Global Affairs’ planned overhaul may not get all funds it requested
Comes amid call for department spending cuts
• Global Affairs Canada is already telegraphing uncertainty that it will get the investments necessary to fully implement its most ambitious reform in decades at a time when the Liberal government is demanding departments reign in their spending.
Much of the government’s Future of Diplomacy overhaul of Canada’s foreign service will need to be done by either reallocating existing resources or with no new money, such as an extensive “red-tape review” launched this month that focuses on “reducing burdensome processes and workloads at headquarters and at our missions abroad.”
That’s according to the “transformation implementation plan” published by the department on Monday, following the announcement in June by Minister Mélanie Joly of an in-depth overhaul of GAC to make it nimbler, less risk-averse and topheavy, and expand its presence abroad.
This version of the “implementation plan” listed dozens of broad initiatives it intends to launch within the next three years to accomplish the reform, but it features neither specific timelines nor budgets for any of them.
The document appears to raise concerns over whether the department will receive the necessary influx of funds to fulfil the promise of increasing Canada’s diplomatic presence abroad both in foreign countries and multilateral organizations like the G20 or the United Nations.
“GAC’S transformation exercise comes at a time when the Government of Canada is refocusing its spending. The implementation plan has been developed with this in mind, by adopting many approaches that are cost-neutral or that can be fully assumed with existing resources,” reads the document.
The plan is referring to a demand in the 2023 budget that all departments reduce spending to the tune of $15 billion overall over the next five years, as well as messaging from Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Treasury Board President Anita Anand that the spending taps will not flow as freely going forward.
One of the key measures the department is launching immediately is a review to identify and remove as much “red tape” as possible from GAC, which deputy minister David Morrison said in an interview is hampered by a “consultative culture” that is too slow and sometimes lacks ambition.
“We have far too many layers of approval. So, we go slow and we don’t shoot high enough,” Morrison said.
He added that removing red tape and alleviating existing processes is a key way to improve how the department operates at little to no cost.
“There are lots of examples of processes that are conceived in Ottawa that don’t really pass the stress test of life at mission,” he added. “We send people out around the world, at some cost, and I would like to ensure that they are freed up to be out there doing their jobs in their host countries, rather than filling out reports to send to Ottawa.”
But experts, retired diplomats and even Joly have acknowledged that existing budgets and simply moving resources and funds around internally will not be enough to reach Future of Diplomacy’s ambitious goals of bringing Canada’s foreign service into the 21st century.
The department’s planning document also acknowledges all the while warning that it still does not know if that additional funding will come, or where it will come from.
“Additional resources will be required to ensure full implementation of some deliverables. Exact sources for these, including via internal reallocations, remain to be fully confirmed and work to identify those will be part of the next steps,” reads the document.
Morrison said the department is well aware of that and will be pushing for the needed funding via the budgetary process.
“We can do a lot that’s free or through reallocation. But some of the bigger ticket items, and certainly the increased presence abroad — and I go back to saying that our value added around town is our mission network abroad — costs money, even if we do it in a smart way using technology,” Morrison said.
But he also noted that a lot can be done simply by moving resources around faster when new needs arise, something he says GAC has failed to do in the past.
“I do know what can be done without substantial additional funds and it’s pretty remarkable,” he added. “In an environment that is resource constrained, that means taking those resources from one part of the organization and deploying them into another. And it’s not something that’s in our culture.”
Asked how this reform will avoid the pitfalls of most other foreign service reforms that never ultimately saw the light over the last five decades, Morrison said he is fully dedicated to seeing it through and noted it’s the first time an associate deputy minister, Chief Transformation Officer Antoine Chevrier, has been assigned to the task full time.
Morrison also said the review will bring about significant culture changes to the department, such as making it “open by default.”
“I want to run a place where the policy muscle involves people picking up the phone and talking to smart experts throughout Canada and elsewhere,” he said.