but also the absence of the United States from a clear international perspective,” UN Ambassador Bob Rae told The Globe and Mail. “We’ve kept the flame alive, and we’re working hard now on how that can be strengthened.”

It’s a task that U.S. President Joe Biden, one of the leaders who unveiled AUKUS last week, helped frame for Mr. Trudeau in a December, 2016, visit to Ottawa, near the end of his vice-presidency. As he drove in from the airport with Bruce Heyman, then the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Mr. Biden said he expected the Prime Minister to be a leader of internationalism amid Mr. Trump’s pending nationalistic presidency.

“The vice-president told me how important Canada would be during this time period, as the carrier of the torch which the Obama and Trudeau team had lit together,” Mr. Heyman recalled in an interview.

Mr. Biden said the same in a private meeting at the Prime Minister’s office, recounted a source with knowledge of their conversation. This guy is going to be a problem for everyone, including you, Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump, and you’ve got to keep these flames of liberalism alive. (The Globe granted anonymity to one current and two former senior Canadian officials in order to gain a better understanding of the government’s behind-the-scenes policy making.)

The Trudeau government would devote most of its foreign policy energy for the next two years to fighting Mr. Trump’s threats to end free trade between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. In their closed-door dealings with his administration, Mr. Trudeau’s team was often shrewder than their public image of guileless do-gooders suggested.

In early 2017, for instance, the president planned to ban U.S. oil and gas pipelines from using foreign-made steel. At a Washington meeting with Wilbur Ross, Mr. Trump’s commerce secretary, then-foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland asked him to stop the policy. When Mr. Ross prevaricated, recounted two sources with knowledge of the episode, Ms. Freeland told him she was meeting later with one of Mr. Ross’s rivals in the administration, deputy national security adviser Dina Powell, and would take the matter up with her.

That evening, as Ms. Freeland sat in the bar at the Georgetown Four Seasons for a drink with Ms. Powell, her phone rang. It was Mr. Ross with good news: He had spoken with Mr. Trump and they had decided U.S. pipelines could continue to buy Canadian steel.

Such tactics, and the ability to read the personality-driven dynamics of Mr. Trump’s chaotic White House, ultimately helped Canada keep continental free-trade virtually untouched in the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Ms. Freeland exchanged reading lists with U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer during talks; Katie Telford, the prime ministerial chief of staff, texted with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law.

“It became clear to us that the two most important people on Team U.S. were Robert Lighthizer, number one, and Jared Kushner, number two, and so we applied a lot of effort to making sure that those two individuals knew exactly where we were coming from,” recalled Gerald Butts, Mr. Trudeau’s former principal secretary.

The Prime Minister’s dealings with the world’s second-largest economy have been less successful.

At first, he sought warmer relations with China, including a free-trade deal. But in December, 2018, Beijing detained two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, and blocked some agricultural imports from Canada after the arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on an American warrant. Mr. Trudeau marshalled an international coalition against arbitrary detention in response. He has also joined the U.S. and the European Union in placing sanctions on Chinese officials over human-rights abuses in Xinjiang.

The Prime Minister, however, opted not to retaliate against China’s punitive tariffs. And his government has indefinitely delayed a decision on banning Huawei from its 5G networks. Such a move has already been taken by other members of the Five Eyes – which includes the signatories of AUKUS, plus New Zealand – who fear the company could be used to gather intelligence for Beijing. Canada’s caution on China may explain why Ottawa was not consulted on AUKUS.

“Canada is not viewed as a serious partner in acknowledging the China challenge,” said retired vice-admiral Paul Maddison, who heads the Canberra-based Defence Research Institute.

Mr. Trudeau’s reticence may be linked both to economic considerations and worries that further angering Beijing could have caused more trouble for the two Michaels. On Friday, hours after Ms. Meng entered into a deferred prosecution agreement that allowed her to leave Vancouver, the Prime Minister announced that Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor were on a plane back to Canada.

In the Middle East, Mr. Trudeau’s attempt to find centre ground also ran into criticism. The Liberals restored funding to a UN program helping Palestinian refugees that was cut under former prime minister Stephen Harper, and twice backed a resolution supporting Palestinians’ right to self-determination. But the Trudeau government has also voted with Israel on dozens of other Palestine-related motions at the UN.

Dahlia Scheindlin, a Tel Aviv-based pollster and political consultant, said Mr. Trudeau has aligned Canada with most of the international community in rhetorically backing a Palestinian state, but hasn’t taken concrete action to resolve the conflict.

“It’s not clear to me how the Canadian government sees its role. It’s a flatline to just say ‘we support a two-state solution,’” she said.

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, translators and drivers who had worked for the Canadian government were left scrambling as the Taliban took over the country last month. On the day Mr. Trudeau called the snap election, television networks showed crowds of Afghans at Kabul’s airport trying to escape.

In June of last year, Canada failed in its attempt to win a two-year seat on the Security Council, losing a first-round vote to Norway and Ireland. Gauged by important metrics, both countries give significantly more to the UN: Norway spent 1 per cent of its GDP on international aid in 2019, while Ireland has one of the world’s highest per capita contributions to the organization’s peacekeeping efforts. Canada, by contrast, gave 0.27 per cent of its GDP in aid the year before the vote. Ottawa allowed its peacekeeping contingent to fall to just 34 personnel last year, its lowest level since 1956.

David Carment, an international affairs professor at Carleton University, says the Trudeau government has preferred to convene multilateral coalitions around specific issues – whether arbitrary detention or the political crisis in Venezuela – rather than work through established institutions such as the UN. While this approach can move faster, it leads to disjointed one-off policies.

“It’s like kayaking down the rapids, where you’re focusing on what’s immediately in front of you rather than having a long-term strategic plan,” he said.

Mr. Rae contends that, despite Canada’s paltry recent peacekeeping force, the country is contributing toward similar goals using other methods. It sent troops to Latvia in a NATO operation to deter Russian aggression, for instance. The country’s current position on human-rights issues, whether in China or elsewhere, he says, are sufficiently strong. “Making other peoples’ behaviour change is not easy. If you simply turn up the volume, that doesn’t necessarily lead to change,” he said.

More immediately, Mr. Trudeau faces a string of bilateral irritants that his close relationship with Mr. Biden has been unable to resolve. The White House has so far announced no plans to exempt Canada from rules meant to make it hard for foreign companies to receive U.S. government contracts.

Mr. Biden has also cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline and refused to protect Line 5, which Michigan’s Democratic governor is trying to shut down. These issues have put Mr. Trudeau in the unusual position of advocating against the positions of environmental groups.

To Mr. Butts, the central issue is one a country of 38 million will always face sitting next to a superpower: the U.S. doesn’t pay much attention to Canada.

“The value of that relationship has to be communicated in detail to Americans so that they know it’s in their best interest to preserve it,” he said. “Because the Americans have 99 problems and usually Canada is not one.”

It helps that on the single biggest international problem, the two governments generally agree. In April, Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Biden and other international leaders collectively announced tougher greenhouse gas reduction targets. One senior Canadian official said the Trudeau government sees this as the central cross-border file, for both environmental and economic reasons. As Mr. Biden and private companies pour money into green projects – from public transport infrastructure to electric vehicles – Canadian businesses will benefit from the spending.

And it’s co-operation on these sort of big-picture projects that could help Mr. Trudeau fulfill the role Mr. Biden foresaw for him five years ago.

“These two governments look through the lens and see the world in a similar way,” Mr. Heyman said. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to see everything the same and we’re going to agree on everything. But it means we’re on the same side of the field.”

With a report from James Griffiths in Hong Kong

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