Hon. Yonah Martin (Deputy Leader of the Opposition): I have a question for Senator Boehm.

I notice that this is a report related to a budget. I wanted to ask for the sake of others in the chamber — and similar to what Senator Lankin asked on a previous report — what the nature of the trip is. As well, what are some outcomes that you expect from the trip? Maybe you could elaborate on the budget. Thank you.

Senator Boehm: Well, thank you very much, Senator Martin. It is, in fact, for a trip, and it’s a trip that was planned to take place earlier and features a revised budget — a lower budget — that was sent to the Subcommittee on Senate Estimates and Committee Budgets, or SEBS, and then to the Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, or CIBA, for approval afterwards.

It’s in support of the long study that the committee has undertaken on the fit-for-purpose nature of Global Affairs Canada. It is supplementary to a trip that the committee took to Washington in December of last year. This one will take the committee — in a reduced number, I should add, because what was approved was the chair plus six members of the committee — to London, Oslo and Berlin.

In terms of why there, it’s because these particular countries have a similar system to ours in the way they conduct their foreign policy. They have recently integrated their aid and development function. In the case of the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, or FCO, it’s now the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, or FCDO, and the Norwegians have done the same thing, as did the Germans, because they are like-minded.

We will be looking at conditions of foreign service — this is not a foreign policy review per se — how people are recruited and how they are supported. This trip is planned for a non-sitting week — the week before we return in September — and it is basically the last element of this study that we have been working on since last April.

I hope that helps a little.