​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:

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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.

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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

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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.
 
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For more on this issue, follow Sayle and Colbourn on Twitter @timsayle and @secolbourn.
 
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