Canadian diplomats in U.S. face high health care and housing costs: audit

An intragroup authorities inspect of canadian river diplomatical missions in the U.S. Completed late last year found staff faced safety risks and problems with accessing health care — more than a year after a union flagged those same issues.

"U.S. Cities present security risks related to street crime, protests, the widespread presence of firearms and broader social crises such as substance abuse and mental health issues," says the audit completed by Global Affairs Canada.

"These factors make security and emergency management a critical component of day-to-day mission operations."

Canadian diplomats are posted to the embassy in Washington, D.C., and to consulates and trade offices in 15 other cities, from Boston to Los Angeles. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand has said she will open a new consulate in Anchorage, Alaska, this year.

At the time the audit was conducted in late 2025, Canadian missions in the U.S. Had 130 diplomats, 254 Canadian staff from various federal departments and 356 Americans hired to help mission staff.

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Global Affairs said it launched the audit because it had never done one for U.S. Diplomatic postings, despite how critical the Canada-U.S. Relationship is to Ottawa.

"Canada maintains a large mission footprint in the U.S. Requiring considerable effort and expenditures," the department said.

The audit, which is dated last November, was published earlier this year. The document does not say when auditors took input from mission staff.

The Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, the union that represents diplomats in labour contract talks, raised concerns about the safety of Canadian diplomats based in the U.S. In early 2024.

Citing lockdowns and evacuations in an office hosting one Canadian consulate in the U.S., the union recommended diplomats posted to the United States receive higher pay to compensate them for the risk.

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The audit notes that Washington embassy staff make regular visits to consulates across the U.S. To "lead emergency training exercises."

It says auditors found that the Los Angeles consulate's readiness training "needs significant improvement," as do emergency management plans for the Atlanta and Detroit consulates.

In 2024, the foreign service union also reported Canadian diplomatic staff abroad were experiencing difficulty accessing health care — a problem it said was particularly acute in the U.S., where providers can withhold treatment until an insurance payment is sorted out.

The audit reports the medical insurance system Global Affairs Canada uses to handle claims from U.S.-based diplomats was still not fully functional.

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Canadian diplomats in the U.S. "consistently raised concerns about the administrative burden relating to their medical insurance provider" and some were forced to take on personal debt to cover health care costs, the audit says.

"Some reported needing to rely heavily on advances (over $100,000 in one instance) or credit card debt to carry medical costs," the audit says. "Given the high cost of health care in the U.S., these challenges can result in substantial financial strain."

Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers president Pam Isfeld said Wednesday it's encouraging to see Global Affairs is aware of these issues, though they're nothing new to the people she represents.

"We're hoping to see more and more of these real-time assessments of what's going on, and hopefully it will lead to some real-time action," she said.

"The U.S. Is important in particular, and if conditions are getting so much worse there, it gets hard to recruit people."

The auditors also found the salaries Ottawa is offering are not high enough to recruit Americans to jobs in consulates and the Washington embassy.

"Missions indicated that salaries were often not competitive enough to attract qualified candidates, and that the departmental staffing process was sometimes inefficient, leading to delays in hiring and onboarding," the audit says.

Auditors also found that Ottawa was capping rent budgets well below what the market offers in multiple American cities.

Canadian diplomats posted to the U.S. Are given a maximum rent budget based on location, salary and family configuration. Diplomats can then find housing that falls within that budget, supplement that budget personally or ask for exemptions.

A whopping 65 per cent of all rents across the U.S. Network exceeded the ceiling Ottawa set, the audit says. The problem is particularly bad in Los Angeles, Boston and Minneapolis, it adds, "due to compounding factors such as low inventory, geographic limitation or security issues" and "proximity to school."

The audit says diplomats have "expressed concerns related to the stress and time pressures associated with securing suitable housing in competitive markets. In response, some missions have established real estate broker support services to assist incoming [diplomats] with their house-hunting trips."

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Isfeld said she hopes Ottawa updates its rental assessments for each U.S. City.

"Their cost-of-living surveys have gotten really behind in some cities and I think they obviously need to address this," she said.

She also warned that appointing heads of U.S. Missions from outside of the foreign service will make it harder to improve how consulates are run, since political appointees are not familiar with GAC systems and protocols.

She noted three of four people appointed this week to lead Canadian missions in the U.S. Have no diplomatic background and will be leading teams facing staff cuts.

"If you're going to be sending people without experience out to missions and then cutting the locally [hired American] staff or the budgets for those missions, that's going to make the work of those people harder, no matter what their great skills or intentions are," Isfeld said.

Overall, the audit says Canadian diplomatic missions in the U.S. "generally maintained good oversight and communication mechanisms that promote transparency and foster collaboration" and many had "robust controls over both physical and information security."

The audit only asked Global Affairs Canada to respond to recommendations on process and protocols. The Canadian Press has asked for comment from the department about the broader issues its staff flagged to auditors, but has not yet received a response.

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