Canada and new ‘global’ strategic alliances: Prospects for human security at the start of the twenty‐first century
Social development is no longer a concern for governments alone. Increasingly, business communities and civil society are getting involved. Many examples from all over Europe already suggest that public-private partnerships can be a turning point in fighting unemployment and social exclusion.1 ‘Global society’ at the start of the new millennium is not as integrated or as pacific as anticipated. Rather, a set of ‘new’ security issues confronts and divides both international and Canadian communities. In turn, governance institutions are no longer just state or inter-state actors but now include myriad non-state organizations, from companies to civil societies (Wolfson and Smith 2000). This paper examines the range of Canadian actors, in a series of new security issues, at the start of the new century. With a focus on the contrasting but increasingly interrelated strategic and basic needs/health sectors, it analyses non-state as well as state institutions and their interor trans-national alliances or networks. More specifically, we argue that in this new environment, where individuals may be supplanting the state as the main security referent and connections between development and security are increasingly acknowledged and identified, human security/development cannot be advanced by states alone. Rather, complex and changeable coalitions of heterogeneous actors have emerged to identify and treat novel global issues, from gender and land-mines to bio-diversity and ozonedepletion, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) and tuberculosis. Canadian-based organizations have been amongst the pioneers in such agendaand norm-setting, the Ottawa Process for the banning of land-mines and the Montreal Protocol on eliminating ozone-depleting substances being examples of the ‘new multilateralism’ or what the UN Secretary General characterizes as a “global compact” (Tomlin 1998; Boutwell and Klare 1999). 17