Canada’s international history provides ample evidence of best, and worst, practices in the management of the state’s external affairs operation.4
In 1932, the Canadian government hosted an Imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa. Initially, the Conservative government of R. B. Bennett saw Canadian diplomats and trade negotiators as an impediment to his, and Canada’s, success. In 1930, Bennett even said to the under-secretary of state for external affairs: “I’m not going to have you monkeying with this business. It is for the Prime Minister’s office [PMO] and not for External Affairs to run these conferences.”5
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 faithfully enacting 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. Indeed, shortly before Brexit took effect, London offered a number of high-level Canadian trade negotiators, economic analysts and political officers positions on their own negotiating team in recognition of their superior abilities and more comprehensive experience.6
Since then, two of Canada’s most effective negotiators, Steve Verheul and Kristen Hillman, have been moved closer to the centre of government (Verheul as a special advisor in the Department of Finance and Hillman as Canada’s ambassador to the United States) – a clear acknowledgment of the trust that both the prime minister and the deputy prime minister have in their abilities.7
There was a time when Canada’s diplomats were similarly respected. In 1945, at the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, it was the diplomatic corps – more specifically, the trio of Lester Pearson, Norman Robertson and Hume Wrong – that convinced Ottawa to accept a great power veto as the cost of creating a credible system of global governance.
Pearson himself, then Canada’s ambassador to the United States, made the case in committee. His intervention marked the only time during the San Francisco conference that Canadian advocacy was mentioned on the front page of the New York Times.
Canada’s position was justified – without the veto, both the United States and the Soviet Union would have abandoned what became the United Nations before it had even been created – and it might not have been brought forward had the Mackenzie King government not trusted the advice and expertise of its foreign service.8
King was not the only prime minister who listened. His successor, Louis St-Laurent, was equally if not more supportive of his diplomatic officials. And while John Diefenbaker initially criticized the Department of External Affairs for being home to too many “Pearsonalities,” he ultimately found at least some of their advice useful.9 Diefenbaker’s successors, Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien all benefited greatly from the diplomatic advice they received – even when they chose not to follow all of it.
In recent years, however, there have been fewer opportunities for our officials to be so fearless. Contemporary diplomacy has become intertwined with the promotion of the government of the day’s party brand, whether that be “freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law,”10 a phrase that became all but obligatory in any foreign policy speech delivered during the Harper era, to the “feminist foreign policy” perpetually alluded to but rarely defined – save for specific references to international assistance – by the current government.11
Diplomats have less freedom to use their expertise to its fullest; instead, they are instructed to conform to pan-governmental, partisan norms.12 In this context, one can understand why so many career diplomats have been replaced by partisan appointees, who are typically less able or willing to object to such politicization.
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.
More specifically, none of Canada’s 11 foreign ministers (two acting) who have served in the position over the last 15 years13 – an average of less than 1½ years per minister – has had either the power or the time in the portfolio necessary to provide Canada, and its diplomats, with real leadership.14 Compare these short tenures to those of Pearson (more than eight years); Paul Martin Sr. (five years); Mitchell Sharp (more than six years); Joe Clark (almost seven years); or Lloyd Axworthy (almost five years).
As a result of this lack of stability at the top of the Canadian foreign policy apparatus, successive governments have neglected to recognize and respond to two critical administrative failures that have decimated departmental morale at Global Affairs Canada:
- excessive partisan diplomatic appointments; and
- the appointment of too many deputy ministers who have lacked the formal diplomatic training in operations, intelligence, policy and communications, as well as 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.
These observations are not meant to imply that there is absolutely no place for partisan diplomatic appointments. Political appointees, if chosen sparingly, and appropriately, can add value to their mission by virtue of their ability to speak directly to the prime minister (and not just the prime minister’s chief staff) at virtually any time of their choosing. They can, and do, challenge the prime minister and effect direct change in Canadian foreign policy in a manner that most career officials simply cannot.
The appointment of Yves Fortier as Canada’s permanent representative to the United Nations in 1988 is one example of how this works best. Fortier was assigned to a file that his prime minister, Mulroney, considered critical – Canada’s campaign for a seat and service on the United Nations Security Council – and he used his close relationship with his head of government to advance Canadian national interests.15
But prime ministers can only have so many international priorities upon which they plan to intervene personally, and partisan appointees come at a significant cost: most need to be trained in the language and comportment of diplomacy, not to mention bureaucratic legalities and practicalities of which they are often unaware; their appointments prevent career officials from achieving their own professional advancement; and not all of them have the managerial abilities to mentor and support their long-serving staff. Political appointees without direct access to an interested and engaged prime minister are therefore prone to serve as partisan mouthpieces; they interfere with departmental business and depress morale not only in the mission, but across the entire department.
In this context, it is difficult to fathom a situation in which it makes sense for a Canadian government to employ more than two or three political diplomatic appointees at one time. In recent years, Ottawa has regularly exceeded that number.
My view of the value of deployed, overseas experience to the office of the deputy minister of foreign affairs comes in part from over 16 years teaching intermediate- and senior-level military personnel (and a select number of senior diplomats), from whom I’ve learned so much about the pressures that deployments place on individuals and their families.
Deputies who have traditionally managed a cadre of personnel, who more often than not spend their entire public service careers in a single Canadian city, are poorly equipped to grasp the often significantly different priorities of employees who regularly deploy. It takes them time to recognize how changes to deployment plans affect spouses, partners, children’s schooling and real estate decisions. Or how cultural isolation and the physical and psychological threats that diplomats in unfriendly states face on a regular basis affect their mental health. It should come as no surprise that divorce rates among members of Global Affairs Canada are among the highest in the public service.
The empathy necessary to understand these differences can certainly be acquired – as can the realization that most diplomats who aspire to professional advancement are much less interested in becoming a deputy minister than they are in serving as a head of mission in one of their preferred countries – but that process takes time, and deputy ministers are shuffled so often that such lessons have to be regularly re-learned. In the unlikely case that a particular skill set is needed at the top of the foreign affairs bureaucracy and the individual with those skills comes from outside of the foreign policy community, Ottawa should ensure that at least two of the remainder of the Global Affairs Canada deputy minister cadre16 are career diplomats.
The lack of such diplomatic experience within the public service leadership at Global Affairs Canada in recent years goes a long way to explaining why the departmental culture has become so risk averse. It’s hard to effect positive change in the field when you don’t fully understand your environment. These same forces have undoubtedly contributed to the evolution of an internal promotions structure that too often 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.17