Team Canada Trade Missions (1994-2005)

Team Canada Trade Missions were the brainchild of Prime Minister Jean Chretien who led many trade missions to countries around the world in the hope of drumming up business for Canada and changing the longstanding image that people around the world held of Canada as a land of snow and wheat. The Prime Minister wanted the whole world to know that Canada was a leader in technology and that it was a country that was open to friendship with the world. Not everyone, however, believed that the Team Canada Trade Missions were as successful as the Prime Minister and his supporters made them out to be. Interestingly, some of the most passionate opponents of the trade missions, such as Prime Minister Stephen Harper, jumped onto the trade mission bandwagon once he was no longer in opposition. This shows that some of the rhetoric surrounding trade missions were not necessarily always honest. Using discourse analysis, thematic analysis, and the views of a panel of Canadian experts, Team Canada Trade Missions (1994-2005): A Popular Prime Minister’s Passion Project delves into the diverse discourses that surrounded the trade missions and identifies the major players, both proponents and critics. In the end, this retrospective work captures the political and business complexities of promoting a country while also trying to measure, besides profits, nebulous benefits such as prestige, power, and publicity.