The Department of Foreign Affairs is a bloated bureaucracy with 18 assistant deputy ministers and 90 directors general, but few employees who know how to speak a foreign language, say former diplomats..“The current situation in the department is dire,” retired staff wrote in a report to a parliamentary committee..“The department requires major restructuring to reduce its enormous and unwieldy senior management complement at headquarters and to focus its energies on priority issues and priority missions abroad,” the Foreign Service Alumni Forum wrote in a submission to the Senate foreign affairs committee. It said cabinet should cut the number of senior managers “with little or no knowledge of international affairs” who can’t even speak a foreign language..According to Blacklock's Reporter, the department last year spent $8.1 billion and had 12,500 employees..“We need to make sure we adapt to these challenging times,” Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly testified last March 24 at the House of Commons foreign affairs committee..Former employees complained of “chaotic” recruitment, “a disproportionately high number of headquarters officers chasing a diminishing and insufficient number of assignments abroad supervised by an extraordinary number of largely inexperienced senior managers.”.Many diplomats cannot speak the language when assigned to missions abroad, they said..“It has a woeful number of officers who speak Korean, Turkish, Farsi, German” and “minimal numbers” trained in Mandarin, Russian or Arabic, wrote the Alumni Forum..“We urge a major reform effort carried out over the next five years,” said the report, adding: “Reducing the numbers of senior managers, increasing delegation of authority and enhancing internal communications would also streamline the department in ways that would free up resources for other requirements.”.Canada’s network of some 180 foreign missions included storefront missions, “some with no Canadians or one or two Canadian staff members” who served no real purpose, the Senate committee was told..“They exist to show the Canadian flag, but are so thinly staffed and poorly supported they are incapable of meeting anything but minimal obligations,” wrote former diplomats..“Much of Canada’s diplomatic presence is a Potemkin village,” they said. “We rank last among our G7 colleague nations in the size and scope of our diplomatic representation.”.“The current situation is sufficiently serious that it requires a frank, clear and comprehensive plan of recovery and rejuvenation,” said the report..“It also requires a plan backed up by numbers and data.”
