THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, March 22, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met with videoconference this day at 4:05 p.m. [ET] to examine, 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 the Chair of the Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee.
[English]
Before we begin, I wish to invite committee members and guest senators participating in today’s meeting to introduce themselves.
Senator M. Deacon: Senator Marty Deacon, Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Senator Amina Gerba from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Greene: Stephen Greene, Nova Scotia.
Senator Ravalia: Mohamed Ravalia, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Nova Scotia.
Senator MacDonald: Michael MacDonald, Nova Scotia.
Senator Harder: Peter Harder, Ontario.
Senator Boniface: Gwen Boniface, Ontario.
Senator Woo: Yuen Pau Woo, British Columbia.
Senator Cardozo: Andrew Cardozo, Ontario.
Senator Martin: Yonah Martin, British Columbia.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I welcome all of you, as well as those who are watching us from coast to coast to coast today on ParlVu.
Today, we continue our study of Canada’s foreign service, the objective of which is to evaluate if Canada’s foreign service and foreign policy machinery are fit for purpose and ready to respond to global challenges today and in the future.
I’d like to also acknowledge that Senator David Richards of New Brunswick has just joined us.
To discuss this matter, we are very honoured today to welcome the sixteenth Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honourable Joe Clark, who was Secretary of State for External Affairs, now called the Minister of Foreign Affairs, from 1984 to 1991. Welcome to the committee, Mr. Clark. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Before we hear your remarks and proceed to questions and answers, I wish to ask members to please refrain from leaning in too close to the microphone or remove your earpiece when doing so. That will avoid any sound feedback that could negatively impact the committee staff or others in the room who might be wearing the earpiece for interpretation.
We are ready to hear your opening remarks, Mr. Clark. They will be followed by questions from senators. You have the floor.
Rt. Hon. Joe Clark, P.C., Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, as an individual: Thank you very much. It’s a privilege for me to be here.
Distinguished senators, I’m honoured by this opportunity to appear before you and, for reasons you will well understand, I will focus more upon foreign policy than upon the foreign policy machinery, which often baffled me, I must confess. I nonetheless humbly acknowledge its importance.
Of course, a guiding question is this: What is the Canadian interest? An additional question, also important, may be more urgent: What is the contemporary Canadian difference, which is to say, what do we have to add to a complicating international situation that others might not? What substance do we offer?
At various times, we had an outsized role and contributed to significant developments in world affairs and world attitudes, often relatively quietly. I won’t pick things out decade by decade, but that was clearly the case in the immediate period after the Second World War, in part because we were one of the few countries with international capacity left standing and were able to show a role of leadership. To our credit, we did. Of course, that happened again through the period of Mr. Pearson’s service as foreign minister.
I’m very aware that it was almost 40 years ago that I became Minister of Foreign Affairs, and our world and country have changed materially. From that distance, I want to note three relevant intangible factors and one regret, which I hope this thoroughly modern Senate committee will not dismiss as mere nostalgia.
First, I will speak to the regret. The External Affairs Department, when I was allowed in the door, was still regarded, along with Finance, as an elite department, responsible for navigating waters that were unusually unpredictable and difficult. I understand the word “elite” has become pejorative, often for good reason. Whatever we call it, that status then brought the department an internal heft and influence among ministries. It fuelled both a tangible pride and an incentive to excel among foreign service officers. I have no doubt that inherent capacity for excellence continues, and your committee should consider how best it can be encouraged now.
The first intangible I want to note is that the ministerial staff who came with me to the Lester B. Pearson Building all came with a genuine respect for the high quality of Canada’s professional foreign service. They were the opposite of adversaries, and that, in turn, steadily earned the respect of the professional diplomats. There was a sense of partnership through my very fortunate period there, which was not pro forma. I have heard that this invaluable reputation changed a decade or so ago, and I just don’t know the circumstances now — I’m not close enough to know — but the sense of mutual partnership and respect is very important and very much worth preserving.
The second intangible is that most of the senior leadership of the department 40 years ago had extensive experience serving in Canadian missions abroad, often beginning in quite junior roles, living in and learning about cultures and societies very different from our own. That direct personal knowledge enriched the advice they gave me and my cabinet colleagues. I understand there is a whole-of-government dimension to senior appointments in Canada, but I strongly believe that the whole-of-world perspective is critical to a department of global affairs.
A third intangible is that, traditionally, much of the transforming work of diplomacy was done offstage, both planning initiatives and, more often than we’d wish, responding to surprise. Offstage might be smaller now, in a world of the internet and chatter and, as seriously, in a world where much of that commentary is not intended to be constructive but rather to be heard or seen.
Let me refer to one instance. Short days after the killings in Tiananmen Square, Howard Balloch, later the Ambassador to China but then the officer with whom I worked most closely regarding that response, convened with me face to face in Ottawa, but from across the country were 70 to 80 of the Canadians whose families or activities had been most directly affected by the Tiananmen attacks. After long and open discussions, we worked out an agreed Canadian response to that attack, which cabinet quickly adopted and which proved durable and influential.
Privacy made that urgent consensus possible, but that privacy was a means, not a purpose. The focus was on the considered views of participants acutely affected. I was the only minister, although a couple of my colleagues lobbied very vigorously to attend. Howard and I think one other foreign office official were the only two officials present. They suggested, respectfully, that I should chair much more than I should speak. Those circumstances created an atmosphere in which our invited participants spoke frankly, knowledgeably and as constructively as the circumstances allowed, including discussing ways in which our relationship with China would change but continue.
That was crisis consultation, not simply gathering advice and perspectives. The challenge is to determine how more ordinary but substantial consultation might occur in today’s media and commentary world. I don’t have an answer to that challenge, although I believe it is essential.
Let me end these preliminary remarks with one look back to Canada’s evolution as an inclusive society and one suggestion for the future.
We are North American in geography, with a rich Indigenous history of which we have not made the use of which it is capable but which can clearly influence our international role. We began both as a colony and as a colony of Europe, heavily influenced by European culture, languages and attitudes. Our 1871 census recorded that slightly more than 92% of our population then traced their origins to the British Isles or to France, with the rest coming disproportionately from other European societies. That British Isles–French dominance persisted in the 1921 census and later, while our net widened to other European countries, including, deliberately, to Ukraine for the practical reason that we needed to farm the prairies.
The point I want to make about this is that for much of our early history there was a persistent resistance to Asian immigration until the 1950s and 1960s. I was startled at its degree. I had known the phenomenon, but I had not known the details. Then, over a cluster of years, there was a major change consistent with a circumstance in which our welcome widened and non-European immigration was a focus, but non-European in the Asian case from Commonwealth countries. In other words, we were looking for and evaluating newcomers on the basis of institutional links to the European history that we knew.
That changed. In the 1970s, 27% of new arrivals to Canada originated from East and South Asia, and that trend continues. We’re speaking here about people, cultures and new perspectives to build and shape our modern country. Those aren’t just immigration statistics; those are attitude statistics. Their relative recency, a century after Confederation, demonstrates how Canadian public attitudes have changed and our capacity to have influence has changed.
Of course, that change was evident again in the overwhelming citizen sponsorship of the “boat people.” We have an actual, solid history of growing beyond what we were. The question is what we will make of that asset from our past in an increasingly troubled age. That answer will shape and be shaped by our foreign policy.
Finally, in these introductory remarks, let me make a brief case for Africa and begin with one of Canada’s quite distinct credentials: our own original status as a colony, which, as a matter of history and of attitude, distinguishes us from many of our Western peers. We have also made real and significant differences in Africa: our missionaries, first of all and quite substantially; our familial relationships through la Francophonie and the Commonwealth of Nations; our leadership against apartheid; and, perhaps most emphatically, our bread-and-butter determination that CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, when it started, had a significant and disproportionate presence in Africa. Canadian NGOs, businesses and foundations like the Mastercard Foundation are active and respected in Africa now.
But in diplomatic terms, Canada has become less present than we were at a time when Africa’s other relations with the West are both more troubled and more contested, including by China’s persisting presence and by Russia and its mercenaries, whose networks, I think, we had come to underestimate until very recently. As tensions and demands in other regions arise, Canada may be tempted to further reduce our formal presence in a turbulent and promising continent where our alliances could grow. That would diminish or waste a significant and distinctive Canadian asset.
I was privileged and a little surprised to play a much larger role in African affairs than I had anticipated when I became foreign minister. It was not simply on the question of the response to apartheid, although that was most widely known. What was interesting to me was to convene during that anti-apartheid period a committee of foreign ministers of the Commonwealth as a whole, but including prominent foreign ministers from Africa. As you can imagine, the dynamics in that sort of circumstance are not always easy.
The first meeting, which I was foolish enough to convene after a cocktail hour, nearly disrupted because the then Zimbabwean foreign minister tore into the foreign minister of the United Kingdom, and it took awhile to calm that down. The rest of the meetings were always before cocktails, but what was interesting about them was that a genuine sense of respect and, I have to say, moderation arose in those discussions. We found that issues that had looked to be impossible to address seriously, quite apart from resolving, became easier to address as time went forward.
I’m sure professional diplomats, people who do this for a living, can recount several other instances of that kind. They may not always have been dealing with company as difficult as some of mine around that table, but what struck me was that there was, on the one hand — and I know I’m on the record but it’s long enough ago — relief, I think, that it was Canada and not the United Kingdom in the chair, and secondly, I think that as we proceeded, we learned a great deal and were able to identify a lot of areas where the whole of the Commonwealth could move forward.
I’m not at all expert or current on a number of issues with which you’re dealing, but I’ll be pleased to try to deal with your questions and again thank you for the opportunity to be here.
The Chair: I’d like to acknowledge that Senator Salma Ataullahjan of Ontario has joined us as well.
[Translation]
Honourable senators, you will each have four minutes for questions and answers in the first round.
I would therefore ask the senators and witnesses to be concise in their questions and answers. We can always have a second round, time permitting, of course.
[English]
Senator MacDonald: Mr. Clark, it’s great to see you here today. I’ll let my colleagues know that he was my first employer. I left university in 1978 and drove to Ottawa for work and ended up working in the research office of the official opposition. That was 43 years ago, Joe, and here we are, so look what you’ve done.
I’d like to speak to you about something that’s relatively current to your career. In 2020, you were appointed special envoy to help Canada’s bid in the UN for the Security Council seat. In that capacity, you met with leaders in a number of countries — Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Algeria — in order to help Canada secure the seat. Of course, many of these countries we wouldn’t describe as democracies. In fact, many of them repress human rights, and there are probably many members of the UN that fall into that category.
I want you to tell us about the trade-offs that they expected you to make or you thought we needed to make in order to get the support of such countries, while at the same time remaining true to our principles. What sort of inherent problems were there that you witnessed or observed that worked against our Security Council bid?
Mr. Clark: Thank you, senator. I don’t think that they were problems of policy or of substance. I have to say that we all find, when we’re dealing internationally, that we’re dealing with states of mind and priorities of policy that are sharply different from our own. We can almost never let that drive us away from the table.
But while I was very politely received on those missions, I don’t think we won any or the critical number of votes when the time came to vote. I was very warmly received, and I say this without personal reference at all. I think that was because of whom I had been and what I had done rather than a current matter. The countries one visits are normally polite to missions of this kind.
For one thing, we had entered late, and that was a factor. For another thing, I think that a status that Canada had enjoyed as standing among other countries that had elected us in previous times was not present in this most recent round. That is a matter that has to be considered quite seriously; it has to be examined. You would need other witnesses than me, other opinions than mine, but I think that was the case. Frankly, I’ve seen nothing to change since then that would suggest that those circumstances would be different.
Does it matter? Running for elections doesn’t matter much, but what does it signal? It signals that the kind of instinct towards cooperation, even trust, even the sense that we will be heard, which I was fortunate enough to encounter — not always but often — in my period as foreign minister may not be as strong as it needs to be today.
Senator MacDonald: Thank you.
Senator Harder: Welcome, Mr. Clark. I want to allow you to elaborate a little more on your offstage influence.
The hidden wiring of foreign policy influence is often relationships, and relationships take time and they take breadth. One of the challenges we’ve heard is we should have priorities, we should focus more as a country. When you focus, you lose a large part of the world, which may be where the opportunities of influence and the challenges of crisis impose themselves.
Could you reflect a bit on the hidden wiring? Tending the garden of foreign relationships was something that you’ve spoken of in the past, and I’d like you to expand a bit. Thank you.
Mr. Clark: Tending the garden was the operating principle of George Shultz as foreign minister of the United States, which was sort of strange from an engineer and a Republican, or the stereotype of a Republican, but he practised it precisely and he did make sure that there were conversations that were very informal. Those were very productive.
I don’t know with how many countries they occurred. They began with Alan MacEachen as the Canadian minister at that time, but they were an important part of our process. They were unusually important because while we’re in regular touch with the United States, we’re more rarely on their mind. What happened in these circumstances was that both sides had to be briefed on the issues that were current. That meant that issues that might have been stagnating in the State Department made their way up.
Now, that was the U.S. case.
One of the difficulties, as you have learned, is that your contacts with foreign colleagues are, by nature, occasional. You’re in and you’re out. I don’t mean in and out of standing; you’re in and out of the same country, the same kind of environment. The conversations sometimes last longer. Some friendships develop that are unusually valuable.
I think the people you should be talking to about this are people who have served as officers in the Foreign Service because they had more contact than I did with this thing.
A point I will make, I’m now active in a couple of organizations that try to make use of people who are past their previous prime; let me put it that way. One of those is the Global Leadership Foundation, which was started by the late F.W. de Klerk. A lot of people, including yours truly, had a little bit of difficulty joining an organization that he chaired. However, we came to the view that he had, after all, been a signal player in ending a regime that he had maintained, and he was a quite broad-minded person.
What we did was try to bring people often from formal office — former ministers — and to an increasing degree people who had achieved eminence in their own countries on specific international policy issues. We sought to engage with heads of government, generally in the developing world, who might welcome private advice from people who had dealt with some of these issues.
The take-up has not been as much as one would have expected. But it has proven helpful in a number of cases over the 10 to 12 years that I have been involved. What is almost more interesting is that a camaraderie has developed among people who had been in office in former times — although not at the same time — but who had not always been on the best of terms in former times, and that has been quite helpful.
I have to say that this is a work-in-progress. It is a work-in-progress that may fail, but it is an instance of the sort of thing that needs to happen more often. There are other instances.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Clark. I’m going to interrupt you because we are over the four-minute mark. This will happen from time to time. I apologize in advance. It’s difficult for me as the chair, particularly since you were my minister at one point.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you so much, Mr. Clark, for joining us here today. We certainly are being well informed in our foreign services.
In your opening comments, you said a number of things. You spoke about trust, respect, your time in the role and the importance of face-to-face conversations and contact — even when you sit at the table and chair as opposed to, perhaps, influencing some of the conversation. I think all of those things lead to the culture of trust and respect and these kinds of things.
Understanding our past is so critical. When we look at the witnesses we have heard from thus far, we hear a lot about the risk of groupthink at Global Affairs and a general culture of risk averseness. I would think that any professional employees, especially those under 40 — perhaps even under 30 — would be hesitant to speak out against direction from their superiors. But we know it is very important, especially in a field like diplomacy.
While we don’t have all the answers, I would like your thoughts today on how the foreign service could foster a culture where people are encouraged to speak up, share their ideas and push back a little bit when necessary.
Mr. Clark: An anecdote is the best I can offer.
I and officials of External Affairs, as it then was, were summoned to the Department of National Defence for a discussion on what came to be known as “Star Wars.”
We went. The Defence officials were in the front row, and we were somewhere near the back. Anyway, we went back to the department — I and the four or five of my officials who had been with me — and shut the door. I said, “You’re going to have to help me on this. This doesn’t make sense to me.” There was a pause. I won’t name the official, although he worked with both of you. He said, “Sir, it doesn’t make sense to us either.” Then we went into a discussion that went beyond External Affairs. The Prime Minister was very interested and very much involved in that.
External Affairs was a little unsure what to make of me. They were unsure what to make of the Progressive Conservative government when I arrived. There was a strong rumour that my late colleague Sinclair Stevens would be the foreign minister. I recall that when I was named, there was a tumultuous welcome in the Lester B. Pearson Building. I said that I fully understood that they were not welcoming me. This was the reaction to whom I was not. But that was there. It took a little while to overcome, but we overcame it.
I do not think that frankness was a problem at that time. It is private frankness. It is frankness within a room where the shades are drawn and the quotes will not be made. Now, has that happened historically? No. Was I a magician in making it happen? No. But it comes down to a word that I believe you used, which is respect. I think there was mutual respect.
That too had to be earned. I was able to do things later in my period as foreign minister that I could not have done earlier. As well, whatever your background, knowledge or wisdom, when you become the foreign minister of a country like ours, you know that most of the rest of the people in the room know more about the issue you are dealing with than you do. I think that recognition, which was self-evident, probably encouraged some of the people who were advising me.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Clark.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you for your many contributions to our country.
You have witnessed several iterations in the global dynamic in your vast experience as a politician and respected global elder statesman. With the rising populism, autocracy and a potential risk to democracy, where do you see Canada’s place in a new world order, in particular with reference to the role of Global Affairs and our priorities? You have referenced Africa. I wonder if you could elaborate further in a more global sense.
Mr. Clark: I do not want to make too much of a point I made earlier about our status as a colony, but I think it is far from irrelevant because there is an inherent distrust in countries whose history has involved abuse from colonial masters. While we undoubtedly misbehaved from time to time ourselves, our record, history and, indeed, our internal conduct as a country have earned us credentials on that question. I think that is an asset Canada has to pursue.
Are there countries we stay away from? Let’s reverse it and look at the countries that are troublesome to others that might be open to us. I think there is a fairly wide range of those.
I can’t assess how valuable la Francophonie or the Commonwealth is to us. I would imagine that in the Commonwealth’s case, which had been the more vigorous of the two, it’s less than it once was. But those are not nothing. Those are opportunities where people sat as equals around contentious tables.
This is a question worth pursuing. I think we have some natural advantages rooted in our history and conduct. Our risk is that we are true to our own history and conduct in terms of the way we deal with difference and challenge at home.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you.
Senator Woo: I wonder if I could get you to reflect a bit further on another aspect of this idea of the importance of the offstage, particularly your comment, your observation about demographic change in this country since the 1960s.
I might observe that it isn’t simply that the composition of immigration has changed, but, particularly since the 1980s and 1990s, the type of immigrant that has arrived is also one that is more confident, if I can put it that way. They have come from places that are successful in their own right, up-and-coming, and so they bring a different quality, if I can put it that way, to their presence in this country.
Are you saying that Canada’s foreign policy hasn’t fully incorporated and internalized the demographic change in the way we do things, in our outlook on the world? Are you suggesting, perhaps, that we need to be less of an Atlanticist country and take more of a global view? If you could elaborate, that would be much appreciated.
Mr. Clark: We have to become I don’t want to say less of an Atlanticist country, but we have no alternative but to become more present in other parts of the world.
I was surprised when I went to StatCan and got the figure about the percentage of the British Isles’ and French influence that are coming. I am going to answer this question in domestic terms and then internationally.
We are aware of the statistics. We are wary of the implications. We are not inquiring about the implications enough. We have to do that. There are a number of risks. One of them is directly related to the confidence, as you say, of the people who are coming here. They are coming here, yes, to learn a new country, but they are not coming here to learn to the degree that their forefathers did. They are coming with a set of views and aspirations and a pride in culture. They do not consider themselves failures to their own culture; it is quite on the contrary.
What needs to be done is to determine where their successes and their culture might affect the country we want to become and the country we can become. I am not an expert on this at all, but that is an area where there is an opportunity for real gains.
What do people think of immigrants? Most of us, traditionally, say, “Well, my great-grandparents were immigrants, but my great-grandparents were not immigrants from Asia.” That is the case with a lot of “traditional” Canadians. I suppose if one looks at the nearly half a century when we were not welcoming Asian immigrants, there is an incipient doubt about the capacity to work with them.
The principal source — not the only one, but the principal source — of this change in our immigration is from Asia. We have to assume, as we did with the Irish and everyone else, that they are coming into Canada to be Canadians. However, they are bringing things no one else did.
The Ukrainians are quite interesting. The Ukrainians came because they could farm. They were not the first choice of Laurier’s cabinet; the first choice were two or three other more familiar generations to whom if you gave a hoe, did not know what to do with it. The Ukrainians were very good at farming. But the Ukrainian integration into Canada took some time. It is not all Asia-related; it has to do, to some degree, with other languages and other cultures.
I am going on too long, and I’m aware of that, but this is a quite important issue that goes beyond foreign policy but has its impact and expression in what we can do in the world.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Clark.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Welcome to the committee, former prime minister. I was delighted to hear you talk about the importance of Africa. As we all know and as you mentioned, Canada used to have a significant presence in Africa, with an extensive diplomatic network there. From a foreign policy standpoint, Canada was very active on the continent through the Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA.
This is what I’d like to know, Mr. Clark. On one hand, how do you explain Canada’s relative withdrawal from the African continent? On the other, what can we do to put Africa back on Canada’s list of priorities?
Mr. Clark: I can provide a more focused answer in English. I apologize.
[English]
Mr. Clark: I understand the question, but I am having trouble formulating my answer.
Yes, go ahead.
Senator Gerba: Yes. I just want to know this: Can you explain to us why Canada is not really in Africa anymore? What can Canada do, or what is needed for Canada to go back to that continent, which represents 54 votes in the UN?
Mr. Clark: What has happened is that priorities of other places have become more insistent. Part of it is also economic in that there were more economic advantages to relationships with other parts of the world.
Also, we have to look at the relatively eccentric ways in which our earlier presence in Africa began. Unless I’m mistaken, when CIDA was established, there was no real deliberate plan by the government that it would spend such a disproportionate time in Africa. In fact, I think it was one of those good ideas that got adopted and not thought through, and they were looking for places to look. Paul Gérin-Lajoie, who was the founder of CIDA, decided that they would spend about 60% of their time in Africa because there were real opportunities. No doubt, there were other factors — Canadian connections, some of which might have been religious, some of which might have been something else. But it was an accident that thrived; it was an accident that served our real advantages.
A lot of the people with whom I met, the leaders of African countries in the anti-apartheid period, were the privileged of their countries, to be frank. I had met them. They gained their influence because they had gone to Oxford or other prestigious schools. They had become acquainted, themselves, with other worlds, including Canada. They knew how to approach us. They knew what we were saying when we expressed some of our reservations.
In a sense, those were all accidents of other events. I’m not sure there was a deliberate policy set out by Canada to determine a role in Africa. It happened. It was invaluable. We are trusted, and we have assets. The question here is not so much to look back and wonder what went wrong; it is to examine what actually did happen. What was Paul Gérin-Lajoie thinking about when he did this?
Then, in the cold light of today, we must take a look at where the assets we have and the assets that exist in Africa can join together. I do not think enough attention is given to that. It is too commercial and too nostalgic sometimes. When I say it is “too commercial,” I’m not saying that the commercial should be put aside — not at all. I think there have been more persistent interests on the part of some commercial Canadians than there have been on the part of some diplomatic Canadians.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Clark. We must move on.
Mr. Clark: Sorry, Mr. Chair.
Senator Coyle: Mr. Clark, it is an absolute delight to have you with us here.
I lived in southern Africa under the apartheid regime. My youngest daughter is named for a South African refugee who was living in Botswana with us. Your work and the work of your government were critical, and I just want to acknowledge you here today. It was a game changer, and one for the best. I thank you for that.
Having started my career in Botswana in 1980, I was not working for CIDA, but CIDA was supporting the work. CIDA was a separate agency. CIDA, as you know, is now integrated.
When you were running the Department of External Affairs, it was not under you, but you clearly had very workable relationships, so my first question to you is about the integration of the development function within Global Affairs Canada and what you think the advantages or possibly disadvantages are of that.
Second, you spoke about how the experience base within External Affairs during your time was so helpful to you. A lot of that experience came from people who had been, very significantly, from a very junior level, living and working overseas. Could you speak about the importance of that and the relevance of that to today’s foreign service?
Mr. Clark: Yes. The experience of working overseas is very important in all of this. To the degree that it can be on-the-ground experience, the better.
I’m not an expert on what happened to CIDA, but I was aware in its declining days that it was declining. I didn’t think that artificial respiration was going to revive it. I cannot really comment on that.
I think that we want to look at contemporary instruments that may legitimately engage Canadian interests and those of African countries. That can be done, but it takes will and it takes direction. It should not be nostalgic.
Senator Coyle: A question that I asked of former minister Baird, who was here the week before last, was about the tenure period of the minister. We have seen quite a bit of turnover over the last number of years in terms of our foreign ministers. I’m curious what you think about that. You had a long tenure yourself. What are the advantages or disadvantages to that, as you may see them?
Mr. Clark: I think that there is a great advantage to tenure. I think that it can go on too long. I would argue that mine did not go on long enough. But the principle is there. That probably applies to more than just Global Affairs.
In Global Affairs, there is a trust that needs to be built. There is a knowledge that has to be built. You have lived in Botswana; I am from High River. There is a big difference. I had a lot to learn. Almost every minister who comes in has a lot to learn.
Speaking again to my time, I cannot exaggerate the importance of the degree of trust and willingness to work together that developed as I became more thoroughly settled in what was then External Affairs. While some of it had to do with me, most of it had to do with a sense of Canadian capacity that needed to be defined and applied.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Clark. I wanted to remind you that your tenure was seven years. That is pretty close to record setting.
Colleagues, we have two more members of the committee who wish to ask questions; we will take those, and then we have three guest senators who also want to ask questions. What I propose we do with the guest senators, if you are all okay with this, is to group those questions together so that Mr. Clark will be able to give a broader answer.
Senator Boniface: Thank you, Mr. Clark. It’s a pleasure to see you again. Thank you for your service to our country.
I wanted to get your view on the role that the private sector can play in terms of leveraging Canada’s interests, and I think of it in the context of Africa because that is where my experience is. It seems to me that partnerships and promotions on behalf of Canada’s private sector have waned and waves back and forth depending on the government’s priorities.
Second, I worked at the UN and I was always impressed with the way that Norway as a small country punches above its weight. I wonder what those observations would have been during your time for smaller countries, and what is it that they have that makes the difference? Thank you.
Mr. Clark: There is something. I cannot try to define it, but I do not think that it is a part of the past. It would be well worth identifying a list of those countries and deliberately working with them.
The private sector has changed. When I began the anti-apartheid campaign, I ran into some of the most ferocious opposition from Canadian companies that this was not what they should be doing, but that was a worldwide trend. There was a very limited discussion as to what the private sector should be doing.
It happens now that I chair an organization, I chair the supervisory board of Meridiam Infrastructure Africa Fund, which has about 15 significant Meridiam projects. We are a mission company under French law and we have an equivalent status in the United States. We deliberately look at our role as more than simply economic or commercial. We’re pretty good as a commercial company, but there is that element twist that is critical to our future. We are not alone, and I think that there should be some example that it might be worth taking a look at. Who are the mission companies in France? Who are the mission companies in the United States? What is it that gives them that status? What extra impact does that have in precisely the terms that you are raising?
Senator Coyle: I just want to go back to Norway. Could you give me other countries that you would consider similar in terms of punching above their weight?
Mr. Clark: I have not thought about this for a while and I want to be current. There would be other countries in the region. Norway was a leader, and I do not know all of the reasons for that. They have to be countries that have the luxury of being engaged in some of these issues. I do not think that I can answer that question.
The Chair: Thank you. I made an error, which is that Senator Martin is here on behalf of Senator Housakos. She is a full participant.
Senator Greene: Thank you very much. It is very good to have you here. I would like for you to comment briefly — although the answer really requires something much longer — on the current international situation.
We have successfully survived the bipolar world of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. We went through a period of Pax Americana in the 1990s, et cetera. Now we have something brand new that we have not seen before, unless it was 150 years ago following the Congress of Vienna or at some point like that where you have all of the established alliances looking at doing something else. Then we also have the complications of climate change and so forth. I was wondering if you could match your experience in handling these kinds of issues and tell us where we are headed.
Mr. Clark: Well, I will be very pessimistic about this because I am. I think that we are dealing with quite serious problems and part of the reason we are is that some of the alliances that were born of particular circumstances are now running down because the circumstances are changed.
We are all celebrating the spread of the internet and the encouragement of people expressing their views, but it is a very difficult circumstance for hard decisions to be taken. The public atmosphere dealing with government-to-government relations is more and more difficult for all of us. I am troubled about it.
We have to remember that Canada’s strength has been — one could not list 15 things that Canada did well, what Canada did when we were effective. What Canada does when we are effective is adopt a state of mind that is prepared to participate with others and take account of their realities. There is not much of that around. There are some roles that we can play in that.
To be clear, we are on one side in some of the issues that are in place. We have to stay there. I am quite troubled by the conflict in the world, the fact that it grows, that it can be contagious and that it might be becoming the style of life for new generations.
The Chair: Thank you. We are almost out of time. Senator Martin, you will have the last question. I apologize to the two guest senators. We have another panel coming up.
Senator Martin: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Very nice to see you, Mr. Clark. I know Leo Housakos has a long-standing relationship with you.
My question goes back to John Baird. When he appeared before the committee two weeks ago, he referenced the need for greater focus and the importance of coordinating trade policy, diplomatic policy and development assistance in order to achieve greater impact. I guess military capability would be an important focus as well, especially in this current conflicted world.
Australia is a good example. Their foreign policy is focused and far more regionally focused than ours. Do you believe that there should be greater focus in our foreign policy? Should we be doing less in certain parts of the world and more in others, based on what’s happening in the world today?
Mr. Clark: That’s a good way to put the question because often, if we’re going to do more in one part, we have to do less in others, although it’s not necessarily a zero-sum game.
Does there have to be focus? Yes. I don’t think our problems with focus are so much with where we operate as it is with how we operate. I think we are more and more developing a foreign policy of statement or declaration rather than a foreign policy of actual change. I think it’s part of the symptom of the age, but we are farther ahead in succumbing to that system than most other countries, and I think that is a problem that we have to face.
I believe that part of the purpose of your committee is to determine where focus should occur, and I believe that it is appropriate.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Colleagues, please join me in thanking the Right Honourable Joe Clark for being with us.
Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!
(The committee adjourned.)