THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, September 28, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met with videoconference this day at 4 p.m. [ET] to consider and report on the Canadian foreign service and elements of the foreign policy machinery within Global Affairs Canada.
Senator Peter M. Boehm (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: My name is Peter Boehm. I am a senator from Ontario and Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
[English]
I will now introduce the committee members participating in today’s meeting. I will note that our committee is full; all members of the committee are here. They are Senator Gwen Boniface from Ontario; Senator Mary Coyle from Nova Scotia; Senator Marty Deacon from Ontario; Senator Amina Gerba from Quebec; Senator Stephen Greene from Nova Scotia; Senator Peter Harder, deputy chair of the committee, from Ontario; Senator Michael MacDonald from Nova Scotia; Senator Victor Oh from Ontario; Senator Mohamed-Iqbal Ravalia from Newfoundland and Labrador; Senator David Richards from New Brunswick; and Senator Yuen Pau Woo from British Columbia. I wish to welcome all of you, as well as people across Canada who may be watching us today during our meeting.
Today, we continue our study on Canada’s foreign service. We have before us three representatives of the Young Professionals Network, the YPN, at Global Affairs Canada, or GAC.
[Translation]
From Global Affairs Canada’s Young Professionals Network, today we are hearing from Marissa Fortune, Project Lead YPN Vision 2030, Analyst, Future of Diplomacy Project; Julien Labrosse, Member of YPN, Visits Officer, Office of Protocol; Sejal Tiwari, Co-Representative of YPN, Development Officer, who is participating in the meeting by videoconference.
[English]
Welcome and thank you for being with us. We are ready to hear your opening remarks, which will be followed by questions from senators. I will remind the witnesses that you each have five minutes to present. We will go in sequence. Ms. Fortune, the floor is yours.
Marissa Fortune, Project Lead, YPN Vision 2030, Analyst, Future of Diplomacy Project, Global Affairs Canada’s Young Professionals Network: Thank you. I would like to begin by thanking this committee for the invitation to address you today. Over the course of this study, you’ve heard from many experts, the majority of whom are either already retired or will be by the time the impacts of your work in this committee are felt.
By comparison, employees under 35 represent nearly a quarter of the Canadian public service, and GAC Young Professionals Network members work in almost every branch, stream and job category, with diverse identities that crosscut all equity groups. We do not just represent the future; we are the present, and we have an important role to play in defining and implementing departmental priorities. We are innovative, solutions-oriented and eager to use our skills and expertise to improve our department at home and abroad.
In 2007, the next-generation working group surveyed emerging leaders at GAC and defined their vision for the year 2020 as having a department that has the capacity to look ahead while responding quickly to changing priorities; is field-oriented, with greater presence abroad; is more focused and less bureaucratic; and boasts a motivated, committed and productive workforce.
They recommended that in order to achieve this, the department should significantly increase recruitment and deploy more staff to the field; reduce the layers of approvals; introduce more transparency in staffing and posting processes; address FSDs, family support and duty of care for dangerous postings; and invest more in skills development, including through incentives for linguistic and regional expertise. I’m sure those recommendations sound familiar to this committee because they are still the types of solutions we are discussing today.
Flash forward to this year, and through our 2030 initiative, the Young Professionals Network spoke to over 350 young employees working at Global Affairs Canada and asked them to define what kind of department they want to work for. My colleagues will elaborate further on our findings, but what we heard was a rearticulation of the same problems and preoccupations that staff were working to address 15 years ago.
However, there were a few notable shifts. First, more than ever, employees of all ages are demoralized and frustrated with the way that human resources are managed within the organization. Second, employees care deeply about meaningful strides toward equity, diversity and inclusion and appreciate commitments that are backed with resources and action.
Finally, challenges related to mental health and employee well-being have been exacerbated by the pandemic, combined with ever-increasing priorities and chronic understaffing. This is an emerging risk to take seriously.
In short, when we ask young professionals about their vision for the future, their response is centred on GAC as an employer rather than an actor on the global stage.
We know that increasingly complex global challenges require a department that is ever-evolving in its pursuit of excellence. We learned that excellence requires employees who feel supported, valued and empowered.
That is why our vision for Global Affairs Canada is a diverse, inclusive and people-centred department that prioritizes its employees, works efficiently and demonstrates its values through action. Achieving that means meaningfully transforming our approach to human resources to be more flexible, accessible and user-friendly. The best and brightest minds in our country come to work for GAC because they care deeply about its mandate, but until its internal structures are fit to serve its own employees, it will not be fit to serve Canada abroad to the best of its abilities.
As senators, you know better than we do of the tendency for history to repeat itself. I have read the McDougall report from 1981 and I would not be surprised if this committee publishes in its findings many of the same challenges and recommendations that were highlighted four decades ago. I believe there is momentum in this moment, and if we do not seize it now, then my generation will be forced to spend our careers grappling with the same bureaucratic barriers, conducting the same studies, forming the same working groups and publishing the same findings as you have.
I would encourage this committee and Global Affairs Canada to consider bold actions for system-level transformation to achieve an organization that is not only fit for purpose but also fit for people.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Fortune.
[Translation]
Mr. Labrosse, go ahead.
Julien Labrosse, Member, Visits Officer, Office of Protocol, Global Affairs Canada’s Young Professionals Network: Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable senators.
My name is Julien Labrosse, and I am a Visits Officer in the Office of Protocol at Global Affairs Canada, a department I joined in 2018 after working for over two years in the Office of the Usher of the Black Rod in the Senate of Canada.
I want to begin by emphasizing that it is a great honour for me to testify before this committee where I served as a Senate page more than 10 years ago.
In her presentation, my colleague Marissa mentioned that young professionals at Global Affairs Canada chose, when we approached them to survey their vision for the future of our department, to tell us about Global Affairs Canada primarily as an employer. In the many consultations we undertook, the conversations invariably turned to human resources issues, professional development and training. Even our consultations on sustainability and the environment — topics that at first seemed far removed from human resources issues — raised the point that lack of staff is a barrier to greater sustainability in our department. Each consultation raised the issue of human resources.
Young professionals at Global Affairs Canada are ambitious. They want to help make a positive change in the world through public service in our department. Yet many feel held back because they perceive a lack of resources, training, professional development and mentoring.
Let me highlight the scope of the problem. As part of our study, the Young Professionals Network launched a survey to which 261 people responded. In that survey, 65.5% of respondents said they were considering leaving the department. The reasons they cited were, in order, job stability, promotion opportunities, discrimination and harassment, work-life balance, and recruitment opportunities.
There are many issues that concern human resources. I can briefly mention a few. Recruitment processes are extremely long and complicated. It is not uncommon for a hiring process to take a year from start to finish. I know this is a widespread problem in the public service, but in a labour shortage context, we are no longer competitive compared with the private sector.
Foreign service officer recruitment is no exception. Post-secondary hiring processes are too infrequent and can take up to two years to complete. There is a lack of transparency regarding timelines, steps and expectations. Also, the civil service entrance examination is a tool that does not seem particularly relevant in this context; it is essentially a math and logic test that has little relevance to the skills diplomats need in their careers.
The result is that the typical profile of the candidate recruited through the so-called “post-secondary” process is someone in their mid to late 30s, who already has six or seven years of work experience and a master’s degree, and who is typically leaving the private sector to become a diplomat and, therefore, earn a lower salary. We need to recruit more young people for these positions, which are supposed to be entry-level, and make it easier for people with more experience to enter the foreign service at a mid-career threshold rather than at an entry level.
Job stability is also a concern for young people who, in many cases, have temporary or student contracts that have the unfortunate tendency to be renewed at the last minute. As a result, some do not know if they will have a contract or a salary with less than a month to go before their contract expires. When their contract expires, many simply choose to leave the department and give up their dream of working there in order to find more stability and certainty elsewhere in the public service or in the private sector. I myself have several colleagues and acquaintances within the department who have left their jobs for other departments, simply for the sake of indefinite job stability.
Another concern of youth is training. Joining a department as complex and specialized as Global Affairs Canada requires training to understand the culture and how the systems work. However, it is clear that this training is lacking. The Young Professionals Network has put in place onboarding sessions to assist new recruits to fill this gap. However, this is not a permanent solution, as these are volunteers.
In addition, many young professionals have told us about the lack of mentoring within our department. Young people don’t know how to plan their careers and move up the ladder. Many do not know who to talk to about their career ambitions and goals. Those who have applied for overseas positions also learn very late where they will be posted.
We also believe that more could be done to increase opportunities for movement between branches within Global Affairs Canada and to make it easier for non-foreign service employees, such as myself, to serve their country abroad and develop their careers.
Another issue raised by our members is the ability to work outside the national capital. The majority of our members are from Ontario and Quebec. Many have studied in the national capital region. Many young people would like to join Global Affairs Canada, particularly in non-foreign service positions, but they do not want to leave their hometown. We believe that this affects diversity, from our department’s perspective, and I assume that senators will be sensitive to the notion that regional diversity is a strength of Canada that should be reflected in the public service.
Young people want to contribute to Global Affairs Canada. They want to serve their country and work to advance Canada’s goals at home and abroad. Sometimes they have long dreamed, as I have, of becoming diplomats. However, many feel demoralized by administrative barriers and a lack of opportunity. For our department to fulfill its mission, it needs a workforce that is motivated, supported and sees a future for itself within the department.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Labrosse.
[English]
Now we turn to Ms. Tiwari. You have the floor.
Sejal Tiwari, Co-Representative, Development Officer, Global Affairs Canada’s Young Professionals Network:
Thank you, Mr. Chair and senators, for the opportunity to address the committee. My name is Sejal Tiwari, and I am a Development Officer at Global Affairs Canada, working in the Asia-Pacific Branch. I also serve as a co-representative for the Young Professionals Network. Outside of work, I’m part of Oxford University’s Diplomacy and Geopolitics Forum for this fiscal year.
You may have heard on this committee that the department is progressing toward equity, diversity and inclusion, or EDI, with 57% women, 6% Indigenous and 26% visible minorities as part of the workforce. While we recognize positive trends and progress, there is still a lot of work to do. For young professionals, intersectionality matters, being more ambitious with our base EDI targets to reflect the incredible range of the intersectional diversity of Canadian society not just in headquarters but abroad as well.
To not fully utilize the strategic advantage of the Canadian mosaic to engage like-minded countries and address emerging global challenges will be a lost opportunity. The future of Canadian diplomacy needs to represent the diversity and multiculturalism of the society it works for. If it does not, it cannot serve Canadians or Canadian interests abroad. No amount of training can ever compensate for the lived experiences and knowledge that young, diverse and intersectional foreign service officers can bring to the table.
In the 21st century, if Canada is to go to the world and promote disability inclusion, racial justice, gender equality and 2SLGBTQI+ and Indigenous rights, then we need to back that narrative with meaningful actions and representation in our own diplomatic corps. To remain competitive on the global stage, we must empower diplomats who are unapologetically feminist, anti-racist and come from diverse backgrounds.
Another challenge faced by young professionals is accessibility. When we talk about access, of course, this includes physical access and accommodations by default. But the kind of accessibility that young professionals want to foster in this department goes far beyond that. Many young employees say they lack access to resources, support, mentorship, stable employment and professional development opportunities. This is not to say that these things do not exist in the department already but rather that there may be visible or invisible barriers that prevent employees from seeking out these resources.
What young employees expressed to us is that this department in the future should strive to be more open, more transparent, more accessible to enter and easier to navigate. When we surveyed young professionals in the department, the second-largest concern they noted was work-life balance. Young employees struggle with heavy workloads and the constant pressure to do more with less.
In recent years, we have also seen an increase in women’s representation in foreign service, or FS, streams. That is great. However, there are systemic issues that act as barriers to their work-life balance, professional growth and mental well-being. To support the retention of female rotational employees, the department should provide appropriate support to spouses, including 2SLGBTQI+ spouses, and children of foreign service officers. This will improve the diversity and accessibility of postings abroad and lessen the strain on families. For example, Finland’s foreign ministry is now offering allowances to the accompanying spouses to offset lost sources of income from not working abroad. The dual income of working parents is a current reality for many.
A third challenge for young professionals is the current corporate culture. While transformative changes are under way, more can be done to incentivize innovation and creative problem-solving. Slow bureaucratic processes can take up valuable time instead of being used for high-level strategic thinking and experimentation. We know the foreign service requires a degree of hierarchy to maintain strategic and reporting structure. But within this highly regulated structure, there needs to be a re-emphasis on the role of flexibility, change culture and a culture of innovation.
We are witnessing overlapping shocks in world affairs, the assessment and management of which has become increasingly difficult with the standardized ways of doing things. For youth, it is important that this department foster new thinking that strikes a balance between showing predictability as a global partner and flexibility as a corporate player.
Addressing these challenges offers a unique opportunity for the department to tap into the creativity and resilience of young employees and reinstate a modernized Canadian foreign service culture, identity and expertise.
Thank you for your time.
The Chair: Thank you very much to all three of you for your concise statements. They were all around the five-minute mark, just as we had requested. Congratulations on meeting that particular level.
Colleagues, we will move to questions. We are keeping a list, so if you want to be added, please signal your interest by raising your hand or catching our attention.
I remind you that we have four minutes for each question and answer in the first round. If there’s time, we’ll go to a second round. I would remind you to keep your preambles relatively short. That allows our witnesses to answer the question more fulsomely.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you very much to our witnesses.
On April 28, 2022, Abbie Dann, a former Canadian ambassador to Ukraine, suggested that young Canadian foreign service officers are not finding adequate mentorship opportunities at GAC. Does GAC have an established mentorship network for young foreign service workers? If not, do you think it would be advantageous for all new foreign service recruits to be assigned a mentor? Finally, how could the department make better links between young foreign service officers and retired former Canadian diplomats? Thank you.
Ms. Fortune: I’m not aware if there is an established formalized mentorship program for new foreign service officer recruits. However, I can speak generally about the rest of the department, which is that young professionals do feel there is a lack of structured mentorship opportunities. It’s something that often falls to employee-led networks, such as the women’s network, which organizes mentorship opportunities and programs. However, those networks are volunteer-led and often lack structure and formalized year-after-year follow-up.
I think the department would benefit from mentorship, namely, more integration of and professional development for young employees.
Mr. Labrosse: Other departments in the Government of Canada have systematized mentorship programs, but I’m not aware of any at GAC. There might be one, but I have worked there for almost five years and have never heard of it. I would have benefited from one. We tried at the Young Professionals Network to institute it as best we could, but it’s not formalized. We are all at the beginning of our careers as well. We have some experience but not as much as people with more experience would have.
To your point on the connection between young foreign service officers and retired diplomats, I think that would be a great initiative.
The Chair: Ms. Tiwari, did you wish to add anything?
Ms. Tiwari: In our focus groups, young employees noted they generally did not see a clear path forward. Most young employees enter the department as casual workers or students and then end up becoming FS officers if they get the chance to do so. Training and mentorship opportunities at the earlier stages can set the tone for these young employees when they do become FS officers.
Recommendations by young employees included relaunching and expanding awareness of the “Take Me with You” initiative, where managers or senior FS officers, or maybe retired FS officers, would be encouraged and incentivized to bring less senior, more junior FS officers to different high-level meetings to expand their horizons that way. That is something we should be considering as well.
Senator Oh: My question is for all three young professionals. Do you believe that Global Affairs Canada does enough to attract young professionals? Do they do enough diversity hiring?
Ms. Fortune: As many have noted, Global Affairs Canada doesn’t usually have a problem attracting talented, young professionals who want to work in the organization. I think the challenge is attracting and recruiting a diversity of young people. Often, the individuals who have the opportunity to do co-ops or student terms within the department are the ones who stay on, and those are mainly people who are located in the National Capital Region and not so much in the rest of the country.
Something that I think could be improved upon is our outreach to universities outside of Ontario and Quebec and more opportunities for perhaps virtual employment from other parts of the country, which the pandemic has shown us is possible.
Mr. Labrosse: Senator, you raise a good question on whether the department does enough to attract young professionals. As Marissa said, we don’t have a problem attracting people, but that’s mostly due to our prestige as an institution. The foreign service has that image where people want to become diplomats and it always attracts people that way. There is a danger of complacency in our department, though. If we only rely on the fact that there will be an endless stream of young people wanting to become diplomats because of the department’s prestige while not improving the conditions of young people in the department, then I think we are losing good opportunities. People will and do leave the department.
Ms. Tiwari: Thank you for your question, senator. Linguistic, thematic and regional expertise was not adequately prioritized in post-secondary recruitment in the FS stream. The early screening done through the public service usually has no correlation with the skills or competencies required in FS and likely results in screening out many quality candidates. We have heard recommendations such as recognizing being fluent in Indigenous languages; improving Indigenous, Black, visible minorities and racialized representation in FS by launching targeted recruitment; and better understanding that employment equity groups are not just four different, individual boxes, rather than accounting for the intersectional lived experiences across that. We hear that Canadian society is increasingly made of first- and second-generation immigrants who maintain strong ties to the country-of-origin diaspora communities within Canada, language and culture. There is room for improvement to capitalize on that. Youth have expressed their commitment to EDI initiatives and they want those initiatives to reflect more strongly through recruitment and retention processes as well. Thank you for that.
Senator Oh: This is for Mr. Labrosse. You said something about discrimination. Can you specify what kind of discrimination? Tell us; don’t worry about it.
Mr. Labrosse: This was raised in our consultation. We launched a survey and asked people to say why they were considering leaving the department. One of the things that was mentioned by a number of people was discrimination. It is not something we delved into deeply because we didn’t want to ask people the specifics of their lived experience in the context of a survey. The survey was anonymous as well. However, it is telling that the third most cited reason for thinking of departing the department was discrimination and harassment.
Senator Oh: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That is an all-inclusive term, so if you do have any specifics on that, we’d love to hear them.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you all for being here today, talking about the job that’s a living piece of your life right now. I really respect that you can be so candid and prepared.
I want you to imagine that you are all as old as us now. If you take your world and your career moments at this time and fast forward perhaps 30 years down the road, to your last day of work before you retire, what needs to happen for you to feel like you have had an awesome career that has been successful, keeping in mind that your career allows you to do items outside your job that are also important, in consideration of the balance you talked about earlier?
So dream.
Mr. Labrosse: Tough question, senator. Because of the nature of the work that I do, I travel a lot. I organize the logistics of the participation of high-level guests to summits abroad. I couldn’t say, for instance, that I would like to attend a G7 or a G20 because I have done those things. However, that is just a factor in my job.
I think I would like to have a better experience of the different elements and facets of the work our department does abroad. I struggle with that personally because — not being a foreign service officer and being in a stream that is non-rotational — I find it hard to see how I could possibly have the experience of another side of our department, either serving in an embassy or working a trade file, which is something I would find interesting. It’s hard for me to see how I can do that. I would be satisfied with my career if I were able to experience the whole work of the department through serving in various capacities while also having a life around it and having a family that doesn’t hate me because I’m frequently not there.
Ms. Fortune: That’s a very difficult question and something that I think is important for us to reflect on deeper and think about.
What came to mind first is that on the last day of any job, I would hope to look back and be leaving the institution better than it was when I started working there. Obviously, that is something that we are passionate about and committed to, as our work in the Young Professionals Network is improving the things that we see as problems and leaving the institution better than we found it. If at the end of my career I can look back and see that as being the reality, then that would be fulfilling for me.
The Chair: Ms. Tiwari, do you want to reflect in that way?
Ms. Tiwari: I do agree with all the comments my colleagues made. We recognize that we are not trailblazers by any means. We are here today because people before us have made it possible for us to stand here, express our opinions and represent youth from our department.
By the end of the last day, if I’m able to do the same for the next generation regarding all these issues that we talked about today, whether it is corporate culture, innovation, EDI, professional development — that is, if these issues are solved to some extent or there are better ways to handle these issues from what is done today — then I think I could give myself a pat on the back.
Thank you for the question.
Senator Boniface: Thank you all for being here and thank you for your candid comments. I was interested in your reference, I think a few times, to human resources and human resources systems. Actually, I hear it across the public service, not unique to your organization. I’m trying to identify whether it is a systemic issue out of the rules of human resources or whether it’s a management issue.
You give the example of contracts that are almost expired — I hear this across the board — or contract to contract to contract and never advertising the position on a full-time basis. I’m wondering if you have drilled down further to see where the actual issue is in the process.
The Chair: I’d like to start with Ms. Tiwari if she feels capable of starting. I want to reverse the order a little bit.
Ms. Tiwari: Sorry, my internet cut out for a second. Could you please repeat the question very quickly?
Senator Boniface: I couldn’t do it as brilliantly again.
The Chair: Let’s go to your colleagues and then come back to you. I caught you a little unawares and I apologize for that.
Mr. Labrosse: Human resources was my area of interest for this study because I worked at HR briefly as a student at the Senate back in the day.
Lots of what we heard related to frustrations in the system and the facelessness of HR as an entity. I think that’s a problem across the civil service. The problem people had was they had many questions about pensions, salaries and contracts and tons of other things related to HR, but there is not one person you can talk to. There are just organizational documents for something, and you send your email into the ether and then you wait for something to happen. There is no phone number you can call.
That was a deep frustration that we had. Also, my managers recently did a hiring process, and I don’t want to speak for them but I could observe from them that they, too, had frustrations in terms of not having someone to talk to clearly in order to assist them in developing the posters and everything. Because it seems that managers need to do all of the work of producing the posters and evaluating everything on their own, and there is no real support on this end.
I don’t know if it’s a question that there are not enough people working in the human resources or that our rules are too stringent or too complicated, but there is kind of a facelessness of HR being a thing and, our respondents cite, as a monolith, of being like the problem is HR but not necessarily one specific part of HR. It’s just HR as a concept. That was kind of a concern.
Ms. Fortune: It’s kind of a behemoth of a nebulous problem that people like to point fingers at, and I think the actual source is a lot more challenging to identify. I think it’s partially both, partially the systemic factors and then maybe partially also the management issues.
When you talk to human resources experts in the department, they often point to the complexity of managing a department such as Global Affairs that has the ever-present challenges with posting individuals abroad, with managing families, with every possible question that you could have around the posting cycle and people uprooting their lives and moving all over the world.
I think it is a unique department to do human resources in. That’s not a question. But I think we haven’t, since the creation of the organization, found the right answer on how it should be managed.
The Chair: Thank you. We’re out of time on that one.
Senator Harder: Thank you for being here. I want to pursue for a bit some of the conversation we’ve had around recruitment and make a statement that I think it’s absolutely imperative for the department to return to nationwide recruitment through an exam and a recruitment process involving interviews that equalizes the playing field for joining.
Second, there has to be an articulated bargain in terms of what the expectations of new recruits are in a rotational foreign service, where you may not get your first choice of destination, but it’s a career in which, hopefully, there is some attention to that. And that you should be adequately developed in terms of language skills, particularly in a foreign service, and opportunities for different kinds of work based on your interests. But there is a bit of a bargain here, and there has to be some expectation of what’s a reasonable pace for promotion. I think those have been the frustrations.
If you buy my assessment, I wonder if you could comment on if you would agree with that — that there should be a national recruitment, not the recruitment through temporary and contract and National Capital Region presence, but more broadly based.
Ms. Fortune: I would agree that there needs to be a nationwide annual recruitment process. I think the way that that recruitment takes place should not be through the post-secondary recruitment process. As Julien mentioned, the standardized testing that they use doesn’t really respond to the skills and competencies needed by foreign service officers. So perhaps a separate exam. I think there are questions to which the efficacy of any standardized test can really capture.
There are problems, obviously, related to the volume of applicants, but I think there needs to be a revisited recruitment process that is a little bit more equitable and certainly more transparent because the system as it is now is not very transparent even for those who are going through it. There is no communication with applicants on what kind of assessments to expect, what the timelines are and what they are assessing. It also doesn’t really count for competencies such as foreign languages, such as cross-cultural competencies, the types of things that would be of value to the department. Those skills aren’t really tested in the early stages of the recruitment process.
So I think it’s certainly something that the foreign service would benefit from revisiting.
Mr. Labrosse: I agree with my colleague here. In terms of the bargain you mentioned, I think most young people in the department understand that they won’t get their first choice and they’re quite happy about this. The problem is getting to know where you’re leaving for in three weeks two weeks ahead. That’s the problem for most people. And the lack of being able to prepare for a posting that you’re going to do with an adequate amount of time.
I think most of us would be very pleased to work in a variety of places, and we recognize that when you’re young is the right time to serve in certain areas.
The Chair: Thank you. I want to give Ms. Tiwari a chance.
Ms. Tiwari: Thank you, senator. Young people do recognize that FS is more like a lifestyle than just a career move, so we are pretty resilient when it comes to not getting our first, second or third choice.
What I wanted to highlight is we found out that through the post-secondary recruitment most people are in their mid-thirties with a master’s degree, six to seven years’ minimum professional experience, and most are ready to take a pay cut to become Canadian diplomats. So we need to recruit younger people for what is supposed to be an entry-level position — FS-01 level positions — and we need to learn from other foreign ministries who are already looking at the disadvantages of standardized testing or overreliance on standardized testing as a way to randomly select or not select candidates as a minimum requirement. Those would be my comments. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Coyle: Thank you to all of our witnesses. You’re a breath of fresh air, and I’m finding this to be a very rich discussion and very helpful. Thank you for all your thoughtful interventions.
You’ve mentioned red tape; you’ve mentioned bureaucracy. In another breath, you’re talking about the pursuit of excellence; you’re talking about the need to foster and support a culture of innovation.
I’m curious, because I think we seriously need that pursuit of excellence. We need that fostering and supporting innovation in our Global Affairs department, in our foreign service. Could each of you speak very briefly to what you see the impediments being to that pursuit of excellence, that fostering of innovation, and what you see as the key things that need to be there to unlock those?
Ms. Tiwari: Thank you, senator. The keyword here is “trust.” There needs to be more trust in younger staff, and the organization needs to take a chance on young employees to allow them to gain experience and learn by making mistakes, with the appropriate safety nets. We have heard young employees want the department to trust them and increase horizontal decision making and encourage the development of corporate culture that is less rigid.
We are in a world where the private sector and the NGO sector are constantly innovating. By default, there is comparison. If you want to retain that young resilient talent, we need not to be the private sector but, at least within our own capacity, really push for that innovation.
GAC should increase efficiency, decrease bureaucratic processes and administrative burden, delegate greater decision-making authority to mid-level management, allowing younger employees to take decisions without being penalized, and also review departmental risk tolerance.
Again, all of these are transformative changes, which are happening. Discussions are happening, but the chair for young employees is not there. We need to be present at the table as well to lead those transformative changes. Thank you.
Ms. Fortune: Sejal captured it well. We hear a lot about the risk aversion in the department, about the need to take more risks, perhaps, decentralize decision making, have more trust in younger staff.
I was preparing my remarks for this committee and I was wondering who was going to approve them for me. Normally, anything I write goes through probably eight levels of approval before it is used by anyone. You get used to that. Having a bit more liberty in terms of the hierarchy would be a breath of fresh air, as you say.
Mr. Labrosse: I fully agree with both of my colleagues on this.
I work in a division that is decentralized, and we’re empowered to make a lot of decisions because we have to work fast, but it’s always fascinating to me to see how other sectors of Global Affairs work, how long it takes to get approval, and all the levels of people who need to sign off on something that is, in the end, not very consequential. That, to me, is aggravating. That’s something we need to work on.
Senator Richards: Thank you for being here. Following on from Senator Harder’s question, how old were you when you became interested in this as a career choice? Was it something you were passionate about in high school and university? Were you recruited in university? Were you always interested in international politics? How did you come to the decision to make this your career?
I know it will be different for each one of you. If you could just let me know.
Mr. Labrosse: For me, I was 15 years old. I did a student exchange program in Germany where I spent three months in Germany. The guy with whom I stayed then came to my house in Quebec City for three months. That developed a love for the international, meeting other cultures and understanding how other places work, how different people live their lives, and how different cultures are, and different languages. From that point on, I’ve always wanted to join the department.
Ms. Fortune: Speaking generally and then specifically, our generation is a lot more mobile than previous generations, and we have access to many different cultures through the internet and also increased opportunities to travel.
My family moved abroad when I was 10 years old, and I grew up, for the majority, in Middle East and Europe. By the time I was 22, I had lived or studied or worked in six countries and wanted to continue to live and work internationally.
Ms. Tiwari: I am from a first-generation immigrant family, and they wanted me to always get a job in the government because it was safe and boring. That was always the intention for me to get into it, and that’s the reason I resented the idea. Then I got the chance to work for the United Nations Development Programme, or UNDP, in Cambodia, and it all changed. I saw development projects being worked on in the field, and I thought it was not boring or safe. I came back and I pivoted my career to get into Global Affairs, and I must say that not a single day is boring or safe.
That just speaks to the idea of how the bureaucratic processes have made that image of GAC, or government in general, and that needs to be overhauled to some extent. Thank you.
Senator Richards: You three would be masters at recruitment then, wouldn’t you, if you had to be. What do you think?
Ms. Fortune: If there is a job in recruitment they want to hire us to do.
Mr. Labrosse: We’re open to contribute.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Welcome to our witnesses. I learned a lot from Mr. Labrosse’s presentation, which kind of answered one of my first questions concerning the fact that some of the witnesses we have had before this committee said that there are many employees of Global Affairs Canada, GAC, who would not even recommend GAC as an employer.
I would like to know the perception of your members who represent the next generation of this organization and have a say in how it operates. What do your members think about the fact that they or employees, old or new, would not recommend this institution?
Mr. Labrosse: Thank you, senator.
I think the young professionals who work for Global Affairs Canada want to work for Global Affairs Canada.
They are people like us, who have wanted to work for this institution for a long time and who have a passion for international affairs. However, the difficulties that exist at GAC in terms of human resources, conditions and contracts mean that many people leave the department, and I imagine that many people would recommend to other — They wouldn’t necessarily recommend leaving the department, but they would indicate that the opportunities to stay in the department long term in a stable way don’t really always exist. That explains why a lot of people I know, who are quality people, have left Global Affairs Canada to go to Natural Resources Canada, Transport Canada or many other departments, precisely because of the stability issue.
[English]
Ms. Fortune: When you look at our attrition rates, they’re not as high as you would expect, considering that when you talk to employees, they say, “We’re not satisfied with this; we’re not satisfied with that.” The problem isn’t that people are unhappy and leaving; it’s that people are unhappy and staying.
The organization doesn’t seem to take employees’ concerns as seriously as they would if GAC were a different institution which didn’t have as much affluence, and there are always people who are going to work there. I think that the employees feel replaceable to a certain extent, and if they leave, they won’t be able to come back.
Even though they have some discontent, they still remain in the organization. I think that is still an issue to consider even if it doesn’t mean that employees aren’t necessarily leaving.
Ms. Tiwari: Thank you for your question, senator. Through our survey, we found that 66% of respondents indicated that they were considering leaving the department, with the top reasons involving HR, job stability and the overreliance on precarious employment.
As my colleague Marissa mentioned, they are unsatisfied, but they are staying. That speaks to them wanting to work toward bettering the system as well.
We heard recommendations about bolder actions by the department so that there are positive impacts on mental health, moral support, improved productivity. Recognizing intercultural proficiency and things like the EDI initiatives are often mentioned in one of those recommendations so that people can stay happily rather than stay and be unsatisfied. Thank you.
Senator Woo: Good afternoon to all of you.
Recognizing that diplomacy is a special activity in the scheme of public service, but also recognizing that the work of the foreign service is part of the broader civil service, do you have thoughts on whether the structural design of how the Government of Canada allocates responsibilities and assigns civil servants in Global Affairs as a very distinct unit to deliver on international issues is the right one?
I’ll put the question slightly differently to perhaps help you answer. Based on your personal stories, when you thought of joining Global Affairs Canada, it came in large part from international exposure and a desire to be engaged in the world, interact with other cultures and so on and so forth.
Of course, all of that is now part of our everyday lives. It’s not just a foreign affairs thing, right? It’s something in finance, and it’s in environment and natural resources and so on and so forth.
If there were a different kind of structure in government whereby you could also pursue your cross-cultural, internationalist and diplomacy-type interests through a specialist department — some of you may have subject-matter expertise that I don’t know about; maybe you’re an expert on acidification in the oceans, for example, which is a global issue, and you might well have considered joining Environment and Climate Change Canada.
The question really is structural. I know this is perhaps deviating a bit from the immediate subject matter, but it does ultimately get to the question of recruitment. Do we have the wrong structure that ultimately brings people to the wrong place to do things they are not able to do?
The Chair: I just want to let the witnesses know that there are only two minutes left, so please be succinct in your answers.
Ms. Fortune: I’ll just reiterate some things you’ve already heard in this committee’s hearings before. I think there is a value in maintaining a diplomatic corps because the skills and expertise that are needed are different than would be found in other government departments.
We also know that other government departments, or OGDs, are increasingly involved in diplomatic work, and we need to deepen our cooperation and relationships with OGDs so that we can work together on international issues. Part of the solution is creating a more permeable organization, which allows for crosswalks between OGDs that do international work and Global Affairs Canada — so being less siloed and working together on whole-of-government issues with the organizations that have that expertise.
Mr. Labrosse: I agree with that. There is value in having people who are subject-matter experts with an international focus in other departments cross-pollinating with Global Affairs. Perhaps they could serve for a moment in Global Affairs before going back to their thing, a bit like the internal movements that I would like to see. Also, we have to remember that diplomacy is a very specific skill that takes a lot of time to learn. Not everyone can necessarily achieve proficiency to the same level. We need to keep in mind that it’s a very specific skill.
Ms. Tiwari: Through our recommendations, we have also heard that young professionals are scared to leave the department to pursue other careers in OGDs to build their portfolios and come back to GAC. It speaks to the same retention and recruitment issues. If we are able to create that cross-pollination between OGDs and GAC, that would help the diplomatic corps within GAC but also the diplomatic work engaged in OGDs. So that would be a whole-of-government exercise. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I just wanted to point out to the committee and the witnesses that we will be hearing from other government departments and agencies in the next few weeks.
Senator Greene, the last question.
Senator Greene: The inspiration for this question is from Senator Deacon, who asked the question, “Looking back at the end of your careers, what would you be most happy with?” I would have expected an answer that said something like, “I helped preserve democracy on behalf of the world” or “I expanded or promoted freedom” — those big questions. Instead, the answers were along the lines of, “What have I done for my department?” I think it’s important to understand that GAC is not an end in itself. It’s a tool. So I would like to ask how well you are using the tool.
Ms. Fortune: I think that’s a great observation, and I think it speaks to our findings as well. Because we were surprised when we talked to young professionals and asked them what their vision for the department was. They said that they wanted better HR, not that they want to work on human rights, or that they want a department that defends gender equality or that is a climate-change expert and pushing the envelope on all of these big issues at the UN. They said, “We want better corporate culture.”
What you do with the tool is only as good as the tool itself, and until we are able to fix our internal issues, we can’t pursue the excellence that we want to see on the global scale to the best of our abilities.
Mr. Labrosse: I agree with this. There is also, perhaps, a feeling among many young professionals that all of these ideals and objectives that the tool of Global Affairs can achieve are very remote from us. We’re not necessarily included in those things. Sejal was talking about the “Take Me with You” initiative where higher-level people could bring us along so that perhaps we would feel more involved and feel like we could have more of an impact and use the tool of Global Affairs a bit more.
I think the problem with young professionals is that we feel everything is too remote.
Ms. Tiwari: Thank you, senator, for that question. I agree with my colleagues. One more thing to really talk about is Canadian values as part of us as employees. We have to make sure GAC stays competitive on the global stage, not just having those values and policies and programs but having those values in employees and diplomats abroad.
Again, I would circle back to EDI as a crucial component. For example, on July 26, 2022, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on equity, diversity and inclusion as part of their way of increasing or proliferating U.S. values in their employees and across. So the business case for EDI being part of why these values should be part of employees and not just policies is becoming stronger and stronger. We need to understand that these are not isolated instances of why our responses were just based on GAC as an employer and not GAC as a global actor. There are missing components there, which are the challenges that we talked about today. Meeting those challenges is why we thought we could do a better job eventually. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We’ve unfortunately run out of time not only for a second round but for the chair to ask some questions. This really hurts me because I was reflecting on joining the department in my twenties and how I would have answered the questions that were put by Senator Deacon and Senator Greene. Looking back, I wanted to end the Cold War, of course. And it has ended, but not really.
I would like to really thank our witnesses. It takes a bit of fortitude to appear before a Senate committee, and I want to thank you for doing that. Your comments were very rich and helpful to us as we go on ahead.
As I mentioned, some of our work includes other government departments. We will also be looking at other foreign ministries in our study.
Colleagues, I don’t know if any of you have any other business, but before we adjourn, I wanted to mention that at last Thursday’s meeting on future business, I updated members of the committee on efforts to secure an order of reference for this committee to undertake a comprehensive review of the Sergei Magnitsky Law and the Special Economic Measures Act, or SEMA. Under the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, reviews of Magnitsky and SEMA are mandated within five years of entry into force. That was 2017. We are now five years later.
Leaders here in the Senate have discussed the issue, and the agreement was that we will seek authorization via a committee motion as soon as possible. That’s how we will be proceeding. This will provide a timely and interesting opportunity for us to do some work on the sanctions issue, especially since Ukraine is still in the limelight.
Colleagues, are there any other items anyone wants to raise? If not, I want to remind you that our next meeting will be tomorrow morning, at 11:30, in this room. We will again discuss the situation in Ukraine as part of our ongoing plan to receive regular updates on the matter.
We will have witnesses directly from Ukraine who will be appearing before us tomorrow.
With that, thank you for an excellent meeting. Thanks again to our witnesses.
(The committee adjourned.)