What’s the difference?
Canadian visa offices abroad are at Canadian Embassies, Canadian High Commissions, and Canadian Consulates. What’s the difference between all of these different types of overseas missions?
Canada has a number of different overseas missions. We have Canadian embassies in countries that are not Commonwealth of Nations (formerly British colonies) countries. That would include countries such as Italy, Russia, the USA, and China. We have Canadian High Commissions in countries that are part of the Commonwealth of Nations such as India, Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Canada is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The USA is not a member, so they only have embassies in other countries and Canada has an embassy in the USA. Embassies and High Commissions are only located in national capital cities.
Consulates are overseas missions that are not in national capital cities. We have consulates in several US cities such as Seattle. We also have a Consulate General in New York given its importance in hosting the United Nations. This type of office can also be found in cities like Hong Kong.
The title of the head of mission also varies and includes High Commissioner, Ambassador, Consul General, Consul, etc. The deputy head of mission at a Canadian High Commission is the Deputy High Commissioner, but the person who is second in command at an Embassy is rarely referred to as Deputy Ambassador for some reason. You may hear about charge d’affairs and this is a person who is usually filling in until an Ambassador or High Commissioner is appointed. Such vacancies occur frequently at American Embassies where a lot of their Ambassadors are political appointees instead of career diplomats, and the appointments are made in the wake of elections. In Canadian missions abroad, it is very rare to have political appointees and most heads of mission and other Canada based staff are career diplomats.
Other ranks may include:
Minister – this person is high ranking and may be a department head, and usually supervises a department or section.
First Secretary – this person has several years of experience and may also be a department head in a smaller mission. They usually supervise several other staff members.
Second Secretary – this person has a few years of experience, and may supervise some other staff members.
Third Secretary – this person is usually on their first posting in their first (probationary) year. They do not usually supervise any other staff, but may have an interpreter or processing assistant.
CBO – (Canada Based Officers) these are Canadian citizen staff member. They may have a higher security ranking than LES (see below) for secure documents such as “Canadian eyes only” (yes that is a real security designation used abroad).
LES – (Locally Engaged Staff) these may be Canadian citizens or local people. Quite often spouses or grown up children of Canadian officers can be hired temporarily in these positions. Sometimes other Canadian citizens are hired locally. And very often it is local nationals who fill these positions.
Liaison officers – there are RCMP liaison officers at some missions. They are often involved in drug enforcement or similar activities, or investigations like the one into the Air India bombing. They are a resource from time to time for immigration security matters as well. For example, they may be able to verify criminal matters in Canada that pertain to immigration applications, or they may be involved in the investigation of large scale immigration fraud activities.
Why should you know all this stuff? Because you look smarter if you address your correspondence properly and you will be smarter if you understand the relative level of the person to whom you’re sending correspondence.