Sen. Peter Harder and Sen. Peter Boehm, deputy chair and chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, unveiling the committee’s report on the foreign service, December 6, 2023/Sen. Marty Deacon

 

By Sen. Peter M. Boehm

December 8, 2023

On December 6, the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (the Committee) released its study on Canada’s foreign service titled, More Than a Vocation: Canada’s Need for a 21st Century Foreign Service. This study was the first of its kind since the release, 42 years ago, of the Royal Commission on Conditions of Foreign Service, led by former diplomat Pamela McDougall. The purpose of the Committee’s report was to assess whether Canada’s foreign service and the department in which it is housed, Global Affairs Canada (GAC), are prepared to deal with the specific operational challenges inherent in the execution of our country’s foreign policies.

As a former foreign service officer, I have witnessed and participated in the changes occasioned by global realignment and technological advances in the practice of diplomacy. As a profession, foreign service is often misunderstood given the Hollywood treatment of it as either a lavish lifestyle spent wining and dining in exotic locales and/or one full of espionage. I enjoyed The Diplomat on Netflix as much as anyone but what is portrayed could not be further from the truth. Foreign service professionals, be they Canada-based from GAC, other government departments and agencies, the provinces, or locally engaged employees around the world, are dedicated and hard-working and frequently serve Canada in exceptionally challenging if not dangerous environments.

They may be single or may be accompanied abroad by partners and families. Their peripatetic careers require missing family events and milestones back home in Canada, putting their physical and mental health on the line, uprooting children to attend different schools, impacting partners’ careers, and finding care for family members with illnesses and/or disabilities.

Despite all the technological advances in communications – including the pandemic advent of “Zoom diplomacy” – there is still no substitute for direct human interaction in the conduct of our international affairs to ensure Canada’s robust presence abroad.

So, how can Canada modernize its approach to foreign service to ensure we have the proper structures and people in place to maximize our effectiveness around the world? The Committee’s report makes 29 recommendations for significant yet realistic improvement. We were guided in our deliberations through 22 hours of testimony from expert witnesses, ranging from current and former ministers – including one former prime minister – to retired practitioners, academics, younger serving officers, and members of employee-led networks within the department.

The Committee also visited the Lester B. Pearson Building where the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, is leading an ongoing internal transformation initiative. Since other countries with comparable systems of government have conducted, or are conducting, their own foreign service reviews and are facing similar challenges, the Committee visited Washington, London, Oslo, and Berlin, meeting with our counterparts as well as senior government officials to make comparisons and draw from their experiences and recommendations.

Why the foreign service matters and why Canadians should care – an overarching question throughout our study – has not been effectively communicated.

What did we find? First, successive Canadian governments, Liberal and Conservative, have failed to educate the public on the importance of Canada’s presence abroad and the need for our professionals to have full access to skills development and training to enhance their effectiveness in an increasingly complex world. Why the foreign service matters and why Canadians should care – an overarching question throughout our study – has not been effectively communicated. This also means that silos between the department’s diplomatic, trade, and international development functions should be broken to achieve better policy coherence, particularly when other departments or agencies also have overlapping mandates.

Managing structures should be redefined to become less top-heavy and a redesigned entry-level foreign service recruitment campaign should be run annually to attract the proverbial “best and brightest” from across the country, including those with professional qualifications and foreign language expertise. There should be internal pathways for foreign service officers and those in other occupational categories that would encourage specialization in specific geographic, functional, or linguistic areas. Career planning and mentoring should be widespread rather than episodic and not limited to the more senior cadres. The Clerk of the Privy Council should call for greater career movement of officials between departments with international mandates to strengthen Canada’s international policy decision-making framework. There should be a willingness, and indeed active effort, to hire mid-career professionals from within government and from the private sector.

The Foreign Service Directives, a mass of regulations providing the administrative underpinnings for conditions of service abroad, require urgent revision and modernization to reflect not just current and future realities but also the diversity of Canadian society – much has changed since the Royal Commission of 1981. Perhaps most of all, internal efficiencies should be found through eliminating red tape and curtailing excessive reporting requirements so that a coherent, forward-looking funding plan can be developed and effectively sold at both the political and public levels.

None of this will be easy. Some of the Committee’s recommendations echo those made by Ms. McDougall, so that should tell you something. There are those pundits and foreign policy thinkers who wax nostalgic over the “golden age” of Canadian diplomacy and bemoan our perceived waning influence in the world. In my view, Canada still has – and indeed requires – strong global presence and influence, despite geopolitical changes and the “polycrisis” global environment.

We need to ensure that our talented people have the tools, the skill sets, the funding, and consistent non-partisan political support to do the job – jobs that include negotiating free trade agreements, providing expert analysis, and coordinating rescue efforts from conflict zones, among many other functions. Foreign policy might not be on the ballot in our elections, but Canadians would certainly notice if we did not have a foreign service. That is why it matters.

Senator Peter Boehm is the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He is also a former ambassador and deputy minister who served as sherpa for six G7 summits.