A diplomat I know, a man who served as his country's ambassador to Canada and is now seconded to the UN, recently returned to Ottawa for a visit and had a question for his Canadian friends.

"Where is Canada? That is what people at the UN are asking."

Until recently, he explained, Canada was seen as one of the unofficial leaders at the UN, just below the top tier of the countries who make up the permanent members of the Security Council.

Ours was a country that could always be counted on to lead and to help mobilize other developed countries when big problems arose.

We also had credibility with the developing world, largely because of our work within the Commonwealth and the Francophonie.

It was this kind of commitment to world problems and the UN process — and the lack of an ideological agenda — that made Canada such a valuable UN member.

What's more, that value was formally recognized every decade or so with what was usually the easy election of Canada to one of the rotating, non-permanent seats on the Security Council. But that was then.

Commitment waned

Today, though, when countries ask "Where's Canada?" what they are really saying is that the Canadian commitment to the UN has waned.

And that lack of commitment is what we paid a price for last fall when we were forced to make a humiliating withdrawal during the election for a Security Council seat. A withdrawal triggered when Canada received fewer votes on the second ballot than we did on the first.

Xavier Rolet, the CEO of the London Stock Exchange speaks as his TMX Group counterpart Tom Kloet (left) is reflected at a press conference regarding the merger of the TSX and the LSE in Toronto on Feb. 9, 2011. The proposed merger, which Ottawa is now to review, will create the world's fourth-largest bourse trading $4.1 trillion of stock a year. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)

But it is not just UN diplomats, who often live in their own little worlds, who are asking the where's-Canada question.

More and more people — business people, scientists, artists and performers — seem to have the same query.

With a federal election looming, it is a question all Canadians should be asking.

Indeed, it is something that also be asked around the plan to put together the Canadian stock exchange, the TSX, with the London Stock Exchange in the U.K.

This proposed merger is being marketed as a "marriage of equals."

But in this so-called equal arrangement the London group has 55 per cent of the seats on the board and its CEO will head the company.

How equal is that?

Why not us?

While we are at it, how is it that the stock exchange in a country like Canada can become what amounts to the takeover target?

As we like to boast, Canada — with it stronger regulation, healthy banks and resilient (resource-driven) economy — is in much better shape than other G8 countries.

We are certainly in better shape than Britain, where the government there actually owns most of the major banks following the debacle of the Great Recession.

Not only that, but the size of Britain's national debt, as well as its debt-to-GDP ratio are huge compared to here.

So why aren't we Canadians taking advantage of our favourable economic position to expand our influence and economy, instead of facing the possibility that our most important stock exchanges in Toronto and Montreal will effectively become branch plants of the LSE.

Why are we so timid? We should be the ones taking over the LSE.

With the economic advantages we have, it raises the question: Where's Canada?