McLeod Group guest blog by Daniel Livermore, August 9, 2022
If the stars align, the year 2023 promises to be key for decisions about Global Affairs Canada and the Canadian foreign service. Two studies are now under way: in the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, launched in February 2022, and at Global Affairs itself, announced by the Minister and Deputy Minister on May 30.
Both studies will address an issue that has been ignored by two decades and should have been an item addressed by the Trudeau Government soon after it was first elected in 2015. What kind of foreign ministry does Canada need in order to run the type of foreign policy we are now pursuing? Or to put it another way, how does the government make GAC “fit for purpose”, not only now but for decades to come?
Neither study was launched with a public announcement as to its rationale. But the motivation should be obvious to anyone observing the underperformance of Canada’s foreign service. Simply put, years of tinkering, including the merger of CIDA into GAC, have created a department that is costly, massive and excessively bureaucratic, with diminishing expertise and low-quality output, led by people who know relatively little about foreign policy or international affairs.
Recent events can only add to the urgency of reforming GAC before it becomes a laughingstock. A rotating cast of ministers in the Trudeau era has meant inexperience and the problems of a steep learning curve. The performance of deputy ministers brought in from domestic departments has been predictably poor. The sad saga of Canada’s irresponsible abandonment of locally hired employees at the embassy in Ukraine has been appalling. Give credit to the three foreign service officers who brought this atrocity to public light.
The GAC-CIDA merger was perhaps the straw that finally broke the back of old “External Affairs”. It mixed the two agencies in a blend that doesn’t work. Development folks in GAC complain that the development vocation has all but disappeared from sight; Foreign Affairs folks complain that CIDA bureaucracy has taken over. Divisions have been created so that one part of the Department can watch the other. The Trade Policy Branch still works because the vocation is clear and the lines of authority are well established. Although the Trudeau government announced a “feminist international assistance policy” early on in its mandate, that policy has proven to be a thin reed that can’t cover the absence of serious policy work in many areas of foreign policy, including China and Eastern Europe.
The issuance of two studies in 2023 will not guarantee that a reform effort will ensue. The government has ignored a valuable Senate study on Canada’s international cultural relations, released in 2019. It could conceivably do the same with the Senate study on the foreign service. Nor is there any reason that these two exercises, which will take time to gather material and arrive at recommendations, should slow down work on other essential reforms that are already inching forward, like reconstructing an annual recruitment exercise for all streams of the foreign service. Clearly, remedial work in some areas, like how to treat our locally engaged staff abroad, cannot wait until next year.
Both reports will probably accept the requirement for a “global” Canadian foreign service. This means embassies or high commissions in about 125 countries, as well as good-sized missions at multilateral organizations: in all, about 180 missions abroad. This may sound like a lot, but it places Canada at the low end of our G7 peers. GAC should caution against the closure of embassies, just as care should be exercised about opening new missions where closure in the future will be problematic.
Both reports must address the central problem bedevilling the foreign service, namely, the decline in its expertise (subject matter expertise, like development and international security issues, as well as linguistic expertise and expertise on specific regions and countries such as Russia and China). One reason is obvious: there are too many foreign service officers at home, and not enough abroad, where they could be learning their trades and acquiring the expertise needed for useful policy formulation.
Redressing the balances between headquarters and the field is tricky and needs deft management (with foreign service experience). It also needs new resources. To make missions abroad work effectively, however, several changes are necessary: programs in the information and cultural affairs area have to be reconstructed; the program that supports Canadian Studies abroad needs to be re-funded; the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives has to be widened, with its resources increased; and representational budgets have to be bolstered. It bears repeating, even though it’s been said many times, that Canada simply isn’t doing enough with respect to development spending.
The resources for some of these reforms could come from internal changes in GAC. It could easily slash its huge senior management complement, downsize bureaux and divisions that duplicate work done elsewhere, and take advantage of IT solutions to streamline work. Its outmoded administrative and personnel structures are long overdue a complete revamp.
What is needed in both reports is absolute clarity of purpose. GAC needs to rebuild a career structure for the foreign service with a weightier presence abroad. Reforms, if well done over the long term, will give GAC the expertise required to offer governments sound advice on foreign policy. It provides no assurance that future governments will be interested in foreign policy; nor is it a guarantee against the gaffes that have characterized foreign policy thus far in 2022. But a well-conceived, well-structured foreign service is a necessary condition for a sensible, rational, long-term approach to Canadian foreign policy.
Foreign policy is about having the international influence to help shape global events in support of our values and interests. The foundational instrument for attaining that goal is a capable, effective Canadian foreign service, empowered with the right tools. The two reports should provide the government with the recipe for change. Let’s hope that recent events have made it clear that a serious reform effort is badly needed.
Daniel Livermore was a Canadian diplomat for three decades and is currently a senior fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, University of Toronto.