Global Affairs Canada
Global Affairs Canada (GAC; French: Affaires mondiales Canada; AMC)[NB 1] is the department of the Government of Canada that manages Canada's diplomatic and consular relations, promotes Canadian international trade, and leads Canada's international development and humanitarian assistance. It is also responsible for maintaining Canadian government offices abroad with diplomatic and consular status on behalf of all government departments.
Department overview
1909 (as the Department of External Affairs)
Department responsible for
- Foreign relations
- International trade
- Consular services
- International development
- Humanitarian assistance
- 12,158 (2019–20)
CA$7.1 billion (2018–19)
- David Morrison, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs
- Rob Stewart, Deputy Minister of International Trade
- Christopher MacLennan, Deputy Minister of International Development
- Cindy Termorshuizen, Assoc. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs
According to the OECD, Canada’s total official development assistance (ODA) (USD 7.8 billion, preliminary data) increased in 2022 due to exceptional support to Ukraine and its pandemic response in developing countries, increased costs for in-donor refugees as well as higher contributions to international organizations, representing 0.37% of gross national income (GNI).[4]
Nomenclature[edit]
The change of terminology from external affairs to foreign affairs recognized, albeit belatedly, a shift that had occurred many years before.
At the time that the external affairs portfolio was created in 1909, Canada was a self-governing dominion in the British Empire and did not have an independent foreign policy. The term external affairs avoided the question of whether a colony or dominion—self-governing and hence sovereign in some respects—could, by definition, have foreign affairs. Implicitly, since the department was responsible for affairs with both Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth countries, all external relations were of a type, even when the head of state was shared with other nations.
Under section 132 of the British North America Act, 1867, the federal government had authority to conduct and implement relations with other parts of the British Empire, which were not considered foreign lands. The United Kingdom and other colonial powers still routinely divided their conduct of overseas policy into foreign affairs (e.g. the Foreign Office) and domestic or colonial affairs (the Colonial Office or Dominion Office, which were later reorganized and combined into one department: the Foreign and Commonwealth Office). Canadian interests outside the empire (e.g. between Canada and its non-empire neighbours, the United States, Russia, St. Pierre and Miquelon, and Greenland) were under the purview of the UK Foreign Office. Informally, however, Canada had had relations with the United States in particular, with trade and other relationships pre-dating Confederation.[26]