Thank you, Mr. Chair.
China's relations with the west, particularly China's strategies of hybrid warfare and the Chinese Communist Party's influence operations in western nations, are my area of expertise.
I was educated in China, subsequently worked with the Communications Security Establishment and had two diplomatic postings to Canada's embassy in Beijing earlier on in my career.
What Canada is facing today is an increasingly corrosive challenge from China's Communist Party-state-military-civilian-market People's Republic of China regime complex. China's strategic intent in Canada is severely at odds with our interests and values.
However, Global Affairs Canada's response to China's comprehensive and coordinated malign challenge to our democratic institutions has been, to be frank about it, pathetically weak and highly ineffective.
Indeed, the Senate's “Rising to the Challenge: Empowering Canada's foreign service” report, which just came out, says that foreign language capacity at Global Affairs Canada has diminished in recent decades, with an insufficient number of staff who can speak Mandarin, Russian and Arabic.
If you then look at the Global Affairs June 2023 “Future of Diplomacy: Transforming Global Affairs Canada” discussion paper, it says, along similar lines:
foreign service officers with in-depth expertise in specific geographies and issue areas...have increasingly felt disadvantaged over time, including in promotional processes, where emphasis has been placed on management competencies, rather than geographic, linguistic or issue-area expertise.
In response, the report says:
The department is coordinating an investment of $35 million over 5 years to build China-focused analytical capacity across its global mission network.
In my view, this is much too little, much too late. Anyway, this is belied by the report in the National Post last week on how last August, as a cost-cutting measure, Global Affairs was suspending all foreign-language programs offered at missions until March 31, 2024.
Furthermore, GAC's adopting of a country-agnostic diplomatic approach to China does not take into account that our Canadian institutions are not compatible and have no genuine counterparts with those of China's Leninist system.
What I mean to say is that the most important role of the Chinese ambassador in Ottawa is to be head of the embassy's Chinese Communist Party committee. The ambassador oversees a massive network outside of legitimate embassy and consulate premises, including the police stations and proxy organizations that enable interference in our elections and other democratic processes and which direct Chinese businesses in Canada to engage in a wide range of grey-zone and espionage activities to transfer sensitive technologies to the Beijing regime.
The resultant paucity of in-depth China-specific expertise within Global Affairs Canada means that our diplomats are readily flim-flammed by sophisticated Chinese regime interlocutors and Canadian special interests that are beholden to the Chinese regime interests.
Another issue I feel I should raise is the tendency of foreign service officers retiring from the public service to undertake roles effectively enabling the PRC agenda in Canada. What I mean is that they go into lucrative positions in agencies such as the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada or the Canada China Business Council or law firms and other enterprises with close relationships with business networks of the Chinese regime.
Such post-government sinecures are not available to civil servants who, while in positions of public trust, were identified by the Chinese Embassy as having been proactive in seeking to defend Canada's security against the malign activities of the Chinese regime. We are more and more aware that the Chinese authorities maintain a lot of lists and files on all of us, facilitated by AI. This reality has a dampening effect on the rigour with which GAC seeks to defend Canada's security and sovereignty against China's very serious challenge to us.
We talk a lot about China, but we do little. The upshot is that, sadly, thanks to our Canadian naivety, greed and passivity, time and time again, China comes up on top to the damage of Canadian national interests of security and sovereignty.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.