First, I think the real value of connections is that you establish them where senior Canadian officials have ongoing connections with other senior officials, who can be presidents.
Now, with respect to the budget, my comment had been that it is rather ad hoc. So in my organization I have about 1.5 people committed to international work. The rest is a function of an event and funding for that particular event, and in our case, that would involve the travel. We had a symposium in China. I would have to find the money for the travel, usually within my own budgets.
More elaborate work, like South Africa, was funded through IDRC. Ukraine is funded through CIDA. Mongolia would be a modest effort, unless it were turned into something more collaborative, involving volunteers and finding some method of garnering more funding, either from CIDA or some other organization.