Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper shuffled his cabinet today, replacing his fallen foreign minister with David Emerson. Emerson is a well-experienced manager who is looked upon favourably by analysts and others. Former foreign minister John Manley was quoted as saying, “He’s been a very steady performer. He will bring adult supervision to the Department of Foreign Affairs.”

Manley might be simply referring to the previous foreign minister, Maxime Bernier, who is under intense scrutiny for leaving sensitive documents at a former girlfriend’s house. The girlfriend was found to have links with the Hell’s Angels.

However I think Manley’s comments can be applied more generally to DFAIT as a whole. DFAIT has suffered a number of scandals in the past year including the NAFTA leak which jeapordized Barack Obama’s presidential nomination, and an official publicly bad-mouthing an Afghan leader. Foreign Affairs has been falling apart in recent years. The interdepartmental battle with the Department of National Defence over who takes the lead in Afghanistan has taken a toll on the bureacracy. Rank-and-file have been leaving Foreign Affairs like senior executives have been leaving Yahoo.

I hope Emerson has a positive influence on my country’s foreign policy. Emerson is good on trade, with experience battling the Americans over softwood. He is positive on relations with China, contrary to the prime minister. Most of all he has much experience running large organizations. He may be the right man to get DFAIT’s act together. Unfortunately, he may not have enough time to make much of a difference. Emerson crossed the floor to the Conservative Party from the Liberals after being voted in 2006, thus he has little to no political base. Once he is gone, the Conservatives don’t seem to have anyone of Emerson’s calibre to replace him.

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