Last week, the Conference of Defence Associations (CDA) Institute released an open letter, titled “Canada’s National Security and Defence in Peril.”
 
In it, the Institute called on: “Prime Minister Trudeau, his Cabinet and the Government to lead and act with a sense of urgency to heed the recent call of the NATO Secretary General to treat 2% of GDP as a floor rather than a ceiling for defence spending.”
 
(Disclosure: I have been teaching with the president of the Institute for the last two years and signatories to the letter include current and former colleagues, students, and friends.)
 
The letter received plenty of media coverage, and if publicity was the signatories’ intent, then they might declare their effort a success.
 
But if the goal was to effect change in government policy, it seems to me that they could have done much better.
 
I see two inter-related problems.
 
First, while the signatories call for what amounts to an ongoing $15 billion+ increase in defence spending, they don’t explain where they think that huge sum of money should come from.
 
Do they advocate a 2% increase in the GST? The cancellation of Ottawa’s promise to enable all Canadians access to $10-a-day childcare? An increase to the age of eligibility for seniors benefits? More deficit spending?
 
It’s easy to call on governments to spend. But political leadership requires hard choices, and the letter offers no direction to help decision-makers make them.
 
The lack of clear policy direction does, however, enable a diverse list of current and retired senior officials with otherwise divergent views on public policy to line up alongside one another.
 
In doing so, it suggests a degree of consensus among the signatories that is, at best, skin-deep.
 
Would the former Conservative minister of national defence Jason Kenney have signed a letter calling for a GST increase or further deficit spending? Would the former NDP premier of Nova Scotia Darrell Dexter have signed a letter advocating cutbacks to a system of universal childcare?
 
In as much as I agree with the premise of the letter - that increasing spending on defence and security is consistent with the national interest - I would have much preferred to see these experts offer up practical options that Ottawa might consider to promote and preserve national security and Canada’s international reputation.
 
First on my list would be a call to lobby NATO to consider money allocated to refugee resettlement to be part of a member-state’s financial contribution.

Canada’s support for the over 200,000 Ukrainians who have arrived here since the Russian invasion represents a significant benefit to international security. 
 
It certainly does more than the defence dollars that Greece spends on its border dispute with fellow NATO member Turkey.

Next would be some sort of consensus on where future defence and security dollars should come from.

A dedicated revenue stream seems to me to be a simple, stable, and transparent approach, but I suspect that a serious conversation would produce a variety of plausible options. 
 
Given the incredible pedigrees of the signatories to the open letter, the CDA Institute could have at the very least initiated that conversation.
 
But since it hasn’t, I suspect that the letter will be ignored in decision-making circles in Ottawa –  without political consequence.
 
***
If you read one article about Canadian defence policy this week, take a look at Amanda Coletta’s Washington Post piece on what the Discord Leaks reveal about Canada’s declining international reputation among certain allies. In it, she notes that Prime Minister Trudeau has told NATO officials privately that his government has no plans to meet NATO’s 2% of GDP target.
 
***
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I suspect that many readers are following the story that the Globe and Mail’s Robert Fife and Steven Chase broke last week about how China attempted to shape the outcome of the 2021 federal election.
 
I agree with critics who suggest that the government’s response thus far has been disappointing.
 
More concerning to me, however, is a complementary piece published a few days later by Global News’ Sam Cooper.
 
Cooper’s article begins:
 
“Three weeks before Canada’s 2019 federal election, national security officials allegedly gave an urgent, classified briefing to senior aides from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office, warning them that one of their candidates was part of a Chinese foreign interference network.”
 
Based on my understanding of how the Canadian government works, there is something here that does not quite add up.
 
For the last fifteen years, Canadian governments – Conservative and Liberal – have generally aimed for what is known as a ‘four corners’ approach to managing the politics of our liberal democratic system.
 
(To the best of my understanding, the term ‘four corners’ was coined by a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Harper.)
 
Think of the four corners like this:

​The two corners on the left side work for the prime minister. The upper left is made up of non-partisan public servants. They represent, for all intents and purposes, the prime minister’s “department.”
 
The lower left are partisan political staff, in this case from the Liberal Party. They work directly for the prime minister on political issues.
 
On the upper right are government departments and agencies. They are also made up of non-partisan public servants, like the people who work at the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) referred to by Cooper.
 
The lower right are, again, Liberal political staff, but these folks work for a minister; in Cooper’s story, Public Safety. (CSIS is one of five partner agencies within the Public Safety portfolio.)
 
The arrows in the diagram indicate who is supposed to speak to whom. Public servants who work in the Privy Council Office (PCO) are meant to speak with their fellow public servants in the various departments, as well as with political officials in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
 
In addition to speaking to the PCO, political staff in the PMO are supposed to speak to political staff in ministers’ offices.
 
Finally, in addition to speaking to the PMO, political staff in a minister’s office are supposed to speak to public servants in the same minister’s department.
 
Public servants in the PCO are not supposed to reach out to political staff in individual departments – they go through the PMO.
 
And, more important, the PMO is not supposed to be in direct contact with departmental officials – they go through the PCO for that.
 
Cooper’s report suggests a meeting between CSIS (i.e., departmental) officials and the PMO. That, in itself, is not unheard of, but still not ideal.
 
What’s more, the report suggests that this meeting was about a Liberal Party issue. And that really confuses me.
 
As public servants, CSIS officials should absolutely be tracking whether our democracy is being compromised, and should report to the government (i.e., through the minister of Public Safety and the PCO) if they have concerns.
 
Whether such interference relates to a specific party shouldn’t matter.
 
Cooper seems to be suggesting that CSIS gave the PMO a private briefing about a Liberal Party issue.
 
If that’s the case, the minister of Public Safety has a lot of explaining to do.
 
For now, however, it seems to me that it is too soon to jump to conclusions. My best guess (hope?) is that CSIS briefed the PCO, not the PMO, and that the focus of the briefing was broader than just the Liberal Party.
 
(It is worth noting that, based on a 2019 Toronto Star report, at around the same time, CSIS was also briefing all of Canada’s major political parties separately about the threat of election interference.)
 
The idea that CSIS briefed the PCO is consistent with former Public Safety Minister Bill Blair’s suggestion that the government has been open about its concerns about China’s efforts to compromise our democracy.
 
If my hunch is correct, we’re back to the still very serious issues that Fife and Chase have raised. But if CSIS really briefed the PMO – rather than the PCO, and/or all of Canada’s major political parties – then the problem could be much bigger.
 
Hopefully, we’ll learn more in the coming days.
 
***
When I have questions about how CSIS works, I ask Carleton University’s Stephanie Carvin.
 
***
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Canada’s former finance minister, Bill Morneau (with help from writer John Lawrence Reynolds), released a new book this month: Where To from Here: A Path to Canadian Prosperity.
 
If you are looking for fulsome – albeit primarily critical – reviews, you can find them here, here, here, and here, along with an interview with Morneau here.
 
Like most of the reviewers, it is hard for me not to find the book disingenuous.
 
Morneau claims to be focused on the need for Canadians, through Ottawa, to make improving productivity their government’s primary objective.
 
It’s a great idea, and he offers – in places – convincing evidence in support of its legitimacy.
 
The problem is that he spends too much of the book slagging his former Cabinet colleagues, and particularly his prime minister, as unserious.
 
It is hard to believe that Morneau could have thought that coverage of his book would focus on anything but the gossipy criticism.
 
Had he really wanted to make a case for a growth-focused agenda – something that we desperately need to hear – he should have looked forward, not backward, and avoided the temptation to settle scores with a prime minister’s office that, admittedly, railroaded him out of politics in a manner that he did not deserve.
 
I am also disappointed with Morneau’s policy solution: a council of advisors modeled on Australia’s Productivity Commission.
 
Canadian Liberal governments have demonstrated repeatedly that they will ignore recommendations from such commissions that don’t please them, while Conservatives typically close such groups down under the guise of shrinking the size of the bureaucracy.
 
Why Morneau thinks his commission would have greater success is unclear.
 
I would have much preferred a simpler recommendation, at least for the current government: stop spending unexpected financial windfalls.
 
The Liberals’ economic rationale for the last eight years has been something along the lines of this: we need to invest in the future, even if we have to go into debt doing so, because the long-term gains from our investments will easily exceed the short-term borrowing costs.
 
As Morneau himself concedes, it is a reasonable argument, at least when the investments aim to promote economic growth and improve productivity.
 
But you’re supposed to use the spoils of your success to pay back the loan. And that’s where the Trudeau government, just like the Dalton McGuinty government from which many of its political staff are drawn, has consistently fallen short. When a government is running deficits, found money should be used to restock the shelves.
 
I am also struggling with two particular criticisms that Morneau levels at Trudeau: first, that by declaring all Cabinet ministers equal in late 2015, he prevented his government from setting clear priorities; second, that the lengthy delay in naming a Cabinet after the 2019 election was a “a huge dereliction of the managerial process.”
 
It seems to me that both actions were all but inevitable given the prime minister’s commitment to a gender-balanced Cabinet.
 
When the Liberals announced their first Cabinet in 2015, five of the fifteen women included were named ministers of state.
 
Although technically full members of the government, ministers of state are paid about $20,000 less than their peers responsible for specific departments.
 
Once the Liberals were called out for the discrepancy, the prime minister swiftly declared all ministers equal and passed the necessary legislation to equalize the pay.

So if you want to criticize anyone here, focus on the transition team for the initial oversight.
 
In 2019, the Liberals had hoped to make star candidate Pascale St-Onge a minister, but the results in her riding were so tight that it took nearly a month for the recount to confirm her victory.
 
In that context, again given the commitment to a gender-balanced Cabinet, it seems to me that the Prime Minister’s Office had no good options:
 
They could have dropped St-Onge, lest she lose the recount.
 
They could have announced a Cabinet that was not gender-balanced, and saved her a spot.
 
They could have appointed a gender-balanced Cabinet, and then added St-Onge and another man to two new portfolios after her win was confirmed (which would have been brutally awkward).
 
Or they could have simply waited, which they did.
 
Morneau complains that the PMO’s silence during this period was unforgivable, but if an amateur like me can figure out what was likely going on, surely a senior Cabinet minister with four years of political experience should have been able to do the same.
 
In sum, Bill Morneau’s ideas about the future of Canada are good ones, but we need someone to deliver them who has fewer grudges to settle and greater political acuity.
 
*** 
Although I don’t agree with some of his analysis, Ian Brodie’s post-politics book/memoir, At the Centre of Government: The Prime Minister and the Limits on Political Power, does a much better job of staying analytical.
 
***
 
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After a series of fits and starts, Canada finally released its Indo-Pacific Strategy last week.
 
One of the best historians of Canada-Asia relations, David Webster, captured the general response to it well:
 
“Canada’s new Indo-Pacific strategy… marks a welcome return of common sense in place of the illusions that have dominated Canada’s approach to Asia for the past quarter-century.
 
At the same time, there are big gaps that show Canadian policymakers still have a lot of thinking to do.”
 
Certainly, some critics are more negative, others are more positive, and still more are waiting for further details and complementary policies, but when the eminently reasonable Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong’s initial response to the strategy is merely to suggest that he needs more time to digest it, it seems clear to me that the document is unlikely to result in any serious grief for the government at home.
 
Personally, I was struck by how explicitly the strategy was framed in terms of national interests.
 
“Interests” are mentioned 17 times across the document; “values” appear just 8 times. There is no touting of Canada’s allegedly “feminist” foreign policy. Instead, appropriate references are made to our more genuinely feminist international assistance policy.
 
In sum, this is a more serious document than some might have anticipated, significantly less focused on branding and marketing than has been typical of this government.
 
I suspect that the reason why is straightforward: the primary goal of the release of Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy was to satisfy a long-standing American concern that Ottawa was not taking the challenge that China poses to a rules-based international order sufficiently seriously.
 
Indeed, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Jolie admitted as much at an event hosted by the Asia Pacific Foundation in October.
 
To quote her directly: “Canada was not always seen as a reliable partner, so that's why we decided to do this Indo-Pacific strategy.”
 
Given the Biden administration’s outspoken preference to work multilaterally, the Trudeau government’s hesitancy to declare its alignment with Washington’s global priorities (initially  because of the detention of the Two Michaels) became all the more problematic.
 
Recall that China was the only country that US Ambassador to Canada David Cohen referred to specifically during his Senate confirmation hearing back in September 2021.
 
Once he arrived in Canada, Cohen told The Globe and Mail that Washington was “looking to Canada to help confront Beijing’s growing military, political and economic ambitions.”
 
“I think for both Canada and the United States, and you could argue for every democracy in the world, China is our greatest threat,” he said.
 
In that context, the strategy’s otherwise unusual promise to “deploy Canada’s first diplomatic position in Hawaii to lead engagement with local U.S. and international partners,” and the pledge to “hold the inaugural Canada–United States Strategic Dialogue on the Indo-Pacific in 2023” make a lot of sense.
 
And the ambassador’s official response, “Today, we welcome Canada’s announcement of its Indo-Pacific Strategy and look forward to continued engagement with Canada, one of the United States’s most important friends and allies, to advance our countries’ shared priorities in the Indo-Pacific region,” must have come as a great relief.
 
All of this is not meant to detract from the work of the staff at Global Affairs Canada, and Canadian Indo-Pacific experts writ large.
 
But it does mean that, inasmuch as Ottawa has promised to shift the focus of its diplomatic, defence, and commercial efforts westward, at its core, the foreign relationship that truly matters to Canadian security and prosperity remains to the south.
 
***
For a clear sense of America’s global priorities, take a look at the speech that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gave upon the release of the latest US National Security Strategy.
 
*** 
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Although the majority of my university professor colleagues have lived a hybrid lifestyle for their entire professional lives – on campus for classes and meetings, working at home (or in the field) otherwise – before the pandemic, I went into the office every day.
 
I liked to have a firm division between work and family, and the public transit commute – two subways and two buses – served as a helpful transition for me from “Dad” to “Dr. Chapnick” and back. (Note: the “Dr.” title is a military thing. I have always been Professor Chapnick in civilian institutions.)
 
By 2019, thanks to the combination of a dramatic increase in the size of Toronto’s population and insufficient investment in our public transit system, my commute had become significantly less comfortable – and consequently less productive – but I was still committed to working from the office.
 
The pandemic began to change my perspective. I did not anticipate the overwhelming psychological and physical benefits of replacing the 100+ daily minutes on the TTC with more peaceful time at home.
 
I hadn’t realized how frustrated I had become by the endless subway delays and the overcrowded buses, especially on days when I had to get home in time to drive one of my kids to an after-school activity.
 
In anticipation of a return to full-time, on-site learning during the current academic year, I looked forward to the more human relationships that I’d be able to build with this year’s student cohort, but I wasn’t sure about where I’d be working when I wasn’t teaching.
 
Now that my in-class teaching for the term is coming to an end, it’s time to decide.
 
My tentative plan is to work from the College around four days per week. I’ll commute by public transit three of those days, and drive the fourth.
 
Driving, which I rarely did pre-pandemic, cuts the commute in half, and will help when I have to be home at a specific time.
 
At one level, this compromise is hardly ideal. It’s easier to do longer-form writing from a single location. And that public transit experience is going to get even less comfortable as more people return to work.
 
But there are three compelling reasons for me to continue to commute.
 
The first is – paradoxically – because I am an introvert. More specifically, having my own office is really important to me.
 
The shift to a hybrid work environment is already prompting a re-imagination of how we use our work space, and I suspect that we could eventually have to ask folks who only come into the College a couple of days a week to share offices.
 
The second reason is, paradoxically again, work-life balance.
 
It’s much harder for me to draw a firm line between work and family when I don’t leave the house.
 
Assuming that I’m able to do about 60 minutes of reading over my 100+ minutes of commuting time, staying home during the pandemic should have opened up 40-45 extra minutes to work per day. I typically worked an extra 90.
 
That was fine at first, when the pivot to remote teaching required everyone to bear down, but it was not sustainable.
 
The third reason is that, as incoming department head, I feel a responsibility to be physically available to my junior colleagues.
 
I suspect that the real losers among those of us privileged enough to have had flexible jobs during the pandemic were the new employees.
 
As a close lawyer friend first pointed out to me, its the least experienced among us who benefit the most from the unplanned meetings in the hall, by the printer, or at the water fountain.
 
They can ask questions that they might not feel comfortable putting in an email, or might not feel important enough to justify a Teams call.
 
Does that mean that I think everyone should return to work as often as I will? 

No.
 
If this were five or six years ago, my kids were younger, my commute was longer, or I was not about to begin a term as department head, I would almost certainly try to stay home more.
 
So I do not begrudge those who plan to decrease their time in the office.
 
But I do hope that new scholars – at the Canadian Forces College and elsewhere –  come into work often enough to learn some of the unwritten rules of academic life, and that readers who are in more senior positions consider doing the same to support their junior peers.
 
***
Kathryn May has done some great reporting on the future of hybrid work in the Canadian public service which you can fine here and here. If you’d like to read something longer, try Jeffrey Roy’s January 2022 study.
 
***
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​On October 20, 2022, I testified before the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade about "the Canadian Foreign Service and elements of the foreign policy machinery within Global Affairs Canada." Here's what I said:

***
​
I thank the committee for its invitation to testify.

I have never worked at Global Affairs Canada, so I plan to focus my comments where I do have some experience: thinking about, and writing about, the history of Canadian foreign policy.

The main message I hope that you take away from my comments is as follows:

Inasmuch as this committee can and should identify changes that might be made to (1) improve the culture at Global Affairs Canada, (2) to improve the experience of Canadian representatives abroad, and (3) to improve the ability of the Canadian foreign service to advance the national interest, I suspect that there will be serious limitations to the impact of your practical recommendations.

The challenge, as I see it, is more fundamental: too many of Canada’s political leaders no longer revere diplomacy, in its traditional form, as critical to the promotion and defence of Canada’s interests on the world stage. 

It follows that the most important thing this committee can do is articulate, profoundly, a unifying vision of the role of diplomacy in Canadian foreign policy.

To explain how I have arrived at this conclusion, my comments will proceed as follows:

I’ll begin by explaining how the diplomatic process is supposed to work by providing an anecdote about the history of Canadian trade policy.

I’ll then outline how the lack of national consensus on the role of diplomacy in Canada’s foreign policy toolkit undermines the government’s approach to managing its diplomatic operation, which in turn undermines Global Affairs Canada as a national institution.

1. How It’s Supposed to Work: A Very Brief History of Canadian Trade Policy

In 1932, the Canadian government hosted an Imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa. Initially, the Conservative government of RB Bennett saw Canadian diplomats and trade negotiators as an impediment to his, and Canada’s, success.

In 1930, Bennett even said to the deputy minister of foreign affairs: “I’m not going to have you monkeying with this business. It is for the Prime Minister’s office and not for External Affairs to run these conferences.”

But the PMO and friendly industrial lobbyists proved to be in well over their heads, and Bennett ultimately had no choice but to empower his expert officials to rescue him from utter humiliation.

The experience caused the prime minister to conclude that trade policy was too complicated to be left to politicians, and too important to be left to industry. The public service, with its technical expertise and its commitment to loyally implementing the government’s agenda, was critical to long term policy success.

Ever since, Canada’s trade policy officials have functioned as among the world’s best.

***

Canada’s diplomats were similarly respected during much of the Cold War, but not so today.

     2.  The Lack of National Consensus on the Role of Diplomacy, and by extension diplomats

Contemporary diplomacy has become intertwined with the promotion of the government of the day’s party brand.

Diplomats have less freedom to use their expertise; instead, they are instructed to conform to pan-governmental, partisan norms.

In this context, one can understand why so many career diplomats have been replaced by partisan appointees.

Similarly, as diplomacy has become yet another a tool of political marketing controlled by the proverbial Centre, there has been less need for stability in the position of foreign minister; significant foreign policy decisions are made by the Prime Minister’s Office anyway.

     3.  Government-level Outcomes

This political environment explains how some of the very real problems identified by previous witnesses have come to be.

None of Canada’s 11 foreign ministers (2 acting) who have served in the position over the last 15 years have had either the power or the time in the portfolio necessary to provide Canada, and its diplomats, with real leadership.

As a result, successive governments have neglected to recognize and respond to two critical adminstrative failures that have decimated departmental morale at Global Affairs Canada:

1. excessive partisan diplomatic appointments; and
2. the appointment of a series of deputy ministers who have lacked the overseas experience necessary to lead a unique cohort of officials whose intrinsic motivation to serve bears little resemblance to that of the typical Canadian public servant.

     4.  Department-level Outcomes

As others have already testified, these failures have informed a departmental culture that is increasingly risk averse and an internal promotions structure that fails to reward diplomatic expertise, whether that be linguistic ability, cultural sensitivity, or merely the wisdom that comes from the combination of international experience, longevity, and specialization.

     5.  A Way Ahead 

Where do we go from here?

I applaud this committee’s commitment to documenting the current state of affairs.

But I also encourage you to seek consensus around the role of diplomacy in advancing Canada’s national interests.

Without it, I fear that real, sustainable change at Global Affairs Canada will remain out of reach.
 
Adam Chapnick
Canadian Forces College / Royal Military College of Canada
Ottawa, 20 October 2022

***
You can find a recording of the proceedings here.

Last week, Conservative MP Pat Kelly, chair of the House of Commons Information, Ethics, and Privacy Committee, pledged to re-examine Canada’s disgraceful access to information system.
 
At one level, I’m ambivalent about his announcement. A previous iteration of the committee reviewed the Access to Information Act back in 2016 and offered 32 recommendations, most of which have since been ignored.
 
As Kelly himself has said, “You’re certainly not going to be able to flip a switch and instantly go from a culture of secrecy to a true coalition of openness by default.”
 
Nonetheless, it seems to me that this review does offer an opportunity for real change.
 
From where I sit, there are two relatively distinct elements to Canada’s access to information regime: one focuses on the release of historical records; the other is concerned with the openness of contemporary ones.
 
While the latter is mired in politics, the former is ripe for reform.

Regrettably, however, advocates too often treat the two like a package, and thereby prevent the easier case from being communicated effectively.
 
As a historian of Canadian foreign policy who has spent countless hours in Canadian, American, and British Archives, I have experienced first-hand the absurd lengths that Ottawa goes to protect records that our allies have often already declassified.
 
In the United Kingdom, most government documents are transferred to the National Archives after 30 years and all-but-automatically opened to the public immediately thereafter. For many of those records, the wait period is now being reduced to 20 years.
 
Australia, Ireland, Israel, and Germany operate under similar rules.
 
In Canada, on the other hand, all files remain closed indefinitely.
 
Researchers are therefore forced to identify and itemize each one that interests them (for me, this has meant hundreds of records); they must formally request that each one be opened individually; and someone from Library and Archives Canada must then review the requested material – even if it’s from over 70 years ago!
 
In Canada we therefore spend hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars every year paying people to examine ancient records that other countries have already released.
 
The University of Toronto historian, Tim Sayle, and Duke University’s Susie Colbourn have explained the absurdity of this approach as well as anyone here and here.
 
And I have a hard time believing that any serious member of Parliament who has heard their pleas could disagree.
 
Put differently, there’s a big difference between a document outlining Canada’s strategy in its bid for a seat on the UN Security Council in 1946 and one summarizing government deliberations about freeing the Two Michaels last year.
 
There is no reason to treat access to them the same way.
 
Kelly’s committee is well-positioned to effect real change by making this simple and obvious distinction.
 
Surely MPs could work together to change the rules on releasing documents that were published before many of them were born.
 
And if they do so, they will conveniently free up staff resources to start working through the backlog of access requests on more current documentation.
 
In sum, let’s hope that Kelly’s committee reaches for the low-hanging fruit. Canada’s needs its own 30-year rule. Now is the time to make it happen.
 
***
For more on this issue, follow Sayle and Colbourn on Twitter @timsayle and @secolbourn.
 
***
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​Kelly McParland wrote an article for the National Post last week that reiterated a common objection to significant Canadian action to combat climate change:
 
“Many Canadians, not all of them cranks, have wondered what practical purpose there is in twisting the country’s industry into an unproductive pretzel in search of slightly lower carbon output when we’re responsible for just 1.5 per cent of global output.”
 
The implication, it seems to me, is that when you only account for 1.5% of something, what you do, or don’t do, doesn’t matter very much.
 
It’s an appealing argument on its surface, which must be why it gets repeated so often.
 
But its advocates rarely seem to recognize its strategic implications.
 
Later in the same article, McParland is highly critical of Ottawa for failing “to pay its fair share” when it comes to NATO’s defence of the Arctic.
 
In this context, it is worth noting that Canada only accounts for slightly more than 2% of NATO members’ combined military spending.
 
If there is no need for Ottawa to worry about greenhouse gas emissions because of this country’s relatively meagre contribution to environmental degradation, surely there’s no need to be overly critical of successive Canadian governments’ failure to invest sufficiently in North Atlantic security given Canada’s relatively meagre contribution to NATO’s military spending.
 
If you couldn't detect the sarcasm in that last sentence, let me be clear that I couldn’t disagree more with such thinking - as it relates to both cases.
 
Canada is not so powerful as to be capable of solving international problems on its own, but it does benefit significantly from the global governance system and structures that Ottawa helped our American and British allies establish after the Second World War.
 
It follows that we have every interest in contributing to collective, liberal-democratic solutions to transnational challenges.
 
By McParland’s logic, since China is the world’s largest carbon emitter, Beijing should lead, if not dominate, the international response to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
 
Such an approach would almost certainly compromise Canadian interests. The Chinese demonstrate regularly they cannot be trusted as global stewards.
 
By doing Canada’s “fair share” to support a UN-led environmental solution, Ottawa adds its voice to those states that prefer liberal-democratic responses to global governance challenges. It also builds political capital that it can use to press others to act similarly.
 
Diplomats sometime call this negotiating with “clean hands.” No matter the issue, one must always do one’s bit before demanding that others behave similarly.
 
McParland seems to understand and subscribe to this mantra when it comes to defence and security.
 
The environmental case is no different.
 
***
 
On the NATO and the Arctic, I’m always interested to see what the University of Manitoba’s Andrea Charron has to say. I also pay attention to the writings of St. Francis Xavier historian Adam Lajeunesse.
 
***
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The National Post published an article last week, “Global Affairs Canada spends $41K on ‘fancy furniture’ for overseas diplomatic offices,” that left me fuming.
 
The piece reveals, via a Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation (CTF) access-to-information request, that between March and September 2020, Global Affairs Canada spent over $41,000 on “custom furniture designed by and purchased from Ottawa-based Christopher Solar Designs” for use in the office of the Canadian High Commissioner in New Zealand, the official residence at Canada’s embassy in Tokyo, the High Commission in Nairobi, and the Canadian embassy in Brazil.
 
I understand that some readers might not consider diplomacy particularly important, and might not believe that ambassadors and high commissioners benefit from being able to make a good impression when they host world leaders.
 
So let’s set aside the argument that diplomacy costs money, and that first impressions matter.
 
And let’s even set aside the fact that these purchases were made during a country-wide lock-down, and therefore likely helped keep a Canadian company in business (and in less need of direct government assistance).
 
What really irks me is a quotation in the article from the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation, Franco Terrazzano, and the reporter’s acceptance of it at face value.
 
Terrazzano says: “They could have gone to a bunch of different stores where their offices are located and spent significantly less money,” to which the reporter adds: “The CTF points out that a visit to a Tokyo IKEA would have saved the Canadian government thousands of dollars.”
 
The problem here is that both suggestions are bogus. A federal official cannot just walk into a store, purchase furniture costing thousands of dollars, and ship it to an embassy overseas (or walk into a Tokyo IKEA and do the same thing).
 
There is a mountain of paperwork that has to take place first to ensure that there are no conflicts of interest at play (what if the minister’s sister owns the store, for example?)
 
My best guess is that a competitive bidding process resulted in Christopher Solar Designs winning a contract to supply certain embassies with office furniture.
 
But I shouldn’t have to guess, because the reporter should have told us so, or otherwise, in the article.
 
If there was a contract, it would come with inflated costs for the seller because of the hours and hours of paperwork that Christopher Solar Designs would have completed to make its successful bid.
 
(Government procurement is so complicated that bidders often hire companies to help them with their proposals.)
 
We compel businesses to go through this cumbersome, bureaucratic process because too many Canadians – cheered on by groups like the CTF – think that Ottawa is inherently corrupt, and the only way to prove them wrong is to make sure that every government purchase comes with an overwhelming paper trail.
 
In Ottawa, you therefore have a choice:
 
(a) you can be more efficient (by enabling officials to buy furniture from the Tokyo IKEA on their personal credit cards and deal with groups like the CTF accusing you of cronyism and corruption); or
 
(b) you can be more accountable (by buying furniture from pre-approved suppliers that is marked up to account for the contracting costs of a transparent procurement process).
 
The CTF’s call for “less waste and accountable government” in the current political environment is therefore all but impossible.
 
One necessarily comes at the expense of the other.
 
In sum, I’m all for holding government to account – and it really isn’t hard to find things about the Trudeau Liberals to criticize – but this article does nothing of the sort.
 
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For more on the Government of Canada’s procurement policies see here, but good luck understanding it all…
 
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Late last week, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development announced plans to investigate the Trudeau government’s decision to allow Siemens Energy (in Montreal) to import, service, and return six Russian turbines in circumvention of Canada’s own sanctions against Moscow.
 
Those turbines enable the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to ship Russian natural gas to Germany.

Until now, the first of the six turbines has been held up in Quebec – as per the sanctions regime instituted in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and Moscow was using Ottawa’s refusal to return it as an excuse to slow down gas shipments to Berlin.
 
Presumably, now that the turbine will be returned, Germany’s fear of an energy crisis this winter will subside.
 
Given the degree of controversy associated with Ottawa’s decision – President Zelensky condemned the move; Ukraine summoned a senior Canadian diplomat to protest; the Ukrainian Canadian Congress is suing in federal court to try to revoke the waiver that Siemens has been granted  – the committee has every right to investigate.
 
But if members don’t simply use the opportunity to score political points, they should find that Ottawa's actions make sense given Canada’s limited ability to support Ukraine on its own.
 
It seems to me that critics who charge that the sanctions exemption “calls into question Canada’s very commitment to assisting Ukraine during an existential period in its history,” or that “By compromising our own sanctions policy, we may also be compromising our credibility,” are viewing the move through Kyiv’s eyes, not Canada’s.
 
Here's what I see when I consider the situation from the point of view of Canadian national interests:
 
Canada must object vehemently to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, its abhorrent human rights violations, and its transparently self-serving disinformation campaign.
 
The fall of Ukraine would undermine the liberal-democratic, rules-based international order under which Canadians have prospered since the end of the Second World War.
 
But our government cannot defend Ukraine (or help Ukraine defend itself) alone, and there is little more that our NATO partners and Western allies can do without the leadership of the United States.
 
President Biden has been clear that America’s ongoing commitment to the defence of Ukraine is contingent on European support and cooperation.
 
If the Europeans aren’t willing to defend their own territory, Biden is not confident that he’ll be able to convince the American public to continue to do it for them.  

The president's position makes Ottawa's explanation for its decision revealing:
 
Both Prime Minister Trudeau and Deputy PM Freeland have indicated that “Germany’s ability to sustain its support [for Ukraine] could be at risk” if the sanctions aren’t waived.
 
That’s probably why the United States made a point of publicly supporting the Canadian decision almost immediately after it reached the press.
 
So Ottawa’s move seems to be the best one it could make in this lousy situation – if you want to blame anyone, blame Russia; then, blame Germany.
 
Inasmuch as I therefore don’t see how the Commons committee could find that Ottawa erred in granting Siemens an exemption, I do see a place for the hearings to make a difference.
 
Initial reports indicated that only one turbine was implicated in this controversy. The deal announced involves six.
 
How and why that number changed is not clear, and it should be. If Ottawa misled Canadians when this issue first came up, it must be held to account.
 
I’ll be tracking the committee’s hearings to see whether members agree.
 
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On Canada and Ukraine, I have found the scholarship of Bohdan Kordan, and especially his two books (find them here and here), particularly helpful.
 
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