bout de papier, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1992) — Summer 1992 // Été 1992, pp. 7–8
Readers will recall the intensive 1990 Corporate Review exercise in which EAITC employees of all levels and streams were challenged to develop innovative approaches to promote the effective delivery of departmental programs within Canada and abroad. In transferring the Social Affairs Stream to CEIC, it is clear that the spirit and decisions of this exercise to which Senior Management and Ministers were so deeply committed have been rejected for reasons which are convincingly explained.
After months of study and reasoned review of the Department’s responsibilities abroad for immigration, consular and passport activities and in recognition not only of their interrelationship, but their consolidation in many foreign ministries such as in the US State Department. The Corporate Review determined: to amalgamate the delivery of these programs at missions abroad under Social Affairs responsibility; to remove the Passport Office and its revolving fund from the Corporate Management Branch; and finally, to create as of 1 April 1991 a new headquarters which reflected the increasing importance of immigration issues in bilateral relations, the prominence of refugee issues in multilateral fora and the need to rejuvenate the consular program.
These decisions set in motion many management, financial and personnel decisions taken at headquarters and abroad, the consequences of which appear not to have been fully considered when undoing what had been done so recently and successfully. Consultations aside, a more thorough research of the impact of the transfer to CEIC and a less disingenuous approach would have revealed that the Foreign Service and EAITC will incur significant costs at every level of operation — costs which are needless in terms of policies, programs and personnel.
In domestic terms, a department concerned with its image, its lack of domestic constituency and the perceptions by other departments in Ottawa should not leap to implement decisions which reverse a longterm management strategy resoundingly endorsed after a year of introspection and consultation. The domestic and international environment has not changed so significantly in twelve months as to warrant a fundamental restructuring in departmental organization affecting three programs. If these changes are not about saving money, as Senior Management has admitted, what are they about? Where is the evidence that the organization of the Consular, Immigration and Passport affairs branch (OFB) was less than effective or less than responsive to direction from Ministers and Senior Management? What really did need fixing? Surely after the sweeping and not inexpensive revisions of Corporate Review, the Department would be better served by letting the new organization demonstrate its effectiveness before introducing yet more change.
In a time of deficit and recession, is it really a priority to move pieces of departments around like jigsaw puzzles without regard to cost or need?
Financial and corporate considerations aside, there is the aspect of service to the public which has been sorely neglected in all discussions of this subject. The Auditor General in his 1989 Report on the Department’s delivery of the Consular Program publicly chastised EAITC for its lackluster performance, poor management practices, lack of global standards, and lack of recognition and career advancement to employees dedicated to consular activities. The transfer of responsibilities to the Social Affairs Stream allowed a rejuvenation of this program, while providing the opportunity for Social Affairs Officers to demonstrate their abilities over a wider range of activities. Social Affairs Officers devised and constructed an outstanding “Consular Awareness” campaign which brought compliments and recognition to the Department, not only from the Auditor General but from the Canadian public. Social Affairs Stream employees managed the Department’s consular program through the Gulf War, not only in Kuwait and a number of missions in the Middle East, but through months of nights and weekends in headquarters. It would be interesting to touch base with these central agencies now to query whether they, too, are convinced that a transfer of consular and passport responsibilities really best serves the Canadian taxpayer and the travelling public at this time.
Recognition of Social Affairs Stream achievements and abilities has been sorely neglected. With a headquarters’ complement no larger than two pages in the departmental phone book, OFB met the challenges of accepting consular responsibilities in which no other group in the Department was interested; rebuilding relations with an alienated Passport Office and overseeing its first year of financial and operative independence as a Special Operating Agency; formulating policy on mass migration and refugee issues worldwide; and managing consular crises globally. These achievements have been rewarded by a transfer out of the Department and by bureaucratic revisionism of the worst kind. Since when do we adhere to the principles of consolidation by deconsolidating? Since when in going “back to basics” is trade promotion a “core” program of External Affairs?
From the viewpoint of Social Affairs Officers abroad, this decision sends conflicting messages. We hear Senior Management speak of ethics and efficiency and then turn 600 Passport Office employees over to their third ADM in twelve months; speak of excellence and then return the consular program to mediocrity; and speak of employee commitment and then transfer 350 committed officers to another department. Perhaps Senior Management should be reminded that Social Affairs Officers in 1981 had a choice whether to stay in CEIC or to transfer to External Affairs. How convenient that the question of choice which was so prominent in the 1981 consolidation process is now forgotten in the 1992 deconsolidation exercise.
The transfer of the stream is most definitely the Department’s loss in terms of skills, youth, enthusiasm and Foreign Service Officers within the broadest meaning of those words. Yet it is never too late to review a decision. It is also never too late to make a case to Management when a decision has unforeseen consequences. This is our responsibility as employees and taxpayers. If Senior Management is not willing, despite strong and compelling argument, to allow the Social Affairs Stream to remain in a Department to which it has committed itself for over a decade, then the sound principles upon which the Department was said to be founded following Corporate Review will by nullified. Most importantly, the EAITC of the future will be as hampered by its organization as was the DEA of the past.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1992) — Summer 1992 // Été 1992, pp. 7–8. Read the rest of this issue →
