The Senate scandal, more than anything else in the seven years of the Stephen Harper government, has exposed the authoritarian workings of this Prime Minister’s Office. Nowhere has his tight control been more ruthless than in the execution of foreign policy, his one-man show in which his foreign ministers are treated as clerks carrying out his orders and reading speeches and ‘talking points’ written in his office.

Joe Clark, former Conservative prime minister, lays this out in detail in his latest book,How We Lead (Random House, 273 pages).

It’s a damning critique of how Harper has changed Canada’s image in the world, from a nation admired for its sophistication in mediating, peacekeeping and working co-operatively in multilateral institutions to one that’s belligerent, divisive and dismissive of the United Nations and other international institutions, such as the Commonwealth, La Francophonie and the Organization of American States.

Clark notes that Harper brought about these profound changes with “little public or no parliamentary discussion or attention.” Nor was Harper’s planned change of direction ever mentioned “in the platforms or prominent policy positions of his Conservative Party.”

Canadians would not have chosen this course had “the option been put to them in clear terms,” Clark writes, adding in an interview that “there’s a clear disjuncture between Canadians and this government on foreign policy.”

Canada had both hard power and soft power. The former was won on the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars, as well as Korea. The latter was accumulated over decades — a Canadian, John Humphrey of McGill University, writing the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Lester B. Pearson winning the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to diffuse the 1956 Suez crisis; and Canada playing a pivotal role in ending apartheid in South Africa, bringing about the International Criminal Court as well as the treaty to ban anti-personnel landmines and the UN principle of Responsibility to Protect citizens from their own murderous governments.

At the citizens’ level, Canadians rallied to help bring tens of thousands of “boat people” from Vietnam in 1979-80, and provided relief to the victims of draught and famine in Ethiopia in 1984-85.

“For most of the last half century, Canadian foreign policy regularly combined both hard and soft power,” writes Clark. But that ended with Harper.

The prime minister “aggressively narrowed” foreign policy to trade and military initiatives.

He glorified active combat and “pushed Canada’s peacekeeping tradition virtually out of sight.”

“The image of Canada as a war-fighting nation was nurtured during the Afghan mission, accompanied by an ‘image’ decision to reshape Canada’s international reputation in more aggressive terms. The government quickly embraced the American habit of shuttling cabinet members into and out of Afghanistan, to offer direct encouragement to Canadian troops, of course, but also for ‘photo ops’ that would incubate and encourage a more macho characterization of Canada’s role in the world.”

In tandem, Harper starved Canada’s “diplomatic and development capacity.” Diplomats were muzzled — “the advice of officials in Foreign Affairs was often not sought on critical issues like China and the Middle East and, when offered, that advice was discounted and rejected.” Foreign aid’s purpose was changed “from addressing poverty to promoting trade. The coup de grace was the elimination this year of CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency), which was absorbed into the department of foreign affairs, trade and development.”

Canada became the first country in the developed world to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, and the only one to withdraw from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.

“The government’s movement away from Canada’s soft power assets has grown more pronounced with each year in office.”

This contributed to the embarrassing loss, the first in our history, in Canada losing its 2010 bid for a seat on the Security Council.

Clark makes another useful observation.

While any country’s foreign policy serves its defence and economic interests, in Canada’s case it also serves “a domestic national interest. It can help us understand and define who we are as a country. The things we do in the world reflect and affirm who we are at home ...

“Canada possesses a palpable identity that distinguishes it from comparable countries. Our characteristics as a country — diverse, respectful, constructive, modern — are significant assets” abroad.

Yet Harper has instead used foreign policy as a wedge issue between various ethnic communities in Canada, to advance partisan Conservative electoral interests.

“While all governments in the past have been aware of the sensitivities of several diasporas in Canada, they usually considered that in the context of broader Canadian foreign policy. But now it’s a more determining factor in the architecture of our foreign policy.”

Canada has another advantage that can be used internationally but is not — a plethora of non-governmental organizations and citizens active on a range of issues internationally. That’s helpful in two areas that are becoming important in the world — “to help resolve conflict before it explodes, and to be a catalyst of co-operation between states and the growing ranks of non-state actors.”

Unless Ottawa changes course, “Canada’s relative position in the world will decline,” and the vacuum will be filled by such emerging nations as Brazil, India, Turkey, Indonesia, Qatar, Korea and others.

Haroon Siddiqui’s column appears on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca