Leaked DFAIT Memo Documents Struggle Between Conservative Political Staff and Foreign Service By Jeff Davis Published July 29, 2009

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Sam Garcia

Behind the scenes battle: Directives for changes to Canada’s traditional foreign policy language, which are said to be coming down from the Prime Minister’s Office in Langevin Block (pictured top), have fired frustrations through the halls of DFAIT’s Fort Pearson (pictured bottom) and instigated a push back by high-level bureaucrats concerned that many of the wording changes clash with accepted Canadian policy.

Fearful that political staffers are severely diluting Canada's foreign policy through alterations to policy language, senior Foreign Affairs officials have begun pushing back against their political masters.

Simmering internal tensions over language changes were first discovered by Embassy in recent weeks, but newly leaked documents indicate that senior departmental officials have had enough.

On May 7, a DFAIT bureaucrat acting as a departmental adviser to the minister's office wrote an email to some of DFAIT's most senior officials, outlining concerns about the many changes to policy language being made by exempt ministerial staffers. The message was obtained by Embassy last week.

The email is titled "[The minister's office] and language related to human rights, child soldiers, international humanitarian law." It was addressed to about two dozen senior officials—including four assistant deputy ministers and a number of directors general—from divisions dealing with human rights, international organizations, Africa, the Middle East and others. Also copied are a number of departmental lawyers and staff from the office of the deputy minister.

In the email, the departmental adviser outlines a number of significant changes made to policy language by political staffers recently. Among them are changes to the "standard docket response" of Canada's position on the violence in Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Suggested changes to this letter include removing the term "impunity" in every instance," he writes. "E.g. "Canada urges the Government of the DRC to take concerted measures to do whatever in necessary to put and end to impunity for sexual violence..." is changed to "Canada urges the government of the DRC to take concerted measures to prevent sexual violence.""

These type of linguistic alterations have become commonplace, the message says.

"Furthermore, the word 'humanitarian' is excised from every reference to 'international humanitarian law.' References to gender-based violence are removed. And in every phrase 'child soldiers' is replaced by 'children in armed conflict.'"

These changes, the adviser implies in the email, have major policy ramifications.

"For example, sentence cited above changes the focus from justice for victims of sexual violence to prevention."

He adds that he doubts whether the political staffers fully understand the significance of their language changes.

"It is often not entirely clear to us why [the minister's] advisers are making such changes and whether they have a full grasp of the potential impact on Canadian policy in asking for some changes to phrases and concepts that have been accepted internationally and used for some time."

The adviser writes that officials from a number of divisions have raised this issue with him, and he suggests a co-ordinated approach may be needed to stop these types of changes.

"I do not believe the requests from [the minister's office] to make these kinds of changes to language will diminish," he writes. "It might be necessary for a more co-ordinated approach as these issues interest a number of different bureaux and are recurring fairly frequently."

In a subsequent email, the adviser writes that he received much positive response to his suggested push back. Then, a preliminary meeting was scheduled so that DFAIT officials could present a united front to their political masters.

"Just to be clear, this would be an initial meeting for officials only, not [the minister's] exempt staff. The purpose of this meeting is to ensure we are clear on the issues we are facing and that we have a co-ordinated departmental view," he wrote. "A meeting with appropriate exempt staff would follow at a later date (and with only a small number of officials)."

The meeting was then set for May 21, in the deputy minister's boardroom on A8.

This is where the paper trail ends, and Embassy was unable to confirm the outcome of the projected meeting with the political staffers, if it happened at all.

Only one departmental source would speak about the internal push back and then only in general terms and on condition of anonymity.

"Multiple times documents will go up and changes will be made, sometimes factual ones, and they'll be changed back at the political level," said the DFAIT insider. "One of the reasons for the email you're seeing is the bureaucracy is saying 'We've got to get ahead of this curve because we're getting hammered every time we send documents up and they come back.'"

The insider situated this confrontation in the context of the unprecedented message control thirsted for by the prime minister, who has decreed that ambassadors cannot speak publicly without first getting their message approved by Conservative spin doctors.

"None of our ambassadors are allowed to speak unless comments go through [the Prime Minister's Office]," the source said. "And the reason for that is because ambassadors are inclined to speak within the context of decades of Canadian foreign policy and because the government doesn't agree with some or much of that approach, they want to vet everything."

Given this ambassadorial "gagging," the source said, it's no surprise Conservative political agents are delving deeper into the fundamental language of Canadian foreign policy.

"It's more than just a close-hold by the PMO....in this case there's actually a determined effort to re-orient Canadian foreign policy, and so the standing speaking lines don't work and need to be checked."

jdavis@embassymag.ca