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.