Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of this committee. As my friend Cy Taylor has said, it is a pleasure and a privilege for us to be here.
In my discussion in preparation for today, it was suggested that I might spend a little time standing back and just doing a bit of an overall sketch of in what context the world is changing and what the implications are for Canada's foreign policy. I'd like to say that the world is going through a transformation that we haven't experienced in 100 years in terms of the tectonic plates of major issues that will have a huge impact in terms of global economic and political power.
I want to articulate a few points in that regard. If we were sitting here in 1950--and I know probably none of us were--and looked at the top 12 countries in terms of demographic size, six of those countries would have been in what we call the western democracies, the G8 countries of the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and France. Only the other six were in the emerging economies or the then-third world, as we called it, of India, China, Indonesia, the Soviet Union, East Pakistan, and the like.
If you went, then, to the year 2000, which is of course in our time of adult memory, and looked again at the top 12 countries, you would find only three of those original six western democracies still on that list. They would have been the United States, Japan...and twelfth, Germany. And the introduction of large populations on the list from countries that were not even on the list in 1950--Nigeria, Mexico, Bangladesh--would have emerged.
If you look ahead to the year 2050, when many of you will still be in Parliament, and ask yourself about that top 12 list, only the United States would still be on that list. The other 11 countries would be the developing countries of the 1950s, the emerging economies of today, and they would include India and China, as one and two; the United States, three; Pakistan; Indonesia; Nigeria; Bangladesh; Brazil; Congo; Ethiopia; Mexico; and the Philippines. I mention this, not that I'm a determinist in demography equals political or economic power, but that is a huge shift in where the population pressure is, the need for economic growth, and what globalization will shift in terms of this tectonic plate of demography as a component of economics.
Let's just look for a minute at the raw economic transformation. Within the next decade China and the United States will have an equal share of global GDP. By 2025 China will represent about a quarter of the global GDP and the United States about 18%. By 2045 the so-called BRIC countries--Brazil, Russia, India and China--will have a collective GDP that is greater than the G7. Economic power is shifting, and the global crisis that we're facing today may nudge that one year or two years one way or the other, depending upon how countries respond, but the reality is that there is a massive change in global demographic and economic power.
Obviously that again isn't just the sole determinant of influence, but it does tell you, and begs the question, what is Canada's place in this.
MIlitary power, of course, remains overwhelmingly that of the United States and collectively that of NATO, but we are seeing that the threats to global security are less from nation-states than from non-state actors, and the threat of failed states and fragile states is much stronger than we had perhaps recognized when the wall came down in 1989.
What are the implications for Canada? I believe that Canada's foreign policy requires a global, realist, and internationalist approach. Why global? We cannot as a country, in my view, retreat to a regional approach to our foreign policy influence. The region, of course, would be that of North America and perhaps even the Americas writ large, and that's an important dimension of our foreign policy—and I want to come back to the U.S.—but our influence even in Washington is assisted by being globally present.
By the way, our business sector is globally present too. It is important for this committee to recognize that in countries like Yemen, for example, Canadian businesses contribute over 20% of the GDP in terms of economic activity. In a country like Ecuador, there is a very large Canadian investment. Mongolia is another, where the Canadian mining sector has been very active.
My point is that we must remain globally engaged and globally present as a country and we must be internationalist; that is to say, we have a unique heritage of being members of many organizations globally. That has given us, I think, a privileged place that doesn't come as it does for the Europeans--from a European Union in which they are able to collectivize some of their foreign policy assets.
It is even more incumbent on us, not having an EU within which to exercise foreign policy influence, to be doubly engaged in a broader internationalist agenda, whether it be through NATO or OAS or through active engagement in Africa and in Asia itself through APEC and other bilateral mechanisms.
My final point before I get to questions is that I'm afraid our infrastructure of foreign policy has atrophied and remains inadequate to the ambitions I would see in a world that I've painted for you, in terms of where power, economic and political, is shifting to. The infrastructure, the mechanism of engaging the foreign policy, is just as important as the policy itself. If you're not present, you don't understand the country. We have less of our foreign service abroad than the OECD average, certainly, and we're actually at the chintzy end of the OECD. We spend less on third-language training than New Zealand. We have 80% of our missions based on three Canadians or less.
My point here isn't to speak for my old department but to remind this committee that just as 10 years ago I would have urged the defence committee to reinvest in Canada's defence capacity, I'm asking this committee to reinvest in Canada's foreign policy and development capacity through our representation abroad. I'm asking this committee to reinvest not in the old places but in the new places, in the countries of the future, and not just in the capitals, and to have the language skills and the understanding necessary to bring Canada's interests both to government and to Canadian players, be they business or civil society. So when you take a look at foreign policy issues, I would ask that you ask yourselves: are we best equipped and best organized to deal with these?
Finally, one of the most important developments of the last 10 years is what has become a euphemism to talk about, and that is globalization, but truly, the domestic agenda of Canada's public policy has become international. Whether you're talking about health issues, environment issues, or security issues, almost any department's agenda has a dimension that is at least North American, if not global. We haven't adequately put in place the mechanisms to assure coherence and cohesion across the collective interests of the Government of Canada. I believe that it is urgent and necessary for us to maximize our influence globally.
Thank you.