Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the Foreign Affairs and International Development Committee for this invitation to be with you today.
The issues you are addressing are fundamental. In the absence of a comprehensive review of our foreign policy, it is important to examine Canada's current capabilities to deal with this changing world.
It is therefore an honour and a privilege to share my observations with you, which are based on the experience I have gained during my long career with GAC, including my experience with Canada's last campaign for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Distinguished members of the committee, to say that the world has changed has become a cliché. Unfortunately for Canada, it hasn't done so in a way favourable to our interests. However, what we're facing today is within our control, because it's about our inability, until now, to adapt to this changing global chessboard.
Many factors are responsible for this observation. First and foremost, the bureaucratization of Global Affairs Canada has undermined its effectiveness. Indeed, the essential qualities of diplomacy such as sound analysis, intelligence gathering, international networks, negotiating skills and time spent abroad have been replaced by internal management prowess. Over the past 20 years, civil servants who have risen to high-level positions have done so predominantly on the basis of their administrative skills rather than their foreign policy experience.
Equally damaging, the administrative burdens on our missions abroad mean that diplomats spend more time in embassies dealing with human resources and other internal initiatives than with diplomacy.
A lack of coordination between departments on global issues has also been unfavourable. The imbalance between interdepartmental priorities sometimes directly undermines our interests. For example, a year before the vote for the UN Security Council, when Canada was a candidate, the Immigration Department implemented onerous biometric requirements for people from dozens of countries despite advice from Global Affairs Canada. It didn't improve our chances.
So, how can we ensure today that Canada has the tools to navigate the current geopolitical context?
First, we need a foreign policy more closely tied to our core interests and less focused on virtue-signalling. To achieve this, we need to set clear, and fewer, priorities. Canada belongs to far more international organizations than many countries of similar size. We are too dispersed. A systematic review of our commitments and a rationalization of our field of activity are called for.
Secondly, we need to put foreign experience back at the heart of the skills required for senior GAC officials and heads of mission. Diplomacy is an extremely complex profession. Knowledge and skills are acquired over time, starting with junior positions in the field. This experience has no equivalent in the rest of the government apparatus. You neglect its importance at your peril.
I recently had the honour to contribute to a paper co-authored by Michael Manulak and Kerry Buck, entitled “Canada and the United Nations: Rethinking and Rebuilding Canada's Global Role”. It puts forward recommendations for how Canada could navigate today's more challenging context at the UN and demonstrate leadership. I'll be happy to share the full report. There are a few key recommendations relevant to today's hearing.
One would be to review our UN priorities with the aim of identifying a short list of five or six focus issues. We should ensure that we communicate to our allies what we will be focused on with a view to complementing each other's work. The European Union negotiates on behalf of its members on many issues at the UN, while countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand have to stretch themselves across an increasingly vast UN agenda.
We need to adapt our working methods.
Thank you.