THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, November 20, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met with videoconference this day at 4:16 p.m. [ET] to study the Government response to the twelfth report of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, entitled More than a Vocation: Canada’s Need for a 21st Century Foreign Service, deposited with the Clerk of the Senate on December 6, 2023.
Senator Peter M. Boehm (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable senators, my name is Peter Boehm. I am a senator from Ontario and the chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Before we begin, I wish to invite committee members participating in today’s meeting to introduce themselves, starting on my left.
Senator Gerba: Amina Gerba from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Ravalia: Good afternoon, welcome. I am Mohamed Ravalia, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Greene: Stephen Greene, Nova Scotia.
Senator Busson: My name is Bev Busson. I’m a senator from British Columbia. Welcome.
Senator Woo: Good afternoon. Yuen Pau Woo, British Columbia.
Senator Harder: Peter Harder, Ontario.
Senator M. Deacon: Welcome. Marty Deacon, Ontario.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Welcome.
The Chair: I would like to welcome everyone who may be watching us across the country on SenParlVU.
Colleagues, today we are here to discuss the government response to this committee’s twelfth report, entitled More than a Vocation: Canada’s Need for a 21st Century Foreign Service, which was deposited with the Clerk of the Senate on December 6, 2023. As you will recall, our report was adopted by the Senate on March 19, 2024, and the government tabled its response in the Senate on June 13, well ahead of the deadline, I should add. I’m grateful for that.
Today, to discuss the government’s response, we have the pleasure of welcoming from Global Affairs Canada: David Morrison, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs; Antoine Chevrier, Chief Transformation Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Transformation Team Bureau; and Vera Alexander, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, People and Talent Management.
We welcome you. Thank you for coming back to this committee and for taking the time to be with us today. We are ready to hear your opening remarks. As usual, this will be followed by a question-and-answer period with senators.
Mr. Morrison, you have the floor.
David Morrison, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Global Affairs Canada: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon to everyone.
[Translation]
First, let me thank this committee for helping to make Canada’s Department of Global Affairs the best possible organization for Canadians in a difficult world — a world that is becoming increasingly difficult by the day. As noted in the government’s and Minister Joly’s response, your committee report’s findings and recommendations were well aligned with the transformation agenda put forward by Global Affairs Canada (GAC).
[English]
Global Affairs Canada, or GAC, stands at the forefront of Canada’s international policies and operations. It has a proud history and a dedicated workforce, but it faces the challenge of serving Canadians in an increasingly complex and volatile international environment.
As you know, following the launch of the Future of Diplomacy: Transforming Global Affairs Canada discussion paper, the department initiated a three-year Transformation Implementation Plan in September 2023. The plan outlines an ambitious agenda to ensure GAC is fit for purpose to respond to the challenges of today and those of the future.
[Translation]
Today, I will provide an overview of what the department has accomplished so far and talk about where it’s headed. Global Affairs Canada has made progress in improving its organizational culture, including the development of a statement that serves as the department’s compass. This statement defines our common aspiration, the fundamental values and principles of our organization, and the culture we want to maintain and strengthen. The department will publish its third report on the handling of misconduct and wrongdoing during 2025. The report is now a model being implemented in all federal government departments.
The department has also launched a new staff survey on employee well-being and leadership effectiveness.
[English]
To build a workforce that is representative of Canada’s diversity, GAC, published an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, its first Accessibility Action Plan, and graduated its first cohort of the Deputy Minister Sponsorship Program. This ensures a pipeline of diverse talent to the executive level.
The department also launched a new organizational structure and governance model that will help break down the silos between trade, diplomacy and international assistance and improve policy coherence on cross-cutting issues, such as artificial intelligence, climate change, critical minerals and the like. In the new governance structure, deputy ministers are chairing seven of the top tables to drive more efficient and effective decision making. We will also soon stand up two key bodies: a staff advisory council and a heads-of-mission council.
[Translation]
GAC made a commitment to invest in the renewal of its Foreign Service, and is succeeding. Over the past 18 months, the department recruited over 415 new foreign service officers at all levels. That number is expected to rise to around 450 by the end of the year. GAC also launched a new department-wide talent management program, strengthened its official language capacity and expanded its foreign language training program.
[English]
The department is increasing its global influence and engagement where it matters most. GAC is advancing a new data-driven approach to help inform future decisions on our global footprint. This will help the department better calibrate Canada’s representation abroad to more efficiently project its influence, defend national interests and provide quality services to Canadians.
GAC has also soft-launched — until next week — an Open Insights Hub. This will connect its policy development and research with Canadian and international experts to help predict and respond to global issues of national interest. GAC has already organized several hub-branded events, including round tables with academics and GAC officials on topics such as the transatlantic dynamic. At the end of November, GAC will host the inaugural Open Insights Days, featuring experts on key issues, such as critical minerals, climate change, security and the like.
We’re also resuscitating the O. D. Skelton Memorial Lecture, which will be given by an international security expert at Brookings called Bruce Jones, who is also Canadian.
[Translation]
The department also completed a review of its crisis management and identified ways to improve its responses in a multi-crisis world. To implement these findings, it has created a new emergency management office, strengthened cooperation with the Group of Five and increased its capacity to use data for crisis management and foresight.
[English]
The department has committed to becoming a more efficient, high-performing organization. To this end, GAC has undertaken a department-wide red tape reduction and an exercise in modernizing some of its procedures. This is focused on reducing burdensome processes and workloads at headquarters and in its missions abroad. To date, 23% of the 61 planned initiatives have been completed, freeing up more than 14,000 hours for staff annually.
Over the next six months, the department will focus on improving its organizational agility, including surge responses in times of crises and to meet emerging priorities. The department will do this by embracing and promoting a “One GAC” approach that is intended to break down silos so that resources can be directed to its most pressing issues. To support this approach, the department has begun a comprehensive skills-mapping exercise that will allow managers to quickly identify employees with the required languages, expertise and experience when surge capacity is necessary.
“One GAC” also means that heads of mission should be truly empowered and accountable for achieving results at the country level across programs.
[Translation]
The department plans to continue recruiting to fill its foreign service officer pools, improve support for families posted abroad and support all staff in planning their career paths. The department is working on its learning options to focus on the most important and effective training. The department is working hard on the final stages of negotiations on the cyclical review of the foreign service directives, to create more flexibility for employees and their families as well as special conditions for rapid intervention in the event of a crisis.
I’ll close by thanking the committee once again for this opportunity to exchange views and ideas on how we can collectively improve the future of Canada’s global engagement.
[English]
We look forward to continuing our engagement with this committee’s work. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you, deputy minister. I would like to acknowledge that Senator Michael MacDonald of Nova Scotia and Senator Mohammad Al Zaibak of Ontario have joined us since you began your remarks.
[Translation]
I would like to inform senators that they have a maximum of four minutes each for the first round, which includes questions and answers.
[English]
Senator Ravalia: Thank you, once again, for being here and for the work you do for our country.
In its response, the government highlighted the importance of modernizing GAC’s tools and processes, including the use of artificial intelligence, or AI, and data analytics to enhance its diplomatic and operational capabilities. Given the increasing reliance on technology in global diplomacy, how is GAC integrating artificial intelligence into its operations, such as policy analysis, crisis response or program delivery?
Mr. Morrison: Thank you very much for the question. Every single week, there is a new invitation or initiative that comes across my desk on artificial intelligence in the public service, and I, of course, have a particular interest in the deployment of artificial intelligence in a foreign ministry. I was in Europe last week and compared notes with the Italian foreign ministry, my colleagues in Brussels in the European institutions and in London. AI and the deployment of AI within diplomacy featured strongly.
We have actually just today designated one of our deputy ministers as our overall focal point for AI within Global Affairs Canada. We did it at that level because of the significance that we see artificial intelligence having in our operations internally, but also in how we run our programs around the world. I will turn to my colleague Mr. Chevrier in a moment. Up until now, we have had ideas bubble up, some of them extraordinarily creative. We are now designating someone at the very top of the organization to make certain that there is coherence among these ideas and that we are interfacing with the wider town and the wider world in order to achieve the most out of AI for Global Affairs Canada.
Mr. Chevrier?
Antoine Chevrier, Chief Transformation Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Transformation Team Bureau, Global Affairs Canada: Thank you for the question. There is an immense appetite within our ranks in terms of advancing on that. We have had a couple of events to illustrate that. People are seeing the benefit, including in some of the issues that have been raised — from policy definition to program delivery — but also how to streamline our processes.
Of course, there is an important conversation that will be led by that deputy minister acting as a focal point, but also with a range of partners in terms of the risk balance in AI and other technology because we can talk about the robotization of information and the automation of information to streamline our processes, the security considerations, the environmental footprint of some of these issues, but the opportunity is there.
In addition to what has been mentioned, we are realizing, including by some of our early adopters within our ranks, that it could be very material to give back time to our employees for them to do value-addition work. It could free up time for people to focus on key messages and strategic considerations by taking care of some of the minutiae that can be generated by some of those tools. That is a shared challenge not only for us but for like-minded partners who are in a transformation agenda, as the deputy has mentioned. I think we are well set up to harness that, but in a reasonable and safe way as much as possible. The opportunities are there, but there are risks there. I think it is a question of risk balance as we approach those, but it is exciting.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you for being here again. It is cathartic to pull up the report and be able to go through the recommendations that we certainly presented and your response and your being here today.
There were a couple of things I have retained thought on. One is around mentorship. I was very happy to see that the government is taking this matter seriously and that there are wheels in motion and action under way at this moment.
My concern is that during our testimony, we heard two stories. We heard one senior staff member saying, “We are on it; we are really taking the mentorship piece to heart,” and then a junior staff member saying, “There is a whole lot of concern here; I don’t see it.” In crafting these mentorship programs, I wonder how much effort is being made to involve new and somewhat new recruits in crafting these guidelines around mentorship.
Mr. Morrison: We have mentorship programs. One I mentioned in particular is the Deputy Minister Sponsorship Program, which is explicitly designed to bring under-represented groups into the executive ranks. We are approaching our third year, I think, so that one has been changed from a pilot program into a full-blown program that we intend to continue.
The other, broader mentorship — I often personally get in trouble with my own staff because I think it is part of my core responsibilities to open my door to folks who want to come and have a chat. I believe that my senior assistant deputy minister colleagues operate on the same principles. We have a very vibrant and vocal youth network in Global Affairs Canada. I think if we were not getting it quite right, we would know about it. Many of us in this room probably benefited to a great degree from informal mentorship; that’s how things work, and I do know those networks exist within Global Affairs Canada. We are right now in the kind of fun part of the fall where we have our charitable campaign going, which has a lot of opportunities for networking and following up.
I’m not aware — maybe Vera Alexander is — that we have so many formal programs beyond the one that I have mentioned, but I think I know the culture pretty well. There is a lot of informal mentoring going on every day. Again, I know we would hear about it from our youth network if we were somehow falling short.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you. That was the mentorship piece. The other piece we heard about in testimony was the interchanges and comments for the GAC employees. We had testimony on how important this is given the whole-of-government approach to foreign affairs; it is no longer the exclusive realm of Global Affairs. In the reply, the government said they agreed, but that this is something already being done. The problem is we heard that while GAC employees know of those opportunities, they are concerned that if they leave, they might be forgotten and their careers at GAC will stall. I didn’t get a sense from the government reply that this matter is going to see a focus or new approach; the government is satisfied with what already exists. Have you received any direction from the government to encourage more interdepartmental experience for employees?
The Chair: I’m sorry to interrupt. That’s full time. Let’s retain that question and come back to it later, senator, if we can.
Senator Coyle: Thank you for being with us this afternoon. I’m curious about recruiting — not just about equity, diversity and inclusion, which you have covered well, but about recruiting geographically in Canada, recruiting people who may not have bilingual backgrounds and recruiting outside of the normal ways of recruiting, recruiting across sectors within the public service and outside of the public service, at other entry points. Could you speak to those points on recruitment?
Mr. Morrison: Absolutely. Thank you for the question. Ms. Alexander will help me out in a moment because she knows how much I have been leaning on the organization around those issues, including the need to have Canadians in the Foreign Service from every part of Canada, which is how it was done when I first joined the department.
In response to the last question, the second time I joined the department, I came in on interchange. I am fully bought into a department that doesn’t pretend that the only way in is at the bottom, because that’s just not the world we live in anymore.
We have not been as regular at recruiting as we should have been over the past decade. That has been fixed in a way that Ms. Alexander’s group deserves the bulk of the credit for, but it is very inefficient to swallow 415 people at the same time. It would be much better to recruit 40 or 50 per year. That’s where we want to go. I know for the first time in — I don’t know how long — a decade or maybe a little less, in the fall of 2025, I think, we are going to be doing a GAC-specific recruitment rather than just participating in the public-service-wide recruitment to address exactly the concerns that you raised.
Vera Alexander, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, People and Talent Management, Global Affairs Canada: We have been doing a lot of research and consultations at this point as to how best to reach some of the atypical communities. Typically, we would have applicants from some of the larger universities across the country, some of the more established international relations programs, for example, but how do we target those less obvious communities to enhance our diversity and our strength as an organization? We are doing these consultations in preparation for the big launch in the fall of 2025. As part of that, as well, we are ensuring that we have financial plans to support official language training because not everybody across the country is going to have the same access as people do in the National Capital Region, or NCR.
What we have done in recent years because we have had gaps in the Foreign Service pools is we have also brought people in from other government departments at different levels, not at the entry level. We have participated in recruitment efforts largely in the NCR that also target diversity for various groups of employees.
Senator Woo: Thank you for being here. I want to pick up on the recruitment question and ask about how you factor in diversity not just in terms of regions, ethnicity and other standard measures of difference but in terms of cognitive diversity. Also, do you have a way in which you encourage people who think differently about foreign policy questions, think differently about Canada’s place in the world, think differently about the history of our nation and where we position ourselves?
Is there space for them, and do you encourage that? Do you not want them around? Is there a way for them to find a place in shaping Canada’s future, because they are part of the fabric as well?
Mr. Morrison: I would say, absolutely. I know there is a place for them in the department. I would struggle a little bit with how to recruit them. Recruitment is a blunt tool the way it’s usually done. I would argue that our staff has a range of views on most things, and we have bumped up into this recently. We have encouraged people for years to bring your whole self to work, even if you may see a foreign policy issue differently. However, we also work in a public service, and we know the rules relating to that.
When the Clerk of the Privy Council, a former Foreign Service officer, launched his signature initiative, it was on public service values and ethics. This was because we have recruited a lot of people into the public service in the past six or seven years — COVID was there in the middle — and many of us were sat down early in our career and were told we’re not going to get rich or famous, but we can have an impact. “There are rules. You can’t put up a lawn sign during an election campaign.”
Think about tweeting. The Middle East is the most divisive issue I’ve encountered in my run in this job — where your private self is, and where your public self is. We do need to allow for a wide range of how people think about such sensitive issues. At the end of the day, though, there are rules about working in the public service that need to be respected. Within those rules, at Global Affairs Canada, we are wide open and will be better for having a range of ways of looking at the world.
Senator Woo: There are competing ex-ambassadors tweeting on different sides of the issue on a number of very important questions, and I’m sure that reflects some internal diversity of view within the department.
How do you allow for some alternative views and perhaps less mainstream views, to follow the rules but to allow for some development and maturation? That is because those ideas may reach a stage where they make some sense, but they won’t if you say, “You can’t pursue this line of thinking.”
Mr. Morrison: I was going to comment on the range of views of our former ambassadors as well because I hear a lot about those.
We’re about to launch a dissent channel, which will allow people with considered views that run counter to government policy to express those views and have them taken seriously. This is a thing that the State Department pioneered in the U.S. during the Vietnam War. We’re doing the same thing at Global Affairs Canada.
The Chair: Thank you. I guess that’s a balance to the Open Insights Hub that you would have externally. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
[English]
Thank you for being here today.
[Translation]
I was truly delighted to see that the response we received takes recommendation 22 of the report into account, which advised Global Affairs Canada to recognize the value of locally engaged staff — LES — and help them thrive. Among the measures announced are $47.6 million over five years and $9 million for subsequent years that will be used to support competitive compensation.
Could you tell us more about these measures, including how these funds will be deployed?
Mr. Morrison: Thank you for the question. As you’ve seen, locally engaged staff are of paramount importance to our missions around the world. They’ve been present much longer than our Canadian employees, so they represent continuity in our embassies and high commissions.
[English]
In our funds that we attracted to support our transformation program — I think that’s what you’re referring to — the bulk of those funds, first of all, is being invested in our workforce. It was about $160 million that we were able to attract in a very constrained fiscal environment, and $41 million of that will be ongoing. The bulk is to be invested in our workforce.
I’ll turn to Ms. Alexander in a moment. Some of that, at least, is targeted directly to our locally engaged staff, or LES.
It’s hard — I’ll be honest — and it’s not enough. There was a recommendation we had that we simply go above where we are now, which is that we try to be 50% in terms of the local labour markets in our total compensation. We thought if we went to 65% or 70%, we would solve a lot of problems. That’s very expensive, and we can’t get there, so we’re using the money to invest in things that our LES tell us they care most about, and we hope that is a down payment on our LES worldwide.
I hear about this every time I travel because I speak with LES — I did in three different missions last week — so it’s a work in progress.
[Translation]
Ms. Alexander: Thank you for the question. Most LES funding is aimed at increasing social and medical benefits. There are four phases; the first has already been completed and is intended for all African countries and several others. We’ve done this because there’s a big difference between the benefits of our locally recruited employees and the benefits we’re used to having in Canada. This will continue with all the other countries and all the other LES. We’ve invested in LES training.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
[English]
Senator Harder: Thank you, deputy minister and team. I want to commend the work that you’re doing. It’s very important for the renewal and revitalization of a very important institution.
You mentioned in your statement two matters that attracted my attention with respect to heads of mission, or HOMs. One is creating a council of HOMs. I would be very interested in what their role is and how you are you selecting them. Is it a policy? Is it a management? How are you going to rotate them so that it’s not just the grandees? Give some colour commentary on that.
The other is a very explicit message that our heads of mission are Canada’s heads of mission and that, therefore, all of the assets of Canada in the mission are to be united or at least coherent. That has been a challenge. I wonder what your recipe for success has been.
Mr. Morrison: It’s work in progress, again. On the first question on the council, I’ll turn to Antoine Chevrier in a moment. We’re just in the process of standing up those councils, as I’ve already tried to joke. Our HOMs are a vocal lot whether they’re current HOMs or former HOMs. There is a huge amount of wisdom that can be gleaned, and that is why we decided to actively make them part of how we do things.
On empowering HOMs at the country level, we’re starting with GAC. I have this concept called “One GAC,” and it’s why we started, frankly, with a North Star statement of our mission, vision and values. Before that, when we wanted to talk about GAC, we had to talk about diplomacy, development, consular services. What kind of organization that is serious describes itself in terms of its service lines? It seemed like a strange place to start, but I was adamant that we needed to talk about what united us as a workforce rather than the different bits we belonged to. That’s where we started, and that same thinking needs to imbue how we operate at the country level.
We have been on two sides of a fence for too long about accountability. Unless you know who’s accountable for results, you can’t know who’s in charge of setting your priorities. I travel around the world, and I am not happy to say that for the 11 years after the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA, was amalgamated into Global Affairs, we still have a difference of view as to who’s actually in charge at the country level. That was supposed to be the HOM. That requires a degree of joint planning that not everyone is comfortable with but that we’re going to get back to. It’s the same with trade and the rest of the offering.
That’s where we are starting. It is One GAC. You are completely right that HOMs at the country level represent all of Canada. That will take longer.
Mr. Chevrier: Thank you for the question. Absolutely, talking about both councils, which will really serve as a sounding board for the management table, as the deputy has expressed, led by deputy ministers, we are seeing, participating in those conversations, material differences in terms of the quality of the conversation and new governance structure. The councils will serve as a sounding board. The membership is important, as you’ve made reference to, so we’re seeking a diversity.
In the context of the heads-of-mission council — you can think of diversity from the point of view of demographics and provenance and so on — different missions will have different pain points. I’ve had the privilege of being head of mission twice, so I am a former head of mission myself. A smaller mission will have different pain points and challenges and different views to express in terms of guiding the decision making. It will be important as we create that HOM council, along with the staff advisory council, to bring that diversity. If it’s only 12 big missions, then the diversity of views won’t be useful, as the governance is supporting the deputy minister’s accountability. That’s part of the plan.
Mr. Morrison: I will just say they’re all on the same WhatsApp chat group. Technology has enabled conversations that never would have been able to happen. We will hear about it if we don’t get the composition of the HOM council right. They’re fully part of what we’re doing; believe me.
The Chair: Thank you very much. If I could add a comment from the chair, something similar was tried some time ago. I think, as you are aware, the heads of mission were associated with various management committees. That, I think, had mixed results; at least that was my own recollection as having been a participant at that time.
Senator Busson: Thank you all for your information today. It’s certainly inspiring to listen to the fact that it sounds like you’re definitely engaged in seeing some major changes take place.
I want to observe that in the kind of major changes that you’re endeavouring to accomplish, the resistance to change is also an issue in traditional departments, specifically governmental departments. Another thing that I think you might be hoping for is an out-of-the-box model, something different, it sounds to me, than the kind of traditional departmental design that you’ve been operating on in the past. You’ve talked about breaking down silos and doing new recruiting and those kinds of things. Certainly, the kind of unique and complex organization you want to continue to evolve into needs that kind of change, I believe.
One of the recommendations of this committee was to look into separate employer status, I suspect, in order to perhaps bypass some of the weighty issues that departments have. Could you talk to us about whether there has been any movement forward? The government committed to “take note” of that recommendation. I’m just wondering whether or not you could comment on that.
Mr. Morrison: Thank you for the question. We were actually in the process of looking into it even before your report came out. It was something that I was very attracted to as a way to solve some of our thornier HR issues. We’re also a huge property management company, and that doesn’t, on the face of it, have a lot to do with diplomacy. Several people in this room have tried to run the place before. It’s a challenging place to run.
This idea of separate employer status had been put forth by a couple of different groups. We commissioned a very senior colleague to look into it. There was a report. Like many complicated things, it had some puts and takes associated with it. I would say that the daunting thing, even if the end goal seemed to be attractive, was the transaction costs to get from here to there, both in terms of financial costs and also in terms of time and opportunity costs to actually take this on.
In my own life, what then happened was we had war in the Middle East and the continuation of war in Ukraine and so on. We have not taken our foot off the gas, but we have just had to recognize that taking that step while we’re already doing the transformation would be a very major thing. Instead, what I have been trying to do is push the boundaries of what is possible within the current regime, and I’ve had some success on that. I’ve leaned in personally to the Foreign Service Directives’ cyclical review, to things that I know are important to our families abroad, and that, I think, has helped generate some movement.
I’ve personally leaned into a couple of the things that the Treasury Board Secretariat told us we couldn’t do. I pushed them, and, actually, we could do them. A year into the implementation of our plan, I’m feeling reasonably good about the path of pushing the limits of the current system, but certainly have not at all given up on further exploring separate employer status. I forget how many different occupational groups we have, but it’s more than 10. That’s why it’s complicated — because you’re not just changing one group from this to something you invent. It would be very expensive and time-consuming to make that transition. I think we are doing pretty well, at least in this phase of the transformation plan, by pushing existing limits.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator MacDonald: I would like to thank our witnesses for being here today. I have a couple of questions. The Transformation Implementation Plan states:
. . . many of Canada’s allies and partners are re-investing in their diplomatic capacities. Canada must do so now, or risk losing ground to partners and competitors alike.
What progress have our allies and partners made in this regard? How do we currently compare to them? As well, are there specific areas in which we have fallen behind compared to our allies and partners? What is being done to address the shortcomings?
Mr. Morrison: Thank you for the question. In our initial report, which is called Future of Diplomacy, we have some comparative data, which I will try to summarize. I would say that our allies are currently investing more. The French transformation plan was accompanied by a budget increase of 10% across the board and 1,000 or 900 new diplomats. Our numbers are modest by comparison. The U.S. Department of State is also investing in its diplomatic capacity with a similar quantum. It is obviously a much bigger operation.
We received, in Budget 2024, all things considered, a credible amount of money that will help us execute on the most important parts of our transformation journey. Technology has to be part of the key to the future of all foreign ministries, and it is very expensive. Having Canadian diplomats abroad is very expensive.
The second part of your question was what we’re doing about it. Well, we are looking at every single bit of our operations, and we are seeing what we could do better within the same rough resource environment. Bureaucracies are not very good at stopping things. I remain convinced — and I’m a child of the UN system, which has much less cash than does the Canadian government, so it has a different way of looking at challenges within existing resource envelopes. That’s what we are currently trying to do: stopping things that are not adding value, deploying AI where we can and ensuring that every Canadian abroad is in the right place, doing the right kind of work.
My opening remarks talked about a data-driven assessment tool to make certain we have the bulk of our people in the places that matter the most. All countries are not equal in Canada’s foreign policy. We have a notion of how to determine where Canada’s interests really lie overseas and to make certain that’s where we have our people and, frankly, to scale down in other countries where it is nice to have expensive personnel but not as necessary as in some countries. Agility and the ability to redeploy resources to the most pressing priorities are a way that the private sector addresses some of these same challenges.
Senator Greene: Thank you very much. I would like to ask a simple question. Hopefully, it is not simple-minded. The question is this: What is the relationship between AI and diplomacy? Are we looking at a situation or a time in the future where AI obviates the need for diplomacy, in a sense? I would like you to explore that a little bit if you would. I would like to ask you to keep your answers in very clear language not only for me but for those people outside who are looking in.
Mr. Morrison: I will have to keep my answers clear because it is not a subject about which I have thought deeply. We were criticized as a group of deputy ministers a couple of weeks ago for applying a mental model to AI that was trying to get our current business done more efficiently rather than reimagining the business.
Senator Greene: In what context?
Mr. Morrison: In my current organization, staff produce a lot of briefing notes. If we apply AI to “I need 800 words on the Cuban economy because I’m about to meet the Cuban economy minister” — right now we have a person write a note, and that is checked and rewritten, and it finally gets up to me. It takes at least a day, usually a couple, whereas you could just ask that question to ChatGPT and get a pretty good answer. That’s an example of AI being used to make a process more efficient.
My mind barely stretches to what it would be like to have AI do things entirely differently, but imagine a trade negotiation where the various things at stake were somehow put into a thinking machine, and the sweet spot was spat out within seconds. You would eliminate months and sometimes years of negotiating if you could deploy AI to complex trade negotiations. If you could deploy AI to a settlement in Ukraine or in the Middle East right now, you would cut out a lot of work that will almost certainly be wasted involving human beings.
So that’s my shot at how AI could revolutionize diplomacy. You are still going to need diplomats at the end of the day to check up on everything — of that, I’m sure. But you might need fewer international conferences. You might need less plane travel back and forth to negotiating sessions.
Senator Greene: Isn’t it like encouraging machines to take over?
Mr. Morrison: Not at all. I think that, ultimately, diplomats represent countries, and our countries, at least Canada, are ruled by folks who are elected and part of a participatory process. I think those people will remain in charge. I hope they do. I think it gets back to the previous question and resources. I think AI deployed appropriately and with the right safeguards will help us do our jobs better.
The Chair: Thank you very much. In my capacity as chair, I will pivot from that Orwellian moment — thank you, Senator Greene — to ask two questions. First of all, thank you very much for responding to these questions. They are very pertinent. They reflect our report and, obviously, the thinking that you have given to responding to it as a department.
I have two questions. They are featured in our 29 recommendations. One is this: In this interval of low or almost non-existent recruitment for about a decade, a lot of people were brought into the department who were basically filling Foreign Service positions but they were not Foreign Service officers. One of our recommendations was to see how they could find a pathway to become Foreign Service officers and therefore qualify for postings. This is because one of the things that we heard is that, as it now stands, they would be considered for postings if there are no Foreign Service officers coming forward, in other words, the positions that remain. That’s one.
I’ll put the second question out as well. This was a recommendation where the response from the department was to note, and that is on the question of mobility at all levels, but preferably at the executive level throughout the government, and to see whether there would be a buy-in from other departments and agencies at the request of the clerk. So it is not just one-sided to facilitate some of that movement where people could advance in their specialized areas and come back and therefore increase the knowledge base, both in the department on what domestic departments with an international interest do and, of course, in those domestic departments a realization of what Global Affairs Canada does.
Mr. Morrison: Thank you for both questions. I may need a little help on the second from Ms. Alexander. I will ask her to fill in, but a vast number of our new recruits — 415 to date and 450 by the end of this year — are those people who were already working in the department. They joined, and being on the inside for a couple of years has given them a leg up in terms of the competitions that we have been running to fill up our Foreign Service pools.
There is, of necessity, a difference between holding a rotational job and a non-rotational job. I’m bound and determined to make the difference between a traditional job and a rotational job greater by giving rotationality meaning in terms of saying, “You signed up to go from embassy to embassy, and that’s what we will be requiring of you.” Every single new recruit has to sign a letter of offer that says that one of their first two postings will be to a hardship IV or V country. So, we have some levers we are deploying. Everybody likes the foreign part, but it is the Foreign Service, and we are going to put the “service” back into the “Foreign Service.” That will help a little bit with the sense that we have first-class and second-class citizens.
In terms of mobility, there are currently 359 people from other government departments working at Global Affairs, and 0.5% of our workforce is in other government departments right now. That’s not comparing apples to apples, but we are much better than we used to be about mobility in and out. It has to be the future. The number one thing that our foreign partners want to talk to Canada about right now is critical minerals, and Natural Resources Canada, or NRCan, has the expertise on that. On climate change, it is Environment and Climate Change Canada, or ECCC. On artificial intelligence, it is Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, or ISED. So, we need to be more permeable than we have been, and we are getting there.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. With your first response, I was having a nostalgic moment there because every year I had to tick a box saying, “I remain fully rotational,” or else.
Senator M. Deacon: I want to come back to but not spend too long on the question. You started to response to it based on your own experience. That is the direction and encouragement of interdepartmental experience for GAC employees. You touched on it, but if there is anything else you would like to add, that would be great.
Mr. Morrison: I came back to it at the tail end of the last question. We don’t have a choice. That’s the future. The old distinction between international issues and domestic issues has entirely broken down. It is simply not feasible or advisable to try to have GAC exercise a monopoly on the international part of domestic files. We need to be much better at seconding staff to each other and at enriching each other in terms of joint delegations and so on. There already is more and more, given the statistics that I was checking with Ms. Alexander. I think it is 359 or 355 people from other government departments who are currently at GAC. That will continue.
Senator M. Deacon: That is good to hear. Of course, we have to do it. The writing is on the wall. It is good business. Do you see structural, functional changes you have to make in order to make that happen?
Mr. Morrison: This is part of your first question. I think we could do more. It is a free market now. We could do more to support people when they are out. We have people go out. Some of them are on secondment. Some of them, frankly, go out because they are frustrated they didn’t receive the promotion they wanted. They go out and spend a lot of time trying to come back in. Some are true alumni. Some are “visiting” somewhere else. For those who are visiting somewhere else, we could probably do a better job at keeping in close touch and seeing when and how they are going to come back.
I was at a deputy ministers’ weekly meeting earlier today, and, looking around the table, the number of GAC alumni who are currently at the deputy minister level all around town is encouraging because it means that all decision making in Canada around foreign policy is better as a result. The head of the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Deputy Minister of Transport, the Deputy Minister of National Defence, Foreign Service officers are all GAC alumni.
Senator Coyle: This is a great conversation. It’s very heartening to hear the movement. It feels like there are a lot of moving parts in good directions. I commend you for the work you’ve been doing. It’s easy for us to study and make recommendations, but you are putting the work in and making it happen.
I’m always interested, and we talked about it here in our report, about how you engage with Canadian expertise, not in other government departments but out there in the big world, across Canada: in the universities, the think tanks, civil society organizations, business and wherever there may be that expertise that is important for the priorities of the day. You have talked about the Open Insights Hub as one mechanism. Maybe you could talk more about that, but also about other just-in-time efforts that you take on a daily or regular basis to seek that out.
Mr. Morrison: Sure. The Open Insights Hub is kind of a brand rather than just an organizational unit. The pledge in our report was to make Global Affairs Canada more connected to Canadians and the world. The good news is that technology allows us to do that. You can literally get anybody to do a Zoom conversation.
We were talking on the way over here about just how energizing this has been for our colleagues at Global Affairs as we build to this two-week period where I have very high expectations that it is going to be terrific. There are going to be some good knowledge products produced. I was saying to Mr. Chevrier that those shouldn’t just sit on our SharePoint site. They should be available to the wider community in Canada and internationally, and our metric should be how many times they get downloaded by university students or high school students.
I have this obsession with our knowledge management and our capacity to connect with my very smart colleagues and the work they do, informed increasingly by whatever else is going on in the world, and how to connect that out to universities not just in Canada but around the world.
The hub is not just a group of people; it is a concept, and I and others will be participating in it over this two-week session. We are resuscitating an old institution in terms of a keynote lecture; we’ll be doing more of that as well. The great thing is that you no longer have to pay people’s airline tickets to come here and share their ideas.
Senator Coyle: Bringing what you are doing out to Canadians — do you want to say anything about that?
Mr. Morrison: In the same group that does the Open Insights Hub, we have a new outreach function to connect directly with Canadian universities, for example. Yes, they travel, but travel is very expensive, so we are using technology to make certain that we are hooked into the Canadian ecosystem and not just two or three universities in Central Canada.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Woo: The topic of my next question was not part of our report, but I think it falls within the broader goal of transformation, particularly on the way you organize yourself. It has to do with the Global Security Reporting Program, or GSRP. I’m interested in knowing what progress you have made in addressing the concerns raised by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, or NSIRA. For those not familiar with the jargon, this is the human-intelligence-type function that Global Affairs Canada conducts. The comment from NSIRA was that some of its activities perhaps did not conform to the Vienna Convention as some of the officers may have thought it would. This seems to be quite a serious failing if it is, in fact, a failing, and I would be interested to hear what the department is doing to remedy the situation.
Mr. Morrison: Thank you for the question. I would encourage everyone to read not only the NSIRA report but also the response to the report that was written by Marta Morgan, my immediate predecessor, in which she frankly takes issue with the characterization of the GSRP program vis-à-vis the Vienna Convention.
The fact is that the program was a post-9/11 creation. I know of no complaints by any foreign government, ever, against any GSRP personnel. We consider it a diplomatic reporting program. It didn’t exist when I was a junior Foreign Service officer, but the nature of my political reporting when I was posted in Cuba was identical to what the GSRP people in Cuba subsequently reported.
It is a program that reports on security issues, the Global Security Reporting Program. Regular diplomats posted abroad are often slightly jealous of their GSRP colleagues because they are well funded and travel extensively at country level, and when the minister comes to visit, they don’t go out to the airport, because they are part of their own program. I would be very happy to talk to you or anyone else about it off-line.
We have made some changes. There have been some practices, actually quite far in the past, which I think wouldn’t pass muster today. We have also shifted it, frankly, out of where it was in the Intelligence Bureau just to reinforce the point that nobody does anything clandestine, nobody does anything coercive. It is not at all an intelligence program; it is a diplomatic reporting program on sensitive issues. I’m speaking like this because I feel strongly that it has been mischaracterized in the mainstream media in this country, and my predecessor took issue actually with the findings of the NSIRA report. We have, under my predecessor and myself, made some changes to remove even the sense that there may be some ambiguity around the program.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I think the deputy minister who instituted the program is also sitting at the table today, and it is neither the chair nor the chief witness.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: I’d like to come back to horizontal collaboration. I believe Senator Harder mentioned it earlier. Recommendation 2 of the report calls on the department to increase collaboration and policy coherence to ensure that trade, diplomacy and development cooperation don’t work in silos. In her response, the minister assured us that the merger of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade with CIDA in 2013 was part of that efficiency effort. This was implemented in developing the Indo-Pacific strategy.
Do this horizontal collaboration and quest for consistency also apply today in developing the Africa strategy, which is currently in the preparatory phase?
Mr. Morrison: Thank you for the question. I mentioned earlier that we have a strategy that I called “One GAC”. There’s still work to be done to ensure consistency, especially at the national level. The Indo-Pacific strategy is a good example, because it wasn’t just consistency within Global Affairs Canada, but consistency across some fifteen federal government entities. I chair a committee of deputy ministers responsible for ensuring that consistency, and it’s an extraordinary thing, in my view, because the money earmarked for this strategy is divided between some fifteen entities. The way the strategy is managed is skewed in terms of consistency, which is something new for the government.
That same spirit and those same tools will be used for the Africa strategy that is currently being prepared. The strategy has already been endorsed by Ms. Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs, but also by Mr. Hussein, Minister of International Development, and even by Ms. Ng, Minister of International Trade. So it’s the same vision for consistency.
[English]
Senator Harder: I want to follow up on your reference to the Foreign Service Directives, or FSDs, and your earlier reference to red tape reduction. Does any of the red tape reduction deal with the FSDs?
Mr. Morrison: As Ms. Alexander well knows, my coming-in proposition was, “Let’s blow up the FSDs.” I kept hearing so much about them and how they were an antiquated set of rules in a book that thick, which did not meet the needs of modern Foreign Service families.
As I said earlier, I’m a child of the UN system, and they are much more modern in their approach to administering their personnel overseas because they can’t afford a rule book that thick. For example, they just issue non-accountable travel advances, and you just have to hold on to your boarding passes for a year, and that’s it. They have a series of entitlements. If you receive $300 a night for every night you spend in Paris, you can take that $300 and have to submit all the paperwork, or you can take 80% of it, no questions asked. Overnight, the UN saved 20% of its travel bill and didn’t need to have armies of people to invigilate its claims.
That was my going-in proposition, and I then ran into the realities of the fact that we don’t own the FSDs. We are the major user of the FSDs, but there are other government departments. Of course, this is part of collective negotiations the Treasury Board oversees, and there are a lot of puts and takes in their overall world. I would give myself a B minus on where I thought I would get versus where I’m landing, and that’s a source of enormous frustration, frankly, because the FSDs matter to our families abroad. However, I think we have successfully argued that the next round will begin almost immediately, so we’re going to get to a place where we can be in a cadence to make certain there is as modern a package of support for our families as possible.
There is an interesting anecdote that Mr. Chevrier told me yesterday about a guy somewhere in South America who applied ChatGPT to the FSDs with remarkable results in terms of explaining to people what their entitlements actually were. To tie a couple of parts of our conversation together, I foresee a better FSD world; we are just not quite there yet.
Senator MacDonald: One of the things we identified in our study was the issue of our troubles with staff retention in our overseas missions and how it would affect mission performance. It’s gratifying to see $47 million of this roughly $160 million being allocated to support competitive compensation for locally engaged staff.
I’m curious: What specific metrics will you use to evaluate whether this investment improves staff retention and consequently improves mission performance?
Mr. Morrison: Thank you for the question. It’s not something I’ve thought of. The first thing that one would look for is a reduction in the attrition rate. Like all statistics, we have problems in some countries, and we don’t have problems in other countries. We have 182 missions around the world in 112 different countries. We have a good sense about where the pain points are.
In some countries, paying at 50% of the local labour market, we have no retention problem at all. In other countries, we do. So we really need to unpack a little bit where we have retention challenges.
On the social package side, which is where the money is targeted, we hope that will help, but it’s very hard to generalize because each country is so different.
Senator MacDonald: Is it related more to cost-of-living issues, or would it be more related to the society in which they’re operating in a particular mission?
Mr. Morrison: I think it’s both. We have a mission in the West Bank right now. That’s a context that’s entirely different from Copenhagen or hyperinflation in Argentina, perhaps. We have all sorts of mechanisms that try to keep pace. Cost of living post-COVID is a real issue everywhere. Canadians, Americans and everyone else are struggling with it.
Last week, I was in Rome, and I gave out long service awards to people who had been there for 40 years. It’s very context‑specific. Again, we had a recommendation that the way to solve many LES issues was to go off of the 50% and go higher, but we simply don’t have the resources right now to do that. So we’re rolling out the slightly more attractive packages in the way that Ms. Alexander mentioned, starting with Africa, but rolling them out across the world.
Senator Al Zaibak: Thank you for being here. My question may fall outside the report, but it may be related somehow. Canada historically has been known to take and play major leadership roles in shaping world policies; I can cite examples going back to the days of Lester B. Pearson and the resolution of the Suez Crisis. Another example is our government under Brian Mulroney leading the cause to defeat apartheid in South Africa. Even more recently, when Lloyd Axworthy was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, he led the creation of the International Criminal Court, or ICC. Canadians continue to look to our governments and to Canada to assert its leadership role. In the past, in all of those situations, Canada was at odds with its major allies, but it managed to persuade them to change their views.
I don’t know whether that was a result of an infrastructure and support system that does not exist now, and whether we can be hopeful that Canada can reassert its role in resolving conflicts around the world and resume its leadership role as a peacemaker and honest broker, regardless of the will of our trading partners or strategic allies, and whether this is a function of shortage of resources or the need for additional resources, regional expertise and human expertise as well.
Mr. Morrison: There is a lot in your question. I would approach it like this: You need different foreign ministries for different times, depending on what is deemed the highest need by a government to meet the national interest.
I would argue, and we did argue in the Future of Diplomacy, that Canada lived in an enviable global environment from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In that environment, the priority was not put on conflict resolution by Canada. It was put, I would argue, on trade negotiation because it was the era of globalization. Canada is an exporting country. I think our leadership on trade policy was second-to-none in that 30-year period. It’s less famous, a little bit harder to understand than the Suez Crisis and a couple of the other issues that you raised, but when you look at who wrote the rules that have helped Canada remain prosperous in a global world, in many cases, those were very smart Canadian trade negotiators at the World Trade Organization, or WTO, and elsewhere. That was certainly the case for the NAFTA agreement, which was kind of the first big step for Canada.
I do think that the world has changed, and we’re now back into a world with raging conflicts, frankly, in Europe and in the Middle East. There are a lot of sort of hybrid threats. If you’ve been watching the news closely, you’ll know that Russia has been up to all manner of no good. There have been two undersea communications cables cut in the past two days. We’re into a new era. I think in that new era, yes, there will be scope for Canada to play a role that it played in the pre-globalization era. We’re trusted. We’re not often seen to come with a hidden agenda. I could see it being more of a feature of our diplomacy in the coming period than it has been in the past 30 years.
The Chair: We’re ending on a pretty high policy and strategic note. On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank our witnesses today, Deputy Minister David Morrison, Assistant Deputy Minister Antoine Chevrier and Associate Assistant Deputy Minister Vera Alexander, for your frank responses to our sometimes penetrating questions. I think it was a good conversation and one that will bear some repeating in the future.
Colleagues, we will reconvene tomorrow at 11:30 a.m. in this room to hear again from Global Affairs Canada officials for updates on the situations in Sudan and in Myanmar.
(The committee adjourned.)