bout de papier, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2016), pp. 12–15
When word came down that Daniel Jean wanted to meet urgently, none of us were quite sure what to expect. About a year and a half had passed since Jean, then Canada’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, had made a very public pledge: “My personal promise is to immediately look into how we can move forward. People who know me, know that I prefer actions to words. As such, I will do everything in my power to help make headway on this file.”
The file in question was not something you might expect to make the hearts of Canadian foreign policy junkies flutter. It had nothing to do with the resettlement of Syrian refugees; nor was it in any way related to reenergizing Canadian diplomacy and leadership on key international issues. Rather, it was as dull and arcane a subject as one could imagine: the conversion of a group of departmental employees from one occupational classification to another. Hardly the stuff of a Tom Clancy novel. Did this file really require the Deputy Minister’s attention, and more importantly, a significant amount of his time, energy and political capital?
The 300 or so Management and Consular Officers (MCOs) of the erstwhile Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, since rechristened Global Affairs Canada, had been clamoring for more than twenty years to be recognized as Foreign Service Officers. At stake was membership in the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO), a salary bump, enhanced career advancement opportunities, and long sought-after recognition of their work. After months of silence on the subject, Jean suddenly wanted to talk, and quickly. His staff contacted the members of the MCO Consultative Committee, a departmental body set up to advance the interests of the MCO stream. Jean had some important news to share.
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The story of MCO conversion is surprisingly interesting, with a history stretching back into the early 1990s. The last two to three years alone are full of all the classic ingredients of a Greek tragedy — there’s hope, despair, frustration, anger, betrayal, heroism, and ultimately, redemption. The denouement was always in doubt; in fact, when Deputy Minister Jean announced that conversion had finally been achieved in May 2015, it caught many by surprise.
MCOs were conceived more than two decades ago as ‘administrative officers’. Their job was to grease the wheels of Canada’s diplomatic machinery, ensuring that our diplomatic missions abroad functioned efficiently. However, over the years, it became increasingly apparent that while Global Affairs did diplomacy very well, it was less effective at management. And yet, the need for effective managers is clear: the Department operates 174 missions in 107 countries abroad; employs 4,900 locally-engaged staff; manages more than 2,200 properties with an estimated value of $3 billion; manages budgets, maintains bank accounts and interacts with banking systems at each post; is responsible for ensuring the safety and security of Canadian staff and their families as well as local staff; provides consular services to an ever-increasing number of Canadian travelers overseas; and is expected to have a robust plan to protect Canadian citizens, staff and Canadian interests in response to emergency situations abroad including political unrest, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks.
To be fair, the MCO job did not initially encompass all of these activities. Rather, as the Department slowly acknowledged that its management control systems required strengthening, new taskings from Ottawa to missions abroad seemed to multiply by the day. With budget cutbacks the new norm and political and trade officers already feeling overworked, every new task, every new request for information, every hitherto unassigned deliverable was assigned by default to the MCO. The job became increasingly complex, the number of overtime hours soared, and the MCO arguably became one of the most important actors at Canadian missions abroad. The job slowly evolved from ‘administrative support’ to something more akin to a Chief Operations Officer.
“Over the years, the responsibilities of MCOs have expanded… and the nature of their contribution abroad has become broader and a lot more complex,” notes Daniel Jean. “I meet regularly with our heads of mission when they come through Ottawa and they all underline how critical MCOs are to the pursuit of our international efforts.”
Mary-Jean Wason and Marta Berggren celebrate with then Deputy Minister MCO conversion; Jakarta (Indonesia), May 2015
While most MCOs enjoyed the responsibility and diversity attached to their continually redefined roles, there was one small problem: MCOs continued to be classified as administrative officers rather than Foreign Service Officers. That meant less pay and less respect.
The concept of a political officer, a trade officer, or an immigration officer is intuitively clear. But the label “management and consular officer” is arguably as awkward as it is ambiguous. In fact, the job package is unparalleled within the foreign service for its vast scope of responsibilities. One MCO describes the job as “infinitely varied; at turns hugely rewarding and mindbogglingly frustrating; part psychologist, part MacGyver,”
Even the Department’s brief description of the job on its internet page hints at a monstrously large and complex set of duties. It describes the MCO management role as: “managing embassies and consulates to operate at peak efficiency; overseeing the human resources program…; managing complex budgets…; managing security issues for embassies and consulates; and procuring and managing properties around the world.” The consular component includes “helping Canadians deal with any emergency or distressful event (abroad), including arrest, incarceration, theft of belongings, deprivation, assault, child abduction, death, medical emergencies and medical evacuation, natural disasters, civil unrest, and airline crashes; managing international emergencies, from contingency planning to the evacuation of Canadians following civil unrest or a natural disaster; providing advice and information to the traveling public; and assisting on passport, citizenship, adoption, notary and other files.”
In fact, one could plausibly argue that this is not a job description for one person, but rather for a team of five. “It’s a strange combination of roles and it shocks me that we’re expected to do it all — at one count I had 17 counterparts in the US Embassies and Consulates in my areas of accreditation.”
Still, as much as MCOs love to complain about the number of tasks that get dumped on their desks, they also love their jobs. “T love my work, serving clients, helping Canadians, solving problems, managing resources, saving lives, establishing networks and using them to advance Canadian interests. My days are never the same, I am exhausted at the end of every single day but proud of what I have accomplished…” The sentiment is shared by many.
Another sentiment shared by many was that the job was not appropriately classified, nor appropriately compensated. “An (administrative officer) in any other department would not have to deal with multiple cultures, 120 different labour codes, very different banking systems and use his or her judgment to make decisions on the spot which may or may not skirt policy requirements…”
MCOs privately acknowledge that departmental or Treasury Board policies often collide with the reality of the legal jurisdiction of the host country. Risk analysis and judgment are paramount; not to mention familiarity with a comprehensive suite of laws, regulations, policies, directives, guidelines, manuals and recommendations; both foreign and Canadian.
Daniel Jean’s message to the MCO community promising to make headway on the conversion file was precipitated by a seemingly innocuous human resources action. Generally, one might expect that the redeployment of a few non-rotational officers into a rotational stream might result in some employee grumbling and perhaps a grievance or two. But when the MCO Governance Committee discretely announced that six employees were being redeployed without competition into the MCO stream, it set off a firestorm. The MCO community, already feeling slighted by twenty years of perceived neglect, was up in arms.
One MCO took up the matter with the members of the Governance Committee. A few days later, someone copied on the original exchange wrote his own message of concern, this time copying the entire stream. His message was followed by another; and that one by another; and that one by another. Eventually, a number of senior departmental managers were added to the cc line, including Daniel Jean. One MCO described this turn of events thus: “Catholics believe in order to talk to God that you… must speak via the priest (MCO Governance Committee)… Protestants believe you can talk directly to God (the Deputy Minister). While both are a matter of faith and have value, there is nothing wrong with talking directly to God. God may like to hear from the people if he is a grassroots type of guy.”
Seeing the previous messages sent by their colleagues, more and more MCOs felt emboldened and nailed their own theses to the departmental door. Some messages expressed frustration, others expressed exasperation; some were hopeful, some were playful; but all of them shared one common theme: MCOs demanded change.
Daniel Jean would later acknowledge that “twenty-three years of patience creates an explosive environment.” He adds, “in this particular situation, all deputy ministers, senior executives and heads of mission were well aware, engaged and supportive. Everyone agreed that the contribution of this group deserved to be recognized.”
The messages would continue for over a week; an unprecedented, “unorganized display of solidarity”, in the words of the MCO Consultative Committee. By the end, over 150 MCOs, representing roughly half the stream, had made their voices heard. A Reformation of sorts was under way.
The MCO job package is a peculiar mixture of complex tasks requiring high-level thinking, judgment and networking skills on the one hand, and mundane transactional work on the other. While MCOs generally take great satisfaction from the former, they often wonder whether there are more efficient ways to complete the latter. As one MCO puts it, “I don’t feel a sense of accomplishment when I’m signing electricity bills, but I do when l’ve worked a 20-hour day to bring Canadians across a border to safety.”
One of the peculiarities of the MCO job, in particular on the consular side, is that privacy considerations limit the ability of MCOs to trumpet their success stories and to be recognized for the important work they do on behalf of Canadian citizens. While high-profile cases sometimes make the media, such publicity is typically instigated by third parties. The many success stories of Canadian consular officers are rarely celebrated in the same way that a new trade deal, for example, is celebrated. Both are important achievements for the Department, but it’s unlikely that a broadcast message will ever be sent out celebrating the successful resolution of a difficult consular case. The Privacy Act forbids it.
few years ago, I was selected for a short-term assignment at one
of Canada’s missions abroad. It was my first real taste of MCO work. I knew it would be challenging, but I wasn’t expecting to face four exceedingly complex consular cases within the span of four months. The country in question was a small one, and while it did receive its share of Canadian tourists, the numbers were relatively small. For reasons of privacy, I cannot divulge many of the details, but I’d like to share my experience with one case in particular — not because I feel that there was anything especially unique about this case, but rather the opposite — because I feel it is fairly typical of the type of consular case that MCOs successfully manage on a daily basis.
Early on a Sunday moming, I received a call from the Emergency Watch and Response Centre in Ottawa. A young Canadian woman had perished a few hours earlier in a mountaineering accident. Her distraught parents and brother and sister were planning to arrive from Canada the next day. As the responsible consular official, I was asked to render all possible assistance to the family — and for the better part of a week, that’s exactly what I tried to do. Every other task, every other activity, every other deliverable, was put on hold.
When I met the family at the airport late on Monday evening, overwhelming grief was evident in all of their eyes; in every word they spoke; in their collective body language. It suddenly dawned on me that, for this family, I was the Government of Canada. I was its embodiment, its official representative. They had come to collect the remains of their loved one, but also to seek answers to what had happened, why, and whether the trek operator bore any responsibility. Even though I was inexperienced, I knew that Canadians expected their Goverment to protect the interests of its citizens abroad, to ask tough questions, and to demand answers. What many don’t immediately grasp is that, as consular officials, we have no legal authority in the receiving state. While we ourselves enjoy the benefits of diplomatic immunity, we do not have the power to get anyone out of jail, to exempt a Canadian from local laws, or to oblige a local official to carry out our requests. The only real tools that we have are our network of contacts and our power of persuasion.
/ accompanied the victim’s family to several meetings with local officials where they sought answers about the accident and whether or not there was negligence involved. I was also there when they later recovered the subject’s remains. This being a developing country, neither the setting nor the preparation was overly elaborate — the body had been laid out on a simple concrete slab in a small building within a cemetery.
Before returning to Canada, the family had one last request; they wanted to meet with the trek operator, and specifically with the guide that had been roped to the subject and her friend at the time of the accident. They wanted to know whether we could arrange and host such a meeting.
There was nothing specific in the Department’s Consular Manual to guide me on whether or not this was a good idea. I was pretty certain that if I checked, I would find one or more policies advising me to steer clear. Our policy on what we refer to as ‘private legal matters’ was simple: don’t get involved. All the same, I had already spent a few very long days with the family, and I believed them to be reasonable people. A meeting would help clear the air, give them back to Canada feeling that their government had not done enough to assist them.
In the end, a meeting at the Embassy went forward and served as a helpful catharsis for all involved. At one point, the guide was describing the accident and became very emotional, recalling how he himself also had children and could therefore relate to what the victim’s parents were going through. He also stated how this was the worst moment of his life. At that moment, in the most courageous act I’ve ever witnessed, the victim’s mother came over to embrace him. By the end of the meeting, we were all hugging each other and taking pictures at the family’s request.
The fact that the meeting went as well as it did was undoubtedly because the family were some of the nicest and most decent people one could meet — quintessential Canadians. Still, I like to think that my judgment and decision-making also played a small role in ensuring that the meeting was non-confrontational in tone (despite the presence of the family’s legal counsel) and that this sad case was ultimately resolved without growing into something larger than it needed to be. The family sent a very kind letter to our Head of Mission as they were departing, thanking me and my team for our assistance. Even our Director General back in Ottawa admitted that she was moved to tears after reading our daily situation reports.
Canada’s consular officers record small victories like this on a regular basis, but the stories are known to only a select few. While we certainly must continue to respect the privacy of our clients, the Department really needs to find a way to recognize the outstanding achievements of our consular officials, Daniel Jean did not waste a lot of time getting to the point. In spite of his apparent silence during the previous few months, he was in fact working hard behind the scenes with Treasury Board, making the case as to why the Department’s MCOs should be properly classified as Foreign Service Officers. Jean writes, “For months I had tried to explain to those who were concerned we were not communicating enough, that when such files approach a critical phase like a cabinet process, you have to have radio silence both to respect cabinet confidence, and also to avoid creating false expectations.”
Jean wanted the members of the MCO Consultative Committee to be the first to know the good news — the President of Treasury Board had finally signed off and MCO conversion was a done deal. He swore us to secrecy until the next day, so that he could make the announcement to all MCOs formally during a Town Hall session; an event which he later described as “sheer joy”. He had been true to his word; he was indeed a man of action and because of his efforts, MCOs are now able to stand beside their counterparts in the political, trade and immigration streams as proud Foreign Service Officers of Canada.
Peter Kolakovic is First Secretary (Management) and Consul at Canada’s Permanent Mission and Consulate in Geneva.
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2016), pp. 12–15. Read the rest of this issue →
