Former foreign affairs minister Stéphane Dion says Canada must substantially staff up its embassies in Europe and set deadlines for following through on the flurry of agreements Brussels has signed with Ottawa.
Dion’s comments come after Canada’s former military chief said Ottawa must stop cutting back on diplomats to spice up defence spending.
“These agreements and partnerships must not remain on paper. They have to be fully implemented,” Dion told the Senate foreign affairs committee on Wednesday.
“In Ottawa, in Brussels and in European capitals, we now have work to do to make sure that commitments are translated into concrete actions.”
Dion was Canada’s ambassador to France until January and in addition a special envoy for Europe.
Dion told the committee that Prime Minister Mark Carney was right to appoint a private envoy to the EU to oversee the varied agreements Canada has signed within the defence, trade and research fields — a move Brussels has emulated with its own envoy.
But he said there needs to be some extent person from either side who’s publicly accountable for each single agreement Canada has signed with Brussels since it’s not clear how lots of these ambitious plans are bearing fruit.
He noted that Canadian businesses are still not exploiting the complete potential of the CETA trade deal between Canada and the EU that took effect in 2017.
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“My suggestion then is to make sure that for every signed agreement, there are two senior officials — one Canadian, the opposite European — who’re accountable for the implementation of those specific agreements, with specific objectives and deadlines,” he said.
Dion said Canada urgently must staff up its diplomatic presence on the continent. He argued that peer countries have more diplomats handling fewer files and urged Ottawa to focus its foreign service cuts on the headquarters in Ottawa, relatively than missions abroad.
The Canadian Press reported last month that Global Affairs Canada is disproportionately cutting positions based abroad, with rotational posts being eliminated at 3 times the speed of staff who’re based in Canada.
“Our resources are already underdeveloped for a G7 country and even compared with countries of lesser importance than ours,” Dion testified in French.
In remarks before a University of Ottawa panel on Tuesday, former chief of the defence staff Wayne Eyre called on Ottawa to rent more diplomats.
“We now have to have interaction diplomatically to form those deep regional and country-specific knowledge and relationships. And I’d argue cutting diplomats is just not the solution to do it. We needs to be stepping into the opposite direction,” Eyre said.
In Wednesday’s testimony, Dion also pushed back on an concept that has come up repeatedly as Canada has navigated a fraught latest relationship with america — that of joining the European Union.
He called joining the EU a “false good idea.”
Dion noted some EU countries still haven’t fully ratified the 2017 trade cope with Canada and Ottawa can be joining a line of 10 nations in search of to hitch the bloc. Doing so, he said, would mean ceding sovereignty to Brussels and arguing over how provinces are represented there.
“Canadians won’t accept this lack of sovereignty,” Dion said, adding such a move would require amending the Structure.
“After that, Canada can be a half-country, so we would wish to present greater than what we’d receive,” he said. “And how much equalization payments between Canadians is a problem. Imagine if we now have to do this for foreigners.”
Geneviève Tuts, the EU ambassador to Canada, added that the EU only accepts members that are physically positioned on the European continent.
Achim Hurrelmann, co-director of the Centre for European Studies at Carleton University, told senators Wednesday that the concept of joining the EU is a distraction from work to enhance relations.
“I find the media debate about Canada’s membership within the EU — and the way in which by which some European politicians have half-jokingly played into it recently — relatively irritating. I believe this debate could actually develop into politically quite dangerous, especially within the context of debates akin to Alberta separatism,” he testified.
“It’s vital that Canadian policy-makers concentrate on concrete and realistic steps that may be taken to enhance Canada-EU relations, and it’s also vital that Canadian policy-makers ask their European counterparts to do the identical.”
Dion suggested that as a substitute of EU membership, Canada should seek to hitch the European Political Community, a high-level forum for co-ordinating a response to the war in Ukraine and economic issues.
He also said the federal government should push to make Canada eligible for grants under a brand new EU research fund that may replace an existing partnership called Horizon next yr.
Tuts urged Canada to remodel policies that she said are undermining the rules-based trading order and the trade deal Ottawa has with Brussels, akin to initiatives to present Canadian corporations an edge in government procurement.
“Certain recent economic policies in Canada have created uncertainties for some EU corporations,” she testified.
“‘Buy Canadian’ and similar provincial policies, in addition to the steel and steel-derivative tariffs, undermine our balanced access agreed in CETA. And these come on top of another measures, like the posh tax on cars, cheese imports, or on wines and spirits.”
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