Good Faith Impulses

Canada's Foreign Service officers are invested in playing hardball with Treasury Board. Their services to the country are invaluable, these are professional diplomats representing the country's very best interests internationally. They must be well acquainted with the issues they represent at the political level, and their obligation to present themselves as representing the preparations and designs of government at the very highest level in pursuing accommodation with other countries in the political and trade sphere is of overarching importance to the government.

For this they are highly respected, their department considered to represent the greatest level of achievement and advancement for the country as a whole on the international circuit. They are thought to be urbane, cosmopolitan, well skilled in diplomatic overtures, with academic degrees to augment their natural cerebral functionality, a credit to the civil service and the government in power whose agenda they are to pursue to the best of their considerable abilities.

Now, through their professional union, the smallest within the federal civil service, they are quite busy at a far more imperative task; looking after the avails of Number One. They have chosen, provoked and encouraged by the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, to set aside their professional qualifications in favour of hard-hat strike action, diminishing the usefulness of their strategic importance enormously and discommoding those whom they are paid to represent in the process.

Treasury Board President Tony Clement, having claimed a series of preconditions before agreeing to binding arbitration has earned the offended wrath of the PAFSO executive. For his unqualified impudence in representing the fiscal needs of government answerable to the taxpayer in balancing the financial books, the penalty exacted by PAFSO is the expansion of service withdrawal -- otherwise known as strike action.

The inconvenience and cost related to simply targeting the three largest visa-processing Canadian missions in Beijing, Mexico City and New Delhi has been expanded to include London, Paris, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, and eleven other important centres where business relating to visas and related matters is conducted. The union's insistent demands for 'wage parity' with those they claim earn more than they do has resulted in real harm done to the government, the country and the reputation of FSOs themselves.

"The Canadian public is deeply concerned by PAFSO's willingness to disrupt international business, including tourism, during our busy spring and summer seasons", stated Minister Clement. Tourism has been heavily impacted, along with the contingent of foreign students who planned to study in Canada, as a result of processing of visa applications now in a backlog situation. Canadian tourism is anticipating a $280-million loss as a result for this summer.

For their part, the union claims a credit to themselves that visa processing has dropped by 65% at the three processing centres targeted up to date. "PAFSO" can only conclude that the government is behaving prejudicially toward the foreign service and is therefore negotiating in bad faith. This should be of serious concern to all Canadians", claimed the union's Tim Edwards. Delusional, it seems, about where the public's sympathies actually lie.

The cachet and prestige of being employed with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade appears to have gone to the heads of Foreign Service Officers. They claim, in their battle for higher wages they they are unfairly targeted, while their salaries are second to none. They cite the inconvenience to themselves and their families in foreign postings, where they should feel privileged to be able to live handsomely abroad and claim personal experiences that broaden their lives.

They cite also the numbers of FSOs leaving DFAIT as an indication of general discontent with working conditions and remuneration. Failing to admit to the public that many bright and extremely ambitious young people, new academic degrees in hand, launch themselves from university directly into jobs that will feature in their future plans.

They plan deliberately to pad their curriculum vitae with diplomatic and international experience, representing their country abroad. To work for a set number of years with DFAIT, then advance themselves by joining the private sector abroad, their desirable experience as government diplomats, their contacts and their travel experience making them candidates for positions such as Vice-President of Corporate Affairs of internationally expanding companies.