Diplomats won’t miss Baird
Government: Foreign service officers dreaded seeing frequent-flying senior minister
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird was a man in perpetual motion. Whether he achieved much for Canada is a matter of opinion, but he was certainly an energetic, amiable traveller.
Those who work for U.S. secretaries of state keep running tallies on how many countries their bosses have been to and how many miles they have logged. Canadians do not do this nearly so much.
My guess is that Baird travelled more often, and to more out-ofthe-way places, than any Canadian foreign minister before him. But it is difficult to prove it without an exhaustive Internet trawl. The Foreign Affairs website contains only partial information about his trips after his first year as minister in 2011.
While Baird received a lot of attention for timely trips to Libya, Iraq and Ukraine, some of his wanderings did not make much sense and must have cost the public purse a small fortune. For instance, two weeks ago, he flew to Brazil to see President Dilma Rousseff sworn in for a second term. He also attended a couple of Persian Gulf conferences during the past six months that were of no importance at all.
While pleasing social progressives in Canada with his stance on gay rights and the difficulties faced by women in many places overseas, these were not positions that in any way changed the often ugly world we live in.
The Harper government’s ardent support for Israel, which has sometimes put Canada in territory where even the U.S. has never gone, may have been Baird’s most controversial file. There probably were some votes in it for the Tories in a few ridings in Toronto and Montreal, but this remains an issue that most Canadians do not really have a strong opinion about, one way or the other.
Baird tilted Canada strongly toward Israel and arguably became Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s only friend overseas. At the same time he enthusiastically pursued stronger ties with several Persian Gulf states which, like Israel, fear Iran but are also motivated by the possibility that without western support they might be overthrown by their own people.
Baird visited the Middle East often, particularly after Ottawa badly mishandled access to an airbase in the United Arab Emirates that was used to support the combat mission in Afghanistan. The workaround that developed after Canada was kicked out of Camp Mirage ended up costing the Canadian Forces many tens of millions of dollars.
It would be wrong to say Baird was much loved or respected by Canada’s cadre of retired diplomats. He wore their criticisms like a badge of honour, especially when they slammed him for his intense devotion to Israel.
But younger diplomats, who were not so invested in that perpetual political hot potato, had other reasons for disliking Baird. Whether the subject was the Middle East, Europe or Asia, they often complained that he had a wide but thin knowledge of the issues and seemed to come at them with preconceived notions about the world that were seldom modified as he became more deeply briefed.
Foreign service officers would roll their eyes or wince when they heard he was coming to town. They did not see the utility of many of his visits and wearied of the arrangements they had to make to accommodate his stays.
There was the incident in 2013 when CTV News reported that Baird and six friends stayed for eight days at Macdonald House — the official residence of Canada’s high commissioner to Great Britain. It was not the first or last time Baird was seen by his diplomats as freeloading at his ministry’s expense although it was the only time the issue erupted into a scandal.
I had only one long conversation with Baird. As it happens, we had tea at Macdonald House in Grosvenor Square in Mayfair, one of the poshest precincts in London.
Two things stand out from the off-the-record chat we had. The first was that Baird was contemptuous of the media. He told me Canada’s senior generals could not be trusted to talk with journalists because the latter would try to trick these mostly savvy officers into saying something that could be used against the government. His opinion was that the military had to be muzzled and managed.
My other observation is that Baird had an odd obsession with the furnishings of the high commissioner’s residence. During a tour of the main floor of the grand home, he pointed out paintings, carvings and even chairs that should be replaced because they lacked the kind of style and sophistication that would impress Britons. Everything I saw in the home looked fine to me and I was taken aback that something so trivial was of such importance to the man responsible for Canadian foreign policy.
I wish there was more to say about Baird’s 45 months as foreign affairs minister. He travelled more than he needed to and became known for his understandably hawkish rhetoric on issues such as Russia and Ukraine and the threat posed to the West by Islamic extremists. Whether his tenure will have any effect on Canada’s place in the world remains an open question.