THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, February 4, 2026
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met with videoconference this day at 4:18 p.m. [ET] to examine and report on such issues as may arise from time to time relating to foreign relations and international trade generally.
Senator Peter M. Boehm (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Happy new year, everyone. My name is Peter Boehm. I am a senator from Ontario and the chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
[English]
I wish to invite committee members participating in today’s meeting to introduce themselves.
Senator Adler: Charles Adler, Manitoba.
Senator MacDonald: Michael MacDonald, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
Senator Ravalia: Welcome. Mohamed Ravalia, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Woo: Yuen Pau Woo, British Columbia.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
[Translation]
Senator Hébert: I am Martine Hébert from Quebec.
[English]
The Chair: I wish to welcome all of you as well as those across the country who may be watching us on ParlVU.
To support the smooth operation of committee proceedings, the following guidelines must be observed by all participants: You should consult the cards placed on the committee tables for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents. Keep earpieces away from the microphones at all times. Microphones must not be touched; activation and deactivation will be managed by the console operator behind me. Avoid handling your earpieces while the microphone is active. Earpieces should either remain on the ear or be placed on the designated sticker at each seat. I thank you for your cooperation.
Colleagues, we are meeting under our general order of reference to discuss the issue of Canadians abroad. This was a subject that Senator Woo had kindly suggested some time ago, last year, and we’re making good on that now.
I would like to acknowledge that Senator Deacon of Ontario and Senator Al Zaibak of Ontario have also joined us since the beginning of the meeting.
Today we have the pleasure of welcoming, from Global Affairs Canada, Kati Csaba, Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau; and Sébastien Beaulieu, Director General, International Emergency and Travel Advice Bureau. From the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, we have with us Michel Roussel, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer, Electoral Events and Innovation. And from Statistics Canada, we welcome Julien Bérard-Chagnon, Chief, Centre for Demography; and Laurent Martel, Director, Centre for Demography.
Before we hear your opening statements and proceed to questions and answers, I would like everyone present to please mute notifications on your devices. We are ready now to hear the opening remarks.
[Translation]
Kati Csaba, Director General, Consular Affairs Bureau, Global Affairs Canada: Honourable senators, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I also want to thank Senator Woo and Dr. Lucia Kovaikova for this thoughtful report on Canadians abroad.
I’m happy to explain how we support Canadians when they need us — whether they’re travelling for a week or have been living abroad for years.
Let me begin by explaining Global Affairs Canada’s mandate for consular assistance.
[English]
Consular assistance is the help Canada may provide to its citizens abroad, guided by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and described in the Canadian Consular Services Charter. Our mandate includes providing advice and information on safe travel; specialized support, like notarial and passport services; providing guidance and support to Canadians on consular cases, such as medical emergencies and death abroad, arrest, violent crime, hostage taking; and coordinating Canada’s responses during crises abroad.
There are defined limits to what we do. Consular assistance is provided under the Crown Prerogative. In other words, there is no legal right to receive consular assistance; it is offered under the executive authority of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It is constrained by host country laws. Our role is to inform and assist Canadians when they encounter difficulties abroad, but the decision to travel or reside abroad is a personal one. Canadians remain responsible for their own safety and preparedness.
Engagement with the Canadian diaspora beyond the delivery of consular services is not part of the consular mandate. Of course, Canadian officials abroad naturally interact with members of the Canadian diaspora in the normal course of their diplomatic work. I have done so myself over the course of my career, and I know my colleagues at Global Affairs Canada, or GAC, do the same. Diaspora members can offer a wealth of insights into local conditions, key actors and political and economic dynamics.
In providing consular support, as a matter of fairness and transparency, we do not distinguish between diaspora Canadians and temporary residents. To help Canadians make informed decisions, we offer a wealth of information on consular services at the travel.gc.ca website, one of the most-viewed sites of the Government of Canada, with 27 million visits last year. It includes country-specific advice, practical guidance and publications such as Bon voyage, but . . . and the Moving outside Canada checklist. We also encourage the use of the Registration of Canadians Abroad service so people can receive timely alerts and instructions when local conditions change.
[Translation]
Information available on our website also includes general and country-specific information about dual citizenship, which is the status of many citizens of the Canadian diaspora living abroad.
If there is a crisis, the government does a rigorous assessment of the situation to determine whether to offer assisted departures, while recognizing that individuals are ultimately responsible for their own safety.
This includes whether Canadians face serious and imminent danger, whether local infrastructure or essential services are still functional, and whether there’s a risk commercial transportation options may become unavailable.
[English]
We have supported the emergency departures of Canadians in a number of crisis situations. Since 2022, examples of this include support for Canadians departing Ukraine following the Russian invasion, as well as assisted departures from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, from Sudan, from Lebanon, from Haiti and during the 2025 Israel-Iran conflict. We worked with Canadian airlines to facilitate departures from Jamaica in the wake of Hurricane Melissa last October.
[Translation]
We must continue to adapt to changing global realities and emerging technologies. While the evolving needs of Canadians remains the focus of our work, we are modernizing our consular services by optimizing our processes and expanding digital services so clients can access accurate information more quickly. We have recently strengthened our digital information gathering and registration tools and improved online payment processes for cost recovery to offer faster and more effective assistance during crises.
[English]
We appreciate the thought that has gone into this report, and we share its goal of enabling Canadians abroad to receive safe, clear and dependable consular services. At the same time, many of the recommendations that fall outside our consular mandate would result in significant additional costs to our program and would require new policy direction and sustainable funding. In keeping with the ongoing comprehensive expenditure review, our priority is to deliver core consular services as efficiently and transparently as possible without adding new services focused on a subset of consular clients.
Thank you for your attention, and we stand ready to respond to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
I would like to acknowledge that Senator Duncan Wilson of British Columbia has joined the table as well.
[Translation]
Michel Roussel, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer, Electoral Events and Innovation, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer: Thank you for inviting me to speak to the committee on Canadians abroad.
By way of introduction, I would like to briefly explain how the special voting rules that apply to the Canadian diaspora have evolved and draw your attention to key operational aspects of Elections Canada’s administration of those rules.
Since 1993, all Canadian voters, including those living or travelling abroad, have been able to vote by special ballot based on the election rules that apply to their situation. It used to be that only military personnel and diplomats could vote by special ballot. In 1993, to be eligible to vote by special ballot from abroad, an elector had to have lived outside Canada for less than five years and have the intention of moving back to Canada. Following a Supreme Court decision, these restrictions were lifted in 2018.
Elections Canada keeps an international register of electors to whom a mail-in ballot is sent once a federal election is called. Registration to the registry and all voter information updates are entirely voluntary. There is no official database of Canadians abroad. Since the inception of this international registry, the number of registered Canadians has increased tenfold, going from 10,000 to 101,000. Most of this increase came after the five-year rule was lifted in 2018, including an increase of 46,000 for the last general election alone. These are positive signs.
[English]
It is critically important that expat Canadians be registered before the call of the election so that they receive a voting kit shortly after the drop of the writ. It takes time for voting kits to reach electors abroad and then for their ballots to be returned to Elections Canada’s headquarters to be counted. Yet, depending on the circumstances of an election, between 40% and 60% of the applications from expat voters occur during the writ period, when there are only a few weeks left to go through the whole process.
To put that in perspective, the rate of new registrations on the domestic national register of electors during the last writ period in 2025 was 4.5%. At the last general election, 32,000 expat Canadians applied to vote after the first week into the election had passed. Only 25% of them returned the ballot on time to be counted. The corresponding rate for those already on the international register at the call of the election was 73%. All things considered, among all applicants, 56% of all ballots issued to expat voters during the last election were returned within the deadline to be counted; 20% arrived late, and 24% were never returned.
I wish to add, Mr. Chair, that none of what I said takes anything away from the collaboration Elections Canada has enjoyed with Global Affairs Canada regarding Canadian electors living abroad. Most Canadian diplomatic offices abroad offer logistical support that facilitates the process of voting by special ballot during a federal general election.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I stand ready to take your questions.
[Translation]
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Roussel. Mr. Martel, you have the floor.
Laurent Martel, Director, Centre for Demography, Statistics Canada: Honourable senators, I would like to thank you for giving us this opportunity to contribute to your work on Canadians living abroad.
There are few data sources available on the number of Canadians living abroad. Administrative data sources, such as those from Global Affairs Canada, serve administrative needs, and those from the United Nations only relate to Canadians who were born in Canada. In that context, the numbers are sometimes very different.
Recognizing this data gap and considering the significance of the Canadian diaspora for some federal departments, in 2022, Statistics Canada published its first estimate of the number of Canadians living abroad. The study that led to this estimate was carried out on an ad hoc basis, with the help of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and Global Affairs Canada.
According to our data, approximately 4 million Canadians were living abroad in 2016. About half of them were citizens by descent, meaning they were born abroad to Canadian parents, which is how they got their Canadian citizenship. Canadian-born citizens make up about a third of the diaspora, while naturalized citizens make up about 15%.
The Canadian diaspora is made up of about the same number of men and women, and they are slightly older than Canadians living in Canada. To reflect the uncertainty of estimating the number of Canadians living abroad, we used several scenarios in our study.
Users should always take several scenarios into consideration. These scenarios vary based on the hypothesis that Canadian children living abroad got their citizenship from their parents, for example.
Without a direct source of information, the numbers related to the Canadian diaspora are based on complex demographic analysis methods. Every demographic event that influences the size and evolution of the Canadian diaspora, such as the emigration of Canadian citizens from Canada to the rest of the world or the deaths of Canadian citizens living abroad, were identified and modelled using several databases, including censuses, Statistics Canada population estimates, mortality tables, and in some cases, UN statistics.
The purpose of this study was to estimate the Canadian diaspora’s size. However, the study does not provide any information on how many Canadians live in different countries. It doesn’t go that far. Statistics Canada has confidence in the figures that came out of the study. Consistency analyses were done and showed a good level of consistency with comparable data sources.
I’ll finish by saying that Statistics Canada does not intend to update this study. Obviously, if such an update is requested, Statistics Canada will consider it. Thank you for your time. My colleague Julien Bérard-Chagnon, the author of the study, who is sitting to my right, and I are ready to answer your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Martel. I would like to acknowledge that Senator Harder from Ontario has joined us.
Colleagues, I wish to remind you that you will each have three minutes for the first round of questions, including questions and answers. I would ask senators and witnesses to be concise. We can always have a second round if we have time.
[English]
Senator Woo: If I could get through each of you with quick questions and hopefully succinct answers, starting with GAC. You have been very clear that consular services are about helping Canadians in trouble, if I can put it that way, while they are overseas, and other parts of the department are involved in more of relationship building.
Can you tell us exactly how the rest of the department is organized with respect to engaging Canadians abroad, promoting their connectedness to Canada, tapping into their potential as assets for the country? I know we once had a parliamentary secretary for Canadians abroad. Did that position have that responsibility, or was that also focused on consular services?
Ms. Csaba: Thank you for the question. I will try to be brief as well. Certainly, there are many parts of the department that focus on developing those relationships, including colleagues working on bilateral relations, colleagues working on trade relations with the country, because we know just how valuable those expatriate Canadians can be in the local community. Every ambassador has a mandate of engaging with the community in their country, and they will choose whatever they see as the most effective means.
So there are multiple ways, including through social events and through different types of meetings. When we have ministers or senior officials visiting from Canada, that’s also a great opportunity to engage. I wouldn’t say there is one focal point within the department that is responsible specifically for that engagement, but it happens in a number of organic ways through the various streams.
Senator Woo: So it is opportunistic and ad hoc — I don’t mean that in a negative sense — but that’s essentially how the different posts do it.
If I could then turn to Elections Canada, and it connects with GAC as well, the big problem you are facing is that Canadians abroad register too late. They get their packages in the middle of an election and don’t return them on time. What is the coordination between Elections Canada and GAC, which has access to information through the registry of — I can’t remember the term you used. What is the coordination such that you can provide ongoing information to potential voters abroad so that they are less likely to fail to meet election deadlines?
Mr. Roussel: Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. With respect to our cooperation with GAC, I should say we inform Canadians mostly through our website. With GAC, we offer materials, information, training information and instructions for consular staff abroad so that they can help Canadians who want to register and vote by special ballot. This occurs, in particular, during the call of the elections. We’ve had a memorandum of understanding between our two organizations.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you all for being here today. I hope I am not incorrect; one thing I was surprised to learn through Senator Woo’s study and the 2022 stats report is how little true accuracy we have on the numbers of Canadians living abroad. My question is if this presents a particular problem, a murky picture or complicates your work at all.
You did talk about the election aspect. I know you did, but I’m going to ask you first to see from an unknown numbers point of view what kind of impact that has on your work, and, of course, open it to the rest of you.
Mr. Roussel: Well, the first answer to your question is that we can’t measure ourselves up against any target. There is no target. When I say 101,000, that might be good, or that might be bad. We do not know reliably.
Second, the Canada Elections Act defined in a particular manner who is entitled to vote. It is not only travellers; it is people who reside abroad, and GAC looks after travellers as well. But it is people who reside abroad and who have resided in Canada before. So those are conditions to be eligible to vote by special ballot.
In other words, those who may register with GAC when they travel are not ipso facto our target environment. That is why it may be prudent to invite people to register and vote when, actually, the rules do not apply to their circumstances.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you. Anybody else?
Mr. Martel: I can only confirm there is no database available on the number of Canadian citizens living abroad, to my knowledge at least. There are a number of administrative databases, but they are filled on a voluntary basis. That explains why there is such an important difference, for example, between the data from Elections Canada and the results of our study at Statistics Canada — because at Elections Canada, it is not mandatory to register in such a database.
Our estimates are based on demographic methods and account for immigrants that have left the country since 1921, so you have a cumulative effect, which leads to 4 million possible Canadians living abroad. It is very different from other administrative data sources as of today.
The Chair: Thank you. I have two small announcements, one more important than the other. First of all, Senator Gerba of Quebec has joined the meeting. The second is a technical one. Your microphones will go on automatically. By pressing the button, you are then turning them off. So just have faith in our tech team here. It will be fine.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you to all of you for being here today.
Has Global Affairs Canada considered facilitating talent pipelines by connecting skilled Canadian colleagues abroad with local professionals and affording opportunities, particularly for brain-gain type of programs? I’m thinking of health, AI, engineering and other skill sets that could certainly impact our country positively.
Ms. Csaba: There is no program specifically that mandates us to deliberately seek out such relationships.
Certainly, the appeal to citizens of other countries to bring them to Canada is very much the mandate of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, and they, of course, will have various programs to attract local talent. But I would say that there is somewhat of an organic process that happens; for example, Canadian businesses that are looking to engage or trade with another country, invest in another country, will, by the nature of their work, come to know the experts in the fields in which they are working and will develop relationships that might eventually lead to some of those people emigrating to Canada.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you. Is it an initiative that you could jointly work on with respect to appealing to people to come here, using our diaspora as a catalyst?
Ms. Csaba: It would take a certain amount of effort and organization. It’s not that we couldn’t do it, but I think we would need to have a clear policy mandate that this is a priority for Global Affairs to undertake such work, just given fiscal pressures and the need to prioritize as much as possible.
Senator Ravalia: Mr. Beaulieu, did you want to comment?
Sébastien Beaulieu, Director General, International Emergency and Travel Advice Bureau, Global Affairs Canada: Through the promotion of education in Canada and recruitment for universities and higher education institutions in Canada, Global Affairs and our network of missions are central to that promotion of those linkages and exchanges that are often in both directions as well in terms of academic partnerships.
Senator Coyle: Thank you to all of our witnesses here.
We have two witnesses that I know of who are former ambassadors. I know we’re trying to talk a little bit out of the normal boxes that we find ourselves in. As ambassadors, you always find yourselves out of the boxes. From those experiences, you can probably see some possibilities, even if there isn’t a clear mandate or the resources at the moment to take up such a mandate. Two of you at the table are former ambassadors. From that experience, you do a lot of convening and those sorts of things.
Are there initial low-cost, high-impact ways that our diplomatic service — ambassadors and their teams — could be working to derive a greater benefit from our Canadian diaspora in those countries on the ground? I think that’s what we’re wanting to talk about.
Mr. Beaulieu: There is a very deliberate effort that is made across our network of missions. Our job is about networking and connecting people, businesses, NGOs and institutions to build that relationship that goes both ways in terms of exchanges of people, talent, information, business and trade. It’s our bread and butter to convene and to make those linkages.
It can go from a prime minister’s visit, where we bring together specific interlocutors and partners, to a very niche visit from a Canadian business in country X looking for a partner on a specific project. It is extremely wide-ranging. I think it would be unfair to say there is no strategy. Our whole existence is based on that and our whole operations.
Senator Coyle: What about the Canadian diaspora, in particular, on the ground?
Mr. Beaulieu: The Canadian diaspora is our first go-to because they know Canada. They know the host country. They speak both or all the languages of both countries. They have a commitment and experience of both countries and are eager to build those bridges and to contribute to that relationship, be it at the very micro level or at the macro, political level.
The study talks about the cultivation of the diaspora. That is our business day to day around the world.
Ms. Csaba: Maybe I can add an example to that. When a Canadian Minister of Trade comes with a business delegation, for example, it is normal practice for the embassy to organize a meeting with members of the local trade community, many of whom are diaspora Canadians, to really give the delegation a clear view of what it is like to do business in that country. What are some of the constraints? What are some of the considerations to keep in mind as they plan for a future business relationship?
We very much rely on that expertise, and, as you say, this is a low-cost, high-impact way of making sure we gather that information and share it.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I’m getting very nostalgic up here.
Senator Al Zaibak: Thank you all for your great public service and for being with us here today. In particular, I wish to express my personal gratitude to Director and former Ambassador Beaulieu for your diplomatic service in the Arab world and for your support of the Syrian business community in the diaspora when such support was needed the most. You’re here representing the Canadian government, and thank you so much.
My question is to you as well. I wonder whether there is a need for a centralized federal mechanism, like a ministry, for example, to coordinate diaspora-related policies across departments. How might Parliament support such coordination without duplicating existing mandates?
Mr. Beaulieu: That question is beyond my remit as Director General for Emergency Management.
Senator Al Zaibak: Any of your colleagues can answer.
Mr. Beaulieu: Thank you for the compliment. When we met 10 years ago, it was to discuss how to work with the Syrian diaspora. So thank you for bringing that up.
Senator Al Zaibak: I witnessed and experienced that first-hand. Thank you, again.
Mr. Beaulieu: So in terms of mechanisms across the government, that’s a very big task and undertaking. Before engaging into any such endeavour, we need to look at how things work in practice. I think the study that we have before us today is useful in that sense, in beginning that conversation of what is working and how services are delivered to Canadians abroad in a range of contexts, whether it’s electoral, diplomatic or having a better understanding of the size of diasporas around the world.
Senator Harder: Let me indulge in a bit of equal nostalgia. My question is for the GAC officials.
One of the questions this study is asking ourselves is while we respect and honour the creativity and the individual efforts across many of the missions, they seem to me to be dependent on the energy of the ambassador and the synergy that the ambassador offers the communities that can be catalyzed. I’m thinking, for example, of visits by university presidents to see their alumni, student recruitment, provincial visits that have a more specific linkage. And all of that is good.
The question I’m left with, though, is if there is more than just the energy or enthusiasm of the particular ambassador, which might wane in the next appointment. Are there ways of making this less opportunistic and personal and more pragmatic and institutional — I understand that I’m asking you to go beyond your mandate — that we should be thinking of in our own reflections on this work? Are we dreaming, or is there some capacity building that we should be encouraging?
Mr. Beaulieu: I think that we’re perhaps underestimating the institutional tools that we have. Obviously, there is ambassadorial leadership, which is key, but we have a whole network of social media accounts in French, English and very often the local language. Those are all deliberate institutional tools that we have — that the ambassador has, that the whole embassy has, and the whole Government of Canada and Global Affairs, in particular, has — to roll out our messages, to connect people, to promote initiatives that tie our two countries, to promote information about registering for elections. Our social media network, to take that very specific example, promotes registering ahead of Canadian elections.
So we have a range of institutional tools, including not just admissions but across the Global Affairs headquarters as well, through thematic offices, whether it be trade, education or general bilateral relations that we have. That’s in addition to the networks that we have with all the other federal departments that have mandates and interests abroad.
So it’s a huge machine that is obviously led by the face of an ambassador abroad but is a very deliberate effort and set of mechanisms that we have.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: I’d like to welcome all the witnesses to the committee. I especially wanted to thank Ambassador Csaba for her work on the African continent when she was stationed in Ghana. She welcomed us as part of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association. I witnessed her ability to mobilize the diaspora, and that is exactly the role we expect our ambassadors and high commissioners to play in the countries where they are stationed.
My question is this. Apart from these meaningful relationships on the ground in various countries, does Global Affairs Canada have a structured program that tracks what members of the diaspora do in the countries where they are, by sectors of activity, skill, know-how or product? Is there a consultation process that allows us to really get to know them?
Ms. Csaba: Thank you, senator, and thank you for the compliments.
I can’t say Global Affairs Canada has a structured program that tracks the information you’re talking about. However, through our commercial service, we can get very detailed statistics on the relationships they establish with local businesses, but those statistics don’t necessarily include members of the diaspora. That said, we participate in a lot of local activities, but there isn’t a single structured program that tracks all the information you talked about.
We gather statistics from the many programs offered in the embassies, but only by sectors of activity. We have very detailed statistics for the consular program, some for trade, but there isn’t a single mechanism that brings it all together.
Senator Gerba: If you had to recommend something along those lines to help us better understand our diaspora, what would it be?
Ms. Csaba: That’s a broad question, and I don’t have a good answer for you. Perhaps my colleague Mr. Beaulieu could help.
Mr. Beaulieu: I don’t want to flip it around, but part of the question could be: To what extent would Canadians who give us this information want to see it shared? As part of my mandate, which includes the registration of Canadians abroad, we ask for this information to assist Canadians if necessary. Under the Privacy Act, I can’t share that information for anything other than what it was collected for. It raises all kinds of issues. Someone who wants to do business with Canada gives their information to trade officers —
Senator Gerba: Trades, for example.
Mr. Beaulieu: Yes, but for trade commissioners, it includes confidential business information. There are contacts, elements that can’t be shared through their network and that could harm the comparative advantage of a Canadian or a Canadian company or allow information from Canadians in the diaspora or abroad to be shared.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
[English]
Senator Adler: Mr. Roussel, in the 1990s, I worked abroad, although working in the United States felt like a different neighbourhood; it didn’t feel like abroad. I was aware of the elections, but I missed a number of them. My ethical position for myself was I don’t have a stake in it. I understand as a Canadian I have the right, but I didn’t feel that I should be voting in an election unless I was living in the country. That was just my feeling.
Over the many years of doing media in both countries, I never received a single complaint from anybody about not voting or not having an easy enough time voting when one is abroad. I did casual, conversational shows where people would complain about anything and everything, so I had hundreds of thousands of complaints but none about this. I am just wondering, because I want to expand my horizons, if you get many complaints about this issue.
Mr. Roussel: We get complaints during the elections from Canadians who wanted to vote and were not able to, and from Canadians abroad. At the last election, for instance, we got short of 200 people complain about their experience with Elections Canada. They essentially could not vote. They complained about the delays in getting their voting kits to vote from abroad. It’s about 200 complaints. That’s the number.
Now, if your question was, “Is there a mass uprising abroad for voting rights and asking us to do better?,” I would not have numbers to show and prove that. But maybe that goes to your point about the connection that Canadians feel with their country.
It is possible that the 100,000 number I quoted is a reflection of the fact that Canadians who ordinarily reside abroad may, over time, lose that connection with the country or feel like what you explained to us you felt when you were in the United States.
Senator Adler: When I wasn’t voting, I never felt I lost connection or my love of this country, which, in my mind, is timeless and boundless. It just seemed that, in my mind, the vote is about people who live in the country. Thank you.
Mr. Roussel: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That brings us to the end of the first round of questions. As is sometimes the case, I have a question, too. I am going to ask it.
About 25 years ago, we tried to establish a program out of our embassy in Washington addressed to the Canadian diaspora to get messaging out that was correct and correcting disinformation on what happened on 9/11 and, in particular, whether there was a Canadian connection or not. There wasn’t, but the media were out there, politicians were out there saying that there was.
We tried to send basic messages out to Canadians, including prominent Canadians registered in the United States. Of course, there are many. It is our largest diaspora community. It was a mixed result. The web was not as sophisticated as it is, obviously, today. Social media was still in its infancy. But we were looking at ways and means to get messages out.
We are in another spot like that right now where we want to get messages out that Canada is a good neighbour, that Canada is not being taken over by China, that hockey is still a sacred sport, all of those things. Is there any consideration being given to just somehow send messaging to Canadians abroad that does not fall afoul of any sort of confidentiality rules? Or is this a little bit beyond your remit as well here?
Ms. Csaba: I’m not sure if I understood the very end of your question.
The Chair: I am asking whether you are planning anything out of Global Affairs Canada in terms of messaging to Canadians of the diaspora community.
Ms. Csaba: Specifically to the Canadian diaspora?
The Chair: And specifically to the United States.
Ms. Csaba: I do not believe we are. Normally, we prepare packages to be used by missions abroad to share information on a whole host of subjects, including often correcting disinformation on various topics. It does happen that we have specialized packages that go to specific missions.
I’m not aware of any specific requests that are directed specifically at Canadians who reside in the United States, but, of course, we have a lot of messaging directed at Canadians that they would be exposed to if they are following social media at all.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Wilson: Since I left my former role, I haven’t been travelling internationally nearly as much, so you will have to forgive me. My question is a little bit tactical. I am curious if we do anything on exit from Canada at airports or at the border in terms of communication to encourage people to register. Or is that something that could be explored?
Ms. Csaba: We do, from time to time, hold various campaigns to educate Canadians. People stand at airports and do surveys, asking, “Are you aware of the travel.gc.ca website?” or, “Have you thought about registering as Canadians abroad?” We post such information on social media as well. We have to be strategic in how we use our resources in trying to get those messages abroad. We don’t have people at every single airport every day of the year to share that.
Senator Wilson: As a follow-up question, I wasn’t thinking so much of personnel but communications, baking it into the system. As you are leaving, “Are you a Canadian? Take this if you are living abroad” — something like that.
Ms. Csaba: We used to have such a publication, a booklet. Every time you applied for a new passport, there was a booklet that contained useful information. With fewer people using printed materials anymore, the tendency has been to put that all online. Our travel website is very broad and covers a huge range of questions, including all kinds of questions that would be useful for Canadians who plan to live abroad or who are just travelling abroad.
Mr. Beaulieu: Perhaps an indication that our communications do work is that over 30 million Canadians visit the travel.gc.ca website every year. Obviously, it is one of the most popular websites of the Government of Canada, so people are using it, and people are aware, and people make the choice to register or not for a range of reasons, but they do have the information.
The Chair: Thank you. Three senators want to ask questions, and we have about five minutes. I would suggest that senators pose their questions in sequence, and then we will let the panel respond to the collective questions.
Senator Coyle: Mr. Roussel, I am assuming that a large percentage of those who vote from abroad are voting from the U.S., because that’s where our largest diaspora is, but I would be curious what the distribution looks like if there is any data on the distribution beyond the U.S.
The Chair: Thank you. We’ve added another senator.
Senator Al Zaibak: My question is for Mr. Roussel as well. We are in the process of considering Bill S-222, which proposes to lower the voting age to 16. I wonder if you have any perspective with respect to the additional burden, additional advantages and your own perspective with respect to the consequences of passing such a bill. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: The federal government wants to double its exports outside the U.S., and we know how meaningful diasporas are. The Canadian diaspora in Africa, for example, is an essential bridge between Africa and Canada.
Do you have an exchange mechanism that could allow the Canadian government to use this diaspora as a lever or as champions of the work they’re doing on the ground, to help the government double its exports?
[English]
Senator Woo: I’ll turn my question into a comment to save time.
I would like to appeal to Statistics Canada to continue to repeat your study. Four million is a very big number. It’s bigger than most Canadian provinces. Canadians abroad have all the rights of Canadians — the absolute right to return, the right to vote, obviously — and if we don’t have accurate information on this segment of our demographic, we are short-changing ourselves on a whole range of policy issues.
Mr. Roussel: In the report that was commissioned by McGill University, there is a table looking at the distribution of Canadians around the world. I can say that in terms of the voters, it corresponds to that distribution as a percentage, with one notable exception, I should say. Hong Kong comes number 2 in terms of the location of the Canadian diaspora. In terms of voters, it is a little lower down. Britain, Australia, Germany and South Korea are the locations where we have the most voters during elections.
In terms of lowering the age of voting to 16, this is not something that Elections Canada has provided an opinion or recommendation on. The Chief Electoral Officer, if asked, will be able to share his opinion on this. From an operational standpoint, this is not something that we have studied, so I can’t provide you with an informed response.
[Translation]
Mr. Beaulieu: Our missions and embassies around the world, including Africa, are well aware of the government and the department priorities in promoting ties, namely by diversifying exchanges using communication and engagement strategies such as high-level sectoral visits and support for various organizations. We are mobilizing efforts and stakeholders, including diasporas in Africa, to nurture relationships and promote stronger exchanges between Canada and the rest of the world.
[English]
Mr. Martel: I want to express my gratitude for expressing the fact that we could update the study. I think it would be relevant because, as everyone knows, the Canadian population has increased rapidly over the last few years, and there are reasons to believe the Canadian diaspora is also increasing. Our numbers were for 2016. Definitely, we could benefit from updates for more recent periods.
The Chair: Thank you. We have come to the end of this panel.
On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank our witnesses for enriching us with your commentary today. You have given us a lot to think about. Mr. Roussel, Ms. Csaba, Mr. Beaulieu, Mr. Martel and Mr. Bérard-Chagnon, thank you.
Colleagues, we are ready to start our second panel. We welcome, by video conference, from the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, Jeff Nankivell, President and CEO. As an individual, we welcome Richard Nimijean, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, at Carleton University here in Ottawa. With us in the room, from Venture for Canada, is Steven Wang, Chief Executive Officer. Welcome to you all. We are ready for your opening remarks.
Mr. Nankivell, you have the floor.
Jeff Nankivell, President and Chief Executive Officer, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada: Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to take up matters on which the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, or APF Canada, has made key contributions in the past, as you will see from the citations in the McGill research paper provided to the committee as reference material. Here, I would like, in particular, to salute the work of APF Canada’s Kenny Zhang, Don DeVoretz and then-CEO Yuen Pau Woo.
A key insight of all the research work done on Canadians abroad is that these people, if properly engaged, can play a valuable role in advancing Canadian interests and, ultimately, in supporting Canadian prosperity at home and connectedness to the world. I endorse this proposition, along with the suggestion that non-Canadian graduates of Canadian education also be taken into account as an under-tapped resource for Canada.
At a time when Canada has an urgent need for friends and connections around the world, building and engaging these networks should be a priority task.
This is not about exploitation; it’s about mutual benefits. For Canadian citizens and especially for graduates of Canadian education living abroad, whatever raises Canada’s brand equity raises their own brand equity. Their interests and Canada’s are fully aligned, and this makes them powerful allies.
We’ve learned that universities and colleges want to engage with them to advance their own institutional interests and to cultivate future donors. Armed with this insight, in 2021, APF Canada approached Universities Canada with the idea of establishing a regular large-scale event in Asia to which universities would invite their alumni, forming the critical mass of a gathering that would itself attract public- and private-sector leaders from Canada and their partners and potential partners in Asia, federal and provincial government agencies, leading players from the research ecosystems in Canada and Asia, and local Canadian chambers of commerce from across the region, along with other organizations and businesses.
So here I find myself today in Singapore, rather early in the morning, where I arrived yesterday in advance of our fourth annual Canada-in-Asia Conference. This initiative has far exceeded all of our expectations.
Supported by the Government of Canada and numerous public- and private-sector partners, this flagship event last year attracted over 730 attendees — a majority of them from the private sector, two thirds of the attendees from across Asia and a third from Canada. The conference and numerous side events are now established as a week in Singapore each February around which Canadians in the region — all across Asia — and Asia engagers and their institutions and firms from across Canada increasingly make their plans.
At the core of the conference is this demographic of well‑situated Canada-connected individuals, uniquely able to convey across the region a whole new narrative about what Canada and Canadians have to offer as partners for trade, investment, institutional cooperation and collaboration in research and innovation.
I sincerely hope that committee members will ask me to say more about this successful initiative. It is a model we would be delighted to see replicated for Canadian interests in other regions of the world.
From my own career experience — 17 years on diplomatic postings in Asia in my previous career — allow me also to offer one key take-away from my time as Consul General of Canada in Hong Kong for five years from 2016 to 2021, on which I would also be very happy to expand.
I would say it is devilishly difficult to determine the number of Canadian citizens residing long-term in places such as Hong Kong, where a large proportion are dual citizens who live their everyday lives as locals and are unlikely to report this status in random household surveys. And when dual citizens depart Canada as Canadian citizens and land in places like Hong Kong as local residents or citizens, neither government has a reliable means of tracking their numbers.
My own experience, when faced with the potential need to support a large-scale departure of Canadians in the turmoil in Hong Kong in 2019, was we had to say we couldn’t reverify the 300,000 number, estimated by APF Canada in 2010, as accurate surveying by phone had become politically impossible. The best indicator we had was trends in the volume of consular service transactions that led us to say that whatever the actual number was in 2010, when the APF Canada survey was conducted, it was most likely the same number or more in 2019. I would be happy to expand on this.
Finally, with regard to the recommendations of the McGill research paper, I agree on the need for a federal government strategy that must include a sustained, proactive program of actual events, as well as communications through media/social media channels tailored to different media markets.
I look forward to the committee’s questions, which I will be pleased to answer in either official language.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Nankivell, for joining us at what must be an early hour in Singapore.
Professor Nimijean, I understand you are joining us from Switzerland, so it’s a late hour for you. Thank you for joining us and you have the floor.
Richard Nimijean, Associate Professor (Teaching Stream), Carleton University, as an individual: Good evening. Thank you for the invitation, and I am honoured to be speaking with you tonight from my home just outside of Basel in Switzerland.
Today’s topic is of great personal and professional interest. I am a political scientist in the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton in Ottawa, and I work on the politics of branding Canada and national identity; Canada and global issues, including Canada-U.S. relations; and how we think about Canada and the discipline of Canadian studies. But for the past 10 years, I’ve also been a trailing spouse, moving to Switzerland in 2015, then to the Washington, D.C., area in 2023 and returning to Switzerland just last month.
I’ve had to rethink how I do my job, namely, how to teach about Canada from abroad to my students and how to do my research on Canada. This led to a rethinking of what it means to be Canadian and how Canadians stay connected to their home country. My situation led to a co-edited book, with my colleague Chris Kirkey, on expat Canadian scholars, The Construction of Canadian Identity from Abroad.
Canadian studies is self-study, and, as I argued in my chapter, you see Canada in a new light when you are far away, as no doubt many of you did when you served abroad.
One of the themes of our collection was that externality matters for Canadian scholars. Far from being disconnected from Canada, as some critics contend, because of their engagement and work, our contributors — like most Canadian expats I have encountered — retain a strong sense of connection to Canada that goes beyond superficial claims about the Canadian national identity. This is what Evan Osnos of The New Yorker magazine called “unintended patriotism,” a deepening of ties that occurs when you live abroad and are not always around people from your home.
[Translation]
Implementing some of the recommendations made in McGill University’s report entitled Canadians Abroad: Overview of Recent Research and Implications for Public Policy could help alleviate concerns that expatriates are not maintaining their connection to Canada.
I would like to draw your attention to two issues discussed in this report: strengthening relations between the government, its embassies and expatriates, and supporting Canadian expatriate networks.
[English]
Since I’m in Switzerland, I invite you to compare the home pages of the Canadian and American embassies to Switzerland and Liechtenstein. In contrast to the American site, the Canadian site provides minimal information on core services. There is no information on events in Switzerland or on major Canadian news stories or government initiatives. There is no telling of the story of Canada. There are no suggestions for staying connected to other Canadians. No doubt, there are rules and regulations for why that is, but it doesn’t provide an opportunity to either promote the country or to connect Canadians abroad.
[Translation]
I like the idea of creating a general website for Canadian expatriates and using newsletters to keep them informed of networking opportunities and social events, such as Canada Day celebrations. Swissinfo.ch does it for Swiss expatriates with its “Les Suisses à l’étranger” service.
[English]
From my personal experience as someone who doesn’t work in Switzerland — my job is still in Canada — connecting to the embassy and its staff is not as easy as if I were employed here or had a job at a Swiss university.
Soft power, of which cultural diplomacy is an essential component, lets a country stay in the minds of important actors in the host country, like students, teachers, business people and government leaders. However, the termination of the Understanding Canada program has not only hurt foreign scholars of Canada — which has led to a radical decline in foreign teaching and research on Canada that harms Canada’s interests — but, as our book showed, it has also removed an important network for Canadian scholars abroad who interact with these actors.
Last month in Davos, the Prime Minister argued that Canada must rethink and restructure its international alliances, yet in the academic world, Canada is increasingly absent from global mindscapes. At a time when other countries are rethinking their international relations and might look to Canada for its special insights into the United States because of our close relationship, people in those countries often know less about Canada. This is what my colleagues all over the world tell me. Expat scholars can help rectify this situation and are an important resource that diplomats can draw upon as they execute their functions.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you. I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Professor Nimijean.
Mr. Wang, you have the floor.
Steven Wang, Chief Executive Officer, Venture for Canada: Honourable senators, thank you for the invitation. I commend the committee’s study — the McGill study commissioned by Senator Woo — on Canadians abroad, which provides a clear foundation for today’s discussion.
Canada is navigating historic geopolitical changes and opportunities. In such a time, national resilience, diversification and global engagement are practical necessities. To that end, one of our most under-leveraged resources is our global Canadian diaspora. We have more than 4 million Canadians living abroad. That’s proportionally one of the largest in the developed world, five times that of the United States and two times that of Australia.
Canada is already a global nation. The question is whether our policies have caught up to that reality. In a global economy, mobility is inevitable. The choice is whether we treat global experience as a loss or a strategic asset. Leveraging this asset requires a coordinated national strategy and a coherent narrative, with the government acting as a vital catalyst that enables engagement alongside businesses, civil society and other institutions.
In an era of building Canada, I argue we should treat our diaspora as a form of economic and civic infrastructure. I arrived in Canada at the age of 9 with my parents as a first-generation Canadian and grew up in the beautiful town of Cambridge, Ontario. Canada was not an abstraction to my family but a set of institutions that worked. Public schools, local communities and civic norms created an opportunity and instilled in me the lasting values that I hold dear until today.
As my education and career progressed, that Canadian upbringing took me to the United Kingdom, China and the United States. What struck me among Canadians abroad was not a lack of goodwill or desire to contribute, but rather the absence of structured pathways to do so. Engagement exists, but it has been informal and ad hoc.
In my role now as Venture for Canada’s CEO, I work closely with entrepreneurs, small- and medium-sized businesses and early-career young Canadians. What I see on the ground is that our companies do not fail to globalize because they lack aspiration but because the first-step barrier can be high, including a lack of capital, local knowledge, cultural fluency and access to networks in foreign markets. Diaspora networks reduce such uncertainty risk at exactly that moment. They are embedded in foreign markets and possess the critical expertise and relationships that our businesses need.
We also see a desire from Canadians with global experiences to seek credible pathways to return or to apply what they have learned abroad. One example is our Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition program, where Canadians with world-class experience acquire, grow and modernize family-owned Canadian businesses, addressing Canada’s succession challenge, ensuring responsible intergenerational transfer of ownership and reinvesting expertise, capital and international networks back into the Canadian economy.
Through our work at Venture for Canada, we see how these connective tissues can function in practice. Our established alumni working abroad mentor younger participants at home, contribute intellectual support to our programs and remain deeply engaged in our community wherever they are.
From these experiences, I would make three suggestions for the way forward.
First, we must prioritize coordination over programming. The primary barrier to diaspora engagement is extreme fragmentation. The federal government’s highest value is to act as a convenor, legitimizing, aligning and piloting efforts within government and across society. In a time of fiscal constraint, this catalytic role is both cost-effective and highly scalable.
Second, we must replace the brain-drain mindset with talent circulation. We need to stop viewing the departure of talent as a permanent loss and start viewing it as a dynamic, living resource. By drawing, for example, “insight loops,” such as short-term secondments, sectoral advisory roles and cross-border collaboration, we can tunnel global expertise and institutional capacity back into Canada.
Third, diaspora engagement must be mission-driven and outcome-oriented. This strategy works best when it is tied to solving concrete national challenges, such as our productivity gap, our small business succession, responsible AI commercialization and regulation, and trade diversification.
To do this effectively, Canada needs to have better data on global citizens, to engage in systematic learning from peer countries and to nurture structured civic forms in global hubs on different continents where the diaspora can meaningfully engage in our country’s future.
In conclusion, our competitive advantage as a country is not necessarily always scale but rather our ability to connect across markets, ideas and cultures. We do not lack global talent or goodwill. What we lack is the infrastructure to connect it to national renewal. It is time to build sustained pathways that enable our global citizens, our fellow Canadians, to answer the call to service and to contribute to our national future.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Wang.
Senator Woo: Thank you to all our witnesses. All of you are not just expert witnesses but also examplars of Canadians who are either living abroad now or have lived abroad, so you speak from experience.
My first set of questions is for Mr. Nankivell. It is timely that you’re speaking to us from Singapore, at the start of the Canada‑in‑Asia Conference. The community of Canadians and Canadian‑affiliated individuals in Singapore and the region with whom you’re connecting — they have always been there. That is not new.
What is so special about Canada-in-Asia, this conference series, that leverages an asset that has been there for a long time to make it special, to make it more than the sum of the individuals who are in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and so on? What is the secret sauce, in your opinion, that Canada-in-Asia brings to Canadians abroad?
Mr. Nankivell: There is a broader lesson in this. We’re now doing this conference for the fourth time. It has always been in Singapore and always in February.
The lesson is that we want to engage these communities. As we’ve discussed, I think there is a broad consensus — certainly in the room there — that these Canadian communities around the world are an asset for Canada, but you have to give people a reason to want to connect. You have to be able to give them something to attract them. I think the formula that we hit on for the Canada-in-Asia Conference was that we are uniquely placed as a national public-purpose foundation that promotes engagement between Canada and Asia, that we can bring the public sector, the private sector, the universities, colleges and the research-innovation ecosystem together and create new networking opportunities.
So, for the Canadians who are here and the Canada-connected people who are here, like the graduates of Canadian education and those who work for Canadian companies, what we offer by doing this convening and by getting over 700 people at this conference is an opportunity for building networks. These are good networks for Canada, but it is also an attraction for the people who come.
We survey them rigorously each year. The number one answer we get as to what they get out of the conference is the connections they make. So they have a personal interest professionally in networking and connecting. The best kind of convening that you can do is when you bring together people who don’t normally intersect with each other.
That is what we offer, and I do think it is a model that could be tried in certain other regions of the world, and you would have allies to do it.
Senator Ravalia: Thank you to all of our witnesses.
My question is being directed to Mr. Steven Wang. Last year, you wrote an article stating:
Canada must embrace its diaspora — not as a lost community but as an important feature of its national identity and a vital source of renewal.
Are there any areas you feel we are doing well in leveraging diaspora relationships?
Mr. Wang: Absolutely. Thank you, senator.
I believe we are doing many things well. I think Canadians abroad are engaged, especially at a time when we are facing pressures in various ways. There is a growing sentiment of Canadian pride in the values that endure.
There’s so much activity going on in many parts of the world; sometimes it just requires a bit of coordination. For example, recently I’ve been working with a couple of my friends who have studied and worked abroad, Adam McCauley and Joanna Klimczak. We are talking about building town halls in different parts of the world where we gather Canadians not just to network but to talk about what our future is, the imagination of what Canada could be and creating avenues to participate and to be part of that narrative that they matter.
And the other aspect that we are working on is collecting stories of Canadians abroad where successful entrepreneurs are investing back in Canada — the C100 is a great example — and also of Canadians who have come back to Canada with a lot of international experience. For example, there is LINC Asia, which is based at the Simon Fraser University at the Jack Austin Centre, named after senator Jack Austin, where they are drawing on their Asian experience to teach competencies to Canadian businesses how to export to global markets.
There are a lot of wonderful activities, and we need to find ways to elevate that, to celebrate those stories, to connect and provide a coherent narrative, especially at this critical moment, which I think is ripe for sending that signal out to the world. It is a bottom-up effort as well.
Senator Ravalia: Are there examples of nations that have established a more effective diaspora engagement? What do their outcomes look like?
Mr. Wang: That is a terrific question, senator. There are many examples from India to Ireland, to Scotland, to Korea. I could go on, but let me give a few examples.
Scotland has what is called the GlobalScot, which is a government-backed network of 655 volunteers — senior business leaders — over 50 countries who provide free mentoring, market intelligence and introductions to Scottish small- and medium-size businesses looking to export. New Zealand has a similar model of a private-public partnership of over 500,000 community members who help businesses unlock potential.
Mexico, for example, has a co-investment matching fund where diasporas contribute to local investments back at home in schools and water systems. For every dollar matched, the government also provides, incentivizing that collective effort.
Korea has a global network of scientists and engineers, a portal of 80,000 participants where they can contribute their expertise and where they provide scientific and technical Q and A every day.
India has a global diaspora advisory council. They started with a permanent council, and they get together but then divide into different sectors.
Netherlands has something very interesting called a temporary return secondment program where they get their diaspora to do time-bound assignments. So they don’t necessarily come back permanently, but they can plug into public institutions, universities, priority sectors and bring their expertise and functions to help support, grow and bring institutional capacity.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We have gone a bit over time on that very good question.
Senator Coyle: Thank you to our three witnesses. There is so much food for thought there. It’s really encouraging actually to hear all of these wonderful ideas and concrete examples.
My first question will be for Mr. Nankivell. You talked about the Canada-in-Asia Conference that you’re at right now in Singapore as a potential model. And you mentioned that we need a Canada strategy that is probably a combination of events, regular media, social media, a whole variety of communication strategies.
In the current model you are working on, is there any Government of Canada involvement or other governments’ involvement?
Mr. Nankivell: Yes, the Canada-in-Asia Conference receives substantial support each year from the Government of Canada, about $500,000 a year through Global Affairs Canada. We also have support from provinces. So for the conference that is happening next week here, we have formal sponsorship from British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, as well as participation from the Government of Quebec, which has been a big supporter, and Crown corporations like Invest in Canada, Export Development Canada and investment attraction agencies from different parts of the country.
In addition to that, we have strong support from the private sector — from major Canadian companies, from financial institutions — and from universities themselves. Their role has evolved over the last few years. It was critical to have a founding partner in Universities Canada, but we have university presidents who are coming and universities that also have partnership agreements with us in connection with these events. They hold receptions to interact with their alumni because they have a material interest in continuing to cultivate those networks.
Yes, we’ve had very substantial support from all levels of government from across Canada.
Senator Coyle: It was your initiative, though, the Asia Pacific Foundation, right?
Mr. Nankivell: Yes, we put up our own money from our own endowment core funding that we have to get this kicked off, and then others have come on board.
Senator Coyle: So to replicate it in other places, though, where there isn’t an Asia Pacific Foundation, I’m wondering if any of those partners are interested in taking that model.
Mr. Nankivell: There could be potential, for example, with Universities Canada. It is a strong organization. In fact, as we speak, they are leading a delegation of 22 university presidents in India. Some of those will be coming to Singapore for the conference. That would be one organization that would have some capacity to get the ball rolling on that.
Then, in the places where there are stronger business councils and business associations, local Canadian chambers of commerce, you could work with them. But we are uniquely lucky in the Indo-Pacific region that we have an organization like APF Canada that can sort of bridge those different sectors. That should be recreated elsewhere, also.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you all for being here today. It’s appreciated.
I’m thinking about something that was announced this week, and that is that over 3,000 GAC employees have received notices that their jobs could be in jeopardy. That includes consular staff. I’m trying to think about services in terms of how appropriate the level of consular services provided to Canadians abroad from your perspective is. At the present moment, what do you see as being the impact of these cuts, and is there better work we can be doing online?
I don’t know that we’ve heard from the gentleman who has been up quite late in Switzerland. Perhaps he would like to start first.
Mr. Nimijean: Over the past decade or decade and a half, support for cultural diplomacy has been on the back burner as a priority. I’m not a foreign policy scholar, but because of the nature of international Canadian studies, I’ve been involved in that movement. When I started my career some 25 years ago, international Canadian studies was a vibrant discipline. There were associations all over the world doing conferences and inviting people and artists. That is important, as many of you know, for getting Canada in the mindscape of decision makers and influential people to keep Canada “on the brain,” so to speak.
Canadian studies in Canada were very much on the decline. Because of the Canadianization movement and the need to know more about Canada, political science, English and history all started focusing on Canada. People said, “Well, we don’t need Canadian studies as much.”
Now, because of the current moment, it is the inverse: There is a growing interest in Canadian studies in Canada, but, internationally, my colleagues are reporting that it’s hard to give courses on Canada. It is hard to get any support from local embassies or consulates. Additionally, with the shift in priorities and the lack of program funding, it is just not a priority. With the budget announcement, at a time when we want Canada to be out there more than ever, the announcement you referred to is certainly troubling from a cultural diplomacy perspective.
Senator Al Zaibak: My question is directed to all of our witnesses.
As Canada is seeking to diversify trade beyond traditional partners, how can Canadians abroad, particularly in the Indo‑Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, be effectively mobilized as bridges for building new economic partnerships? What are the necessary steps and actions that you recommend our government to take in that regard?
Mr. Nankivell: If I may, I would just restate that I think the potential is definitely there. We have seen it in our own work as Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada in the Indo-Pacific region. I think you need to make an offering that will attract Canadians and Canada-connected people who are in those locations. If those are places where Canada is not doing a lot of business yet, then they are probably not feeling like they are in the loop. Convening events that will be attractive to them is the way to get them on board. When you tap them on the shoulder or ask them to come out for a Canadian event, my experience as a diplomat and in my current role has been that they are always enthusiastic. They are really looking to help; you just need to give them something to latch on to. That means you have to have resources to launch programs and events.
Mr. Nimijean: As was mentioned in the report and as I think Mr. Nankivell mentioned, getting the word out is really important.
In the first half of the meeting, the representative from GAC talked about how their bread and butter is connecting Canadians abroad, but many Canadians abroad are not connected. Trailing spouses who often do not work but who have skills and knowledge — in Basel here, we call them Hausmann if you are a trailing spouse and a man — there is a collection. They are not being tapped into.
I’m in a peculiar situation because my job is not here, but I don’t have connections to things, and there is no way to find out. My point about the website is that how would I even go about, short of a general email saying, “Hey, I’m in Switzerland, and this is what I do. Are you interested?” — not everyone is motivated to do that.
I would also say that not everyone is on social media. This goes back to the previous question in which under-resourced embassies and consulates don’t have the resources to do these kinds of outreach that is critical.
The Chair: We will allow Mr. Wang to add a few comments.
Mr. Wang: I will be quick. It is a very important question, senator. At Venture for Canada, we see that, for small- and medium-size businesses, increased access to foreign markets is critical through the diaspora by lowering information and trust frictions. We need a concrete ask from the government objective, then a delivery mechanism and then a basis for evaluating it.
In this case, the objective is clear. Then, the ask is vetted introductions, for example, to buyers, distributors and regulators; —market, notes and referrals to local resources. The mechanism is, for example, a connector roster of local city resources, — budding and standardized request templates.
Especially in this time of more fiscal constraint, it’s all the more reason to tap into our diaspora to leverage the incredible resources we have there.
Senator Harder: My question is for Mr. Wang, as well.
You called for a sustained government strategy, and other witnesses have talked about the resources they would wish to see allocated to this issue. We’re living in a fiscally constrained environment, which you yourself just referenced. I wonder if it wouldn’t be best to try to put a model together that is regionally specific and that incorporates some of the attributes that you have raised, perhaps building on Jeff Nankivell’s Canada-in-Asia Conference as to whether there isn’t something we can add to at least experiment with more creativity. Rather than have a global solution that we expect the Government of Canada to catalyze, we’d have a regional focus and a bit of experimentation with broad partners. I’m not saying the Government of Canada doesn’t have a role — it does in the Canada-in-Asia Conference — but is there some practical solution here that we can make at least some attempt to describe?
Mr. Wang: That is a really important question. I think the role the federal government can perform is a signalling effect. Once that signal is sent, then we can deploy all levels of engagement: federal and provincial governments, local networks, consulates and embassies, universities, chambers of commerce.
For example, on the regional point you mentioned, our provincial governments also have representation abroad. So, for example, with Quebec and the Francophonie, how do we create more alliances and support there?
Also, on bringing those engagements back to Canada and to different parts of our regions across Canada, how do we engage diasporas that have a connection to Nova Scotia or British Columbia and try to funnel that?
The idea is not for the government to do everything but to have a light touch, enable pilots and then work together to really catalyze. That approach will be much more effective in this environment.
Senator Harder: Jeff Nankivell, could you expand on the opportunities which your experiment, now going on four years, could advance if this mandate on advancing connections to the Canadian diaspora in Asia were part of your conference?
Mr. Nankivell: We have taken it as part of our mandate that it really is central to the idea of the conference itself, which was to build mind share for Canada in the region and to help to build a stronger infrastructure, a kind of latticework of networks across the region, tapping into resources already there. I should note, in terms of the Government of Canada funding and participation, this year it will be well under half of the external funding that we’re getting for the conference. The rest comes from two dozen other partners. In some years, it was as low as a third. It’s about the provinces; it’s about the different business groups and some of the Crown corporations with particular mandates.
We have benefited, in the case of the Indo-Pacific region, from the existence of the Indo-Pacific Strategy that itself had funding. In fact, the GAC contributions these days to the Canada-in-Asia conference are financed with the funding that was earmarked under that strategy. Canada doesn’t have such strategies for other regions. We’ve seen some very positive outcomes — although it’s still a work-in-progress — from Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy as it has been implemented up to now.
It is really important. The approach really needs to be tailored by the region. I would certainly endorse the idea that there is no one-size-fits-all here. It needs to be very regionally specific. But the expertise exists in the Canadian public sector with regard to certain parts of the world to be able to do something — it won’t be exactly the same but something similar.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I will ask a question as well, and it is to Professor Nimijean. You referenced Understanding Canada as a program that was cut, in your remarks and in your statement.
This committee several years ago did a study on cultural diplomacy. In it, there was a portion on the importance of encouraging Canadian studies abroad. In fact, we called for the reinstallation of the Understanding Canada program. In my experience as ambassador to Germany, there was an annual conference in Grainau — I don’t know if it still exists, in Bavaria; certainly, the village does, but I don’t know about the conference — where scholars from the German-speaking countries, so Germany, Austria and Switzerland, would come together to discuss Canadian academic issues. It was a tremendous exchange. That was the example that I used when I tried to lobby successive governments to reinstate this program.
If I understood you correctly in your statement, with the demise of Understanding Canada as a program, the study of Canada and the outreach that Canadian academics could do abroad have been severely diminished.
The second part of my question is whether there is a way to come back on that. Because in government, it seems like the issue fell between chairs at Global Affairs and Heritage Canada, as it then was. Any additional comments on your part would be welcome.
Mr. Nimijean: Thank you for the question. Yes, I never went to the Grainau conference, but everyone says it was great. There have, of course, been the British Association for Canadian Studies, the Mexican Association for Canadian Studies and ACSUS in the United States. They are huge conferences that not only attract Canadian scholars going to these conferences but provide an opportunity for scholars, students and faculty in those countries to really explore those ideas.
After I received the invitation to speak with your committee, I just reached out to some people, some friends, colleagues across the world about what has been going on. I know that in some cases — because I’ve been teaching on and off in the Czech Republic in the past few years — with the demise of Understanding Canada, there is much less incentive for universities to support courses on Canada if their graduate students are not getting these little $5,000 grants to go to Canada to study, to get books. The demise of the program, as you know, caused a huge debate. A report came out and showed that the economic returns to Canada were great, much greater than the few million dollars invested.
How do we get back to it? Well, the ICCS, the International Council for Canadian Studies, is trying its best to do something. A team at York University has been publishing on the state of international Canadian studies, and I can get you the reference. But we need to do more work on what is going on.
The Chair: Thank you very much. To emphasize the point, we don’t have a British Council. We don’t have an Alliance Française. We don’t have a Goethe-Institut. If we do want to project and use our diaspora effectively in that context, this is something that the government could look at.
Senator Woo: I have a hypothesis to which I want Professor Nimijean and Steve Wang to respond. It tries to explain why we’ve had so little attention given to Canadians abroad. Four or five million people, that’s a big number.
My hypothesis is that we tend to look down on Canadians abroad. We tend to disparage them. There are terms that I’ve heard and seen in the papers describing Canadians abroad as foreigners with Canadian passports or disloyal Canadians or failed Canadians. The idea is that if you had to go abroad to continue your career, you couldn’t hack it in Canada; therefore, you are a kind of failure. Can you respond to that? It is a gross generalization, of course, but can you respond to that and tell me if it partly explains why we’ve given so little attention to this very large demographic?
Mr. Nimijean: Well, at one level, we celebrate Canadians who have gone abroad, who have achieved at a very high level — doctors, entertainers, once-in-a-while academics. But as I write in my chapter and in our introduction, going beyond that, I agree that we tend to look down upon expats as somehow a drain. Diaspora studies in Canada tend to focus on the internal aspects.
People come from all over the world to Canada and, somehow, for whatever reason, we don’t think of ourselves as going to other parts of the world. I have a colleague in Poland who studies the Polish diaspora in Canada. I have a colleague in Romania who studies the Romanian diaspora. Yet, somehow, we don’t have Canadians who study the Canadian diaspora. I’m not sure why that is, but, to me, if you don’t travel outside the country, you don’t realize certain things. That’s one of the findings of our book — that you engage with Canada differently. You become more connected, in a way, not less connected, but you actually need to travel to feel that.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Ravalia: My question is for Mr. Nankivell. In your earlier presentation, you made a reference to dual citizens. Could you elaborate further on the diaspora who are dual citizens, and are we able to leverage their duality, so to speak, in expanding connectivity for Canadians living abroad?
Mr. Nankivell: I think we can. It will vary enormously on the circumstances. As I mentioned, in certain places — Hong Kong is definitely one of them — there are Canadian citizens who hold local citizenship who live fully integrated into the local community.
The experience of our consular team — when I was the Consul General in Hong Kong — is that these people, apart from document renewals of Canadian documents, didn’t look to Canada for consular services. And if they found themselves in legal trouble, arrested or hospitalized, very seldom did they think of turning to the Consul General of Canada.
Now, Hong Kong is a society with a very sophisticated social safety net. It would be different in other places, but one of the take-aways I had from that experience, and in the earlier testimony you heard about the privacy issues, is that a lot of Canadians who are dual citizens, if they are approached for consular services — for example, we get a tip from a family member in Canada, or someone in the media says a Canadian has been arrested; you call around the police stations and you find the person — they say, “I don’t want to have anything to do with you. I don’t want a record of this on any file. Please do not engage in my case.” It is highly situationally specific.
As I also mentioned, when we make opportunities available to people who have not been connected to Canada for some time, the vast majority of them are very keen to get involved and to be part of networks. But, again, they have to see that there is something in it for them; that’s not a particular selfishness on their part.
By building these networks and creating events and programs that will attract people, that’s the way to do this. It is patient work that you have to do over a number of years and with adequate resources.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We’ve come to the end of this panel. On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank Jeff Nankivell, Richard Nimijean and Steven Wang for joining us today. We’ve been enriched by your commentary.
I would like to thank Senator Woo for proposing this particular hearing. I think we had a good discussion.
Colleagues, we will reconvene tomorrow at 10:30 in this room to discuss international development in the current global climate. It is International Development Week, so it is entirely appropriate.
Will we go in camera at the end of tomorrow’s meeting to deal with our draft report on Bill C-15, the budget implementation act, which was sent to each of you by email on January 20. Just to refresh your memories, you have received this document.
(The committee adjourned.)