- Hi, I’m Martin Rust with the Security and Policy Institute for Professional
Development, here, at the University of Ottawa.
My guest today is Scott Gilmore, a former diplomat and current columnist with
Maclean’s magazine.
Talking about a variety of issues today, Scott, but one of them of
course is our own country, here at home.
How do we build a better Canada?
What kind of policy issues do we need to explore?
And how do we prepare, essentially, for the future
in a geopolitical and global environment?
- Well, one of the issues that I have spent some time thinking about is not necessarily
how we make policy, but who are the policy makers.
One of the things I’ve noticed about Canada in my work with the Canadian public
service, but also with my work with Americans, and British and Australian governments,
is how siloed we are here.
The Canadian public servants, for the most part,
are public servants.
Their entire career has been spent in that stream and they’ll retire
out of it.
It’s very rare for people to come in from the private sector, from academia or
from the non-profit sector, which is what you
see happen much much more frequently in the UK and in the United States, for example.
And I think this dramatically reduces the quality of the policy making that we have.
It creates a disconnect of the civil society
with the private sector that’s necessary for us to
understand what’s happening, where it’s going, and what we need to do to take
advantage of that.
- So how do we change that?
- Well, there are some very simple things that can be done, unfortunately they involve,
you know, unions and the Treasury Board, that would allow people to move in and out
more freely.
There are more complex things in terms of our culture around this.
Right now, we’re very very suspicious of anybody
from the private sector coming in, and we’re very … and particularly anybody from the
political class coming in to the civil service.
I think we need to get pass that.
But there are examples that we can learn from, very
practical ones, in how they think through things in Washington and in Canberra and
London.
- I’m wondering if there are specific policy areas that lend themselves more to attracting
a wider pool of talent …
- Mm-mm.
- … and what those might be?
- Well, from my observation, on the trade and commerce side, you do see a little bit
more interchange taking place, or exchange between
the public and the private sector.
I find, though, on the more classical foreign policy
side that it’s shocking how little movement there is back and forth.
And it’s bad for both sides.
You know, Canada’s just, hopefully, ended over a decade of war in Afghanistan.
I can’t think of any academics in Canada who could justifiably call themselves Afghan
experts, who had spent time inside government on Afghan issues, or with the Department
of Defence, who spoke Dari or Pashto and spent time on the ground.
Now, that’s partly a question of funding for
universities, but it’s also because we’re just not allowing that movement back and forth.
- If we accept the premise that what happens in the rest of the world impacts …
- Right.
- … Canada and Canadian policy, and what you’re talking about is a gap, therefore,
of international experts … you know, the question
is short term and long term.
What do we do short term, and if there’s a particular
area of focus, what do we focus on?
- Well, short term, I would propose a … what on the surface would seem to be a fairly
bold and ridiculous policy maybe, but I think could be practical, which is incentives to
allow Canadian universities’ students to study for one semester abroad, anywhere they
wanted.
I think it could be financed and I think the return over the long term would be
dramatically … would be significant for Canada.
We really are a stay at home nation.
We tend to vacation in Mexico and occasionally
in Europe.
And even though we have this incredibly multiethnic, multinational country,
it’s very rare for people to do business in
Beijing or have friends in South America or have travelled in South Asia, and we need
to change that.
In the longer term, I think we have to recognize that the world is changing
and that places like Africa are becoming more and more important.
You know, Nigeria, for example, is going to have a larger population
than the United States by the turn of … mid-century, and not only that, Africa in
general is going to have a larger middle class than China.
Now these are facts that should be ringing in the halls at Foreign Affairs and
the Department of Trades, but I’m afraid they’re not getting the attention they deserve.
- Well, that’s why the Security and Policy Institute was created, that’s why we’re
here and so, that’s why discussions like this
today are so important, thank you.
- Great.
- I’m Martin Rust with the Security and Policy Institute for Professional Development,
here, at the University of Ottawa.
My guest today has been Scott Gilmore, a former diplomat and current columnist with Maclean’s
magazine.
Thank you.
- Thank you.