Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
As president of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, the organization that represents the 2,000 current service officers in Canada, I'm very pleased to be here.
As a career foreign service officer myself, I'm very happy that the committee has chosen to hear about Canada's diplomatic capacity from those of us who represent the current practitioners in the field.
I believe that my presentation is going to be a little more “nuts and bolts” than are those of some of my colleagues, but that's because that's what we hear about in our domain from the people who are currently working there.
The FS group is the only Canadian public service group whose entire membership is committed to serving both at home and abroad as one of its fundamental conditions of employment. This commitment affects not just foreign service officers themselves but also our partners, our children, our extended families, our friends, our neighbours and even our pets.
Over the past decade or so—people have already covered the turmoil that the world has gone into—the international conflict has been on a scale that we haven't seen since World War II, along with a global pandemic that we are still recovering from, economic recession and climate crisis. At the same time, Canada's career foreign service has found itself fighting for the political support, the funding, the training and the leadership that we need to really effectively represent Canada and Canadians abroad.
We were very happy to see the launch of the Senate study on the foreign service as well as Minister Joly's future of diplomacy initiative, and this study, all of which signal to us that Canadian decision-makers might be willing to give Canada's diplomatic and international engagement the attention and the practical support it deserves. This is very welcome, and it certainly has not always been the case since I joined the foreign service back in—I hate to say it—1993. Time flies when you're having fun.
We agree with most of the points that were made by the Senate committee in its final report, especially on the need for reinvestment in our diplomatic and foreign policy infrastructure. Although we understand the reality of diminishing resources, we do believe that refocusing on priorities and core business and investing in the foreign service right now are essential. We're hoping that the views of this committee will help to encourage the government to do just that—to take practical action to support the great words and analysis that we are hearing.
We also agree with the Senate committee's recommendation that the foreign service directives, in particular, which govern many of the conditions of service abroad, need to be fundamentally revamped and modernized to meet the needs of today's public servants and their families.
Many of the principles on which those directives are founded have not been re-examined since the 1981 McDougall commission report. Many of the issues identified in that report have never really been properly addressed.
The gaps are particularly large when it comes to issues related to spousal employment and support for employees and families with disabilities.
I note that Professor Roussel referred to our need to pay more attention to the U.S. in light of what might be happening there. Getting people to go to the U.S. is one of the problems that the foreign service has faced. A lot of that is related to FSDs, including provisions for health care. That's something to think about in terms of how these very practical things can affect our ability to represent Canada and Canadians abroad in a very practical way.
We also support the Senate committee's recommendations on enhancing expertise in the foreign service, but one point I would like to make—as I understand my time is almost up—is that it needs to be layered on top of the traditional diplomatic skills of networking, analysis, cross-cultural awareness, flexibility and adaptability. Language capacity is great, but if you have poor judgment, that is not going to work. We need to recognize those areas as important areas of expertise as well.
We're very happy to see that both the minister and the Senate committee agree with us that we need to continue to recruit, and just so that I'm not being completely negative about Global Affairs, I do want to point out that they have taken many measures.
We have seen over 170 new members in PAFSO in the last 18 months, and that is making a big difference to our capacity to represent Canada and also to represent Canadians of different backgrounds and younger people as well.
When I gave evidence to the Senate committee, I think I reported that the average foreign service officer was 45 years old. Global Affairs Canada came out to say that the average officer is actually 47 years old. That is definitely a demographic that absolutely should be heard from, but we need to hear from other people as well, and they are taking steps to do those things—