Entitled Exceptionalism

Those individuals who serve their country in missions abroad as diplomats at various levels, concerned with politics, with trade, with cultural exchanges and handling requests for refugee asylum, looking after immigration proceedings, and for representing the interests of nationals living abroad, have a very special job, and one which also privileges them. As envoys of their country they are highly respected. They become the face of their country abroad, and by their actions and demeanor represent all that is to be admired about the country they represent.



They are privileged in that they are given the opportunity to travel internationally, to those countries where they are posted throughout their careers. They are given the privilege of immunity from local and national law and order, although it is incumbent upon them as representatives of their own country to extend the courtesy of respecting the laws and customs of other countries where they are posted. They are exceedingly well housed in a manner meant to showcase their privileged status.

Canadian Government -- Warsaw

They are recompensed extremely well, expecting and receiving generous salaries for the work they are expected to accomplish on behalf of their country, and they are as well given many additional and sometimes quite extravagant extras. They are protected from cost-of-living expenses, they are privileged with paid-for travel expenses to return home regularly, or to arrange for family members to be flown out to visit them, as part of their contracts.

And they are expected by their government that they represent, and by the taxpayers of the country who fund their enterprise through embassies and consulates abroad as well as their salaries, to exemplify all that is best in public service. The problem is that when people are given that level of trust, allied with a gracious way of living and a generous salary that reflects the importance of the position they fill, they also end up feeling entitled.

Canada's Foreign Service personnel have launched a type of work-to-rule strike that has been unknown in the past in that area of the country's public service. It is an elite area of the public service. And because of that there are expectations that those who fill these extraordinarily privileged positions will appreciate that anticipation of government and the taxpayer that they will fulfill their obligations.

PAFSO, the professional association representing Canada's Foreign Service Officers, is put out that there is an outstanding lack of wage settlement. Government has offered the same wage settlement that other unions have been asked to accept during a period of fiscal restraint. PAFSO has refused. Resulting in a series of low-key strike actions; affecting sporadic service withdrawals.

FSO activists have arranged for picket lines to embarrass the government at foreign embassies; a situation truly lacking in professional dignity. The actions have inconvenienced ministerial travel, visa applicants and immigration files, and now they threaten as well to impact deleteriously on the country's tourism, through the slowdown of visa application files.

Because most of Canada's international travellers arrive during summer months between June and September, leaving as much as $17-billion behind in the Canadian economy, this additional stress on the economy is beyond inconvenient and serves as a destabilizing ingredient in an already stressed situation. It represents extortion, in fact.

The union's argument is that the dispute over wage settlement between government and FSOs is Treasury Board's fault. PAFSO is unwilling to accept that FSOs accept a raise similar to the one given the rest of the public service. The cost to the country of these slow-downs in service will impact in the billions, while the raise that PAFSO insists for its members is estimated in total about $4.2-million annually.

Extortion by any other nomenclature.