Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 14th, 2024

[Dr. Stephanie Carvin]

Thank you.

I'm very sorry.

I speak Oshawa French, which isn't proper French.

Given my strong accent, I will reply in English.

With regard to these issues, I do think that we cannot function without improving the core capacities of the organization. It doesn't matter what the issue is.

Professor Juneau and I both study national security. It's where our interests lie. Fundamentally, obviously climate is going to greatly impact national security and it's going to have a huge impact in geopolitical shifts, but we can't address any of this unless we address the core competencies of the organization. This is what I worry about.

In relating to what Mr. Chong said earlier, I do worry that we are attending these international forums and not bringing our best ideas to the table. Where is our voice? We have shown leadership in some areas, but again, I worry that this leadership is not being sustained. I worry that it tends to be what's in the headlines and where we can go from that. I do believe that there's a lot of work behind the headlines, but that's not useful if it's always just constantly behind the headlines. This kind of speaks, then, to the transparency and communications aspect to foreign affairs that I think is also lacking.

I would suggest that we need to provide better direction, better training and capacity. It's hard to disagree with any of your questions. I'm not sure I have any great insight.

Again, I think I'm slightly biased from my recent travel to Japan, but I note that their diplomats, once hired, immediately spend two years abroad as part of their training. I don't think that's going to be something Canadian diplomats do soon, but it gives them incredible exposure. Not only was that really inspiring to me, but I was sad because I found that, out of all the individuals I spoke with in their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, only one had chosen to come to Canada—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Professor Carvin, I'm sorry. Could you wrap it up?

[Dr. Stephanie Carvin]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you.

I'm terribly sorry for the interruption.

Next we go to Monsieur Bergeron.

Mr. Bergeron, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's really unfortunate that we can't hear from Ambassador Bonnafont. Like my colleague, I had a number of questions for him.

Your Excellency, I'm happy to see you. I am very sorry that you cannot participate in this meeting because of technical problems. Thank you for your patience. I would like to ask you a number of questions, and I invite you to answer us in writing.

First, France has had its share of diplomatic ups and downs recently, especially in Africa. The last French military members who had been sent to Niger left that country on the morning of December 22. That day ended more than 10 years of fighting jihadism in the Sahel. We also saw what happened in Mali and Burkina Faso. What happened to make France, which was a power with a positive impact in Africa, end up in this situation? What was it that was lacking, in terms of French diplomacy, that led to such a situation?

Second, in 2023, the foreign service review, an open consultation on the evolution of French diplomacy that you led, produced a 298-page report. In the report's cover letter, you indicate that the report proposes two sets of measures, one to drive the modernization of your tools and methods, and the other to modernize your human resources policy. One recommendation calls for greater cooperation with the elected members of Parliament, particularly with respect to parliamentary diplomacy. How does France promote parliamentary diplomacy to increase its influence?

Third, I believe that most of the states that are friends of Ukraine have already sent a parliamentary delegation there, which Canada has not yet done. In your opinion, what contribution can parliamentary missions in countries at war, such as Ukraine, make?

My last question is about another recommendation on the need to invest in cultural, scientific and economic diplomacy. How is cultural diplomacy also an adjunct to France's influence in the world?

I'm very much looking forward to your comments on that, Your Excellency. Again, I'm very sorry about your situation today. Thank you for being with us and for your patience.

Mr. Chair, I would now like to ask Mr. Juneau a question that I asked Senator Boehm this week.

As you may know, Mr. Juneau, Senator Boehm is the chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which produced a report on diplomacy. We invited the senator here to talk to us about this report, and one of the recommendations is that:

Global Affairs Canada should promote the equal use of French and English within the department, ensure thatab initio official language training is maintained, and expand official language training opportunities to all other employees, including both Canada‑based and locally engaged staff.

I have two questions for you about that.

First, we learned about the existence of a free pass that apparently exempts senior officials from the bilingualism requirement. Have you heard of that? Is it something that is likely to undermine the status of French within Global Affairs Canada?

Then, most of the time, in Ottawa, when the Prime Minister, ministers and senior officials speak or participate in conferences or in the work of this committee, they do so almost exclusively in English. What message does that send to the diplomatic community in Ottawa?

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

Thank you very much for your questions.

I read the Senate committee's report. In general, it's a very good report. This committee has looked at issues that are not necessarily sensational or don't get a lot of attention, but they are critical. For example, it looked at issues related to “machinery”—I'm using the word that was used here—and administrative capacity. It's a great effort. I hope the committee will continue in that direction.

As I said in my testimony, it's all well and good to implement strategic objectives in foreign policy, defence or national security, but without the machinery in place, their implementation will be impossible. So it was a good contribution to the debate.

You asked me whether officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development had a free pass. I have to say that I don't know. I do not study language issues in the public service, so I am not in a position to answer that question.

I worked at the Department of National Defence for 10 years, and I have been a professor for almost 10 years. In my experience, Global Affairs Canada is one of the most bilingual departments. It's far from perfect, but it's better than many places.

That said, I cannot answer the question you asked me.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

What you're telling us is absolutely terrifying—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

I'm afraid you're considerably over your time, Mr. Bergeron. It's at six minutes and 37 seconds.

We now go to MP McPherson. You have six minutes.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all of the witnesses.

I am sorry as well that we're not able to hear from His Excellency.

I was very interested, Professor Carvin, in some of the things that you were saying around our failure to have policies in place—I've been calling for the feminist foreign policy to come forward for a very long time—and the implications for our self-interest and our relationships and what we're trying to build.

There's one thing I'm curious about. I was listening to someone tell me a story about a three-star general who had talked about the need for development and diplomacy as key frameworks for defence and was saying that they were actually cornerstones. If we did that, then.... I think this committee heard from David Beasley from the World Food Programme about paying for what needs to be done now or paying a thousand times more at a later date, with the cost of conflict and whatnot.

With regard to our diplomatic corps and the machinery and all of those pieces that are part of it, what are the implications for Canada of the failure to invest in development and in human rights, in addition to perhaps the failure in defence?

[Dr. Stephanie Carvin]

I think it's significant.

I've spoken about our national security and defence because it's more my area of expertise, but I would agree with the general, with the one proviso that I do worry that we don't want to securitize development. We want to make sure that it is at arm's length and this isn't seen as a military tool or a national security tool. I think that's the one thing we do have to be careful of.

Yes, we often talk about the 2% budget, but we don't often talk about the foreign aid budget, which is, I don't even think—

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

It's 0.7%. At least, that's what we're hoping for, but we've never gotten close.

[Dr. Stephanie Carvin]

Exactly.

I think this does hurt us. Where do we see this? We see it at the United Nations. We could have a whole discussion about where we are in the United Nations and things like that, but if this is an area where we want to show leadership or we want to bring in states that are questioning our commitment to international organizations or norms or things like that, and when they're not seeing us pay for these things, it ultimately affects our capacity to build conversations, relationships and things like this.

I was particularly disappointed when we downgraded our Africa strategy to a framework. I think that's bad.

It was interesting.... Again, I'm sorry to keep referencing my trip to Japan. It was excellent; I highly recommend it.

One thing that someone said was that this is an area where Canada could potentially even show leadership. Someone suggested there could be a quad in Africa in terms of development, human rights and things like that. Australia, Japan, Canada and Korea could work together to provide an alternative to perhaps China or other authoritarian states that are gaining ground.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Yes, absolutely. We heard news reports that the Senate committee actually heard that Canada is becoming almost irrelevant in Africa, which is of course not where we would like to see Canada positioned.

I'm going to quickly ask a question of Ms. Deif, who's online.

You had also spoken a lot about what the implications are when Canada applies international law and international standards differently in different contexts. I'd like to put that same question to you.

From what we're seeing in Israel and Palestine, with the horrific situation happening right now in Rafah and Gaza, what are the implications when the rest of the world sees Canada acting deeply differently in different circumstances?

[Farida Deif]

We simply do not appear to be a principled and impartial actor, so we lose our credibility to engage. We lose our ability to highlight laws of war violations in other conflicts. We lose our leverage with states, and we also, most importantly, let down victims.

We will see this, for example, when the Human Rights Council session happens in a couple of weeks. Canada will be in a very difficult position, as will as other western states, in pushing for the renewal of a very important commission of inquiry on Ukraine, because many states will see a very clear western double standard in terms of the response to Ukraine in the use of every tool in the diplomatic tool box from supporting ICC investigations to targeted sanctions, and then a very flagrantly different response with respect to serious laws of war violations in Gaza.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much.

Professor Juneau, is there anything that you could add to this conversation?

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

Very briefly, I would say that irrespective of our individual views on the war in Gaza, whether we want a ceasefire or not and whether we're more pro one side or the other, one of the consequences of this war will be major damage to western credibility, to our soft power, or however you want to call it.

Even if you are very much pro-Israel and you very much support Israeli operations, that's subjective. Objectively—and I travel to the Middle East a lot—the damage to that credibility is significant. The more the war continues, the more that damage will accumulate, and we will have to live with this in many ways in terms of our credibility and our ability to build coalitions to promote objectives and to deal with radicalization in many ways. That, I think, is objectively true irrespective of where we stand on the war itself.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

From my perspective, I think that when we don't support the ICJ, we weaken the work that the ICJ is trying to do in this circumstance and then in other circumstances as well.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

That was perfect timing. Thank you, MP McPherson.

We now go to MP Hoback. You have four minutes.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I'll be quick, then.

We'll start with you, Ms. Carvin.

You talked about students and bringing students into Global Affairs. Does Global Affairs give the universities an update on what they want to see as requirements for students when they graduate from university or do their master's program?

[Dr. Stephanie Carvin]

Yes, they do. It's not a specific list of requirements, I should be clear, but we constantly engage with government.

Obviously, I teach at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, vastly superior compared to the graduate school of the University of Ottawa, but both of our schools will engage with government regularly to figure out what skills they want in our students.

As an example, I don't have my students write 40-page essays. I have them write a one-page brief on an issue. They think that's great, because it's just one page, and then they see what they have to fit into one page. This is the kind of training that we try to provide at our schools.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I've spoken to Canadian students at other universities around the world. One of the complaints they have is that they feel that it's an Ottawa-centric recruiting system and that they don't get credit for the education they get, for example, in Washington, London or other parts of the world.

Would you agree with those types of sentiments?

[Dr. Stephanie Carvin]

As someone who did all of her graduate education in the U.K., yes. It's hard.

A while back—I'm going to say in 2005 or 2006—was the start of the program to recruit policy leaders, which did have outreach to international capitals abroad, and for students who were studying in Washington, London, France and places like that, there was that opportunity.

I think we could do better. I would agree that encouraging that kind to outreach even to Calgary or B.C. is important.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Their logic was that they thought that Global Affairs didn't want people who thought outside of the box. They wanted the same type of person cut and pasted and put in there.

Thomas, I think you want to jump in on that one.

[Dr. Thomas Juneau]

If I can just jump in, I think that touches on the point that Professor Carvin mentioned, which is the fact that so many entry-level positions are short-term contracts of various types. That makes it simply logistically easier to hire from across the street in Ottawa, whether from the University of Ottawa or Carleton University. If we had a more sustained, structured system to hire on an indeterminate basis through an appropriate process, it would become easier to tell somebody in Calgary they can come for a full-time job as opposed to telling somebody in Victoria to come for 90 days and then we'll see.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

We see different people being posted abroad. What type of preparation do you think they require before they actually go abroad?

Besides having the security training and the basics of the job training, what kind of background training are they doing with regard to the country they're going into, the region they're representing or working in, with different diasporas and things like that? Do you work with them? Do you know of any think tanks they're working with in this type of area?