Let Me Be Clear: Fact Checking Leaders on Foreign Policy

The fourth debate in this election "season" -- a campaign as long as some places in Canada go without snow -- was rather polite compared to the first two English debates.

It was clear host Munk Debates wanted a civil conversation among gentlemen, where the moderator held court and didn't let the leaders shout over one another. The audience laughed and clapped as though there was a flashing sign telling them to do so, and even booed Liberal leader Justin Trudeau for speaking over Conservative leader Stephen Harper. Apparently they're sticklers for manners, too.

Civility doesn't equal truthiness, however, and it turns out there were some whopper-sized statements in last night's foreign policy debate. As per form, we picked one statement per leader to debunk.

Thomas Mulcair: "It's very difficult to see how Canada's superior interests were being served when Prime Minister Harper said to President Obama that it was 'a complete no brainer' -- those were his exact words -- that the Americans had to approve Keystone XL. I know that Keystone XL represents the export of 40,000 Canadian jobs because Mr. Harper told the Americans so."

The NDP leader's first sentence is misleading. Speaking to reporters in New York at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in 2011, Harper told an American reporter that approving the Keystone XL pipeline, which would ship raw bitumen from Alberta to Nebraska, would be a "no brainer." He could have said this to Obama in a private conversation, but in public he said it to a reporter.

The second sentence is false, with a caveat. Keystone won't "export" jobs to the United States. Mulcair could be referring to the fact that exporting raw bitumen means American refineries get to refine the product, rather than a Canadian facility. But the 40,000 jobs number comes from a U.S. state department report, and the majority are either temporary positions or they already exist.

Also, in 2013 the Washington Post pointed out that number -- 42,000 if you want to quibble -- is overinflated.

The report estimates about 16,000 direct jobs from building the pipeline. That includes an estimated 4,000 construction jobs that would last less than 20 weeks on average, and many of the 12,000 remaining jobs, such as construction work on the pipes, are already completed.

The other 26,000 jobs would come from spending on goods and services by those 16,000 workers and their employers, an unknown number of which are pre-existing jobs. Canadians would fill none of these jobs themselves unless they came down to the U.S. to work.

Justin Trudeau on Bill C-51: "The Liberal party put forward amendments, they were voted down. The Conservative party put forward the same amendments and passed it. But in every step of the way, every single proposal or amendment that was put forward to improve at committee C-51, the NDP voted against."

True and misleading. The Conservative government did reject the majority of the Liberals' proposed amendments to Bill C-51, which received royal assent in June.

The Huffington Post reports that of the amendments the Conservatives did adopt, two were Liberal proposals: clarifying that protesters following the letter of the law would not be targeted for surveillance, and "the ability to further distribute material beyond federal circles" -- which sounds an awful lot like the Liberals' proposal to "limit information sharing done on the basis of national security in order to prevent the inappropriate disclosure of information about Canadians, as occurred in cases like Maher Arar's."

But while the NDP did vote against passing the law, it also proposed amendments. The CBC quotes deputy public safety critic Rosane Doré Lefebvre as saying she wouldn’t know how her party would vote on an amended C-51 until it was revealed, but: "We continue to oppose C-51 because it goes too far and undermines Canadians' rights and freedoms."

Stephen Harper: "Ninety-nine per cent of the free trade access of this country has been created by Conservative governments."

False. No matter how you slice it, the Conservatives aren't responsible for 99 per cent of free trade access. At least, not if you're counting agreements "in force."

You can look at it two ways, according to Gus Van Harten, associate professor at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School and frequent critic of Conservative trade deals on The Tyee: if you count Free Trade Agreements only, the Liberals are responsible for at least three out of the 12 currently in force, leaving the Conservatives responsible for 75 per cent of free trade access. That's also if we give the Conservatives the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was signed by a Progressive Conservative government but ratified by the Liberals.

If you count both FTAs and Foreign Investment Protection Agreements (FIPAs) currently in force -- and Van Harten notes Harper often does include FIPAs when talking about free trade -- 14 out of 29 were introduced under a Liberal government.

Adding both types of trade deals together, the Conservatives are responsible for 24/41 ratified deals, or about 60 per cent.

But maybe it's okay that the Conservatives aren't as dominant on free trade as they thought.

"It's kind of a stupid thing to think 'We signed more, so we're better,'" said Van Harten. "It just assumes that the terms of the deal are meaningless; it's just whether you sign one or not. The fact you signed a lot of them, maybe you're prepared to give up more to get them."