bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1997) — Winter 1997 // Hiver 1997, p. 3
If you read September 11’s Ottawa
Prime Minister’s Office has decided to give ministerial staff a 15% salary increase. It seems that the $65,000 limit placed on annual salaries for ministerial political staff (not including executive assistants, who make more than $100,000 smackers) was keeping Ministers from hiring staff of truly high quality, leaving them with a corps of young people without much experience. No one of any quality or experience would work for $65,000: after all, according to one anonymous insider, “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.”
Lemme see. What is the maximum salary for a senior foreign service officer — not a senior manager — after 10-20 years on the job? $64,000? What’s the basic salary for a junior officer? About $34,000? What does a junior officer with five years’ experience — at home or abroad – make? About the same.
Experience and expertise obviously is meaningless in this line of work. My friend Ken and I were discussing this last week over lunch, as we were looking for grubs outside the Pearson Building. “Doesn’t that 15% salary increase bother you?” I asked “I mean, our salaries were frozen for years, and then most of us only got 4% this year.”
“And a snotty letter from Personnel” he reminded me, tilting his head back and dropping a black juicy beetle into his mouth. “That counts for something?
“OK. And a snotty letter from Personnel. The point is, doesn’t anyone see the irony?” I scratched my crotch and bared my teeth at the passing cyclists.
“Maybe they need the extra money. I mean, Clearasil’s really expensive now, and look at the price of skateboards, bubblegum….”
“I still don’t buy it.” I picked a few lice out of Ken’s fur and slipped them into my suit jacket for my afternoon snack. “Well, got a Ministerial briefing to do for this afternoon.”
“Me too,” Ken replied. “And a speech at the UN.” We loped off to our offices together, flashing our colourful ID cards at passing females.
I wonder, what do the Non-Monkeys Upstairs — our bosses — think when they see comments like this? Do they worry about all those posts abroad, and how difficult it must be for the few homo sapiens in positions of authority there to keep control over all those apes? Funny, though — somehow, all those sub-humans manage to get things done, even if their frontal lobe development is a little shaky. Teams Canada swoop through our missions abroad with hundreds of starry-eyed business people in tow, and we make it work — for the businesses as well as for the government. Ministerial visits descend, demand, decry and depart: we ensure that they are as prepared as possible to represent our country’s interests at the most senior levels. People who want to travel to Canada — to study, promote business, visit relatives or establish a new life — flow through our offices: we have to decide whether they are suitable (sometimes in a very few minutes, sometimes after extensive detective work), and then be prepared to defend this decision not only to interest groups and immigration consultants, but to our own Ministers and MPs. We promote and protect the interests of Canada — political, economic, commercial, ape, non-ape — every day, in hundreds of ways. And somehow, despite all these activities, we monkeys manage to perform with the highest degree of professionalism.
At least, that’s what our managers tell us. Amazingly enough, we manage to perform to the same levels at headquarters — when we’re not hanging from our tails in the corridors, munching on fruit and nuts, or sitting with typewriters in rooms randomly hitting keys and hoping for the works of Shakespeare to emerge. Imagine if the Ministers, for example, actually realized that their briefing notes and talking points, press lines and clever answers in Parliament were produced by monkeys — like me, for example. It’d make them want to double-check the spelling, and to ensure there are no hidden heretical references to issues dear to our hearts — like preservation of jungle habitats, or — perish the thought — giving us more peanuts.
Do any of the Non-Monkeys Upstairs have a good answer? Finding a suitable answer is indeed a problem for them. How do they respond? “Yes, we pay our employees peanuts, but they do good work anyway”? Doesn’t sound great. “Our employees are not monkeys — we just pay them like monkeys”? “Hmm, well, some of the more senior monkeys get human salaries when they represent us abroad”? Man, I’d like to see that message from the Deputy Minister.
Come to think of it, I guess it’s pretty hard for our bosses to find good press lines on this issue. Better get some of the simians in the Press Office working on it. After hours, of course. As long as they don’t ask for overtime.
Phil Calvert has been with DFAIT since 1982. Most places he has served are trying to forget him. He does not have a prehensile tail.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1997) — Winter 1997 // Hiver 1997, p. 3. Read the rest of this issue →
