Another crisis in North Africa has sent Ottawa scrambling to evacuate Canadian citizens, this time from Libya.
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, on his way to Kuwait, will stop in Rome to greet Canadians evacuated from Tripoli, as the government's way of signalling that its first priority - getting citizens out - is being met.
But then there will be mounting questions about the other scramble, to provide some real response to killings in Libya, and to pro-democracy protesters. On this issue Ottawa has been relatively quiet.
Former prime minister Paul Martin called for UN intervention, arguing it's a textbook case of when the world should invoke the Canadian-born concept of "responsibility to protect" to help prevent the Libyan government from attacking its citizens.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for sanctions. Barack Obama declared that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi had violated international law, and that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would go to Europe to drum up an international response. In Canada, Mr. Cannon declined to suggest a potential response.
There is a concern that joining the call for sanctions could damage efforts to get Canadians out of danger in Tripoli, because that requires co-operation from the regime.
A first group of 26 Canadians was evacuated to a U.S. boat Wednesday and a second group of Canadians - 213 have told the embassy they want to leave - are to fly to Rome on Thursday.
Mr. Cannon's stop to meet them is a sign the Harper government feels the need for a political crisis response to Libya, even if it is a short detour from the minister's planned travel to Kuwait. But by late afternoon in Rome, the evacuees will have landed and questions about where Canada stands on repression in Libya will mount.
On Tuesday, Mr. Cannon held a news conference but declined to suggest any measures for international action on Libya, prompting NDP critic Paul Dewar to ask, "Is that it?"
In a small way, the Libyan revolt touched Ottawa yesterday, when a diplomat at the Libyan embassy in Ottawa, Ihab el-Mismari, quit his job in protest. "They are killing the friends with whom I grew up, they are killing my brothers and sisters," he told a reporter from the Toronto Star.
But there's little sign the bloodshed has stirred Ottawa toward leading calls for action to pressure Libya, though the Harper government has prided itself on a tough line against Iran.
Canada doesn't have much leverage in Libya, but then Ms. Clinton acknowledged that even the United States has few easy options for pressuring Mr. Gadhafi.
There was a thaw in Libyan-Canadian relations after Mr. Gadhafi allowed in nuclear inspectors, and was no longer the world's chief pariah. Mr. Martin visited in 2004, and Canadian companies moved in to exploit oil finds and build pipelines. But Canadian diplomats still found Mr. Gadhafi to be an erratic enigma, and in 2008 his regime responded to Mr. Cannon's criticisms with a threat to nationalize Petro-Canada operations.
Mr. Cannon rebuffed calls for Ottawa to push measures such as sanctions, arguing it's best to discuss them privately with other countries first. "We have to be able to do it in concerted fashion, so that it will have an impact," he argued Wednesday. He'll meet with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini on Thursday, and might go to Geneva for a meeting with Ms. Clinton and other foreign ministers on Monday.
But the fact that pressuring Libya requires concerted international efforts is more reason, in some eyes, for Canada, a G8 country and NATO member, to push publicly for quick, strong measures.
"There are limited options, but there are certainly things one can do," said Fen Hampson, director of Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. Canada can press a call for sanctions, he said, or suggest enforcing a no-fly zone to prevent the Libyan air force from taking to the air to fire on its own people.
"It would send a very strong message to Gadhafi," he said. "The fact is, we should be doing and saying more."
In months of protests that have shaken North Africa and the Middle East, the Harper government hasn't found a tone to echo sympathy for movements for change. In Egypt, they preached stability for fear that post-protest chaos would endanger Middle East peace. But Libya is not the same cornerstone yet Mr. Harper's government still appears to unable to find its voice.
Mr. Hampson notes that Canada has typically marketed its expertise in things such as forming political parties and administering the elections, but hasn't stepped up to offer it in places like post-protest Egypt, while the EU has. For decades, Western countries such as Canada had policies which stressed maintaining stability and containing rogues like Libya, and now Ottawa hasn't found a replacement.
"It's fair to say that what seems to be democratic revolutions or at least strong protest movements don't necessarily go together with stability," Mr. Hampson said. "Our policies have been wedded to the status quo, but the status quo is being rapidly overturned."
Campbell Clark writes about foreign affairs from Ottawa
Campbell Clark