Consuming Greed

Wilfully Harming Canada

"The problem is that after about [a decade] of service these foreign service professionals are looking in the office next door to them and seeing economists and lawyers and social scientists who are making huge amounts of money more than them, and they're deciding to take their hard earned skills and experience elsewhere. 
"None of us wants to be on strike. This goes against every bone in our body. It goes against our better instincts, it goes against our professional values, it goes against our dedication to our profession, it goes against our dedication to serving Canada and Canadians."

"Anytime a member of cabinet wants to travel abroad on government business, we are going to be pulling all of our members at Canada's mission in the host country, we're going to pull the geographic division at headquarters ... and we'll also pull any specialized divisions at headquarters that are working on specific deliverables. If there is a treaty or an agreement or something they want to sign, we'll pull the people who are working on that as well. We've gotten well over a dozen cabinet level trips cancelled in the last six weeks.
"All of this could be resolved for a tiny fraction of the wider economic fallout that the government's inflexibility is creating."
Tim Edwards, Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers

A classic example of "protesting too much"; overmuch and without more than an iota of perceived sincerity in some quarters; in short complete B.S. Actions have always shouted far more emphatically than words themselves, and in their unqualified acts of deliberate sabotage to the elite government department they serve, foreign service professionals have put the lie to the 'professional' in them and marked themselves shamefully as rank amateurs; jealous, possessive and greedy.

This is a clear declaration of war. Canada's civil servants feeling entitled, due to their self-perceived elite status as professionals representing the best that Canada has to offer on the international scene, behaving like the tail of the dog obedient to the distractions of its extremity. Dogs perform very well sans tails; government is dependent on the professionalism of its senior diplomatic corps and equally those who belong to PAFSO.

AP Photo/Charles DharapakTim Edwards, president of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, protests in front of the Canadian Embassy in Washington on May 3, 2013. “It really is having the impacts that job action is meant to have,” he says.

 

Perhaps it is time to declare those in the diplomatic corps to be "essential" workers, denying them the unionized legality of holding the government to ransom. After all, the diplomatic corps, in staging these walk-outs, embarrassments-to-government and to Canada as a whole by extension, do so in the belief of their "essential" status. By withdrawing their critical services in a blatant effort to force government to grant them "equality" to other professionals of whom they covet like remuneration, they betray their professionalism.

Every word of Mr. Edward's declaration of loyalty to country, to government, to job, to service to Canada and helpfulness to internationals is belied by the boasts he counters them with in succeeding statements. In describing, aptly, the harm that PAFSO is encouraging its members to on those whom they are pledged and paid handsomely to serve, Mr. Edwards makes of his statement of pained loyalty an utter farce. He boasts of the harm done to Canada, its missions and its ministers.

And then there is the cost to the taxpayer. In contesting the higher salaries paid to lawyers, economists and social scientists, alleging that all diplomatic staff should be seen as equal in value of work and concomitant paycheque, he neglects to consider their specialized qualifications and the years they spent in academia earning those qualifications. On-the-job experience of the diplomatic core is not the equivalent of those specialized qualifications and should not be remunerated in equal salaries.

The three month-old job action has been estimated at a cost thus far of $300-million from tourism loss alone to the treasury -- Canadian taxpayer funded. Canadian taxpayers have a right to believe that the taxes extracted from their own wages are being well and wisely spent. Clearly, with the 1,350 striking diplomatic corps from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade they are not. Ministerial tours have been cancelled and the Governor-General's African tour disrupted, courtesy of PAFSO.

Staff in Moscow, Delhi, Islamabad, Riyadh, Ankara and other posts are busy demonstrating to those countries with sterling international reputations for workers' rights and entitlements that Canada, a bastion of democratic rule and equality is obviously, from all those countries' authorities can happily determine, no better at democratic rule and all it entails than they are. Another bonus to Canada -- courtesy of Canadian diplomats.

While it is undeniably true that somewhere among that one-and-a-quarter-thousand Canadians employed in the sterling professionalism of diplomacy, there must be some outstanding, serious contenders for the status of diplomat-of-the-day, there are present more than sufficient misfits steeped in an attitude of entitlement that they have not earned, and will never earn. A newspaper article recently quoted a foreign service officer stationed in Mexico City's visa office.

This unnamed visa officer explained that he and many of his colleagues feel guilty as files continue to back-log, and as a result feel tempted to actually do the jobs they are paid to do: "But then we have to realize that it's not us, we're not stopping it, it's really the government that's stopping it at the moment... It's a question of equality, of fighting for our rights. It's hard to see that people don't really understand what's going on, they just feel that we're not doing our jobs."

He's spot-on there. Which is say that the general public does indeed feel that the diplomatic staff at DFAIT is "not doing" their jobs. That sad statement of his represents pathetic rationalization. Tying right in with the tenor of their union leader's statements. Representing to the Canadian taxpayer who should give a damn, the malice and dysfunction of social-national betrayal of trust and loyalty. That visa officer stationed in Mexico's statement that "It's extremely difficult...We want to serve our clients the best we can", is fairly disgusting.

The response to what he whingeingly attests and what those on the sharp-end of the work stoppages and slow-downs fear and anticipate differ rather dramatically. "As an institution, we're wary of what will manifest when we get closer to the arrival time for students", said Justin Kerr, international student advisor at Queen's University. "The prospect of delay is already disturbing students", said Morton Mendelson, deputy provost at McGill University which stands also to lose some professors to delayed visas.

And, added Karen McKellin, executive director of the University of British Columbia's International Student Initiative, the strike "adds an element of uncertainty and risks to crossing borders that really shouldn't be there." Local contracts have been hired temporarily to process visas, according to a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Once again, non-Canadians rushing to try to patch what Canadians are destroying; trust, reliability, professionalism.

"The unfortunate stress levels being imposed on tens of thousands of young students will leave a bad taste of Canada in their mouth. It's particularly unfortunate because foreign nationals have no right to be here. Can you imagine? You're in university, and you do not know whether you will have permission to continue your university studies. You risk losing a year, and $25,000 per year that you're out of the game. So it's wrong. Young people are going to be the unfortunately victims of  federal labour dispute."
Richard Kurland, Vancouver immigration lawyer