The union representing staff at Global Affairs Canada says the foreign service is laying off dozens of its highest-skilled diplomats, while asking other envoys moving across continents to wait months for their personal items.

The cuts come as Global Affairs Canada sets out its plans to meet budget belt tightening requirements laid out by Prime Minister Mark Carney last year.

The department targets for layoffs are causing an uproar among former diplomats and international relations experts, who say the government’s cuts are odds with Ottawa trying to gain influence at a time of geopolitical calamity.

“The attrition rate that they’re looking at is going to hit missions abroad pretty hard,” said Pam Isfeld, a career diplomat and president of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers.

“I just don’t think that things have really been thought through,” she said.

The latest departmental plan for Global Affairs Canada, published on March 13, says GAC will cut 1,240 full-time equivalents by March 2029, a cut of 9.4 per cent of the 13,185 staff equivalent as of March 2025.

In January, the department issued notices to 3,095 staff warning they may lose their jobs, though some of those may switch to different roles or be spared if others quit or retire.

Global Affairs Canada previously said it must trim its workforce 12 to 13 per cent by 2030.

Isfeld said as part of the cuts, Ottawa is disbanding a specialized tier for foreign service officers, known as FS-04. Most are either being reclassified as executives or as one rank lower — but 34 positions are simply being terminated, Isfeld said.

“It’s going to make us all look bad in the long run,” she said. “We already were starting to get a bit of a reputation over the last 20 years for our mouths being a lot bigger than our pocketbooks.”

The department did not respond to a request for comment.

The FS-04 pay band applies to roles with specific knowledge, such as a nuclear specialist deployed to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, according to Isfeld. The union head was herself made an FS-04 when her posting in Warsaw changed to monitoring Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and keeping track on all matters in neighbouring Belarus.

“It’s a structural mismatch to be saying we’re going to be active and engaged in this ambitious foreign policy — G7 presidency legacy, Indo-Pacific stuff, Africa stuff, Ukraine stuff, climate finance, now all kinds of Arctic stuff, co-operation with the Nordics,” she said.

“You just cut the entire cadre of most experienced, most specialized people,” she said. “Your influence doesn’t come really from your press releases in Ottawa.”

In the departmental plan, GAC projects saving a half-billion dollars in the fiscal year that starts next month, $747 million the following year and then $1.12 billion in the fiscal year ending March 2029. Those savings will come from a number of places, including “refocusing Canada’s international presence in the areas of advocacy and diplomacy,” streamlining trade services and linking foreign aid and security initiatives with economic growth.

The document also says GAC will find unspecified efficiencies across its missions, sell off some properties abroad, and upgrade infrastructure and information security protections at those missions to cut down on the costs of protecting its personnel.

Isfeld said Global Affairs Canada is also cutting back on letting diplomats fly their belonging to postings abroad, and she said some will have to wait six months or more for anything that doesn’t fit in the three suitcases they are allowed to check in at the start or end of a posting.

“Previously, small air shipments were approved as a supplementary shipment option for household effects for some itineraries. This option has been replaced with reimbursement for additional checked bags for all travellers,” the union wrote in a March 4 update to members.

Global Affairs Canada’s cuts come ahead of a foreign policy review that Ottawa expects to come later in the year, which may generally touch on which regions and nations will see an increase in diplomatic postings, which missions might close or merge with others, and what themes or languages the foreign service aims to focus on.

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand has said her department already has the broad outlines of Canada’s foreign policy and can thus shape their staffing priorities.

Global Affairs Canada has won some praise from MPs and unions for not issuing layoffs to the two lowest ranks of foreign service officers, which had occurred during budget cuts in 2012 and were widely seen as hurting Ottawa’s ability to replenish its diplomatic workforce over time.

In last year’s election, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s campaign platform said he intended “to deploy more Canadian diplomats and officials abroad, to expand our trade, and to restore Canadian leadership.”

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