Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, I definitely agree. I think they've gone to two extremes. In the old days, it used to be that you got promoted by people knowing your reputation and based on different things like that. Then that got to be too much of a closed shop, and that was not fair. They went to this very—on paper—objective thing that is based only on current capacities, and now they're at the other end.

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, you don't, basically. That's the bottom line for some of these things. That is our complaint, sometimes. As a professional association and the union representing people with grievances and staffing complaints.... Sometimes, there are very rigid systems that serve the central authorities when they want.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm afraid I'm not really qualified to speak on what decisions are made by security people at Global Affairs. We have a very developed network of people on the ground, and they make decisions and give advice based on what they are seeing. The world has, as people said, gotten a lot more risky in many places.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. I agree with my colleagues that it's not an either–or thing. We need both kinds of expertise. Before I came to do the president of PAFSO job full time, I was deputy director of foreign policy research at Global Affairs. One of my frustrations there was that due to the chronic understaffing in the department, we had a very hard time protecting our small foreign policy research group of experts from day-to-day taskings.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm sorry. I just want to say thank you. Five and half minutes is not very long, and I'd be very happy to follow up with any members of the committee who have other questions. Thank you all very much.

Foreign Affairs committee  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.