AUF WIEDERSEHEN — SABINE SPARWASSER joked last week that diplomats have nine lives. This week, she’s adjusting to a new one, settling into retirement after serving as Germany’s ambassador to Canada.
Sparwasser isn’t uprooting anytime soon. She and her husband GARY SOROKA, a Canadian, are staying in Ottawa after her seven-year tenure ended Sunday. A week before her last official day, she hosted a farewell party in the backyard of her official residence in Rockcliffe where embassy staff and guests hobnobbed over drinks and a spread of house-made frankfurter, Oktoberfest and Nürnberger sausages. — Spotted in the backyard: EU Ambassador MELITA GABRIČ, Ottawa Mayor MARK SUTCLIFFE, CBC CEO CATHERINE TAIT, Canadian Chamber of Commerce President PERRIN BEATTY, U15 Executive Director CHAD GAFFIELD, Rubicon Strategy’s DON NEWMAN, journalist PAUL WELLS, Reuters’ DAVID LJUNGGREN, The Economist’s ROB RUSSO, CTV News Chief Political Correspondent VASSY KAPELOS, Navigator’s CHRIS HALL, Coconut Lagoon Chef JOE THOTTUNGAL and pollster NIK NANOS. — Incoming: Berlin is sending two ambassadors to replace Sparwasser. Wife-and-husband TJORVEN BELLMANN and MATTHIAS LÜTTENBERG will begin their tenure in August, trading each other off in the role to share parenting duties. Playbook caught up with Sparwasser at Germany’s embassy overlooking the Rideau Canal in Centretown. During an exit interview in her last few days of work, she reflected on bilateral relations — and shared the job advice she’s already given to her successors. “It was never hard to be an ambassador here in Ottawa … but the cascade of crisis has energized the cooperation enormously,” she said. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. How would you describe Canada-Germany relations today compared to when you started your term as ambassador in 2017? We always had good trade and people-to-people relations. But what happened in the past too often was the focus was always on the U.S. in Canada. The focus was always on Europe in Germany. We overlooked the potential that lies in this bilateral relationship between Canada and Germany. The mandate I gave myself was to make it clear to us that we don't just like each other, we actually need each other. In those seven years, world circumstances changed dramatically. And in the course of all of these things that are like a cascade of crisis, Germany and Canada have really realized we do need each other. If you look at the cooperation we do on foreign policy. During the German G7 presidency [in 2022], the G7 became the management board of world crisis, in particular on the Ukraine crisis. The relationship of our two foreign ministers [ANNALENA BAERBOCK and MÉLANIE JOLY] is extraordinarily close. They work together, talking to each other on WhatsApp. Canada has extraordinary resources, critical minerals, energy. Canada can be a world leader in renewable energy in particular when it comes to hydrogen. And for us, preferably green hydrogen. Germany is a country that has just replaced its dependence on Russian energy with LNG but ultimately, our commitment is to replace our energy needs with renewable energies. We've made a lot of headway, but we will still need to import green energy [in a] big way. Tell me more about that tendency for Canada to focus on the U.S. and Germany on Europe. How was that a challenge for your mandate goal? I wouldn’t call it a challenge because that’s too negative. The job of being a diplomat for Germany in Canada — it's never been a hardship posting. It's a very, very like-minded environment in which you're operating. It's never been hard, but it hasn't been as dynamic as what we're seeing now and what we've seen even since Covid. What have you learned about Canada outside the Ottawa bubble? What you need to do as an ambassador is go out and travel a lot. This is a huge country. It's an extremely diverse country. Beautiful, too. And I thought I knew Canada at the time because I've been here before. But I hadn't really been up north much. Global Affairs offered this trip to the north where you go to all three territories to several points and you really spend time and meet people — you would never be able to organize so many contacts by yourself. I went up north very early in my tenure and I came back home to Ottawa, and I thought, “Hmm, maybe we're not doing the right kind of things.” Up north, I realized that anything to do with climate, energy, also natural resources, science are the big drivers of what we can do, how we can effectuate positive change for our societies. And we actually concentrated our resources in the embassy much more on that. That really great experience translated into policy change. I want to talk about politics for a minute. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) made gains in the EU elections and we’ve seen the party make connections with parliamentarians last year. Is there a cautionary tale here for Canada — what kind of trends should we be anticipating ahead of an election year? Let me begin with foreign interference because it relates, right? Foreign interference is, by now, in all our Western democracies. It's a very concerning phenomenon. It's very strong. In Germany, it's very clear we are more in the focus of Russia. We see a lot of hybrid threats. We have seen disinformation campaigns that have affected some outcomes for politicians. The attempt is to foster the extremes to destabilize the democratic consensus within a country. And we've seen that the AfD, the right-wing extremist party, has received support from Russia. … There are lots of connections and you can see this is a real danger. We've just had a European election and even with everything that has happened, and all these things that have been revealed about Russian influencing of AfD politicians, the AfD has still had a strong result. It's very difficult to see how to debunk that kind of influence. We really need to show the light on those activities and explain to people right-wing extremism. Extremism right now is a global phenomenon. It is also a nearly normal phenomenon in times when you see societal and transformative change happening. Very often when you’ve had technological revolutions and societal change happening, it creates winners and losers. It creates lots of anxiety. People feel they don't understand the world anymore and they go in for the simple answers. And it is difficult sometimes to explain and face the complexity of what's happening to us. My ultimate response would be that giving into despair is not an option. We need to try and establish rules for those things. We need to actually trust the strength of our democratic system and convince our citizens to stand up for it. And that's what happened in Germany at one point at the beginning of the year. | 
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