Hon. Patricia Bovey: Honourable senators, this question is for the chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Senator Boehm, in June 2019 the Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee tabled its report Cultural Diplomacy at the Front Stage of Canada’s Foreign Policy. We rose, and there was an election before it was voted on. However, I’m well aware that staff in Global Affairs and Canada Council for the Arts have taken it on and both have established departments for its implementation. I’m also aware that a year ago Canadian Heritage was finishing their report, an update on it. I am not aware of anything since.

Has the Senate’s Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee received those updates, implementation strategies and actions? If not, when are you expecting them? And will the committee meet with the ministers involved to move these recommendations along?

Senator Bovey: Senator Boehm, Global Affairs Canada is about to launch a diplomatic modernization exercise, the first since 1980. Do you have confidence that cultural diplomacy will be reinstated as one of the four pillars of our foreign policy, especially now, given the world’s crises, where the need, I believe, to understand cultures and each other is becoming ever more apparent?