Government-wide Afghan Task Force mandate runs out in April Top bureaucrat to become CIDA brass; dwindling task force working on last report to Parliament. By Carl Meyer Published January 18, 2012    1 Comment

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The government-wide task force overseeing Canada's mission in Afghanistan is still working on a final report to Parliament until at least April, even as it loses another leader to the top floors of Canada's aid agency.

Greta Bossenmaier, currently the deputy minister of the Privy Council Office's Afghanistan Task Force, is moving across the Ottawa River to become the senior executive vice president at the Canadian International Development Agency, the government announced Jan. 12.

The PCO has not yet said who will replace Ms. Bossenmaier.

The task force's former assistant deputy minister, Sara Hradecky, left to become Canada's ambassador to Mexico in October and was never replaced. Nor was former task force director general Steve Hallihan, who is now Canada's high commissioner to Jamaica.

But even though these senior positions are empty, the task force is still alive and kicking—at least until April.

"The mandate of the Task Force...extends to the end of the 2011-12 fiscal year," wrote PCO director of corporate and media affairs Raymond Rivet in an email.

The coterie of Afghanistan-focused bureaucrats must still finish a final report to Parliament on Canada's engagement in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2011, he noted.

"It provides a final look," he wrote, "at the status of Canada's benchmarks and targets that were announced by the government of Canada in 2008. The report will be tabled in due course."

Ms. Bossenmaier's job has been to advise Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Canada's role in Afghanistan, and to co-ordinate a government-wide engagement strategy. Starting Jan. 30, she will be working with CIDA president Margaret Biggs in supporting International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda.

Meanwhile, the agency's former executive vice-president David Moloney is swapping office buildings with Ms. Bossenmaier. He left Jan. 3 to become a PCO senior adviser responsible for implementing the perimeter security plan with the United States.

A diplomat factory

Ms. Bossenmaier has several years of experience at the top of government departments and agencies with a foreign focus, including a period as associate deputy minister of foreign affairs in 2008-09, and before that as the executive vice president of the Canada Border Services Agency in 2008.

Even so, her new gig is the latest in a trend of diplomatic promotions that has benefited those who have passed through the crucible of the task force.

Besides Ms. Hradecky and Mr. Hallihan, former task force director of operations Sanjeev Chowdhury became consul general in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2011 after running the Summits Management Office, a Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade office that oversaw the organization of the 2010 G8 summit in Huntsville, Ont. and G20 summit in Toronto.

Elissa Golberg was the first representative of Canada in Kandahar, and was promoted last year to run Canada's office at the United Nations in Geneva after being director general of the Stabilization and Reconstruction Task Force, DFAIT's disaster response team.

As well, Ms. Hradecky's predecessor, Yves Brodeur, became Canada's NATO envoy in Brussels last year after another job in DFAIT. And Ms. Bossenmaier's predecessor David Mulroney became Canada's ambassador to China in 2009.

Other individuals who have seen promotions after their task force days include former Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan Arif Lalani, who is now the director general in DFAIT's policy planning bureau, and his successor in Kabul Ron Hoffmann, who became Canada's ambassador to Thailand.

Mr. Mulroney, Mr. Chowdhury, and Ms. Golberg all worked on the executive secretary to the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan, which created the modern iteration of the task force in 2008 with its benchmarks and signature projects.

Afghanistan fading

According to the government's electronic directory service, the task force still has 10 people—six senior members as well as four executive and administrative assistants.

They include: special adviser to the deputy minister Kimber Johnston; director of operations Steve Boivin; director of policy Charles Court; senior policy and communications advisers Mark Fisher, Ross Glasgow, and Dawolu Saul; executive assistants Dina Thibault and Cristina Sepulveda; and administrative assistants Samantha Sweet and Marjorie Vendrig.

But at one point the task force was a 26-member team, with bureaucrats from PCO, DFAIT, the Department of National Defence, CIDA, the Treasury Board and Public Safety.

Its dwindling ranks, as well as news of its final report and its mandate limit, is another sign of waning government attention to Afghanistan.

After six years, Canada handed over control of the volatile Kandahar province of Afghanistan to the United States in 2011. Canadian troops and equipment have largely been pulled out of the province, and in early 2011 the once-powerful Cabinet committee on Afghanistan was shut down.

As well, Canada's ambassador to Syria, Glenn Davidson, was supposed to take over from Bill Crosbie as Canada's man in Kabul this fall. But DFAIT told Embassy he has had to extend his stay in Damascus due to "the volatile situation on the ground."

Canada launched an evacuation campaign in Syria, offering expedited passports and urging Canadians to get out while they still can. But all that still means that Canada's mission in Kabul has been run for months by a chargé d'affaires.

Experts say there is every indication that the Harper government wants to close the books on the whole ordeal.

"Afghanistan has very little remaining interest for the government. They want to get our troops out safely and move on," said Paul LaRose-Edwards, executive director of CANADEM, a non-profit development agency that deploys Canadian experts overseas.

cmeyer@embassymag.ca