The number of polls informing Canadians of their Canadianisms is remarkable. Polls on Canadian icons, polls on Canadian values and even a poll on “what makes a Canadian pizza, Canadian.” So it was refreshing to see a mildly critical headline in the Globe and Mail titled “The foreign policy myth.” Now that readers know what makes a Canadian pizza, Canadian, the Globe asked what makes Canadian foreign policy, Canadian?

Don’t expect an answer from the article. Globe reporter Michael Valpy has little if any critical guidance to offer. In fact, an article supposedly about the country’s foreign policy (if headlines matter anymore) ends up citing a new poll about how patriotic Canadians are.

The Harris-Decima poll reveals Albertans are the proudest of Canada, with an average ranking of 9.43. Quebecers, with an average of 7.82, are the least proud of Canada. Perhaps this does say something about Canada’s foreign policy, as these trends tend to hold true when polling support for war.

Valpy writes that Canadians “have been seduced by mythology” of a peace loving country, when the reality “is starkly different from the altruistic image of Canada with which its citizens are in love.” None of the reality is observed in Valpy’s article, and, contrary to his assertion, Canadians are not at all misled by the dominant mythology.

For example, few Canadians are seduced by the government’s own myth that the war in Afghanistan is altruistic. An Angus Reid Strategies poll in March revealed 58% of Canadians disagreed with the decision of Parliament to extend the Canadian mission for another three years. Strong disagreement was expressed by 42% of Canadians. This is by no means a population “seduced by mythology.” Similar if not more significant opposition to Canada’s Free Trade Agreement with Columbia would ring true if the media gave it a fraction of the attention that another state suppressing its own people gets: Zimbabwe.

Valpy cites Roméo Dallaire, Maude Barlow and the Stephen Lewis Foundation as reasons for being seduced by the Canadian peacekeeping myth. They deserve the credit, there’s no doubt, but Valpy cites the source of this mythology very precisely. The myth began “when a brilliant group of a dozen or so young Canadians were recruited into the foreign service between the two world wars.” Lester Pearson is the founding model of this myth, and there is no doubt that it has carried on since, Valpy writes.

If Pearson was the founder of Canadian peacekeeping, he also “supported all the aims of U.S. policy in Vietnam” including the regular submission of reports from Vietnam to the U.S. and granting the U.S. passage to test chemical agents in Canada before use in Vietnam, according to an excellent study by Canadian Cold War academic John W. Warnock. “One has to search pretty far to find more fervent devotion to imperial crimes than Pearson’s declarations,” Noam Chomsky wrote in Canadian Dimension in 2005.

Valpy then cites the “periodic arousals” of the Canadian peacekeeping myth by Diefenbaker, Trudeau and Mulroney. Their foreign policy certainly deserves dissection, as does Valpy’s citation of “one of Canada’s most brilliant diplomats,” Allan Gotlieb, but it is his final reference that illustrates the Canadian myth so well.

“The missionary impulse had its last hurrah with Lloyd Axworthy,” Valpy writes, citing Axworthy’s initiatives on the International Criminal Court, the international gun trade, the doctrine of responsibility to protect and the treaty to ban land mines. Valpy doesn’t note that Axworthy deemed the 1999 war in Kosovo as the pinnacle of “responsibility to protect,” where Canada conducted 10 percent of the bombing, causing mass migration and devastation to a region that shows only mild signs of recovery today. I wrote briefly on Axworthy’s Kosovo legacy in May.

These are the peacekeeping myth-makers Canadians are supposedly seduced by. There can be no doubt that “the mythology lives on, powerfully.” Canadians should take strength in the fact that they are seldom tricked into believing this powerful myth themselves, however much Velpy would have readers believe otherwise.

Matthew Brett is the Canadian Dimension weblog editor and a Montreal-based journalist at a weekly newspaper. Read other posts by Canadian Dimension.