Brazenly Breathtaking Insolence of Entitlement

"We're prepared to maintain our strike through the summer and deep into the fall."
"It's a key part of their economic action plan ... to expand the network of (free trade agreements) that Canada has abroad."
"So the foreign service job action will do everything it can to disrupt and to delay that until the government decides to come back and negotiate in good faith."
PAFSO president Tim Edwards

Those sound like sentiments emanating from the thought processes of someone seeking to do grave harm to the Government of Canada and to Canada's future; its economy and its potential trade agreements with other trading partners. It sounds as though those are words emanating from an foreign antagonist, someone who wishes ill and will do their utmost to ensure that ill comes to the country. It hardly resonates as patriotic aspirations of Canadians hired for their assumed professional integrity and capability to further the fortunes of the country.

People who land elite positions in a well-regarded and indeed most elite of all government departments, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. People hired for their experience, their education, their clear ability to communicate and to furnish within their job descriptions opportunities to aid the government in pursuing its international ambitions. For this, these fortunate individuals are paid extremely generous salaries, topped up by opportunities for advancement and at their end of their careers a pension indexed to inflation allowing them to live handsomely in perpetuity.

These are also individuals who are singularly privileged to rotate from Ottawa headquarters at DFAIT out to all the countries of the world where Canada maintains its embassies and consulates, as well-regarded and hugely respected representatives of their country. They are privileged to live in style, receiving salary top-ups when living in countries where the cost of living exceeds that of Canada. They may return home to Canada at regular intervals, and they may have paid trips extended for family members to visit them abroad. While serving in their diplomatic posts they have the opportunity to meet other international diplomats.

When they return to Ottawa they are the envy of their peers for the experiences which they have been exposed to and the opportunities as seasoned veterans of the foreign-rotation stream that will accrue to them in furthering their careers. None of this sounds like heavy-duty sacrifice on the part of those individuals who are represented by PAFSO. Canada's diplomatic corps have chosen their career paths for what it offers to them. Their children attend highly regarded international schools and have the privilege of meeting and interacting with children from various parts of the world; opportunities not to be overlooked as indifferent to their own social development.

Yet the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers has chosen to militantly betray their government's and their country's trust in their professionalism and their obligation to perform their jobs to the best of their ability. Instead, they have chosen to behave in a shamefully juvenile manner by withholding services which inconvenience and in many instances entirely disrupt the life-plans of many people who depend on Canada's missions to forward their own needs. "We are not as eager as our employer to keep playing a game of chicken while jeopardizing the livelihoods of thousands and tens of thousands of Canadians nationwide", stated Tim Edwards in a blatant display of hypocrisy.

"PAFSO has heard the concerns of Canadians and of Canadian businesses. This is why we have taken the decision to act responsibly and commit to finding alternate solutions in the face of the government's stubborn refusal to compromise", he stated further in an equally breathtaking distortion of reality. If PAFSO chooses to refuse government's settlement offer perhaps it is the union that is stubborn and uncompromising. Mr. Edwards knows full well that arbitrators tend to find for complainants.

PAFSO executives' decision to target visa applications, harming those who wish to visit Canada for a wide variety of reasons, personal and professional, and its targeting of harming trade talks with the European Union, Japan and the Trans-Pacific Partnership by the withdrawal of diplomatic trade professionals' services in the ongoing processes is a clear and obvious indication of their vindictive and unreasoning decision-making in favour of harming the country's international effectiveness, its reputation and the government that relies upon them, much less the taxpayers that pay their salaries.

An utterly shameless and shameful performance.