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Welcome to Diplomatic Dispatch, a new podcast series by Radio Canada International.

My goal is to bring you insights into Canada’s foreign, defence and development policy.

I’ll discuss Canada’s global role through interviews with policy makers, former and serving diplomats and soldiers, academics and think tank experts, humanitarian workers, civil society activists and entrepreneurs.

Richard Fadden, National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, appears at Senate national security and defence committee in Ottawa on Apr. 27, 2015. (Sean Kilpatrick/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Canada needs to be “clear eyed” about its own place in the rapidly changing multipolar world and the security challenges presented by such “revisionist” adversaries as Russia and China, says a former spy chief and national security advisor to two prime ministers.

The world is undergoing fundamental change and Canada cannot rest on its laurels at a time of rising global threats, including the increasingly isolationist United States, dysfunctional Western allies and the emergence of China and Russia, cyber threats and terrorism, says Richard Fadden.

He is a former national security adviser to both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his predecessor, Stephen Harper.

I spoke with him at the Summit on Canada’s Global Leadership in Ottawa at the end of November in 2019.

The event was organized by the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC), the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development (CASID), the Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health (CanWaCH) and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI).

This is Episode Two: Foreign policy through the national security lens and does Canada need its own foreign intelligence service?

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Welcome to Diplomatic Dispatch, a new podcast series by Radio Canada International.

My goal is to bring you insights into Canada’s foreign, defence and development policy.

I’ll discuss Canada’s global role through interviews with policy makers, former and serving diplomats and soldiers, academics and think tank experts, humanitarian workers, civil society activists and entrepreneurs.

Nicolas Moyer is the president and CEO of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. (Nicolas Moyer)

What is Canada's foreign policy? How should Canada conduct its foreign policy? Who should conduct that policy? Should that policy change? And if yes, how? Who are Canada's allies and who are its foes? And what do we do with them?

These are all questions that I'm hoping to ask and try to answer in this podcast series. And my search for the answers began in Ottawa, at the Summit on Canada's Global Leadership in late November of 2019.

The event was organized by the Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC), the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development (CASID), the Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health (CanWaCH) and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI).

There I met with one of the principal organizers of the summit, Nicolas Moyer, president and CEO of the CCIC.

This is Episode One: Rethinking Canada’s foreign policy 

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Ukraine's foreign minister says 63 Canadians were among the 176 people killed when a Ukraine International Airlines passenger plane crashed just minutes after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport on Wednesday.

Flight PS752 was en route to Kyiv when it went down.

Ukrainian authorities initially said it appeared mechanical failure was the cause of the crash but later said nothing could be ruled out.

Former pilot and former Transportation Safety Board of Canada crash investigator Larry Vance spoke with CBC News' Suhana Meharchand about the range of possibilities investigators will be looking at to try to figure out why the plane lost its signal after climbing to about 8,000 feet before crashing.

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The three-and-a-half-year-old Boeing 737-800 crashed just hours after Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on Iraqi military bases, housing U.S. soldiers.

Airlines from around the world, including Air Canada, rerouted flights from the area pending further investigations into what happened,

Evin Arsalani and her one-year-old daughter, Kurdia, were among those killed when Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 crashed near Tehran Wednesday morning. (Evin Arsalani/Facebook)

In a statement offering his condolences, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada will ensure the crash is "thoroughly investigated."

In addition to the 63 Canadians, there were 82 Iranians, 11 Ukrainian passengers and crew, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Germans and three Britons on board.

There were no survivors.

A close friend confirmed to CBC News this to be University of Toronto student Mojtaba Abbasnezhad, a victim of Wednesday's crash. (Mojtaba Abbasnezhad/Facebook)

Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said he had been in touch with the Ukraine government, tweeting, "Our hearts are with the loved ones of the victims."

Payman Paseyan, a member of the Iranian-Canadian community in Edmonton, said multiple people from the city were on the plane, including many international students.

Meanwhile, CBC News reports that a family of three, a University of Toronto student, and a Greater Toronto Area dentist are among the 63 Canadians who lost their lives.

With files from CBC, CP, AP, Reuters

Mali is on a perilous course, says Alexandra Lamarche.

Nearly eight years after the onset of crisis in the West African country, the international community remains heavily focused on stabilization and counterterrorism, with little to show for its efforts, says the Canadian humanitarian worker.

In fact, the humanitarian situation in parts of the country seems to be getting worse, says Lamarche, who travelled to Mali in September on a fact-finding mission for Refugees International.

In the last three years, the number of Malians displaced from their homes has more than quadrupled, and conflict and displacement is increasingly spreading to previously stable areas of the country, Lamarche says.

Humanitarian organizations are struggling to effectively provide for the 3.2 million Malians in need of assistance this year alone, and aid efforts are hindered by underfunding and a complex security environment, Lamarche says.

Refugees International published her report Mali’s Humanitarian Crisis: Overmilitarized and Overshadowed, last week.

Radio Canada International had a chance to speak with Lamarche for a podcast episode discussing her report and its recommendations for improving the humanitarian situation in Mali, addressing root causes of the conflict, which has now spilled to neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso, and implementing the terms of the country’s peace agreement.

(click to listen to the podcast interview with Alexandra Lamarche)

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While many immigrants in the Greater Toronto Area have made great strides in landing their first job in Canada, very few of them make it to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC), shows that only six per cent of executive positions in the leading public, private and non-profit organizations are occupied by immigrants, despite the fact that they make up nearly half of the GTA population.

The picture gets even bleaker if one factors in race and gender: only about 4.2 per cent of executives in the GTA are from racial minorities, and only two per cent of executives are immigrant women of colour, according to the study.

“There is a lot of effort by the governments, by employers, and by the settlement sector to find ways to advance immigrant talent,” said Yilmaz Ergun Dinc, the lead author of the study.

But most of these efforts are focused on immediate outcomes of landing the all-important first Canadian job, Dinc told Radio Canada International.

“There isn’t that much attention being paid to what happens after,” he said in a phone interview. “Do immigrants advance in their career? Do they reach management positions?”

Leveraging skills and talents of immigrants

It’s important to have answers to those questions because Canada’s immigration system is built on the premise that the society will leverage the skills and talents that immigrants bring, Dinc said.

“And if you don’t have immigrants at the top leadership positions, that means there is a bottleneck there, that you are not fully utilizing the talents and competencies of the people that you are bringing here,” Dinc said. “That’s very costly for Canada and for the world because these are talented people that bring their insights and experience from all around the world.”

Immigration: benefit or burden?

Loans help immigrants obtain Canadian credentials

There is a lot of research that shows that diverse leadership drives innovation and creativity, Dinc said.

“You don’t want homogeneous leadership whether it’s companies, whether it’s the non-profit sector, whether it’s government making the same decisions,” Dinc said. “Different minds think differently. That means they will find different solutions to the same problem.”

Research also shows that organizations that have more diverse leadership achieve better competitiveness and have higher profits, Dinc said.

“Canada wants to have very diverse labour markets and also to be connected to the global markets to do business, but without immigrants in decision-making roles Canada’s labour market will not have that global outlook,” Dinc said. “You need immigrants to realize their full potential and reach executive positions if you want Canada to be competitive in the global fora and the global economy.”

The study suggests a few strategies to help immigrants reach executive positions.

Inclusion training for current leaders and executives has shown to be very helpful, Dinc said. Mentoring and sponsorship also make a big difference because immigrants don’t always have the same networks as people who were born in Canada, he added.

Janine and Ian Maxwell want your money.

Not all of it… But as much as you can spare to help them care for more than 250 orphans and abandoned babies at their orphanage in Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland) and the 2,500-acre farm that produces food for a network of 30 churches and schools in the tiny Southern African kingdom.

In their quest to feed their orphans, the Maxwell’s and their Heart for Africa charity have partnered with Egg Farmers of Canada, which manages Canada’s egg supply and represents egg producers.

Tim Lambert, CEO of Egg Farmers of Canada, said he was so impressed by the story of the Canadian couple, their work with orphans and their Project Canaan Farm when he first heard it several years ago that he decided to visit them in Swaziland, as the country was known before it changed its name to Eswatini in 2018.

Canadian egg farmers help feed Swaziland orphans

“We were amazed at what they had already achieved with their 2,500-acre farm, with the orphanage for children and also with community feeding programs,” Lambert said in a phone interview from Ottawa, where he was hosting the Maxwells, who are in Canada as part of their month-long fundraising tour of North America.

“Malnutrition in the country is a huge problem, the country has been devastated by HIV/AIDS and within that they’ve lost a generation of adults,” Lambert said. “So there is, if you can believe it, a half a million orphans and vulnerable children in the country, that’s more than half of the population of the entire nation.”

(click to listen to the full interview with Tim Lambert, Janine and Ian Maxwell)

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The partnership between Egg Farmers of Canada and Heart for Africa was announced in late 2014 and since then Canadian egg farmers have helped locals build an entire egg farm from the ground up, Lambert said.

The farm now has 5,000 hens in two houses, offers fresh eggs to thousands of people in the community and is providing a locally produced protein that’s essential for human growth and development, Lambert said.

The Egg Farmers of Canada also got help from other industry partners, such as Sanovo, a Danish company that donated equipment to hard cook and chill the eggs, and the Saskatchewan Eggs Producers donated a delivery truck for the operation, Lambert said.

Lifesaving protein

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AuOhVNZHuw

“We’re able to distribute over 4,000 eggs every day and to date we’ve distributed over five million eggs,” Lambert said.

The eggs are distributed in some of the most remote subsistence farming communities in Eswatini, said Janine Maxwell, who grew up in Northern Ontario.

“We have been in a drought for the last two-and-a-half years and we still don’t know whether the rains are coming so they haven’t even been able to plant their maze crops, which is their staple, for the last few years,” Maxwell said.

“We had already been running this feeding program with these 30 partners and feeding local children but we’re seeing more and more children coming into the program because there is no food at home, and there is no food in the schools.”

Each child gets a hard-boiled egg along with their nutritious MannaPack meals provided by the U.S. charity Feed My Starving Children, she said.

“That protein is so important for their brain development, for their body development,” Maxwell said.

'I knew I couldn't go back to my life leisure and pleasure'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=8MuEzmmhM1E

Maxwell said she was heartbroken hearing the stories of orphaned children during her travels through Africa. A former marketing executive, she travelled to Africa in “search for the meaning of life” after ...

A Canadian ocean conservation group is renewing its calls on the federal government to clamp down on seafood mislabelling, saying its latest investigation provides mounting evidence of a widespread and unchecked seafood fraud problem in Canada.

Oceana Canada says DNA testing of seafood samples from retailers across Montreal revealed that Canada’s second largest city has one of the highest rates of mislabelling found in testing across the country.

The testing showed that 61 per cent of 90 seafood samples from 50 grocery stores and restaurants in Montreal were either a substituted species or didn’t meet the labelling requirements set out by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), Oceana Canada said Wednesday.

The testing in Montreal conducted by Oceana Canada’s investigators in July is part of a national, multi-year investigation of seafood fraud and mislabelling at grocery stores and restaurants in Canada.

Nationally Oceana Canada’s investigation has shown that almost half of 472 samples – 47 per cent – collected in six Canadian cities from 2017-2019 were mislabelled.

Seafood mislabelled along supply chains, say researchers

The conservation group also carried out tests in Victoria, (67 per cent mislabelled), Toronto (59 per cent mislabelled) and Ottawa, (46 per cent mislabelled), Halifax, (38 per cent mislabelled) and Vancouver (26 per cent mislabelled).

A health concern

Josh Laughren, executive director at Oceana Canada, said the investigation found farmed fish served up as wild caught, cheaper species substituted for more expensive ones and fish banned in many countries because of health risks masquerading as another species.

When one fish species is substituted for another, or incorrect information is provided, consumers are put at risk of exposure to parasites, allergens, contaminants, aquaculture drugs and pesticides used in industrial farming operations, or natural toxins found in certain species, Laughren said.

“When you go to a sushi restaurant and get white tuna or butterfish, very often what you’re getting is actually a fish called escolar, which is charmingly nicknamed ‘the laxative of the sea,’ which is probably all I need to say and is banned for sale in some of the countries,” Laughren said in a phone interview with Radio Canada International.

“Yellowtail, one of my favourites, is often actually Japanese amberjack, a much cheaper fish that contains a natural toxin known as ciguatera, which can cause long-term neurological symptoms.”

(click to listen to the full interview with Josh Laughren)

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A pathway for the seafood black market

A customer looks at the seafood counter at a Metro store Monday, Apr. 15, 2019 in Ste-Therese, Que., north of Montreal. Conservation group Oceana Canada is calling on the federal government to institute a traceability system to follow seafood from boats to Canadian stores and restaurants. (Ryan Remiorz/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Seafood fraud also provides a pathway for illegally caught fish to enter the market. In addition, when a cheaper, more abundant fish is mislabelled as a more expensive, less abundant one, it can give consumers a perception that the population is healthier than it actually is, Laughren said.

This undermines efforts to stop overfishing, manage fisheries responsibly and protect areas and animals in need of conservation, the conservation group added.

Canada ratifies UN agreement to deny safe haven to illegal fishing vessels

“We know from some recent studies that illegal fishing that happens has really poor labour standards, including child labour and almost slave labour,” Laughren said. “So for your wallet, for your health and for our oceans it’s a very bad practice.”

As the federal election campaign picks up steam, federal officials should be ready to counter possible Russian disinformation campaigns targeting Canadians, says a Russian expert.

Sergey Sukhankin, a senior fellow with the Jamestown Foundation, a U.S. think-tank, who is teaching at the Concordia University of Edmonton, says Russian and Canadian interests collide in the Arctic, in Ukraine and in the Baltic states, making Canada a likely target for Russian disinformation operations.

“Perceived as one of Russia’s chief adversaries in the Arctic region, Canada is a prime target in the information wars, with Russia potentially even meddling in the October 2019 federal election,” Sukhankin writes in a new University of Calgary study.

“Ottawa should be ready for a new surge in cyberattacks, disinformation and propaganda levelled against Canada in the near future.”

However, Sukhankin said he doesn’t expect the Russian disinformation campaign targeting Canada to be as powerful and far reaching as the Kremlin’s campaigns in Ukraine or the three Baltic states, the United States and the European Union.

Building on Soviet experience

U.S. President Ronald Reagan, right, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev exchange pens during the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signing ceremony in the White House on Dec. 8, 1987. (Bob Daugherty/AP Photo/ file)

To understand the Kremlin’s 21st century disinformation campaigns, one has to look back to the campaigns waged by the Soviet Union, Sukhankin said in an interview with Radio Canada International.

“In many ways Russia’s current disinformation campaign against Western countries, including Canada, of course, derives its origins from the Soviet period,” Sukhankin said.

(click to listen to the full interview with Sergey Sukhankin)

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The Soviets used a number of tools that included disinformation, fake stories, release of the kompromat (compromising materials), and a host of other measures, Sukhankin said.

“What is totally different today, what differs Russian disinformation from the Soviet one is that Russia has been able to get rid of this ideological surcharge, which has made Russian propaganda much more flexible and appealing to various sides of respective societies where Russia tries to channel its disinformation,” he said.

“This at the same time makes Russian disinformation much more dangerous and a much more far-reaching phenomenon than it used to be before 1991.”

Canada is seen by the Kremlin as one of the most russophobic countries, Sukhankin said.

“This is quite explicitly visible in various reports, various papers that are issued by Russia’s pro-Kremlin information outlets such as RT, Sputnik, that portray Canada as Russia’s – I wouldn’t say archenemy – but a country that has been progressively anti-Russian and russophobic since at least 2014,” Sukhankin said.

In the eyes of the Kremlin, Ottawa’s full and unconditional support for Ukraine following Russia’s annexation of Crimea has transformed Canada from an ordinary Western adversary into a country that is part of the vanguard of anti-Russian forces in the West, Sukhankin said.

Waging information warfare at home and abroad

Russian President Vladimir speaks during his annual news conference in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Dec. 20, 2018. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)

It’s very important to distinguish critical reporting of Western policies and actions in the Russian media from outright disinformation, but often there is only a faint line separating the two, Sukhankin added.

“What Russian disinformation is it usually has a piece of truth, a tiny, tiny piece of truth at its kernel,” Sukhankin said.

In 1986, Jennie Carignan was a bored teenager looking to do something challenging with her life.

So she decided to join the Canadian Armed Forces and enroll at the Royal Military College of Canada. She was among the first women to enter the Combat Engineer trade after all military occupations were opened to women in 1989.

Today, Maj.-Gen. Carignan is one of the highest-ranking women in the Canadian military and is the first and only woman from a combat arms trade to rise to the rank of general.

And in June of this year, Carignan who commanded 5 Combat Engineer Regiment and led a task force of engineers in Kandahar in 2009-2010 at the height of the Taliban insurgency in the restive Afghan province, smashed through another glass ceiling.

She was appointed to lead the NATO mission in Iraq and promoted to the rank of major-general.

“For me it’s a great honour and a privilege to be able to go out and do this,” Carignan told Radio Canada International in a phone interview from Kingston, where she’s undergoing training ahead of deploying to Iraq this fall.

“That’s why we join the military.”

(click to listen to the full interview with Maj.-Gen. Jennie Carignan)

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Tough-as-nails

Lt.-Col. Jennie Carignan, commanding officer of the Engineer Regiment of Canada's Task Force Kandahar, speaks to area resident Yar Mohammad about a retaining wall project near his village along the Tarnak River in the Dand Distrct of Kandahar province on August 12, 2010. Carignan figures she covered 10,000 km of bomb-riddled, dusty roads in Afghanistan as a combat engineer. (Dene Moore/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Carignan, who will be taking over from another Canadian, Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, will command about 580 NATO trainers on the ground in Iraq, including the Canadian contingent of about 250 personnel.

Carignan, who currently commands the 2nd Canadian Division and Joint Task Force East in her native province of Quebec, said she never thought that she’d be making Canadian and NATO military history.

“I’ve basically done things one day at a time, going after one challenge at a time, making sure that I did the best I can,” the mother of four said.

Carignan’s experience as a frontline commander in Afghanistan and a former chief of staff of the army, and a reputation of a tough-as-nails leader will come in very handy in Iraq.

The NATO Mission Iraq (NMI) is a non-combat training and capacity-building mission aimed at building up Iraqi national forces to prevent the re-emergence of groups such as ISIS or al-Qaeda.

The trainers focus on educating Iraqi military instructors, who in turn train their own forces in bomb disposal, armoured vehicle maintenance, civilian-military planning and medical care.

The alliance also advises the Iraqi defence ministry on institutional reform.

Canada maintains a separate contingent of special forces troops in northern Iraq, who advise and assist local security forces in counter-terrorism operations against pockets of Islamic State extremists. While they've been defeated on the battlefield, Islamic State is still conducting a guerrilla-style campaign of terror and hit-and-run attacks.

Carignan said she’s been doing a lot of studying to learn about Iraq’s history and culture, and the region’s complex political context.

'We need female and male warriors'

Brig.-Gen. Jennie Carignan speaks with Ukrainian soldiers being trained by members of the Canadian Armed Forces as part of Operation UNIFIER in Ukraine. (2nd Canadian Division)

Despite the challenges the Canadian military has faced in integrating women and stamping out sexual misconduct in the ranks, Carignan said her experience has convinced her of the advantages ...

A female Royal Canadian Navy officer has made NATO maritime history by becoming the first woman to command a multinational naval task force in one of the alliance’s most sensitive areas of maritime operations.

Commodore Josée Kurtz has assumed the command of Standing NATO Maritime Group Two (SNMG2), one of the alliance’s four maritime groups, whose primary area of operations extends to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

The eastern Mediterranean off the coast of Syria and the Black Sea, off the coast of Ukraine and Russian-annexed Crimea, are some of the alliance’s most complex areas of maritime operations where NATO warships come into close proximity with the Russian navy in what are essentially conflict zones.

“These four groups provide capability, show presence and demonstrate NATO alliance solidarity and strength in various theatres of operations,” Kurtz said in a phone interview with Radio Canada International on board her flagship, Canadian frigate HMCS Halifax, off the coast of northern Spain.

(click to listen to the full interview with Commodore Josée Kurtz)

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But these groups can be fairly mobile, Kurtz said, pointing out that HMCS Halifax is presently off the coast of Spain heading to Portugal before making their way back to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and then back to the Atlantic later this year.

“We can be supplementing other standing groups in other areas if that’s where the capability is required,” she said. “It speaks to the agility and the flexibility of those standing groups.”

Exercising with allies and partners

Members of Standing NATO Maritime Group 2, and naval vessels from NATO partners Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine, sail in formation while conducting Maritime Security Awareness (MSA) in the Black Sea during Exercise SEA BREEZE 2019, on July 11, 2019. (MCpl Manuela Berger/Formation Imaging Services Halifax)

Kurtz assumed command of SNMG2 during a ceremony in Souda Bay, Greece, on June 15, while Canadian frigate HMCS Toronto, which became her first flagship, had already been at sea for five months.

Shortly after, the NATO task force led by the Canadian frigate sailed the Black Sea, with British destroyer HMS Duncan, Romanian frigate ROS Regele Ferdinand, and Turkish frigate TCG Turgutreis.

NATO has three allies – Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania – and two partners – Ukraine and Georgia that share the Black Sea with Russia, Kurtz said.

“It makes sense that we show a presence in that area same as we do in other areas where we have NATO allies,” Kurtz said.

NATO’s Arctic dilemma: Two visions of the Arctic collide as NATO and Russia flex muscles

The task force participated in two exercises in the Black Sea, she said.

The first one was a joint Ukraine-U.S. exercise off the coast of Ukraine dubbed Sea Breeze 19.

The Canadian frigate sailed to the Ukrainian port city of Odessa to take part in that exercise, Kurtz said.

Leading Seaman Lyra Michelle Mazerolle a Steward onboard HMCS Halifax participates in a boarding party training exercise during Operation REASSURANCE, in the Atlantic Ocean on July 21, 2019. (Cpl. Braden Trudeau/Formation Imaging Services)

Following the conclusion of that exercise, SNMG2 headed southwest to Bulgaria to participate in the Bulgarian-led exercise Breeze 19, Kurtz said.

“By participating in those two exercises both with programs in port and a program at sea, by the same token we were able to demonstrate a significant NATO presence in the Black Sea area,” she said.

Throughout all that time, the NATO force was shadowed by the Russian navy, Kurtz said.

“From a NATO perspective we exercised freedom of navigation,