Terry Glavin had an article in Maclean’s last week claiming that “Canadians are leading the push for a global [international] anti-corruption court [IACC].”
 
The piece is about a diplomatic effort to create a body that operates similarly to the International Criminal Court, but would focus on enforcing a global anti-corruption regime.
 
Put another way, if a country refused to crack down on corruption within its own physical or virtual borders, the violators could be pursued at the IACC.
 
And if enough powerful states participated, the court could have real teeth.
 
I suspect that Glavin’s claims of Canadian leadership are exaggerated.
 
Certainly, former Liberal cabinet ministers Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock have endorsed the court on behalf of the World Refugee and Migration Council, as has the former Conservative cabinet minister Peter MacKay as part of Integrity Initiatives International, but it looks to me that they have come to the idea fairly recently.
 
The initiative appears to have begun with an American judge, Mark L. Wolf, who proposed such a court in 2012 and later published the most comprehensive argument in favour of an IACC through the Brookings Institute in 2014.
 
No matter whose idea it is, it’s one that any Canadian government should be able to get behind.
 
Back in 2014, Wolf estimated that:
 
“$1 trillion is paid in bribes annually, and the cost of all forms of corruption is more than 5% of global GDP. An estimated $8.4 trillion was lost in developing regions due to illicit financial flows between 2000 and 2009, which is ten times more than those regions received in foreign aid.”
 
The arguments against the initiative are predictable, and legitimate.
 
For one, an IACC will only work with sufficient international support, and too many global leaders benefit directly from the corruption that plagues their countries.
 
Moreover, the cost of standing up a new global body would be steep, and those funds might be used more efficiently to fight corruption at its source.
 
Nonetheless, this particular cause should resonate with Canadians who prefer that Ottawa derive its foreign policy from our national interests.
 
International corruption comprises our foreign aid program and enriches our adversaries. An end to it would also strengthen the as yet still weak anti-money laundering regime that exists here at home.
 
We have the diplomatic capacity within Global Affairs Canada to contribute constructively to this cause, and with Axworthy, Rock, and MacKay visibly onside, there appears to be potential to approach the issue in a non-partisan manner.
 
To be clear, I’m not calling for the type of Canadian leadership that Glavin celebrates. That would be presumptuous, particularly given this country’s remarkably disappointing record on money laundering and tax havens to date.
 
But I do hope that Canadians with an interest in foreign policy track the IACC negotiations, and that those with influence ask our government about it regularly.
 
Combatting global corruption is a cost-effective way of promoting and defending the liberal international order that continues to serve Canada’s national interests.
 
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For a general background on money laundering in Canada, take a look at some of the work coming out of the Financial Transactions and Report Analysis Centre. The most recent Canadian legislation can be found here.
 
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As we near the end of the worst of this pandemic, we will all be hearing a lot about how Canada might “build back better.”
 
Over the last couple of weeks, for example, the University of Saskatchewan’s Loleen Berdhal and the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson each published articles about reforming the public service. (See here and here for Berdhal; and here for Ibbitson.)
 
Berdhal and Ibbitson believe that the largely successful transition to remote work by so many of the 120,000 officials located in the Ottawa region this past year means that many could probably work from elsewhere permanently.
 
Berdhal advocates spreading government offices across the provinces and territories. Ibbitson envisions more telework.
 
The two identify a similar set of benefits to decentralization:

• Potential cost savings (from selling expensive Ottawa real estate);
• Reduced critical infrastructure vulnerability (by limiting the concentration of government functions in a single geographical space);
• Decreased cynicism towards government (by bringing services physically closer to more Canadians);
• More widely-distributed private sector economic spin-offs (from the new concentration of government offices in different regions);
• Stronger regional voices in government; and
• More equitable access to government for regionally-based advocacy groups.

 
They also acknowledge some of the challenges that such a move would entail:

• Many Ottawa residents wouldn’t want to, or wouldn’t be able to, relocate;
• Those who do leave the capital would incur significant up-front moving costs; and
• Recruiting bilingual workers might be difficult in parts of the country where speaking French is less common.

 
I am intrigued by Berdhal’s argument in particular, but I am also concerned about potential second- and third-order effects.
 
Most important to me is that disbursing official Ottawa across the country will likely make it even harder for certain groups of Canadians to become senior public service executives.
 
Here’s why:
 
Presumably, for national security reasons, no matter how decentralized our government becomes, one would have to keep a number of departments in the capital, beginning with the Privy Council Office (PCO), known in other countries as the Department of the Prime Minister.
 
Officially, the PCO “helps the government in implementing its vision, goals and decisions in a timely manner.”
 
More specifically, among its many duties, the PCO lets the government know if “line departments” are working at cross-purposes. (This is part of what is known as the "challenge function.")
 
Since most of the issues that face the federal government today cannot be solved by a single department or agency, the office has become absolutely critical.
 
Consider the National Water Agency that Ottawa recently pledged to create.
 
Natural Resources Canada and the Department of Agriculture are running the consultation process to launch its development, but Indigenous Services Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans also have a stake in the outcome.
 
The International Joint Commission should be engaged, and I suspect that both the Navy and the Coast Guard could be, too.
 
The public servants who ultimately lead the agency will need to build relationships with a variety of stakeholders, and it has long been recognized in official circles that the best way to gain the necessary perspective is to spend time working in the PCO.
 
Indeed, in Canada today, it is all but impossible to reach the highest levels of the bureaucracy without at least a year or two of experience in one of Canada’s central agencies.
 
It follows that if federal departments are scattered across the country, the top public service jobs will be limited to individuals who are willing to relocate multiple times over the course of their career.
 
In this context, cultural and gender inequities are likely to prevent a number of Canadians who would otherwise make great public service leaders from acquiring the experience necessary to move up.
 
There are ways to minimize this challenge, but few really good ones.
 
So let’s build back better, but let’s do so carefully, and prudently. Otherwise, for every problem we solve, we risk creating another.
 
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On how the Canadian government works, check out the indefatigable Alex Marland and Jared Wesley’s The Public Servant’s Guide to Government in Canada. Marland’s latest book, Whipped: Party Discipline in Canada, was just shortlisted for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
 
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