bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 3 (2000) — Fall 2000 // Automne 2000, pp. 27–28
To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a happy, stable couple will consider having a child at some time. Or it might be an unplanned but welcome event. In the case of the foreign service, odds are this will happen on post to some dozen or so couples every year. This is not a declining number. On the contrary, since the Department is striving to reach its equity targets and more young women are being hired each year, inevitably for some of these women and their partners, their child will be born during a posting. Moreover, the employee will want to use her or his non-discretionary maternity or parental leave to care for the baby during those first exciting and emotional months.
This article is about the difficulties and complexities involved in taking leave without pay and the policy questions which are raised as a result of parenthood. While I deal mainly with the impact of this leave for those on post, many of these issues would be the same if you were taking leave while at headquarters. The number of employees taking maternity or parental leave is of course higher in Ottawa. While these questions are gripping stuff for those in the middle of it, they come close to the bottom for others who have not yet been touched by it.
A note here about abusing a good policy. While employees of both sexes will want to take advantage of our government’s liberal policies, the employee must be careful about not going overboard. The intent of the policy is to alleviate undue hardship on the parents, but not to encourage, for example, one year leaves during two year postings, which by any standards is not good operational policy.
The money
It is clear that quality time spent with a young baby makes it easier for all to adjust to a new life together. There is no substitute for the care a devoted couple can give to a much-wanted child. The Department understands this reality. However, the challenge is to make practice fit reality in our evolving world.
The first challenge is to find out how to manage your leave while on post. There is no one person or position in the Department with responsibility for and expertise in leave without pay: educational, sabbatical, family-related or other. There should be. The procedure is fairly simple; there is a provision for maternity and parental leave while on post in the FSDs. You also have to apply for maternity benefits from Human Resources and Development Canada (HRDC). HRDC is accustomed to paying maternity/parental leave abroad and has a special service centre dedicated to this, so while payments may be slow, they are at least regular. (The question is, if they can pay maternity benefits abroad, why not unemployment? Happily, DFAIT is pursuing this important issue.)
Regrettably, the system for payment in our Department is rather more ad hoc. When you are a long way away, and far from SIGNET (not to mention immersed in feeding, sleeping and nappies), it is hard to keep track. You must make an effort though, in order to avoid bounced cheques and other costly surprises. Your compensation advisor can help and, in particular, can provide guidance on what paperwork is needed to speed up processing of the manual cheques as well as advising you on the health coverage and pension aspects of leave without pay.
Maternity/parental benefits while on leave on post — the tax issue
New maternity and parental leave conditions have been confirmed. At present, a mother can take six months’ leave paid at 93% of her salary and FSD allowances. The father can take ten weeks at 93%. A further six months should be possible for the mother under new collective bargaining arrangements as a result of federal decisions, regardless of disparities in implementation between the provinces.
In response to my question, Revenue Canada ruled in February 1999 that the part of maternity or parental benefits which comes from your allowances is not taxable. This has only recently become important — officers taking leave without pay abroad in earlier years were not taking such long leaves and therefore were not losing much money because of the taxation, nor necessarily changing tax brackets and paying higher taxes.
This Revenue Canada ruling was part of a package which the Employer was already looking into and the ruling provided them with more leverage. However, paying the benefits without taxing them would reduce the amount HRDC can pay, so the employee would have been back to the status quo. The Employer had to go through some tough negotiations to ensure that this would not happen and instead sought and achieved innovative ways of getting around this complication. Now the Department must identify those who took this type of leave while on post – not a simple task.
The stand-in — keeping your boss sane
The other essential matter that concerns us as professionals is the question of who will do my work while I am gone? While you may desperately want the baby and also remain firm on taking several weeks or months off (the longer the better for you both, in many cases), your supervisors and you will also want to ensure your workload is properly handled while you are gone. We all have full workloads and the gap left by a full-time FS taking leave is going to be significant. Not filling the gap may raise the question of whether you are really needed and will be noticed the next time the number-crunchers come looking.
When you take maternity or parental leave, you are on leave without pay. This means your position can be frozen, and your salary money can be used to hire someone to fill in for you. (Your maternity/parental benefits come from an entirely different budget.) This information is useful because it opens up your options. For example, the post can hire an LES with a security clearance, or look for an officer in Ottawa who wants to do some temporary duty (TD). In some cases Personnel can pay salary costs, but the mission/geographic is usually asked to pay at least the per-diems, meals and accommodation and travel costs. Since I was in Australia, this would have been expensive. We were lucky enough to find a spouse with a top secret security clearance who was willing to work. (I note that the TD has advantages for the TDer, too: her experience working in my position for six months no doubt helped in passing the interview to join the Foreign Service.)
The policy
There are solutions to each question and there are people in Ottawa ready to assist. Unless it is really urgent though, these questions will not make it to the top of most priority lists. This is frustrating not only for the parents involved, but also for their managers seeking a satisfactory replacement solution. Some delay is understandable given Ottawa workloads and competing priorities. In order to ease the way for colleagues entering the arena, I wrote it all down with the blessing of Personnel. Ten pages of “How to Take Maternity/Parental Leave on Post.” This document is being updated as changes have been occuring rapidly and will be available to interested employees when it has been finalized.
Women face this reality far more keenly than men, so it is attrition, morale and mobility among female officers that are at issue. This is not to say that fathers who also take parental leave is not a matter to be dealt with, but their more limited leave does not have the same serious consequences for the organization. This reflection has led me and others to address two broader corporate concerns:
1. The role of women in the Foreign Service: The Department has an obligation to make the Foreign Service more representative of Canadian society by hiring and promoting more women, and it has made considerable progress in this regard. But hiring and promoting, while important, are not enough. Terms and conditions of work are critical. The extent to which the terms and conditions of work are conducive to the recruitment and retention of women in the Foreign Service is a credit more to the progress made across the Civil Service. The Employer, employees and the Bargaining Agents need to do more work on the terms and conditions which are unique to the Foreign Service.
2. The welfare of children on foreign postings: It is clear that a decision to go on a posting remains the prerogative of parents who must keep the needs and health of their children in mind. One of the key issues is child care. The provisions in the FSDs and in our contract implicitly assume that children on posting have a parent at home. Children at post with two parents working potentially face serious challenges. The Employer, employees and the bargaining agent need to review these. Canada’s foreign policy encourages institutions and governments to consider children as a segment of society with their own inherent rights. It may be that children on posting once upon a time enjoyed a privileged environment. It may be that this is still true in some parts of the world, but in certain situations this is very definitely not the case and such children often face more loneliness and isolation than they would at home.
The conclusion — never again
I am an optimist by nature, and I tried hard to retain a positive outlook throughout this difficult process. It was clear that any leave where a position is left vacant is an inconvenience to the Department. I was and am appreciative and grateful for the opportunity to spend time with my husband and baby and keep my marvellous job. I was equally grateful for very understanding supervisors at post and interlocutors in headquarters. But I will not be taking maternity leave at post again.
The Department and Canadian foreign policy have benefited enormously from the large influx of smart, committed and dynamic women over the past decade. The Department has made progress towards ensuring this continues but we all need to contribute to ensure a better future for our Department. What have you done lately?
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 3 (2000) — Fall 2000 // Automne 2000, pp. 27–28. Read the rest of this issue →
