Photo: The Canadian Press

Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland talks to reporters about NAFTA outside the House of Commons on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Thursday, May 18, 2017. Freeland says the world wants Canada to trumpet tolerance and diversity. That's her plan for what is being billed as a major foreign policy speech early next month. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland says the world wants Canada to trumpet tolerance and diversity. That's her plan for what is being billed as a major foreign policy speech early next month.

International figures, such as former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, think that's a fine idea and about time too, in a world grappling with growing nativism, intolerance and anti-immigration sentiment — a phenomenon they lay at the feet of U.S. President Donald Trump.

But Freeland diverges with many in the world on whether that values speech needs to aim at Trump.

Annan, who was in Ottawa recently to help launch a new think-tank devoted to the study of pluralism, says the time has come for politicians to show courage and speak out in the face of disturbing new global trends.

Freeland is no less passionate about defending and advocating on behalf of what she has called the "open society."

But when it comes to how that might be accomplished, her approach might be described as: no shouting at Trump please, we're Canadian.

"I am a big believer in humility being a Canadian and national virtue," the minister told The Canadian Press in an interview last week. "We're all taught as kids that bragging is not polite.

"Having said that, I think that ambition is not the opposite of humility. And now is a great moment for Canada to be ambitious at home . . . and be ambitious about what our voice can accomplish in the world."

Freeland adds the "world is really listening for what Canada has to say."

In the past, an assertion like that could have been dismissed as self-serving bombast.

However, a group of prominent international observers — who will play a role in shaping the foreign policy discussion in Canada in coming years — are cajoling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals to take to the rooftops and start shouting. They say it is a message that needs to be heard not only in the U.S., but in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.

"Mainstream leaders have to have the courage to take on these issues and offer alternatives," said Annan, who is a board member of the Ottawa-based Global Centre for Pluralism, which has the backing of the federal government and the Aga Khan.

Annan said whenever he speaks in the United States, he tells Americans to look to their northern neighbour as an example of good behaviour.

"Three, four weeks before the election, nobody thought Trudeau would win. But he started speaking to the people, defending Canadian values — we will receive refugees, we will welcome them," Annan said.

"I think you're on the right track and I hope others will follow you. Not the other way around."