bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1991) — Summer 1991 // Été 1991, pp. 45–47
Canada’s Department of External Affairs,
Vol. 1. The Early Years, 1909-1946, by
John Hilliker, McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 1990, 406 pages. $49.00.
There are a couple of departments in the federal public service which symbolize the modern public service. One is the Department of Finance where, between the early 1930s and the end of World War II, individuals such as Clifford Clark, W.A. Mackintosh, R.B. Bryce and others transformed a small, relatively unimportant book-keeping body into what became the centre of government financial policy formation. The other is undoubtedly the Department of External Affairs. In the early 1920s, this was little more than a clearing house for international correspondence. A small headquarters staff, only two posts abroad (London and Paris), and a poorly defined role within government service meant that it was a department of marginal importance in Ottawa. Yet, within a generation, it would be transformed into the elite department in the government. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the “Pearsonalities” as John Diefenbaker scornfully termed them, were part of a new mandarin class that was well-educated, self-confident and occasionally a little arrogant. External Affairs had moved from the margin to the centre of the Canadian public service. The rise of External Affairs from its formation in 1909 as an obscure adjunct of the Prime Minister to the powerful post-war department is the subject of this official history.
Initially, there would seem to be two obstacles to an official history of the department. The first is that it is an official history. The preface makes the somewhat ominous point that this manuscript was reviewed by no less than a nineteen-member committee with “authority to solve such problems of emphasis, interpretation, style and content as may arise.” Frankly, the whole structure sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare and must have made it difficult for Hilliker and the other historians involved to do their jobs properly.
The second obstacle is that there has already been a great deal written on Canadian external policy and on the key individuals who dominated the formation of that policy. In addition, there have been numerous memoirs by the politicians and public servants whose careers took shape in the inter-war and wartime years. Until now, however, there has never been an official history of the department, and as anyone who has worked in the public service will know, the story of the department is important to the understanding of the lives and attitudes of those who worked within it. The ’corporate culture’ is always relevant and in a department which symbolized the mandarin class, that culture is especially important to understanding power, policy and reaction in Canadian foreign policy.
What Hilliker’s book makes clear is the way in which that corporate culture evolved. As mentioned, External was not always the elite department that it later became after World War II. For years after it was founded, it remained a peripheral body, small in size and restricted in scope. This was for reasons both external and internal to the department. Externally, there was a fear that any broad mandate for the department would in effect challenge the constitutional unity of the Empire. Internally, people like the first Under- Secretary, Sir Joseph Pope, simply did not have the necessary orientation toward policy to make much of the department. Thus External Affairs was not involved meaningfully in the framing of the 1911 Reciprocity Treaty or in the Imperial Conference that took place the same year. Even during World War I, a time when so many constitutional precedents were set, External remained a peripheral organization, maintaining correspondence and handling routine matters.
By the 1920s, change obviously was needed. The precedents set by the war, Canada’s membership in the League of Nations, and Mackenzie King’s belief in an autonomous foreign policy implied a much larger role for this fledgling department. Initially, an aging Under-Secretary and an inefficient departmental structure retarded the development of this role. Instead, the Prime Minister looked to individuals outside the service, bringing them in as needed for advice. Then, in one of his most famous appointments, King appointed one of these outsiders as Under-Secretary of State. O.D. Skelton was to create a new and vital department; for it was under him that the department assumed its distinct personality.
Skelton’s role (Under-Secretary 1925-1941) was crucial in two ways. First, as a former academic he sought out men (not women at this stage) of intelligence and education. The most famous names of the department’s history, Lester Pearson, Hugh Keenleyside, Norman Robertson, Hume Wrong and others were hired by Skelton. Second, Skelton was able to win the trust of both Mackenzie King and R.B. Bennett. Especially in the case of the former he became, as has often been said, something of a deputy Prime Minister. This close relationship meant that Skelton’s department likewise moved into a somewhat special position within the civil service, especially as at the time the Prime Minister was also still the Minister of the Department.
The Skelton story is well known, but this book makes an additional point that is important in understanding the evolution of the department. The change in power came under Skelton but not the change in size. For one thing, whatever Skelton’s strengths, he was not an administrator. He refused to delegate and seemed unable to adopt any systematic organization for the department. He could survive only because of its relatively small size and the personal style of administration that functioned in the pre-war era. Moreover, the combination of Mackenzie King’s penny-pinching, and the financial realities of the depression, meant that even in 1939 External Affairs was a small body, both at home and abroad. Thus, for example, H.L. Keenleyside was the officer more or less totally responsible for “the Far East, Latin America, the United States other than commercial; central and eastern Europe”!
Growth came, as in so many other parts of the public service, with the Second World War. Once Canada entered into a global conflict, not as a member of the British Empire but as an independent state, it found that the web of necessary connections grew apace. Mackenzie King, who had remained as Minister throughout the war, found himself agreeing in spite of himself to create new posts and positions. Norman Robertson, Skelton’s successor, finally reorganized the personal and individualistic functions into a series of divisions. Hierarchies expanded and specialized functions replaced the previous rather casual assignment of duties. By the time the Cold War began (and this volume ends) External Affairs had taken on many of its modern characteristics. It retained the sense of elitism that derived from the inter-war years. It now also had the prestige and capability within the public service to fulfill the needs of a nation that, whatever the constitutional precedents may have said, really only assumed its role as a functioning power during the years of the Second World War.
This is a fascinating book, and one well worth reading. As an official history, we are indeed fortunate that it is available in both official languages.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1991) — Summer 1991 // Été 1991, pp. 45–47. Read the rest of this issue →
