Senator Yuen Pau Woo

Motion to Call on Government to Create a National Strategy to Engage Canadians Abroad—Debate Continued

Honourable colleagues, I rise today to make the case for a national diaspora engagement strategy. I am not referring to the diasporas of immigrants residing in Canada, which is what some of you might be thinking, but to the much-neglected community of Canadians who live outside the country. At a time when the need for Canada to have connections and relationships with places beyond the United States is more important than ever, a national strategy on Canadians Abroad will provide ambition, structure and coherence to the way in which we engage with our overseas population, and give Canada leverage for a foreign policy that is no longer tied to traditional notions of who our friends and allies are.

I have been studying and thinking about the issue of Canadians Abroad for nearly two decades. At the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, I led a project to estimate the number of overseas Canadians. The number we came up with was 2.8 million, which was – even then – much larger than most people assumed. In 2023, Statistics Canada came up with a fresh estimate and arrived at a range of between 3 and 5.6 million. If you take the midpoint of that range, you will have a number that more than 10 percent of Canada’s population and a demographic that is larger than most Canadian provinces.

This is a population that has all the rights of Canadians resident in the country, yet we largely ignore them. Sometimes, we even disparage them as “foreigners with Canadian passports” or “disloyal Canadians.” This kind of thinking is one of the reasons why Canadians abroad have received so little positive policy attention. But like them or hate them, Canadians abroad have the right to vote and the right of return, and they can be shunned and alienated, or they can be embraced in a way that increases the chances that they will contribute to Canada’s foreign policy, domestic prosperity, and Canada’s image in the world.

I have taken to calling the Canadian diaspora the “Province of Canada in the World.” If Canadians abroad had a premier, I am sure she would not be calling to secede from the federation, but rather, asking why the federation has not done more to connect with its overseas citizens. The “Province of Canada in the World” would bring a vibe to the state of the federation debates that is not about grievance but about wanting to be more connected with the rest of the country.

That is the purpose of my motion: to call on the Government of Canada to come up with a national strategy to better engage with overseas Canadians across the range of policy domains that are relevant to them.

When we think about Canadians abroad, we do so mostly through a lens of return, in other words, how to attract the most talented of our compatriots to come home. This is a worthy goal that lies behind much of the recent effort to encourage Canadian scholars to return to Canada by offering large financial incentives. But this approach assumes that Canadians abroad contribute to the country only when they return to Canada. There are indeed many Canadians living and working overseas who would welcome the opportunity to return, but there are many more who are happily living and working overseas and wanting to be connected to Canada in ways that are beneficial for them and for the country. These overseas citizens are already contributing to Canada through professional networks, research collaboration, cultural exchange, and commercial activity. They are an underutilized asset for the country, and they remain underutilized as long as we don’t recognize and mobilize them.

A recent report from the Institute of Canadian Citizenship and the Conference Board entitled The Leaky Bucket found that about 20% of immigrants leave Canada within 25 years, with the highest incidence of departure taking place within the first 5 years of arrival. The most highly educated and highly skilled immigrants have the greatest likelihood of what the report calls “onward migration.” The report’s authors frame these findings are a retention problem and call for a national strategy to reduce onward migration – to plug the “leaky bucket,” if you will.

I support the effort to strengthen retention by improving settlement services, recognizing foreign credentials, and encouraging employers to not fixate on “Canadian experience” as the overriding criteria for hiring. But it is important to not frame “onward migration” as “failure to succeed in Canada.” The mistake is not studying why people leave, but assuming that leaving ends their value to Canada. If we have, in fact, attracted some of the most highly qualified and highly skilled immigrants to our country (as we often claim), we should not be surprised that their talents are also highly desirable in jurisdictions outside Canada and that they have career options well beyond North America. It is, of course, the same for Canadian-born talent that is sought after by other countries. If they choose to go abroad, we surely don’t think of them as failed citizens.

The point is, that while we want to make Canada as welcoming as possible for immigrants to settle and build a life here for their families, we should be no less accepting of them as full-fledged citizens if they choose to leave Canada to pursue other opportunities.

Research on migration tells us that international mobility and transnationalism are features of modern economies. Indeed, The Leaky Bucket report shows that emigration and onward migration are driven primarily by opportunity, not by attachment or loyalty. Diaspora engagement therefore is complementary to, rather than in competition with immigrant retention efforts. People may move in and out of Canada at different stages of their lives while remaining connected throughout their time overseas, but only if we make it easy for them to stay connected.

Many of the overseas Canadians I’ve spoken to maintain active professional, economic, and civic ties to Canada even as they build their careers overseas. They follow Canadian politics, have dealings with Canadian organizations, mentor students and junior colleagues, and facilitate business connections. But many of them encounter barriers to being more connected to Canada in such areas as voting, being informed about policy changes affecting them, and navigating issues related to taxation or social benefits. It should be no surprise to anyone that there is an inverse relationship between the barriers to staying connected and the interest in being connected. As one member of the Canadian Chambers of the Asia Pacific told me, if the Canadian diaspora chooses to disengage with Canada, it is usually not by choice, but because of what he calls “friction” to engagement.

To be fair, Canada is not oblivious to its overseas citizens. Global Affairs Canada has a consular affairs division, and we even had, for a time, a parliamentary secretary responsible for Canadians abroad. The focus of the department, however, has been on providing consular services to Canadians overseas, including emergency services for Canadians who need help while abroad. This framing of the Canadian diaspora is a fundamentally defensive one – it is about Canadians who get into trouble when they are out of the country and need the government’s help. In extreme cases, it is about the emergency evacuation of Canadian citizens in conflict zones or following a natural disaster.

This is not a criticism of the very good work of consular services in helping Canadians when they need help when overseas. I am also conscious of the mandate and resource limitations that consular services has to work within. But I believe the framing of Canadians abroad as essentially a “consular services” problem has stifled our ability to think more broadly about the benefits of the Canadian diaspora. It is akin to fixating on the cost of house insurance rather than focusing the value of the house, and the benefits of living it in. We could also say that Canada has hitherto seen its overseas citizens as “contingent liabilities” on the national balance sheet, while totally ignoring that they are also a hidden asset.

According to Statistics Canada, the population of Canadians abroad is very diverse. Roughly one-third were born in Canada, half are citizens by descent, and about 15% naturalized citizens living abroad. Most are of working age. With the recent passage of C-3, which eliminated the first-generation cut-off for citizenship, the number of Canadians overseas is likely to grow.

To the extent that we think about Canadians abroad, we tend to focus on so called “Star Spangled Canadians.” There is no shortage of famous Canadians who live and work in the United States, from Wayne Gretzky to Celine Dion to the late Catherine O’Hara, and we generally have a positive impression of them. 

We also tend to think of Canadians abroad as our compatriots in the “old country,” meaning Britain, France, Germany, Italy, etc. There are indeed many Canadians living in the U.K. and across Europe, and they form an essential part of our Canadian diaspora that the national strategy I am calling for should include. But Canadians in the old countries are already part of our national psyche and have been largely tapped into because of our long-standing historical and cultural ties across the Atlantic. And, dare I say it, also because Old Canada has been more comfortable with the Old World and tends to see Canadians in the U.S. and Europe as the more acceptable face of overseas Canadians, compared to, say, Canadians in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

But, as Prime Minister Carney has reminded us, the old world is fading, and a new world awaits us. An international strategy that is based on “variable geometry” as well as alliances of non-traditional partners means reaching out to overseas Canadians beyond the Atlanticist bubble. It means working with Canadian diaspora groups in the so-called Global South and tapping into the knowledge, expertise and networks that they have in those markets.

I am thinking about Canadian educators who are teaching at Canadian schools across Latin America, members of the many Canadian chambers of commerce in Africa, Canadian professionals across the Arab world, and the 300,000 or so Canadians in Hong Kong, most of whom are originally from Hong Kong and maintain close ties with Canada. In a world of fractured trust, Canadians embedded abroad are often our most credible interlocutors.

Living abroad often introduces practical and emotional distance from Canada, which over time, reduce the sense of connection to Canada. It’s the mundane stuff like accessing services, paying dues and taxes, getting information on policy changes, re-entry challenges, voting, and so on. Each point of failure adds to the alienation of our overseas citizens, which reduces the mindshare of Canada as a place to talk up, build connections, create opportunity, and not least, to return to.

An obvious example is voting from abroad. Some of you will remember that we amended the Elections Act in 2017 to restore the right of Canadians overseas to vote in a Federal election, even if they have been abroad for more than five years. Many overseas Canadians have expressed frustration over what they see as a cumbersome process that involves advance registration, the vicissitudes of international mail, and compressed timelines. Reporting from the Canadian Press this year highlighted cases where Canadians abroad who complied fully with the requirements nevertheless received their ballots too late to be cast. Comparative research shows that Canadians abroad vote at significantly lower rates than their American counterparts, which is not the case when it comes to in-country voting. This suggests that the problem is not a lack of interest, but administrative or structural barriers that make it difficult for Canadians abroad to participate. Any national strategy on overseas Canadians should include improvements to voting from abroad as a fundamental aspect of cultivating attachment and belonging to Canada.

Some time ago, I undertook outreach with members of the Canadian Chambers of Commerce across the Asia-Pacific to learn more about their experiences and needs, and how Canada was supporting them. The central conclusion was not that Canada lacks the capacity to do more abroad, but that we lack coordination or clear policy intent.

What we heard can be summarized under three headings: encouraging community abroad, making Canada accessible, and capitalizing on global experience.

These three issue areas are easily mapped onto areas of federal responsibility – including overseas missions abroad, service delivery departments, and the bully pulpit of the Prime Minister and his cabinet. For a start, we could again appoint a Parliamentary Secretary for Global Affairs Canada who is responsible for Canadians Abroad – except that this person’s mandate would be to promote engagement with Canadians abroad rather than to simply manage an emergency help line or renew passports.

What I am proposing does not require the creation of new structures or a complete redesign of administrative processes, but rather a reframing of Canadians abroad so that the orientation of existing policies is to find ways of better utilizing this hidden asset, celebrate accomplishment, and cultivate attachment. To take just one small example, something as simple as a Canadian Community Liaison Officer at Canadian missions abroad can go a long way in connecting with Canadians in that jurisdiction and bringing them together at events such as Canada Day. 

In the last Parliament, I commissioned a report from the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada on the state of research on Canadians Abroad and implications for public policy. The author, Dr. Lucia Kovacikova, found a large knowledge gap in our understanding of Canadians abroad and the absence of any coherent government policy or approach to its overseas citizens. She came up with 12 policy domains that are important for overseas Canadians and the Federal and Provincial departments that have responsibility in those areas.

Canada is late in recognizing the significance and value of our diaspora compared to other jurisdictions. Ireland has a whole-of-government diaspora strategy. France and Italy provide formal political representation for citizens abroad. New Zealand has a strategy that focuses on leveraging its “global Kiwi” network for economic growth, promoting attachment, and safe travel. India has a dedicated program focused on its overseas citizens as well as “People of Indian Origin” and holds a major event every year to celebrate its diaspora.

Yesterday, the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development held hearings on the subject of Canadians abroad. Witnesses largely validated the idea that our overseas citizens are underutlized assets and that the Government of Canada can leverage this community without creating a new bureaucracy or committing significant new resources.

As one witness said, the starting point is for the government to signal that it values Canadian abroad and wants to actively include them in Canada’s international engagement efforts. That alone would provide the impetus for the many Canada-affiliated business, cultural, and academic organizations overseas to mobilize their resources in a more deliberate way, working with embassies and consulates in their jurisdictions.

I encourage honourable senators to speak to my motion and look forward to hearing your perspectives. I suspect most of you in this chamber have a relative or close friend who is a Canadian living overseas. We even have some former senators who are part of the Canadian diaspora, and they are, it would seem, doing very well indeed.

I invite you to consult with your Canadian expatriate contacts on what they would like to see in a national strategy and to tell us about what you hear. Even though we are a chamber organized by regions, there are no senators representing a region of more than four million Canadians. They are the “Province of Canada in the World,” and they deserve to be heard. This motion is my small effort at giving them a voice. Thank you.