A Canadian flag on your backpack won't buy much goodwill in Colombia.

[JohnyCanuck]

Don’t sew that flag on your backpack if you are heading down to Colombia

By: Mariam Ibrahim and Siavash Saffari

If you’ve ever travelled anywhere outside of Canada, chances are somewhere along the way you met some fellow Canadians with the country’s flag sewn on their backpacks. It’s almost as if the flag is meant to say to the rest of the world, “Don’t worry, I can be trusted. My country doesn’t have military bases all over the world. My country isn’t waging war indiscriminately. We’re just peacekeepers.”

According to Yves Engler, author of the recently-published The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, a vast majority of Canadians believe that Canada is a force of good in the world.

However, there appears to be a significant disconnect between what Canadians see as distinctly Canadian values and the Canadian government’s actual record in conducting its foreign policy.

The disconnect could partly be attributed to the Canadian government’s tendency to do the bidding of its U.S. counterparts on many fronts, despite a 2007 Angus Reid poll, in which 70 per cent of respondents stated they “do not believe that Canada should take the view of the United States into account in deciding on its foreign policies.” Also contributing to this disconnect is the role that our government plays in securing the narrow economic interests of Canadian corporations, at the cost of what is seen by most Canadians as our core values.

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article/235930640-don-t-sew-that-flag-on-your-backpack-if-you-are-heading-down-to-colombia