Canada turns its back on UN peacekeeping — at the worst possible moment
Our peacekeeping troops can fit into an Uber
Canada is walking away from UN peacekeeping almost entirely.
On July 17, National Defence quietly confirmed it is closing four peacekeeping operations and gutting a fifth.
Operation CROCODILE, our contribution to the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Operation SOPRANO, our presence with the UN mission in South Sudan, will both wind down by mid-2027. Operation SNOWGOOSE, our long-standing support to the UN force in Cyprus, ends on the same timeline, and Operation KOBOLD, our small footprint in Kosovo, disappears by year’s end.
When the dust settles, Canada’s entire UN peacekeeping presence will shrink to a handful of officers with UNTSO — the same Middle East mission Canada joined back in 1954.
It is our lowest commitment since 1956, when Lester Pearson proposed the first UN Emergency Force and won Canada its first Nobel Peace Prize. Canada, once the world’s leading peacekeeping nation, now ranks around 70th among UN troop-contributing countries.
Professor Walter Dorn, who has tracked Canadian peacekeeping for decades, called the news “very disappointing.” “Canada ignores global security to its peril,” he warned, adding that this decision “kills a long and proud tradition of Canadian peacekeeping” — one built, in part, on lessons from two world wars about why global security has to be taken seriously, everywhere, not just where it’s convenient.
The timing makes it worse. This spring, Ottawa announced it had hit NATO’s 2% GDP defence-spending target — over $63 billion, the largest year-over-year defence increase in generations — and committed to reaching 5% of GDP (3.5% core, 1.5% broader security) by 2035, roughly half a trillion dollars over the next decade. Yet the UN missions that need Canadians most, in the Congo and South Sudan, get almost nothing. Guns for NATO, none for peacekeeping.
Dorn said the Canadian government feels that the military is overstretched, but that he doesn’t believe it to be the case.
“We could definitely double or triple our size and not have any operational effect on any other areas of the world,” Prof. Dorn told The Hill Times. One area that the mission closure will be felt the most is in the DRC, where a war has been ongoing for more than four years. “There’s a huge need there,” he added.
Canada invented modern peacekeeping. We are dismantling it, operation by operation, even as we write enormous cheques for a different kind of security altogether. It is a proud tradition being allowed to quietly expire.
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This is disheartening! Ultimately our security comes from respect for each other and law, including international law. Carney knows "the rules based order" was never very fair, but that now it's under a new kind of threat (as he said at Davos). His solution seems to be to invest in policies that actually bolster the very people and forces undermining international law. See for instance How Mark Carney's LNG Grift Funnels Money to Wall St. Billionaires https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lf3Zl46K_Nw & Confronting Mark "Elbows Up" Carney about US -Owned gas Terminal https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aV1UAHq6Xwk . Both by Kai Nagata, who left his job as CTV bureau chief in Quebec City at age 25... so he could share truth, not hogwash.