Budget cuts hurting embassies: DFAIT reports
Recent budget cuts at Canadian embassies and high commissions are having dramatic ramifications on the country's representation abroad, according to Foreign Affairs reports.
In particular, the documents reveal that last summer's decision to slash travel and hospitality budgets has made it difficult to make key contacts and build trade relations, and has kept missions from covering more than one country effectively.
This is a story that has been unfolding for at least three and a half years — a Conservative government that has publicly boasted about restoring Canada's place in the world has quietly closed consulates, sold off property, slashed budgets and hollowed out the Department of Foreign Affairs. Harper's foreign policy appears to be fairly simple — do what the Americans and Israelis tell us to do and pretend it was our idea. I guess that doesn't require a very big budget. Except for the weapons systems, of course.
Canada's back, all right. Trouble is, nobody recognizes it anymore.
Sadly, Harper is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. I have no problem with closing embassies etc. We don't need them with the kind of instant communication we have today. But you are also right--we are doing it on orders from our controllers. This means we are no longer a country but a coattail rider. Again, I am not surprised. This has been happening for many years, not just the last three years. And it will only get worse. We are no longer a sovereign nation but just another cog in the wheel of the NWO.
I don't agree that not having a presence in foreign centres doesn't matter, for a variety of reasons. It certainly matters in terms of cultural interchanges, which means bodies in place to arrange shows and performances and readings -- that's about the first budget Harper cut, as I recall. But it can matter for a lot of other reasons as well. Business conversations aren't well done by email, not for long. And embassies take in all kinds of local information about social and political developments that could matter to us -- at least they do if you've got well-trained personnel on the spot.
Harper doesn't care because he doesn't actually know most of the rest of the world and cares about it only as his masters in the MIC (military-industrial complex) care about it. He doesn't want to know how other places work; he just wants to know how to exploit them.