The Foreign Service Journal, October 2006

Canadian FSOs Face Budget Constraints, Changing Priorities Canada has the lowest proportion of diplomats posted abroad of any G-8 country — about 25 percent — according to a briefing report for Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay that was brought to light in the Aug. 23 issue of Canada’s foreign policy newsweekly, Embassy ( www. embassymag.ca/html/index.php? display=story&full_path=/2006/ august/23/foreignservices/ ). A decade of “financial restraint” is cited as the reason why more than half of Canada’s Foreign Service officers never leave the Department of Foreign Affairs on Sussex Drive in Ottawa. According to the briefing, each additional diplomat posted abroad costs up to $300,000 per year. Further, many of the country’s mis- sions need millions of dollars worth of security upgrades, and programs, public diplomacy and advocacy have been pushed aside. According to Embassy correspon- dent Lee Berthiaume, the problem was highlighted in July when the gov- ernment had to scramble to get diplo- mats and staff members to Lebanon, Cyprus and Turkey to help evacuate thousands of Canadian and dual- national citizens who were trying to flee the region. From 1995 to 2005, Canada opened 31 new missions, and bet- ween 1999 and 2004 there has been a 50-percent increase in consular demands. But some missions, such as Beirut, have only one or two trained diplomats — so host-country nation- als and locally-hired Canadians who are not part of the Foreign Service are doing much of the work. In the view of one retired Canadian ambassador, the problem is only partly financial: the real problem is a shortage of trained diplomats. “I think [Canada’s international pres- ence] has been damaged,” he says. “My belief, my conviction, is for Canada to be served well abroad, it needs to be served by Foreign Service officers.” The Cost of Secrecy The annual financial costs attribut- able to the national security classifica- tion system reached a record high of $9.2 billion in 2005, up $1.2 billion from 2004, according to a new report from the Information Security Over- sight Office ( www.archives.gov/ isoo/reports/2005-cost-report. pdf ). That figure does not, however, include spending by the Central Intelligence Agency, which classifies its cost data. Otherwise, the govern- ment share of this expenditure is esti- mated to be $7.7 billion. An addition- al $1.5 billion was spent by govern- ment contractors in the private sector. Classification-related costs include not merely the direct costs of classify- ing information, which are modest, but also the derivative costs of the personnel security clearance system, 12 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 6 C Y B E R N O T E S B ecause we are rich [and] we are strong we have sometimes been insensitive to the weak and to the claims of people who couldn’t get high enough on our agenda. So if we want to exhort people and persuade them as well as prevent them from engaging in terror, we have to act like we believe our common humanity is more important. — Former President William J. Clinton, Aug. 16, www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice