In this fifth volume of the Canada Strong and Free series, Mike Harris and Preston Manning call for Canada to reclaim its leadership role in the international arena. They focus on three foreign policy priorities which would enable Canada to significantly advance its national interests and international influence across a broad front.

International Trade Liberalization

Freer international trade offers the most effective means of increasing Canadian prosperity and sustaining essential social services. Manning and Harris propose eliminating protectionist measures from supply management to business subsidies, systematic privatization of government export promotion and development programs, elimination of ideologically driven efforts to diversity trade patterns and partners, and fully opening up the domestic market to international competition.

Maximizing the Benefits of Strong Canada-US Relations

Whether Canadians like it or not, Canada's influence in the world depends to a large extent on its ability to gain and exert influence in Washington. Harris and Manning propose a Canada-US Customs Union involving a common external tariff, a joint approach to the treatment of third-country goods, a fully integrated energy market, a common approach to trade remedies and border security, and an integrated government procurement regime.

Better Approaches to Reducing Global Poverty

Harris and Manning recommend the adoption of the Tools of Wealth Creation approach to attacking poverty - focusing not on the redistribution of wealth but on a broader distribution of tools for creating wealth such as property rights, access to capital, human capital development, access to technology, and access to trade markets. They also propose greater use of public-private partnerships for infrastructure and vaccine development, reforming CIDA, completely untying food aid from any requirements that it be provided from Canadian sources, and the new paradigm of providing aid and peacekeeping simultaneously in conflict and post-conflict situations.