Do More With Less

Embassy, April 23rd, 2008
NEWS STORY

Demand for Consular Services

Triples Over Last 10 Years

While thousands more Canadians are requesting help abroad, the government is planning to trim resources.

By Jeff Davis

While demand for consular services is at an all-time high, and expected to continue growing for the foreseeable future, newly released documents show the government is planning to reduce the amount of resources available in coming years.

According to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade's most recent report on plans and priorities, the "demand for consular services has tripled in the past 10 years, with most of the increase having taken place since 2003."

The total volume of consular assistance cases, the report states, has grown from 35,680 in 2002-2003 to 44,068 in 2006-2007. In 2006, the last full year for which statistics are available, Canadians made more than 40 million trips outside Canada.

The rise in demand for consular services is rooted in increased international business travel, increasingly complex dual nationality cases, and an increasing number of natural disasters involving Canadians abroad, the report says.

The report says the government plans to improve access to consular services provided by the department. Among the actions to be undertaken is a plan to increase the number of consular staff at both headquarters and at missions abroad.

The report also says the department will create a rapid deployment team that will be dispatched to crises zones following natural or man-made disasters, as well as a new Emergency Management Office within DFAIT to further support emergency responses during crises.

There is also mention of a "Canada-Mexico rapid response consular mechanism" which will be used to "ensure timely action on difficult and high-profile consular cases in Mexico." Details were not provided in the report.

But while DFAIT's plans for consular improvements are ambitious, the government's will to fund these improvements seems less-than-enthusiastic.

This fiscal year, 2008-2009, consular services will receive $46.4 million. Next year, the consular budget is planned to drop to $41.4 million, and then rise incrementally to $41.5 million for 2010-2011.

Just last year, the department was expecting more. In DFAIT's report on plans and priorities last year, consular service budgets were to hover steady at around $47 million annually until 2010, where budget forecasts end.

If the government follows through with its planned cuts, funding levels will drop to 1997-1998 levels, despite the tripling of demand for consular services since 1997-1998. These cuts will also stand in contradiction to the findings of an internal departmental evaluation of consular affairs, conducted in 2004, that concluded "program resources were insufficient."

Personnel levels, under the 2009 forecasts, are slated to remain steady at 496 full time employees until 2011, giving no indication how the department will be able to increase the number of staff dedicated to consular services.

Despite frequent requests for explanations or comment, DFAIT communications did not get back to Embassy by press time. Requests to interview senior consular officials were also denied.


Can't Do More With Less: Critics

Since coming to power in January 2006, the Conservative government has been hit with a number of complicated and very public consular case.

Despite demands the government do more, Canadian Brenda Martin spent more than two years in a Mexican prison without trial after being arrested on questionable fraud and money laundering charges. The case has become a major headache for the Conservatives, who have been unable, or unwilling, to help her. She was finally found guilty of money laundering yesterday.

Meanwhile, the government has taken heat for its inability to help a Chinese-Canadian man, Huseyin Celil, who was sentenced to life in prison after a Chinese court found him guilty of terrorism. And government pleas for clemency in the case of a Canadian man, Mohamed Kohail, sentenced to public beheading in Saudi Arabia have fallen on largely deaf ears.

Liberal Consular Affairs critic Dan McTeague called the declining funding levels to consular services "reckless" and doubted whether the consular improvement plans can be achieved with less.

"You're going to do more with less?" he said. "It is obviously a contradiction."

Mr. McTeague, who served as parliamentary secretary for Canadians abroad under the previous Liberal government, said the government is simply "not serious about consular affairs."

"There is a tremendous amount of insecurity in the world," he said, "They're now leaving Canadians largely exposed by dropping the funding by a whopping 12 per cent."

He pointed out that the planned cuts fly in the face of the 2004 internal report on consular affairs.

"They don't understand, they don't appreciate and they're prepared to sacrifice and compromise," he said. "I think this probably speaks to why they are having such difficulties with files like Brenda Martin, Mr. Kohail and why they failed for three months to address the issue of Huseyin Celil."

Mr. McTeague predicted the Conservatives would pay for cuts at the polls.

"Consular issues and the plight of Canadians abroad is mainstream in minds of most Canadians," he said. "I think [Canadians] are going to be a little miffed that this department is being nickled and dimed to death at a time when expectations are to do better and more."

Gar Pardy, who served 11 years as director-general of consular services at the Department of Foreign Affairs before retiring in 2003, said it doesn't seem logical that more can be done with less funding.

He said the consular division has grown enormously over the years. In 1992, he said, consular had just a dozen workers. But he said this round of cuts is yet another in the ongoing process of extracting money from DFAIT and redirecting it to the "centre"—namely the Privy Council Office and Prime Minister's Office.

Mr. Pardy said that, by international standards, Canadian consular services rank among the best in the world.

Hot Show!! Pardon Me, Prime Minister

Crichton Cultural Community Centre (CCCC)

Subject: Benefit performance of Pardon Me Prime Minister - Wednesday, April 23rd

On Wednesday, April 23^rd at 7:30 p.m. at Mackay United Memorial Hall (corner of Dufferin Road and Mackay Street), Ingrid McCarthy’s New Edinburgh Players will stage a special benefit performance of Pardon Me Prime Minister, a comedy by Edward Taylor and John Graham. All proceeds will go to the CCCC to enhance programming and operations, and ultimately to acquire the building at 200 Crichton to ensure it remains in public use.

• tickets are $20 each. They are available by calling the CCCC office @ 613-745-2742. You can also call Carol Burchill at 613-741-7205.
  
• the MacKay United Church Hall will be set up with round tables that seat 4, 6 or 8 people.
  
• doors open at 6:45
• the play starts at 7:30
• refreshments include tea, coffee, juice and cookies.

Please join us for a delightful evening of local theatre, and help give a much needed boost to our ongoing fundraising campaign!

Amigos West

Doug Campbell in Victoria sent out a call to Left Coast Amigos to rally 'round for a jar at the Penny-Farthing Pub.

He reports "a good turnout with some emerging from privacy after many years. There was me, Bob Turner, Tom Bearrs, Garrett Lambert, John Swanson, Bill Ross, Nick Etheridge, Art Fraser, Doug Waddell, Vic Lotto. Expected for our next gathering in the fall-David Cohen, Jim Graham, Nigel Godfrey, David Roberts, Maldwyn Thomas, John Treleven, Robert Mcleod. Sorry no pictures. You-all enjoy a great summer. Doug."

Perhaps we should plan an East-West get-together, in Winnipeg? With photos?

Jake Warren, RIP

WARREN, Jack H. (Jake), O.C., LLD After a short stay at Ottawa General, Jake has passed away in the full embrace of his loved and loving family. Born in April, 1921 on an Ontario tobacco farm, he was raised and educated in Ottawa and completed his studies at Queen's University, Kingston, B.A., LLD. In World War II he welcomed responsibility as a naval officer on many ships, notably HMCS Valleyfield which was torpedoed and sunk in the frigid North Atlantic in 1944. His survival only ensured and reinforced his commitment to deliver a genuine public service to a country that he loved. An interest in trade and internationalism brought him post-war to the Department of External Affairs and in due course to appointments as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom (1971-1975) and Ambassador to the United States of America (1975-1977). His focused dedication and overwhelming work ethic were rewarded with varied positions of significance throughout his life, including Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (1968-1971). In 1977 he returned to Canada to act as Ambassador and Canadian Coordinator of the Tokyo Round of World Trade Negotiations (1977-1979). Upon his well-deserved retirement from the federal public service, but still hungry for intellectual challenge, he accepted the Vice-Chairmanship at Bank of Montreal and then represented the Province of Quebec as its Free Trade Policy Advisor during NAFTA negotiations. He received the Public Service Outstanding Achievement Award in 1975 and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1982. The many achievements in his professional life only pale against the happiness and love that he shared with dear Joan, his wife of 55 years, his four children, Hilary, Martin, Jennifer (Charlie), Ian (Andrea) and his grandchildren, Andrew, Colin, Alec, Beverly, Thomas, Madeline, Emily, Jack, Robert and the late Fiona, who will miss his great wit, dining-room table exuberance and unsuccessful efforts at discipline. He has been a great friend of many and his absence at Round Table, CHIMO, Stammtisch, White Pine and on the salmon rivers will be conspicuous. Funeral service will take place at St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church, 125 MacKay Street on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2 p.m. In lieu of flowers, donations to the NAC Orchestra Bursary would be appreciated.

Join the Value Chain

More and more, firms use parts made around the world. That makes the old hostility to foreign competitors outdated

Michael Hart And Bill Dymond, Financial Post
Published: Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Canadian trade policy is preoccupied with yesterday's priorities: bilateral trade agreements with minor partners and multilateral negotiations that provide scant benefit, while ignoring pressing problems in Canada's most important trading relationship. Tempting as it is to blame the political caution of a minority government and wait for political fortunes to change, the problem is deeper and of longer standing. Canadian trade policy has become detached from its economic moorings.

Conventional trade policy assumes that international trade consists of the flow of nationally identifiable goods and services across borders and that states have an interest in influencing the size and direction of such flows. Politics translates this into a focus on increasing export opportunities while disparaging the import side of exchange.

Yet as national boundaries recede as key determinants in international trade, the national identity of products becomes difficult to divine. In today's world of value chains and global production, the conventional tools and instruments are at best irrelevant and at worst dysfunctional, yielding perverse results for contemporary trade and investment.

Global value chains are the new paradigm of international trade. More and more transborder transactions take place within firms, among related parties, or within integrated networks. As firms' abilities to disaggregate and geographically disperse production have grown, parts and components have grown to form a greater share of international trade. Production is geared to a wider market, and the range of goods and services that are exchanged internationally has widened considerably.

Capital and technology move between nations to promote export-oriented production, not to substitute for imports. International exchange now involves a much more complex and sophisticated range of economic transactions. Vertically integrated firms have given way to much more flexible, horizontally organized enterprises making creative use of regionally and globally organized value chains.

If the government appears to understand that Canada's future prosperity depends upon effective participation by Canadian firms in this new economy, its policy preferences remain firmly rooted in the past. Trade Minister David Emerson stresses that access to export markets remains Canada's highest priority, to be achieved through successful completion of the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, the development of strategic partnerships with China, India and Japan, and the negotiation of bilateral free trade agreements.

A successful Doha Round and trade agreements with Peru, Colombia and the Dominican Republic offer, at best, marginal new opportunities for a few Canadian firms, but will have little impact on the economy as a whole. Trade missions to far-flung places that offer limited new prospects may similarly serve political or foreign policy imperatives, but make few, if any, economic contributions. What Canada needs is a trade policy that recognizes the increasing importance of global value chains and the critical role of Canada-U.S. integration in gaining full benefit from their exploitation.

There remain barriers to realizing the full trade potential of the Canadian economy. Some of them lie in foreign markets; more of them reside in Canada. In its latest report on Canada, the World Trade Organization observed that significant trade barriers still protect certain agricultural activities, and foreign investment restrictions remain in areas such as telecommunications, financial services, the cultural industries, and air and maritime transport.

Reform in those sectors could lower costs to Canadian taxpayers and consumers while increasing productivity and competition in the domestic market. Ultimately, addressing remaining policy-induced distortions would help ensure that Canadians continue to enjoy one of the highest living standards in the world. A serious contemporary trade and commerce strategy would start by hacking away at these barriers.

Canada also needs to move decisively to pursue a bilateral initiative with the United States, to design and implement a border regime that eliminates much of the detritus of past customs administration for bilateral trade. We should implement a joint regulatory agenda that seeks, over time, to move toward much higher levels of convergence through a combination of mutual recognition, joint rule-making, and similar programs. And we should establish the joint institutions and decision-making procedures that will achieve these goals. A modernized Canada-U.S. treaty that reflected the reality of the dynamics of value-chain-based trade and production patterns would help point the way toward a renewed and revitalized trade policy.

The benefits to Canadians of such a reordered agenda are potentially enormous. Success in reducing the direct and indirect costs of administering the border, for example, would alone be worth the effort. Reducing overlap and duplication in Canada's increasingly costly regulatory regimes would put further dollars in the pockets of Canadians and increase their capacity to pay for other priorities, from health care reform to education.

Redirecting productive private resources to more-rewarding activities would lead to even larger benefits, strengthening the Canadian economy and adding further to the capacity to focus on other priorities. The only cost that would arise is political: in Canadians' exaggerated preoccupation with ephemeral concepts of sovereignty and nationhood.