Integrating Anti-Corruption in Canadian Foreign Policy
Key Takeaways
The conference delivered quality conversations during panels and breaks, creating engagement between participants from different backgrounds, and creating important links for future collaboration. It was clear that everyone was committed to working together in a collective fashion to move the needle on several important items.
Key thematic takeaways from the conference include:
Understanding the implications of corruption: It was referenced by several speakers that Africa is a net creditor to the world, losing more money to corruption than it receives in international aid every year. This shows how detrimental the impacts of corruption are and speaks to how Canada and must frame its anticorruption efforts.
Connecting the domestic with the international: Tackling anti-corruption through foreign policy requires coordination across government, such as to implement international treaty commitments and emerging best practices and innovative approaches. It is not only for foreign policy actors. Legislation and enforcement for illicit financial flows especially are important to prevent Canada from being a parking lot for stolen funds from overseas.
Working across actors: Anti-corruption work can often be siloed, but that is not a recipe for success. Officials from different government departments met during the conference and discussed how to collaborate going forward. The recent commitment to create a Canadian Financial Crimes Agency is one example of a concrete opportunity for collaboration.
Creative thinking: A number of speakers remarked that we need to think about corruption and fighting corruption in different ways from the past including not always emphasizing a criminal justice approach. Systems thinking, norms thinking, economic distortion thinking were put forward as were collective action, business integrity, and civil actions.
The importance of analysis: In order to support creative ways of thinking, there was a consensus among speakers, including by top Global Affairs Canada officials and others on the need for good analysis. If corruption is a system, you need to understand that system. If resources are limited for Canada, then GAC can work to pool information with other countries, and work with civil society in local communities to gather information.
The importance of civil society. Civil society is a key actor to help drive and sustain change, but increasingly around the world there is shrinking space for civil society groups. They need to be supported, but also have their independence. Even between civil society groups, ‘national elite’ groups need to work with local groups.
The importance of societal resilience and civilian led initiatives: Ultimately citizens will demand and drive change. When Canada and other countries engage internationally on anti-corruption, we can assist and help stakeholders, but cannot push or lead. Anti-corruption programming needs to be flexible and able to respond to windows of opportunity to support civilian efforts and governments committed to progress on anti-corruption.
The need to protect whistleblowers: Whistleblowers are often the actors that instigate change by revealing corruption. Without them, anti-corruption work becomes far more difficult. Canada and other governments need to protect domestic and foreign whistleblowers.