bout de papier, Vol. 20, No. 3 (2004) — Winter/Spring 2004 // Hiver/Printemps 2004, pp. 4–7
he call came into the Operations Centre at Foreign Affairs late in the evening.
The voice was hesitant and faint. It was a young Canadian, touring South America by motorbike, saying that he was lying in a ditch along an isolated road in northern Bolivia following a close encounter with a truck. It was raining and he was injured. Within minutes the Operations Officer was in touch with the consul at the Canadian embassy in La Paz, provided the available information and instructed that assistance be sought from the Bolivian authorities.
The caller was assured that help was on the way and before long he was receiving medical attention:
by Gar Pardy
The call was one of thousands that come into Foreign Affairs’
J: 24-hour Operations Centre each week from the four corners of the world. The system, based on the world’s best communications and computer equipment and software, is the envy of most foreign ministries. The software backing the system, called COSMOS, was developed in Canada for Canadians. The British and Dutch governments recently purchased it for their own consular services. A first for Canadian government-developed software.
It was not always this way. Consular service has been the handmaiden of the Department of Foreign Affairs’ work since its inception. Those who visited the prisons and scenes of accidents, found missing children or negotiated the release of kidnapped Canadians were constantly reminded of the lack of personnel, money and training. John Hilliker, in his book on the Department, The Early Years, 1909-1946, reflects on the efforts of early Canadian governments to avoid financial or direct responsibility for Canadians in foreign lands. Regrettably, that policy continued for more years than was understandable.
Also, consular work has never played an important role in the culture of departmental life, either in Ottawa or abroad. Similar attitudes can be found in the foreign ministries of other countries. For most, life in the foreign service was not intended as one providing services to Canadians who were affected and afflicted by acts of others, God, or their own egos. Rather, for most, foreign service was for the “loftier” pursuit of peace and commerce.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the chequered history of the bureaucratic location and the identification of officers for consular services. Since the mid 1980s, the management of consular services has floated, independent of outside influence, from a standalone bureau, to integration with immigration and passport, to inclusion in legal and environmental matters, and then on to trade and communications. Today, consular is part of a GOB (group of bureaux) that includes financial services, protocol, physical property, information management and technology, inspection services and passports. A common thread is hard to find.
These bureaucratic peregrinations were also accompanied by changes in the departmental officers designated for consular work Historically, consular work was the responsibility of political officers; that changed in 1988 when immigration officers were assigned the responsibility. That changed again in 1992 when immigration officers were de-integrated (in the aftermath of the al-Mashat affair) from the Department. At the time, little thought was given to the fact that the removal of immigration officers from the Department also meant serious disruption of consular services for Canadians.
This lack of thought was evidenced by confusion as to the future home of the consular function among departmental employees. It was departmental employees themselves, in the management group, who recognized the problem and made a proposal to have the consular function become part of their responsibilities. It was not a perfect to Consular Services solution, given their already heavy responsibilities, but in the absence of other options it was accepted.
This change, in 1992, provided the stability on which wide-ranging and far-reaching changes could be made to the delivery of consular services. Nevertheless, there are suggestions today that these arrangements are no longer acceptable. As happens far too often in the Department, personal and bureaucratic interests could once again take precedence over the interests of Canadians in difficulty overseas.
Canadians have been well served by the 1992 arrangements. But, as recent events have demonstrated, assistance to Canadians in difficulty overseas is no static matter nor one that can await bureaucratic perfection. The advent of the jet engine and chickens in the pots of many has made foreign travel as common as a trip downtown. Younger and older Canadians are travelling; they are travelling to more distant places; and adventure tourism brings its own special dangers. Wars, civil and not-so-civil ones, terrorism, crime, earthquakes, volcanoes and storms have added immeasurably to the traveller’s traditional problems of upset stomachs and sand fleas. In the Caribbean basin sun, sea, sex and Seagrams are part of the background litany of afflicted Canadians.
Not so many years ago, governments and the travel industry worked to replace the archaic patchwork of rules and procedures that continued to dog the international traveller. In 1963, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations was negotiated and represented a codification of historical international practise on the treatment of foreigners by nation-states. It remains the world’s pre-eminent and, to a large extent, only international agreement that provides the basis for assistance to citizens in other countries.
Further to the Vienna Convention were efforts, largely through ICAO and IATA, for facilitation initiatives to ease the movement of the international traveller and to remove the barriers, many the legacy of the pre-aircraft era, that continued to make international travel an obstacle course. These efforts mirrored, in part, the efforts to facilitate the movement of goods and services, which continue to make progress even in a troubled world. Unfortunately, the efforts to facilitate and support the international movement of people have largely disappeared and, in the absence of world comity, the future of such efforts looks bleak.
In the early 1990s, once the bureaucratic decisions were made, serious attention was given to improving consular services for Canadians. At the same time it was recognized that the future of consular services was dependent on creating a recognized and respectable place for the service in the daily life of Foreign Attairs.
A daunting task. Bureaucratic changes had decimated the group of trained Canadian consular officials and it was largely due to the professionalism and dedication of locally engaged consular officers around the world that Canadians abroad continued to be assisted Program reviews and other government-wide expenditure reduction exercises added to the bleak landscape. Resources for consular services, just as for other essential programs, were going south and there were no expectations that this would change in the coming years.
In all of this, the objective was to maintain existing service levels and, as well, to improve and add to them. In this we were rebuilding the boat while at the same time sailing it to the far corners of the world. During this period the demand for consular services was constantly outstripping the ability of the system to meet it. More Canadians than ever were travelling; dual nationality problems were emerging as a serious impediment to providing assistance; parental child abductions were increasing; and there was a dramatic increase in the arrest of Canadians in other countries. In 1993, a preliminary inventory of Canadians in foreign prisons listed fewer than seven hundred. Today, there are times when the number exceeds three thousand.
Typical of the period were the calls to parents on Mondays to inform them that their teenaged daughter had been arrested the night before in Jamaica and to be told that was impossible. She was staying with friends down the road!
In bringing change to consular services it was assumed from the beginning that change would have to come from inside. There were no expectations that others would be willing or able to help. At the same time, it was also assumed that there was a need to break with the hoary, historical traditions that so long encased and circumscribed consular services.
An early initiative was to broaden the travel information program. A limited program had been in place for a number of years and was largely centred on the publication Bon Voyage, but … Country travel reports were created and, despite misgivings from lawyers on liability, these have blossomed into a central feature informing Canadians of the problems that will be encountered and what can be done to avoid them. Today there are country travel reports for over 225 destinations. At the same time, country and subject publications were created and today there is a rich mixture covering topics ranging from dual nationality to working overseas, retirement abroad and the woman traveller.
Early activities also included initiatives to improve the legal environment in which consular services are conducted. A League of Nations treaty which obligated Canada not to provide assistance to Canadians when they were in the country of a second citizenship was denounced, a first for Canada. Negotiations were begun for bilateral treaties with Egypt and Lebanon to assist in resolving parental child abductions. Treaty arrangements for prisoner transfers were concluded with a number of countries. In the United States, where there had been a treaty arrangement with Washington since the late 1970s, efforts were concentrated to improve its working and to increase the number of states active in the treaty. Today there is only one state — Rhode Island – that is not active in these treaty arrangements.
Throughout the period an overriding issue was to provide assured resources for the consular services. The aim was to remove the large element of uncertainty associated with the “lottery-based” allocation system that was and remains characteristic of the governmental process. This was achieved in 1996 when, as part of the budget for that year, a consular service fee of $25.00 was approved. The fee is collected at the time a Canadian applies for a passport and today, along with other fees, it provides in excess of $50 million in revenue that is dedicated to consular activities.
The assured funding direct from Canadians and tied to the demand for passport services provided the foundation for the expansion in the recruitment of new people and expansion of services including new offices overseas. Resources for consular work have always been a small part of the Department’s budget, averaging in the single numbers, and the number of people directly involved worldwide fewer than three hundred. These cost recovery initiatives provided a significant increase in personnel resources overseas and in the directing group in Ottawa. One example of this was the growth in honorary consuls, whose numbers have grown from the low forties in 1993 to over one hundred today. These offices in places such a Puerto Vallarta, Luanda and Chang Mai are a low cost and effective way to provide consular help to travelling Canadians.
The assured funding also permitted the development and deployment of COSMOS software. COSMOS is tied to the Department’s own computer and communications system, and provides Canada with the world’s only dedicated consular software. It was developed in cooperation with WorldReach Software, an Ottawa-based development firm. Since its first deployment in 1993, it has provided consular officials overseas and in Ottawa with a thoroughly modern tool to support their work. In addition to improved case management, COSMOS provided the foundation on which the Consular Operations Centre was expanded so that services could be provided 24 hours a day in all corners of the world. Also, there are software modules for the delivery of passport services overseas, registration of Canadians living abroad and contingency planning.
Today the tragic problems of Ms. Kazemi, Mr. Sampson and Mr. Arar demonstrate that consular assistance for Canadians in difficulty overseas will continue to occupy a significant place in public debate. Earlier, the debate concerned assistance for Canadians such as Raoul Léger, Stanley Faulder, Sean Kelly, Christine Lamont, David Spencer, Nguyen Thi Hiep and countless others.
Unfortunately, for some there was no satisfactory conclusion to the earlier debates and as the new cases demonstrate, the current debate is as much characterized by wishful and confused thinking as it is by an understanding of what Canadians can expect when they venture beyond the borders of Canada. “Respect” for the Canadian passport or the “rights” of Canadians overseas have become the demands of many and “soft diplomacy” has become an all-encompassing accusation against the government.
Canadians overseas, like foreigners in Canada, do not have any special rights, nor can they expect to obtain preferential treatment from foreign governments. The best they can expect is that they are treated no worse than the citizens of the country concerned and in many cases that is cold comfort. Canadian laws and rights end at the Canadian border and the laws and rights of another country begin when a Canadian crosses its frontier. For the vast majority of Canadian travellers this is not a problem. But for the few that encounter difficulty this basic rule is lumpy gruel.
Contrary to popular belief, there are few international rules, and certainly no effective “laws,” that control the actions of states in their treatment of foreigners within its boundaries. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations has more to do with the conduct of consular relations between governments than it has to do with the establishment of standards of conduct in the treatment of foreigners. In the Convention’s fifty-seven articles only two establish standards of conduct. These provide limited requirements for notification in the event of arrest and death of a foreign national. The Convention provides no support for the popular view that the Canadian government can “legally” demand standards of conduct on the part of other governments in their treatment of arrested or detained Canadians. The Convention provides no right of private communications with arrested persons, or unlimited access or guarantees of medical or other services or even a safe environment.
Equally troubling is that other international conventions on such matters as torture, the rights of the child, equality or human rights offer little direct benefit to Canadians arrested in foreign countries. There is a wide gap between the largely hortative objectives of such conventions and the need to assist individuals in trouble in foreign countries. In most instances there are no specific mechanisms through which breaches can be determined and remedies enforced. When feet are being beaten and fingernails shortened, threats of disruptions to the bilateral relationship or public embarrassment do nothing to improve the lot of victims. There is more than a risk that their lot would be made worse by such entreaties. When torture, coercion or mistreatment is used in connection with national security or large national interests, as was the case in some of the recent cases involving Canadians, then there is little scope for redress based on national laws, international instruments or the quality of bilateral relations.
Persons and organizations who perpetuate the myth that there is redress through such mechanisms do an enormous disservice. The disservice becomes more disturbing when the ensuing public clamour results in foreign governments refusing to cooperate and puts on hold any expectation of positive action. Christine Lamont and David Spencer probably spent several years more in a Brazilian prison than was necessary as a result of the efforts of their supporters to portray them as victims or to demonstrate the unjustness of the Brazilian justice system. Foreign governments rarely read the Globe and Mail or listen to the CBC and should they do so, rarely heed their advice:
Canadians in difficulty in foreign lands do have a right to the full support and assistance of their government. In most of the troubles – deaths, accidents, kidnapping, illness and missing persons — most foreign governments are ready to assist. However, it is also common in such matters that the expectations of victims and friends and family are not high expectations and react badly when they perceive inattention or dismissal of concerns. In foreign lands such expectations are affected by language, practise and culture. Unfortunately, wrongful convictions, poor medical treatment, unfound missing persons and parental abductions are as much a part of the Canadian scene as they are of foreign countries and despite the best will in the world there will always be disappointments.
In the area of detentions and arrests the problems are more acute and the demand for action by those jailed or by family and friends in Canada more intense. The unfortunate reality is that some Canadians in foreign countries do pretty much what they do in Canada — they murder, they assault, they traffic in drugs, they organize and carry out large-scale frauds and they rob. In some instances Canadian law enforcement officials provide information to foreign governments that could result in the arrest of Canadians overseas. Also, Canada is one of a few countries that will extradite its citizens to foreign countries to face charges. Generally, Canadian law enforcement or justice officials admit to no obligation to assist in the defence of such persons although there have been instances when they have cooperated with Foreign Affairs in doing so.
For the most part, Canadians in such predicaments abroad are treated much the same as the citizens of the country in question. However, unfamiliar legal processes, lack of bail, barriers of language and custom, prison conditions and lack of direct support from family and friends all contribute to make the life of a Canadian imprisoned abroad one of high anxiety, dangers and illness. Many of the same conditions apply in Canada as well but this does not lessen the obligation for action by Canadian officials.
In this fevered ferment it would be wrong to assume that Canadians have suddenly become the favoured victims of unsavoury regimes or friendly governments that have placed national security ahead of respect for human rights. The citizens of other countries encounter similar problems, some even in Canada. In this new world, the vast majority of travellers will conținue to move, and while the movement is slower then we would want, only a very few fall victim to the misplaced or idiosyncratic vigilance of governments.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 20, No. 3 (2004) — Winter/Spring 2004 // Hiver/Printemps 2004, pp. 4–7. Read the rest of this issue →
