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Tapping Our Potential: Diaspora Communities and Canadian Foreign Policy Is a Joint Initiative of the Following Two Organizations, Both Based in Toronto

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Tapping Our Potential: Diaspora Communities and Canadian Foreign Policy Is a Joint Initiative of the Following Two Organizations, Both Based in Toronto TAPPING OUR POTENTIAL DIASPORA COMMUNITIES AND CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY TAPPING OUR POTENTIAL DIASPORA COMMUNITIES AND CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY A Joint Initiative Of THE MOSAIC INSTITUTE AND THE WALTER & DUNCAN GORDON FOUNDATION 1 TAPPING OUR POTENTIAL DIASPORA COMMUNITIES AND CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY TAPPING OUR POTENTIAL DIASPORA COMMUNITIES AND CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY A Joint Initiative Of THE MOSAIC INSTITUTE AND THE WALTER & DUNCAN GORDON FOUNDATION 1 TAPPING OUR POTENTIAL DIASPORA COMMUNITIES AND CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 Background 3 Why does this matter? 3 About the report 5 Methodology and organization of the report 6 What this report is not 7 Acknowledgements 9 Disclaimer 10 TOWARD DIASPORA ENGAGEMENT IN FOREIGN POLICYMAKING AN OVERVIEW OF CURRENT THOUGHT AND PRACTICE 11 MECHANISMS FOR GOVERNMENTAL CONSULTATION WITH CANADIAN DIASPORA GROUPS IN FOREIGN POLICY DEVELOPMENT 29 PRELIMINARY RECOMMENDATIONS 34 CASE STUDIES: AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE 37 1) Afghanistan 38 2) China 42 3) Eritrea 50 4) Sri Lanka 61 5) Sudan 70 ORGANIZATIONAL PROFILES 75 OUR CONTRIBUTORS 75 2 TAPPING OUR POTENTIAL DIASPORA COMMUNITIES AND CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY INTRODUCTION BacKground Canada has what is arguably the most international citizenry on the planet. By virtue of both our open, proactive immigration policies and our longstanding commitment to promoting multiculturalism, we now live in a country where approximately 20% of all Canadians were born outside of the country, including some 40% of those living in Vancouver and more than 45% of those living in Toronto.1 And, compared to other countries with high levels of immigration, our fellow citizens come from a far greater variety of source countries.2 Yet while there has been considerable research undertaken and social service programming developed to consider and address the challenges represented by the settlement and integration of new immigrants into Canadian life, relatively little attention has been paid to improving our understanding of the transnational dimensions of today’s immigrant experiences. While providing high-quality language or skills training to those newly arrived in Canada is of unquestioned value both to them and to the country as a whole, it is arguably no less important to consider how the ethnocultural diversity that results from our proactive immigration and multiculturalism policies affects who we are as a country, or our collective identity as Canadians. It is even less common to consider how our relationships with the rest of the world—especially those parts of the world from which our population derives—may be enriched, expanded or otherwise affected by the changing composition of our Canadian mosaic. The Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation’s Diaspora Program, launched in 2004, set out to amass knowledge of the implications for Canada’s foreign and development policies of our country’s diverse population and their ties to different parts of the world. Now, after almost seven years, the Foundation is winding down its work with diaspora communities with the publication of this report, the dual purpose of which is to review and summarize the extent to which Canada’s foreign policy has been, is and should be informed and enhanced by the expertise and insights of Canada’s many diaspora communities, and to encourage ongoing research and capacity-building in this area. In publishing this paper, the Gordon Foundation is delighted to be partnering with the Mosaic Institute, whose work is largely focused on exploring and promoting these pressing issues. Launched in 2007, the Mosaic Institute works with Canada’s ethnocultural communities to advance Canadian solutions and promote peace and development in conflict- ridden or underdeveloped parts of our world.3 Both the Gordon Foundation and the Mosaic Institute believe that Canada’s diversity can and should be harnessed to improve the content and reach of Canada’s foreign policy; that the diversification of our population through decades of conscious effort and ambitious public policies—while valuable in and of itself— should also make a difference to the way Canada relates and responds to the rest of the world. In particular, we believe that Canada’s ever-growing diversity uniquely positions it to play a significant role in helping to broker regional disputes and promote the practice of good government around the globe in a way that our traditional Anglo-French heritage alone does not. WHY DOES THIS matter? This area of research is important for many reasons. These include the following, inter alia: 1) Canadian foreign policy could be improved as a result. Tapping into the resources and expertise of diaspora communities matters because those communities may possess insights, experiences, and expertise that could inform and enrich both the content and the quality of Canadian foreign policy. This reflects the more general belief that the inputs of interested and experienced stakeholders from across a wide variety of public policy areas are valuable in enhancing the quality of the policy outputs relating to those same areas. We see this belief demonstrated, for example, when governments invite parents and teachers to weigh in on educational policies; healthcare practitioners to advise on health policy; or members of the country’s research 1 Statistics Canada, 2006. 2 A 2007 Migration Policy Institute study found that “no one group dominates Toronto’s immigrant stock. Nine countries account for half of the foreign-born population, while the rest of the foreign-born come from nearly every country in the world.” Marie Price and Lisa Benton-Short, “Counting Immigrants in Cities across the Globe,” Migration Information Source (2007), http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=567 3 For more information about both the Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation and the Mosaic Institute, please see the Afterword to this paper. 3 TAPPING OUR POTENTIAL DIASPORA COMMUNITIES AND CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY community to contribute to the formulation of policies related to science and technology. This common practice is not merely political expediency designed to curry favour with politically important groups of voters; rather, it reflects a general belief and perception that those with unique experiences and expertise related to these various areas of public policy will serve as a sort of “reality check” on others’ policy ideas, and ultimately improve the quality of the resultant policy outputs. The inputs of farmers do not automatically become the policy outputs of governments any more than the inputs of bankers automatically dictate the direction of economic policy, but the former’s experience harvesting crops and managing farm enterprises and the latter’s experience managing large investment portfolios are typically valued and weighed alongside a range of other policy considerations whenever agricultural and economic policies are made. The fact that such contributors have a vested interest in the content of the government’s final policy outputs does not disqualify them from participating in the public policy discussion. Any concerns about entrenched interests are outweighed by the tacit assumption that agricultural policy will be better as a result of input received from farmers and economic policy will benefit to some degree from the input of the banking community. By the same token, the Mosaic Institute and the Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation believe that diaspora communities have legitimate experiences and expertise to contribute to Canada’s official foreign policy and its international activities. However, unlike farmers or bankers or parents contributing to the development of public policy in their respective areas of specialization, it is not well known or well understood how and to what extent diaspora communities currently understand, have access to, or influence the content of Canadian foreign policy as it relates to countries, regions, issues or disputes of which they have extensive knowledge. If it is indeed the case that some diaspora communities—most likely those that are small in size or not yet well- established in Canadian life—typically have less relative access to the foreign policy establishment than Canadians from larger communities or those of longer standing, then to explore ways of enhancing the contribution of such diaspora communities to the formulation of Canada’s foreign policy also matters because it levels the playing field between those who have more access to the foreign policymaking process and those who have relatively less. 2) Canada’s foreign policy interests are too important to avoid empirical inquiry into the actual and potential role of Canada’s diaspora communities. Careful research in this area matters because the potential repercussions of making uninformed assumptions about the ability of transnational Canadians to enhance Canadian foreign policy—whether favourable or unfavourable— could be serious. This is a new enough field of inquiry, and the potential stakes high enough, that a careful, empirically sound investigation is warranted. We must take the time first to define those Canadian values that help underpin our global priorities as a country—such as strengthening democratic governance, reinforcing the rule of law, advancing the cause of pluralism or protecting fundamental human rights—and then explore how best to invite, receive and assess policy inputs from individuals, organizations and communities that might be able to help Canada imbue its foreign
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