Party of One (30 page)

A hint as to what lay behind this remarkable shift in Canadian diplomacy emerged in the fall of 2012. A Foreign Affairs document was leaked to Greg Weston, a CBC journalist. In it, departmental officials urged the government to drop its traditional diplomatic posture and concentrate on economic relations in emerging economic powerhouses. The document contained little mention of
human rights, peace and security, international aid, or Canada’s long-standing reputation as a once-respected “honest broker.”

The Harper government brushed off the well-documented story with the standard lines: it doesn’t respond to unauthorized leaks, and the document was not government policy. But just over a year later, international trade minister Ed Fast announced the new thrust of the Canadian foreign service. It aligned perfectly with the leaked document: “economic diplomacy.” Canada’s foreign service officers were now going to be travelling salespeople pushing economic ties in Asia and South America.

Meanwhile, their colleagues in more traditional postings weren’t going to be plying their profession out of the usual addresses. A vast, diplomatic yard sale was in the works, with former finance minister Jim Flaherty the chief auctioneer. Flaherty had pored over a list of the two thousand properties owned by the federal government abroad and realized this was low-hanging fruit in his quest to balance the budget. Priceless assets were being sold off for short-term political gain.

The process had actually begun with the sale of Strathmore, the Canadian ambassador to Ireland’s residence on the outskirts of Dublin, a deal done in the second Harper minority against the better judgment of former ambassador to Ireland Michael Phillips. He called the sale “a big mistake.” Another former ambassador, Robert Fowler, agreed. “It’s a pretty sad statement about Canada’s position in the world,” he told reporter Randy Boswell in the
Ottawa Citizen
.

Canada’s diplomatic downsizing accelerated with the sale of the home of the Canadian high commissioner to the UK at One Grosvenor Square in Mayfair. Steeped in history, Macdonald House was purchased by an Indian real estate developer for $530 million. The Harper government served notice that it will also be selling the Canadian embassy at 35–37 Avenue Montaigne
and the Canadian Mission to UNESCO, both addresses in central Paris. Two official residences in Brussels and another in Oslo are also on the block.

It would be easy for the Europeans to see the real estate offload as a sign that Canada wasn’t quite as interested in the EU as it once was. In mid-2012, when the EU was struggling with its financial crisis, the majority of G20 countries agreed to contribute money to the International Monetary Fund to prevent a financial collapse in Europe that would have far-reaching implications for the entire world. The Harper government was odd man out again, saying no to any European bailout. “This prime minister will not force hard-working Canadian taxpayers to bail out sumptuous Euro welfare-state countries and the wealthy bankers that lend to them,” the ever-diplomatic Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre said in the House of Commons.

All told, as reported by John Ivison in the
National Post
, the Harper government plans to sell forty official residences around the world. The justification was supposed to be a search for efficiencies by putting more Canadian agencies and missions under a single roof. But to diplomats watching their profession being retooled by foreign affairs dilettantes and childish name-callers, it was clear that the Harper government didn’t have much respect for the role and traditions of the foreign service.

All doubt was removed when 1,350 foreign service officers went on strike in April 2013 over the revolutionary concept of equal pay for work of equal value. By the numbers, their union, the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO), had a strong case. In some instances, out-of-country diplomats were being paid as much as $14,000 per year less than colleagues who were doing the same work in Ottawa. PAFSO had been principled but not pushy about its demands. Its members had been without a contract for almost two years, and on April 2, 2013, they
resorted to work-to-rule campaigns. The rotating work stoppages turned into the longest strike in federal public service history.

The Harper government did not cover itself in glory in the six-month war of nerves between employer and employee. The Tories got personal, a standard tactic when dealing with opponents. Treasury Board president Tony Clement portrayed Canadian diplomats as the coddled elite of government service, implying that they were perpetually hunched over champagne and caviar, showered with perquisites, and protected into old age with gold-plated pensions.

A lot of serving and former foreign service officers bristled at Clement’s pejorative portrayal, seeing it as further proof that the Harper government didn’t respect their profession and hadn’t noticed that since 9/11, diplomacy wasn’t all cummerbunds and canapés. One of them was Ken Taylor, the legendary ambassador to Tehran who in 1979 spirited six American embassy employees out of the country during the Iran hostage crisis. Taylor decried Clement’s portrayal of diplomats as lucky to have their cushy jobs, and countered that today’s foreign service officers are, if anything, underpaid. As for Clement’s tactics in blackening diplomats in the eyes of taxpayers, Taylor was blunt: “I find that a mischievous approach.”

Clement was nothing if not full of mischief. Despite the public reproach from Canadian diplomatic royalty, Clement continued to slag Canada’s diplomats in the press and the social media. It was, he insisted, all about protecting the taxpayer. That was a tough sell coming from the man whose government broke all the rules in its G8 and G20 spending—according to interim auditor general John Wiersema, a government that may also have broken the law. Perhaps Clement thought that the public had forgotten that the Harper government ignored established protocols for approving infrastructure grants, including $50 million worth of gazebos, public washrooms, and sidewalk upgrades in his Parry Sound– Muskoka riding.

As the auditor general pointed out in his report, he was “very concerned” that there was zero documentation to explain how the Conservatives selected those thirty-two municipal projects in Clement’s riding. He was equally troubled by the fact that Parliament approved the spending only after being told by the Harper government that the special infrastructure fund would be used to reduce “border congestion.” That at least should have been an easy problem to fix. Parry Sound is 340 kilometres from the border.

With a blatant appeal to the Conservative base, Tony Clement advised the diplomats to go back to work because the government’s offer wouldn’t be sweetened. It was an uncompromising stance designed to set the tone for the comprehensive negotiations with public servants coming up in 2014—Stephen Harper versus the unions. Clement famously assured the striking diplomats that he was firm in his position and wouldn’t “fold like a $3 suitcase.”

Predictably, the relationship worsened. During the strike, the government snooped on the email of union members, and even punished temporary workers if they were perceived to be participating in the strike. From the president of the Treasury Board on down the line, government played a vindictive hand to the end, refusing to attend PAFSO’s annual awards dinner where outstanding foreign service officers were recognized for their service to the country in a sometimes very dangerous occupation.

In the end, Tony Clement folded like a $10 suitcase. The Harper government gave the striking diplomats roughly half of what they had been holding out for, but not until the Public Service Labour Relations Board found that Minister Clement had bargained in bad faith with the union. The cost to government of fully meeting the union’s wage demands was set by Tim Edwards, PAFSO’s president, at $4.2 million over three years. The cost to the economy of the six-month labour disruption was estimated at a billion dollars. With no visas being issued, Canadian universities and the
tourism industry, both benefiting greatly from foreign clientele, suffered the most. It was a heavy price for the Harper government to inflict on the country in the name of reassuring its base that it hated unions as much they did.

It was the nasty new world of Canadian foreign policy, largely the product of the navel-gazing ruminations of a single man: Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Canada’s approach to the world was no longer being driven by a professional diplomatic corps with a depth of experience and knowledge, and a commitment to public diplomacy and soft power. It was in the hands of a quixotic and inexperienced neophyte whose judgments and edicts were often inconsistent and contradictory.

Prime Minister Harper was one of two leaders (the prime minister of Mauritius was the other) to boycott the Commonwealth Conference in Sri Lanka in 2013, ostensibly over a concern for human rights and the unconstitutional manner in which that country’s chief justice had been removed from office. Yet Harper attended the Francophonie Summit in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where horrendous human-rights violations were taking place in a country that has become a stranger to the rule of law. The prime minister claimed that he had not travelled to the DRC to “excuse” the atrocities being committed in that African country but to “spotlight” them. But if that were so, why not attend the Commonwealth Conference in Sri Lanka to “spotlight” his concerns about Colombo’s undermining of human rights and democracy?

It all came down to one man’s personal judgment of longstanding international conundrums. Not understanding them, and not interested in the advice of his diplomatic corps the way Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien had been, he reduced complex international situations to comic-book proportions and Sunday-school solutions. In the case of Sri Lanka, there may also have been a political calculation—as there usually is with this prime minister.
Toronto’s sizable Tamil population—between twenty-nine thousand if you believe Statistics Canada and two hundred thousand if you trust expert academics and the
Toronto Star
—was no doubt delighted that the PM refused to go to Sri Lanka, where they had once been persecuted. Their gratitude may well be expressed at the polls in 2015.
⁷

Like the Commonwealth Conference, another thing Prime Minister Harper decided he could do without was Ottawa’s Canadian studies program abroad. The program had been set up forty years ago as part of a public diplomacy effort to promote Canada’s brand abroad. Its $5-million annual budget supported Canada-focused projects by foreign scholars, graduate students, and researchers. The return has been impressive. There are now Canadian studies programs in fifty countries. According to Patrick James, president of the International Council for Canadian Studies, Ottawa’s $5-million investment translates into $200 million in spending on Canadian studies globally. Though some found his number high, the Canadian Press obtained a 2010 internal report from Foreign Affairs showing that the government realized a fourteenfold return from its annual $5-million investment.

Still, the bland notice on the program’s website that announced its demise was not totally unexpected. In 2008, the Harper government renamed the program “Understanding Canada.” It should have been called “Understanding Harper’s Canada.” From that point forward, foreign applicants with Canadian projects in mind would have to confine their research to priority policy areas established by the Harper government—one of the faster ways to turn off inquiring minds.

W
ITH
ALL
THE
momentous changes to the country’s diplomacy under the Harper government, I asked Paul Heinbecker what has been the greatest difference in the way Canada now meets the world.

“The biggest difference between Harper and his predecessors when it comes to foreign policy is that he believes it should be fought out on moral grounds,” Heinbecker replied, referring to a statement Harper made in 2003. “But for some reason, the moral argument did not extend to the Palestinians. We became blind in one eye, a pretty major change when we present ourselves internationally as principled and fair-minded.”

“Blind in one eye” is an apt description of much of Stephen Harper’s foreign policy, but occasionally the blindness has been total. The Harper government couldn’t find its moral compass when Egypt’s new democracy was overthrown in a bloody military coup in August 2013. While hundreds of protesters were being shot dead in the same Cairo Square where Hosni Mubarak’s police state came to an end, the prime minister of Canada was silent. He was silent when the junta arrested the democratically elected leader of the country, Mohammed Morsi, threw its political opponents in jail, and ultimately declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
⁸

And while the Harper government had nothing to say when a resident of Canada was shot dead while opposing Egypt’s violent coup by the military, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, John Baird, did condemn the shooting of a Coptic Christian priest—a message he knew would resonate with the Conservative Party’s religious political base. As for the religious freedom of hundreds of thousands of Muslim supporters of Mohammed Morsi, again, the Harper government was silent.

When it came to China, it looked at first as if Stephen Harper had his moral compass firmly in hand while framing Canada’s relationship with the economic giant. Back in 2006, Harper not only routinely lectured China on its abysmal human-rights record, he pledged that he would never sell out Canadian values for economic returns. Talking to reporters from the Canadian Press en route to
the Asia-Pacific talks in Vietnam, Harper said, “I think Canadians want us to promote trade relations worldwide, and we do that, but I don’t think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values. They don’t want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar.”

The almighty yuan was another matter. In 2012, Canadians, including the prime minister’s bewildered political base, saw a pro–Communist China Harper government make a series of secretive, mega-deals with Beijing. The trend had already begun in 2010 when Sinopec, the giant Chinese petroleum and chemical company, plunked down $4.6 billion to buy a 9 percent stake in Syncrude. There was more to the deal than met the eye, as author Andrew Nikiforuk reported.