While the great diplomat and diarist enjoyed Champagne and oysters in post-war London and Paris — where the socialite Lady Diana Cooper and novelist Nancy Mitford once organized “Ritchie Week,” a non-stop whirl of parties, dinners and balls — his present-day equivalents must content themselves with Asti Spumanti and frozen hors d’oeuvres.
These are austere days for Canada’s diplomats. As proof, sources have confirmed to the National Post that the government plans to sell the Canadian embassy in Paris at 35/37 avenue Montaigne, just blocks from the Champs Elysées, from where Mr. Ritchie used to rove forth. It will also sell a separate building south of the River Seine, at 5 rue de Constantine, where Canada’s mission to UNESCO is based. The plan is to purchase a new building for all Canadian programs in the French capital. Neither location has been listed yet and there is no indication how much money may be raised but two such large properties in central Paris would clearly yield significant funds for the government’s deficit-reduction program.
“A consolidation of all programs under one roof significantly reduces the operating costs of the Government of Canada. In the current economic context, the Parisian real estate market offers us an opportunity to relocate our chancery and at the same time mitigate the financial risks associated with an aging building,” said a Department of Foreign Affairs briefing note. “This project makes sense from a business point of view and is attractive and profitable for the government and the taxpayers of Canada.”
If all goes according to plan, it will earn our ambassador in Paris, former Conservative Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, the grateful thanks of his government. But it will further anger a bureaucracy that feels the Tories are selling precious national assets for short-term political gain.
The Harper government has taken a dim view of the foreign service — treating its officers as “unnecessary luxuries,” in the words of academic Roland Paris.
In its quest for “responsible spending,” the government is selling a reported 40 official residences around the world.
When Jim Flaherty, the Finance Minister, went looking for departmental cuts in his 2012 budget, he found what looked like easy targets in the 2,000 properties that the Government of Canada owns or leases around the world.
Buried in an annex of that budget, the government said it would generate capital revenue of $80-million selling official residences abroad.
Last month, the government revealed it had sold One Grosvenor Square, the home of British High Commissioners for the past 50 years, to an Indian real estate developer for $530-million. Around $300-million will be reinvested in a new building nearby, said the soon-to-be homeless High Commissioner, Gordon Campbell.
But the asset sale program has barely started. In addition to the embassy and the UNESCO building in Paris, Foreign Affairs confirmed that one of three official residences in Paris — that of the mission to UNESCO will be sold in 2015/16 (the others are that of Mr. Cannon, and Judith LaRocque, the Ambassador to the OECD).
In Brussels, two official residences — those of the head of mission to NATO and the head of mission to the European Union — are on the block (the former for 1.9-million Euros; the latter for 6.5-million Euros).
Earlier this year, the National Post reported that Canada’s $20-million official residence in Oslo is up for sale. “There is only one property other than the king’s that is bigger and maybe nicer in Oslo, and that is the U.S. ambassador’s residence,” said one local real estate agent.
More controversially, the official residence in Rome was put on the market — despite the 13,000 square foot Villa Grandi being associated with Canada’s Italian war campaign (it was bought in 1950 for $186,000 using reparations that Italy was required to pay the Allies).
In 2011, Canada sold Strathmore, the official residence of the Irish ambassador in Dublin for a reported $17.7-million.
But is all this activity motivated by a desire to protect hard-working Canadian taxpayers, as the government claims? Or is it a short-sighted and politically motivated fire sale, designed to help the Conseratives balance the books?
Paul Dewar, the NDP Foreign Affairs critic, said the process has been “haphazard.” “The government has not put the case forward in a rational manner,” he said.
While there may be a good business case to be made in some instances — the gardening costs alone for the Rome residence are said to be $250,000 a year — there does seem to be an indecent haste to some of the sales.
Could a better price be realized if and when European real estate markets rebound? Are we undermining our own international influence by moving our diplomats from the heart of world capitals and relocating them into more remote locations?
None of that is likely to matter. The Conservatives need cash, and they need it now. Apart from a few retired diplomats crying in their canapés, there is no political cost. And so, it’s Ambassades A Vendre.
Charles Ritchie would undoubtedly have taken a dim view — as he did about most politically motivated policy. “I’m an Old Hat on a New Frontier,” he once said. There are many veteran foreign service officers who will know exactly what he meant.
Original Article
Source: fullcomment.nationalpost.com/
Author: John Ivison
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