Unequal Partnerships: The Politics of Canada's Relations w ith the Third W orld LAURA MACDONALD The very existence of Canada - its languages, its cultures, its values, its tolerant spirit, its standards of behaviour - has rep- resented an independent voice and has constituted something different, something special, for the larger world. By freely forg- ing a united nation based on respect for diversity, Canadians bring a special sensitivity to other problems in the world. Barbara McDougall 1 Without significant exception the universalizing discourses of modem Europe and the United States assume the silence, willing or otherwise, of the non-European world. There is incorporation; there is inclusion; there is direct rule; there is coercion. But there is only infrequently an acknowledgement that the colonized people should be heard from, their ideas known. Edward Said2 C anadian politicians and policy-makers tend to portray Canada's role in the Third World as benevolent and altruistic. Many Canadian political economists have debunked this self-congratulatory perspective, and have re- vealed the various ways in which Canadian corporate inter- ests benefit from Canadian aid, trade and other policies to- ward the Third World. 3 This neo-Marxist perspective pro- vides a valuable analysis of some of the motivations behind Canadian policy, but does not go far enough in its critique. As James Ferguson argues, "political economists are often too quick to impute an economic function to 'development' projects, and to accept the premise that a 'development' pro- ject is primarily a device for bringing about a particular sort Studies in Political Economy 47, Summer 1995 111