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(Since Trump vs Trudeau/Carney is pure culture war, this counts) Every now and again there are throwaway lines in comments here about how Canada is a bad ally, or incompetent, or just generally bad-and-should-feel-bad. And believe me, lots of us do. But those Canadians who disapprove of the direction the country has taken usually do so for internal political reasons (Justin Trudeau, immigration, house prices, indigenous rights-gone-wild, virtue-signalling gun laws, etc). The comments I'm talking about are usually hinting at foreign affairs, but even the most self-hating Canadian usually believes Canada is internationally respected. Please offer below your critiques/complaints about Canada from a foreign affairs/relations standpoint.
From a Malaysian, currently living in Australia: I usually don't really think about Canada all too much since pretty little of what it does affects me. I have been over there, and kind of have to agree with @OliveTapenade in that I think of it as being like a less belligerent and less polarised US with more legacy allegiance to Britain, with the (sort of hilarious) quirk that the nation's self-conception is largely defined around not being the US despite sharing a very large number of cultural characteristics with their more powerful neighbour. Perhaps the differences may seem large if all you know is the North American cultural sphere, but to the rest of the world the distinction is not that clear. Canada is really just not all that distinctive internationally nor is it that prominent when it comes to foreign affairs.
When it comes to being "internationally respected", I could not honestly say I respect Canada that much. This may be harsh but when it comes to my respect and regard for a nation, it's not geopolitical leaning that most influences my view, but general competence, and that includes how it handles internal concerns. Its ability to build infrastructure, deliver on QoL things like safety and convenience, and just generally make canny and efficient decisions are all important. But the sheer tragedy that is Toronto's public transport is illustrative of a larger problem Canada has. When they insist on building Transit City-like Potemkin light rail transport all over the city, then spend 10+ years and billions of dollars to build a single line that's barely faster than the bus lane it replaced, THEN promise to try and fix the failure with bullshit like signal priority as if that isn’t just duct-taping over a serious structural issue, well, "respect" is not what comes to mind. When I think about Vancouver's little experiment in decriminalisation which quickly made them the fentanyl capital of North America (the DTES looks downright post-apocalyptic), "respect" is definitely not what comes to mind.
I can respect China in spite of it being a very disruptive geopolitical actor because it possesses a level of competence and state capacity that is currently allowing it to eat everybody else’s lunch. I can't, however, respect a country when it seems incapable of fixing simple issues. On a base level, respect at least requires that you be a serious actor capable of getting your affairs in order at home (and abroad), preferably with a telos that amounts to more than simply coasting off your current comfortable position and behaving as if your global standing is so assured that you can tolerate endless inefficiency, dysfunction and policy failure at home.
To be fair this is my opinion on a lot of Europe as well, so Canada certainly isn't the only one being subject to this withering assessment.
I think this is the general identity crisis in the whole Commonwealth ruled by the king including Australia and New Zealand. As the British Empire collapsed, so did the overall identity of these countries as having the "civilizing mission" where it was their burden to uplift the world in line with projects such as ending slavery, saving artifacts in Imperial museums, spreading literacy etc. What they came up with was alignment with post WW2 liberal consensus of building multicultural societies, while other countries of commonwealth such as those in Caribbean took upon the identity as anticolonial crusaders.
Now as the mutliculturalism collapses, there is new profound identity crisis. So what is left is pretending to be more sophisticated opposition toward uncouth Americans - this is by the way also the identity of many EU nations as they also see their mutlicutural projects collapsing together with prestige be it economic, scientific, diplomatic or technological.
The whole dynamics reminds me actually of late Austrian empire and its identity as opposition toward militaristic unsophisticated Piefke "Reichsdeutschen" Germans, while at the same time being jealous of German economic dynamism and rise to power. The comparison is uncanny right down to failure of multicultural project as ethnic tensions increased down to bureaucratic paralysis and anemic economy and science as well as tension being supposedly culturally superior while relying on supposedly civilizationally inferior power for protection and growth.
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