Canada's foreign policy train wreck

I present this week a triumvirate of articles from Embassy Magazine on the rather scandalous topic of the underhanded and unpalatable language shift in Canadian foreign policy, a la Stephen Harper.

Alluding to the language contained in these policies using the only tool in his arsenal -- the Liberal versus Conservative binary -- is not only transparently idiotic, it's dangerous and disastrous for Canada, who has been at the table to negotiate international legislation through successive Liberal AND Conservative governments. But if such lunacy wasn't enough, how about the impossibility of getting the Conservative Party to defend their course of action. The spokespeople and justifications are few and far between. The best Lawrence Cannon, supposedly the mildest of Conservative ideologues, can do is proclaim that Canadians elected his party to set the foreign policy agenda.

Really? When was foreign policy "language" a hotly contested topic in political debates?

And so, with hands thrown way back into the air and teeth gnashing with each passing day, my sense of concern for the Canada I thought I knew -- compassionate, accepting, progressive -- grows ever stronger.

(These articles are long, but worth reading. Please take action by voting and writing to your Member of Parliament in disgust!)

Liberal-Era Diplomatic Language Killed Off
by Jeff Davis
July 1, 2009

It was once considered a hallmark achievement of modern Canadian foreign policy, but few breathe the words "human security" in Stephen Harper's Ottawa. And this is no accident.

Since taking power three years ago, Conservative political staffers have worked to purge the language of the previous Liberal government's much lauded "human security" policies from the DFAIT lexicon.

This has prompted a debate between those who feel a "smaller" Conservative foreign policy has been implemented, and others who argue that human security still plays a role in Canadian foreign policy beneath what is merely a political rebranding exercise.

DFAIT insiders tell Embassy that since the Conservative government took power in 2006, political staffers have directed rank and file Foreign Affairs bureaucrats to stop using policy language created by the former Liberal government.

"There are phrases you are not supposed to use," said one Canadian diplomat, on condition of anonymity. "Anything that smacks of the previous government is totally verboten.

"There is this tendency, almost like a knee-jerk reaction, to discount or ignore or change whatever it is the Liberals did and let's put a new Conservative face on it," he added. "There's a whole range of words and expressions that are being depopulated out of the documents, and are replaced with ones that are more to the [Conservatives'] liking."

Chief among the forbidden phrases, multiple DFAIT insiders have told Embassy, are "human security," "public diplomacy" and "good governance." Preferred key words include "human rights," the "rule of law," and "democracy" or "democratic development."

Human security refers to a package of policies advanced by the Liberal government in the 1990s, most notably by former Chrétien-era foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy. The human security paradigm, as opposed to the traditional state-centric view of foreign policy, focuses on the rights and well-being of individuals around the world. This bundle of policies included the promotion of the International Criminal Court and the Responsibility to Protect, as well as various initiatives related to child soldiers, land mines, small arms controls and economic and food security.

Indications of the lexicon change first arose several months ago when the Conservative government instructed Canadian diplomats not to use the phrase "Responsibility to Protect". However, as the government started preparing for a run at a seat on the UN Security Council, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon issued an internal memo removing the "Responsibility to Protect" ban.

DFAIT sources say political staffers have made their disapproval of Liberal policy language known to senior bureaucrats when they happened upon such phraseology in policy documents. The orders, DFAIT insiders say, trickle down "by osmosis."

"The way you learn about a lot of this stuff is when you do a draft, and you use a phrase you are used to, and then it comes back crossed out and new expressions are put in," said one.

"Once you realize that, at the director or director general level, these are things they don't want to hear you use, that becomes a command performance and that's it... and that filters right down to desk level eventually."

The message to avoid the Liberal language of human security has also moved well beyond the ramparts of Fort Pearson, sources near the United Nations say.

Bill Pace, the New York-based executive director of the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy, said Canadian diplomats have told him of the restrictions on their use of certain language.

"I talked to [Canadian] ambassadors in Africa and Asia who told me they were under instructions not to use the term 'human security' because the Harper government considered it part of the Liberal government legacy," Mr. Pace said.

"It's probably very accurate that the current government saw this as key elements of the previous government's foreign policy, and distanced themselves from it," he added, iterating a view expressed to Embassy by a number of academics and DFAIT insiders.

A Rebranding Exercise?

Some three years into its rule, the Harper government has largely completed its work of removing overt references to human security from its websites, division names and programs.

The Human Security Policy Division, for example, has been renamed the Human Rights and Democracy Bureau. DFAIT's Human Security Program, meanwhile, was renamed the Glyn Berry Program for Peace and Security in 2007.

Other programs have not fared so well.

Funding has been cut to the Canadian Consortium on Human Security, an "academic-based network promoting policy-relevant research on human security." The Human Security Fellowship program, which sent graduate students to do field work related to human security in places like Central Asia, Haiti and Africa, was also halted.

Little if anything related to human security, furthermore, remains on DFAIT websites. Pages on the "Human Security Program of Foreign Affairs Canada" no longer exist, for example.

Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae described the scrubbing of Liberal language and policies as "Orwellian."

"They're also not allowed to use the phrase R2P because they see that as another Liberal inheritance," he said. "It's a sad reflection of their ideological desperation, and I think increasingly sets Canada back."

Mr. Rae said the Ontario government of Conservative premier Mike Harris, which succeeded Mr. Rae's NDP government and for which many of the Harper government's ministers and staff worked, similarly forbade officials from using language such as "equity" and "social justice."

However, Fen Hampson, the director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, said the changes are unsurprising. He said every government will engage in "relabelling" and that showing differentiation from your predecessor—in policy or language—is a political imperative.

And despite the fact that overt references to human security policies are largely absent, he said, the underlying ideas appear to have held fast within the ranks of the bureaucracy. The Glyn Berry Program, for example, reflect a focus on good governance and the rights and well-being of the individual, ideas deeply interconnected to human security. Meanwhile, Canada's engagement in Afghanistan and Haiti are driven by human security-like ideas like peacebuilding, assisting war-torn countries and democratic development.

"In a lot of ways, that agenda was successfully institutionalized in the bureaucracy," said Mr. Hampson. "The human security unit has been relabelled, but it's still doing many of the same things, so it hasn't been totally thrown overboard."

In fact, Mr. Hampson said that the softening of Canadian support for human security issues began even during the reign of the Liberal governments, though they left the programs and language of human security in place.

"The downplaying of human security and the language of human security really began right after Axworthy left the scene," he said. "I think it's probably fair to say when John Manley was foreign minister, the sort of rebranding and refocusing to a much more, shall we say, hardcore view of Canada's security interests, and the importance he gave to the bilateral relationship with U.S. [took place]."

Mr. Manley inherited the mantle of foreign minister from Mr. Axworthy in October 2000, during a time when relations with the United States seemed strained, partially because of the human security agenda itself. Many of the major human security initiatives, the ICC and the land mine ban being two examples, were not supported by the United States.

"Some people felt that the human security agenda...had become somewhat of an irritant with Washington," Mr. Hampson said. "There was a feeling that [human security]...had been seen south of the border that we were running interference on U.S. policy."

Support for the human security package and R2P weakened further after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and especially following the invasion of Iraq.

Many developing countries, Mr. Hampson said, feared the Responsibility to Protect could facilitate their invasion by powerful Western nations.

"R2P, which they saw as very interventionist, almost became discredited after Iraq," said Mr. Hampson, adding that it is viewed by many as "yet another doctrinal instrument to interfere in the internal affairs of countries."

Professor Brian Job, director of the Centre of International Relations at the University of British Columbia, agreed that human security's fingerprints can still be seen on Canadian foreign policy.

"The paradox that has occurred is that Canada and its diplomats and websites no longer feature the words human security as a programmatic label," Mr. Job said. "But they articulate the agenda of human security in their programs such as in Afghanistan, which is all about the human security of Afghan civilians, and the same goes in Haiti.

"The government doesn't pronounce on human security, but looks to achieve humans security," he added.

Mr. Job said a more substantive shift has occurred on the diplomatic front, where Canadian diplomats adopted a less active and activist demarche.

"Where you've seen the current government draw back from the previous human security agenda has been on its proactive leadership at the institutional level in the international system," he said, citing a lack of enthusiastic support for the International Criminal Court and R2P as an example.

This lack of diplomatic leadership, Mr. Job added, has left Canada with a foreign policy of a much narrower scope.

"The Conservatives as a government have a quite different notion of what a foreign policy agenda should be, and it certainly is not one of proactive leadership at international level," he said. "It's much more reactive, selective, I would say a much smaller foreign policy. Human security was a broad agenda about looking for opportunities to be innovative, and that's not the modality of the current Conservative government."

Mr. Pace from the World Federalist Movement said he found it quite "ironic" that Canada, under the Harper government, turned its back on the human security paradigm just as it was being accepted by more governments and civil society groups around the world.

"Even if Canada abandons it, it's now firmly implanted and there's tremendous support amongst civil society in small and middle power democracies," he said. "Canada was being viewed as much more of a leader in progressive international politics than it is now, and in the last several years it is seen more as looking inward, more dealing with economic issues, and protecting its relationships with the U.S."

And while Lloyd Axworthy may be viewed by the Harper government as a Liberal partisan, Mr. Pace said, he is remembered abroad as a "world community leader and organizer, someone who wanted to take advantage of the end of the Cold War and get not only Canadian but international policies onto a much more peaceful path."


Leaked DFAIT Memo Documents Struggle Between Conservative Political Staff and Foreign Service
by Jeff Davis
29 July 2009

Fearful that political staffers are severely diluting Canada's foreign policy through alterations to policy language, senior Foreign Affairs officials have begun pushing back against their political masters.

Simmering internal tensions over language changes were first discovered by Embassy in recent weeks, but newly leaked documents indicate that senior departmental officials have had enough.

On May 7, a DFAIT bureaucrat acting as a departmental adviser to the minister's office wrote an email to some of DFAIT's most senior officials, outlining concerns about the many changes to policy language being made by exempt ministerial staffers. The message was obtained by Embassy last week.

The email is titled "[The minister's office] and language related to human rights, child soldiers, international humanitarian law." It was addressed to about two dozen senior officials—including four assistant deputy ministers and a number of directors general—from divisions dealing with human rights, international organizations, Africa, the Middle East and others. Also copied are a number of departmental lawyers and staff from the office of the deputy minister.

In the email, the departmental adviser outlines a number of significant changes made to policy language by political staffers recently. Among them are changes to the "standard docket response" of Canada's position on the violence in Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Suggested changes to this letter include removing the term "impunity" in every instance," he writes. "E.g. "Canada urges the Government of the DRC to take concerted measures to do whatever in necessary to put and end to impunity for sexual violence..." is changed to "Canada urges the government of the DRC to take concerted measures to prevent sexual violence.""

These type of linguistic alterations have become commonplace, the message says.

"Furthermore, the word 'humanitarian' is excised from every reference to 'international humanitarian law.' References to gender-based violence are removed. And in every phrase 'child soldiers' is replaced by 'children in armed conflict.'"

These changes, the adviser implies in the email, have major policy ramifications.

"For example, sentence cited above changes the focus from justice for victims of sexual violence to prevention."

He adds that he doubts whether the political staffers fully understand the significance of their language changes.

"It is often not entirely clear to us why [the minister's] advisers are making such changes and whether they have a full grasp of the potential impact on Canadian policy in asking for some changes to phrases and concepts that have been accepted internationally and used for some time."

The adviser writes that officials from a number of divisions have raised this issue with him, and he suggests a co-ordinated approach may be needed to stop these types of changes.

"I do not believe the requests from [the minister's office] to make these kinds of changes to language will diminish," he writes. "It might be necessary for a more co-ordinated approach as these issues interest a number of different bureaux and are recurring fairly frequently."

In a subsequent email, the adviser writes that he received much positive response to his suggested push back. Then, a preliminary meeting was scheduled so that DFAIT officials could present a united front to their political masters.

"Just to be clear, this would be an initial meeting for officials only, not [the minister's] exempt staff. The purpose of this meeting is to ensure we are clear on the issues we are facing and that we have a co-ordinated departmental view," he wrote. "A meeting with appropriate exempt staff would follow at a later date (and with only a small number of officials)."

The meeting was then set for May 21, in the deputy minister's boardroom on A8.

This is where the paper trail ends, and Embassy was unable to confirm the outcome of the projected meeting with the political staffers, if it happened at all.

Only one departmental source would speak about the internal push back and then only in general terms and on condition of anonymity.

"Multiple times documents will go up and changes will be made, sometimes factual ones, and they'll be changed back at the political level," said the DFAIT insider. "One of the reasons for the email you're seeing is the bureaucracy is saying 'We've got to get ahead of this curve because we're getting hammered every time we send documents up and they come back.'"

The insider situated this confrontation in the context of the unprecedented message control thirsted for by the prime minister, who has decreed that ambassadors cannot speak publicly without first getting their message approved by Conservative spin doctors.

"None of our ambassadors are allowed to speak unless comments go through [the Prime Minister's Office]," the source said. "And the reason for that is because ambassadors are inclined to speak within the context of decades of Canadian foreign policy and because the government doesn't agree with some or much of that approach, they want to vet everything."

Given this ambassadorial "gagging," the source said, it's no surprise Conservative political agents are delving deeper into the fundamental language of Canadian foreign policy.

"It's more than just a close-hold by the PMO....in this case there's actually a determined effort to re-orient Canadian foreign policy, and so the standing speaking lines don't work and need to be checked."


Tories Elected to Set Foreign Policy: Cannon
by Lee Berthiaume

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has shot back at critics and federal civil servants upset over the government's recent changes to Canadian foreign policy language reported in Embassy.

In an interview on July 30, the minister said some of the modifications are semantics, but acknowledged that others are designed to move the country's foreign policy in a direction decided by the government. Either way, he said the government's actions are what matter.

Others, however, have questioned whether Mr. Cannon fully understands the implications of the changes being made, and have called on the government to bring the issue into the public to be debated in front of all Canadians.

Last week, Embassy reported that terms such as "gender equality" and "child soldiers" were being stricken from the language employed by Canada's foreign service. From now on, diplomats are to use the terms "equality of men and women" and "children in armed conflict".

In addition, "international humanitarian law" would now be simply "international law" and, in one specific example, the words "impunity" and "justice" would not be used when calling for an end to sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Instead, there would be calls only for efforts to "prevent" sexual violence.

Last week's report came hot on the heels of other reported changes to Canadian foreign policy language, unearthed by Embassy, which included abolishing "good governance," "public diplomacy" and even "the Responsibility to Protect"—many of which came into use during the tenure of previous Liberal governments.

Malcontents Free to Leave

Sources within the public service have pointed to political staffers at the minister's office as being behind the changes, and an internal email acquired by Embassy and circulated to numerous senior officials within the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade say bureaucrats have been looking at ways to stop the changes.

Mr. Cannon said Foreign Affairs deputy minister Len Edwards is in charge of implementing government policy and would be responsible for dealing with any malcontents within the bureaucracy. However, he said anyone who disagrees with the government's direction is free to leave.

"I've told my people that this is the policy that we carry out and if anybody is not happy with these policies that we're carrying out, well all they have to do is go and run in the next election and get themselves elected and support a policy that is different from ours," the minister said.

"We've been elected to govern the country and the government of Canada puts forward, sets forward its objectives, its policy objectives as it does in any other department. And it is up to the departments to execute the policies that the Canadian population supported and acknowledged by putting this government in place. And that is exactly what we are doing."

When asked specifically about the language changes, Mr. Cannon simultaneously downplayed the significance and acknowledged that the government is charting new territory.

"They don't change anything," he said. "It's our vocabulary. You're driving this down into the weeds."

However, he later said that "in some circumstances it's semantics. In other circumstances...whether it be the Responsibility to Protect, we're going to be changing policies so that they reflect what Canada's values are and what Canadians said when they supported us during the last election. That's the role of government, that's the role of an elected official."

Mr. Cannon indicated what is more important than any language change is the actions a government takes to implement its foreign policy.

"If you change a word, it doesn't make a substantial difference," the minister said. "If you do a different action, if you take a strong stance on human rights, if you stand up for Israel and make it quite clear that you want to be able to make it known that we can't continually be on a picket fence, that you have to be able to stand up and be counted for, that's the role that this government is playing."

Changes a Fait Accompli

In an open letter to Mr. Cannon in response to last week's Embassy articles, NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar decried the changes, saying there will be major ramifications.

"Your government may not agree with the evaluation that Canadian citizen Omar Khadr is a child soldier," he wrote. "However, removing the term 'child soldier' and replacing it with 'children in armed conflict' is a significant legal and political change that will have a critical impact on Canada's foreign policy and its reputation on the child-soldier file.

"The same applies to modifying the language of impunity on sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an effort that goes hand-in-hand with the government's inaction on Security Council resolutions 1325 and 1820, which call for an end to impunity and a meaningful engagement of women in peace building."

Such dramatic changes, he wrote, should evolve from deliberations between government officials, experts in the field and, most importantly, the Parliament of Canada.

Mr. Cannon said he is "always amenable to debating anything with [Mr. Dewar], but it's not going to change the government of Canada's policy. We're elected to govern and that's exactly what we're doing."

In an interview, Mr. Dewar said it's a fair point that the government has been elected to govern. However, he refuted Mr. Cannon's statement that the Canadian public was supportive of the changes.

"No one elected the Conservatives to drop nomenclature terms like 'child soldier,'" he said.

Mr. Dewar said it is inappropriate for staffers within the PMO to be politicizing Canada's international positions and language, which he feels is exactly what is happening.

"Let's be frank here, this is ideological," Mr. Dewar said. "This is controlling a message and certain words they don't want used because they're seen as either too soft or kind of connected to another political persuasion.

"It's not by people who have spent their time working in the area of foreign affairs, but people who have spent their time working in backrooms. And that's really a huge change from any government in being that controlling on what is being stated by our foreign affairs representatives, diplomatic corps, and it's very chilling."

It also confuses those with whom Canada interacts internationally, he said, who won't understand why Canada would stop using an accepted term like "child soldiers."

Former deputy minister Gordon Smith, now a professor at the University of Victoria, said he found the reported changes "disturbing."

While he agreed there is no question a government can change foreign policy and the way it is presented, he said excising words like "human security" goes too far.

"They are not just 'Liberal' concepts or policies," he wrote in an email. "The concept of human security is now deeply rooted in international organizations, international politics and scholarly works. It is not an 'either or' matter.... It is both.

"Policy is being changed and so is the way it is being presented. The point is that the changes should be clear and not hidden in the clouds of obfuscation, as now seems to be the case."