During the late 1990s, largely in response to its individual as well as the world?s collective failure during the Rwandan genocide, the Canadian government became a leading advocate of the concept of human security. More specifically, it sponsored the work of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, and then became an outspoken advocate of its most important conceptual innovation ? the idea of the ?Responsibility to Protect? and the international community?s obligation to intervene where state governments fail to fulfill this Responsibility. Yet throughout this same period, the government of Canada was effectively eroding its resource capacity ? developmental, security, and diplomatic ? to respond to international crises both before and after they ?break.? The crisis in Darfur has brought these two contradictory trends to a head. How does a global ?middle power?, with expansive normative objectives but limited and eroding means, respond to a crisis in which the Responsibility to Protect is so flagrantly flaunted? What influence is it able to bring to bear in attempting to orchestrate an effective international response in line with the principles it has sought to promote? To what extent, conversely, does its inability to contribute more substantially to the international effort to respond to the Darfurian crisis weaken both its foreign policy credibility and the campaign to breathe life into the ?R2P? project? Finally, under the new Conservative regime are we now seeing a historic retreat from the ?norm entrepreneurship? role, and the concomitant commitment to African security and development, which marked the discursive priorities of the previous Liberal government? The paper addresses these questions through a critical analysis of Canada?s diplomatic, security, and developmental response to the Darfurian crisis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]