bout de papier, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2007) — Spring/Summer 2007 // Printemps/Été 2007, pp. 37–39
The great thing about a foreign service career is the opportunity to work abroad, representing Canada and assisting Canadians wherever they are. And Canadians are everywhere these days; ask the Consular Bureau!
started my career as a Trade Commissioner. My first job was helping a small “maison d’edition” in Montreal to land a contract with the Algerian Ministry of Education to supply school books in French. Since then I’ve done everything from fighting the fish wars in Spain to advising Christian charities from Toronto on their development projects in the Andes. But the most exciting, and most challenging, posting I’ve had was in New York.
Most people know New York as a tourist destination. We go for the shopping, for the theatre, for the museums, and so on. But imagine living and working there! It’s fabulous. On any given day, and depending on your responsibilities, you might be setting up a visit to Wall Street for the Minister of Finance, or planning a lunch with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company to talk investment, or working with the editors of the Food Section in the New York Times on a feature about Canada. The Big Apple is where the worlds of media, of finance, and of entertainment intersect, with large dollops of sport and politics and fashion mixed in.
But New York is not the only interesting posting in the US; Chicago and Boston, Seattle and Minneapolis, Atlanta and San Francisco all offer a broad palette of sophisticated business and political issues, and very pleasant lifestyles. Detroit and Buffalo have become front-line policy posts, with a strong focus on border and security issues, environmental challenges, and emerging questions of North American economic competitiveness. Dallas is at the heart of the extraordinary transformation of Texas into a country within a country (with the GDP of Canada, incidentally). Miami is the vibrant, colourful north-south gateway, connecting North America to the Caribbean and Latin America.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) now operates 23 offices in the United States, ranging from the embassy in Washington through 13 consulates general and six consulates to three satellite trade offices. Each of the consulates general is responsible for a territory of two to six states. Many of these territories are the equivalent of G-8 countries in terms of their economic importance for Canada and the political influence wielded by their congressional delegations. There are also large numbers of Canadians living and working in many areas of the US, such as southern California.
The realization that the regions matter prompted the creation of the Enhanced Representation Initiative (ERI) in 2002. DFAIT needed to ramp up its presence in key sections of the United States, particularly the south and southwest which have been growing in economic and political importance for a generation. The US political system, with its separation of powers, gives Congress enormous clout. Individual senators and members of the House of Representatives are not strictly bound to follow party lines as in our parliamentary system, so it’s essential to know what local interests and influences are shaping their views. The consulates general are much closer to these local influences than the embassy, and can report on who Canada’s allies, and adversaries, are on key files like softwood lumber or “mad cow” or the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (the passport requirement). That enables headquarters to design an advocacy strategy that will enlist powerful US support for our position. In the mid-term elections to Congress in November 2006, Canada had, for the first time, a complete network of posts in every key region of the US. These posts reported on the candidates, their views on issues of importance to Canada, and their sources of support. This new capacity was the product of a lengthy process of reorganization of the network: right-sizing territories to make them more manageable, establishing new offices in places that were not adequately covered, and focussing the work of the foreign service on combatting myths about Canada and fostering more positive views.
One of the innovations introduced by the ERI is a network of honorary consuls, 20 in all, in key American cities such as St. Louis, Missouri, and Portland, Oregon, where Canada does not have an office. These honorary consuls are chosen for their standing in the community and their ability to provide good advice to the consul general to whom they report on how to promote and defend Canadian interests. The Department has been extraordinarily lucky to recruit some very fine individuals who are willing to be champions for Canada.
The US is probably the only country in the world where it’s necessary to work the regions in such a regular and systematic way. Trade Commissioners devote a lot of time to finding allies in the local business community who will tell their congressional representatives that measures unfavourable to Canada will have a negative impact on their own region. Political/economic relations and public affairs officers collaborate with their trade colleagues by identifying potential allies in the local political structure and getting the right messages conveyed in the local media. The old separation between trade and political files is meaningless in the US, where getting a company to consider investing in Canada may depend on convincing their senior executives that Canada is a staunch ally in the war on terror.
One area where bilateral relations often work well is in contacts between Canadian premiers and US governors in adjacent regions. Fostering cross-border cooperation like this makes for very interesting work in the US posts, as do the visits of senior Canadian political leaders at the federal level.
Our proximity to the United States, and our shared history and economic interests, undoubtedly give Canada an advantage in getting a share of US “bandwidth” — as a previous ambassador called it. But we still have to fight for it. Other countries have also increased their representation in the regions. Our Consulate General in Chicago is one of 28 in that city! In San Francisco we’re one of 22.
Important as the US is to Canadian interests — think of it as China and India, Latin America and the EU all rolled together — foreign service officers are reluctant to serve there. Various reasons are advanced for this. Lifestyle is one, but, as I’ve noted above, the posts in the US have a lot to offer. While the beaches of Bali may be lovely, the US has a huge variety of beautiful and interesting places to serve.
Another reason for steering clear of the US seems to be that it’s not foreign enough, that it’s too close to home in every respect. This is a misconception; the US is not at all the country that most Canadians imagine. It’s far more diverse and more complex than the common portrayals of Americans in the Canadian media would have us believe. Most cities in the United States have as much history, cultural activity and regional flavour as their Canadian counterparts; some even more. And Canadians are very welcome.
Cost of living is another issue. This is a legitimate concern, as compensation under the Foreign Service Directives (FSDs) has fallen behind actual costs of living. In a report to Parliament on May 1, the Auditor General noted that while costs are 18 percent higher than in Canada, employees in the US are not fully compensated. This falls hardest on officers assigned to larger cities and on employees with families. It needs to be corrected quickly.
On the positive side, it’s relatively easy for spouses and accredited partners to find work in the US. They get a special visa that allows them to work without losing their diplomatic or consular status, and can potentially earn a very good salary. The ERI Secretariat has developed a pilot project that gives spouses/partners one time assistance of Can$10,000 to help with career transition and this has proven effective.
Housing and schools can be a concern for some. Most officers in the US have to find their own accommodation and furnish it, which translates into a financial penalty. To make matters worse, the housing guidelines imposed by the FSDs mean that our officers are often living in neighbourhoods where the public schools have problems with drugs and violence. Applications for permission to put kids in private schools must be approved by an interdepartmental committee and can take months.
Sometimes the permission comes too late to register the child in an appropriate school. A lot of work has been done by a few dedicated individuals to try to correct these problems, but to date there’s little progress.
The problems are not ones that DFAIT can resolve alone; Treasury Board must agree, and has promised to take a fresh look. The fundamental issue is that the FSDs, as they are applied in the US, are out of line with the needs of modern Canadian families. Correcting them, through negotiations in the triennial review cycle, takes too long.
The Auditor General said in her report, “The process in place to compensate employees for living conditions abroad… has not allowed the Department to respond in a timely way to changing circumstances and the problems employees face as a result. This hinders the Department’s ability to assign qualified staff to some of its missions around the worid. Despite concerns expressed over many years by our Office and various stakeholders, this issue has not been resolved.”
The senior management of the Department has identified this as a priority area for attention. While the foreign service assignment process is basically voluntary, the Department has an obligation to try to put the right people in the right jobs abroad. Disincentives have to be addressed.
In order to finance the expanded network of offices in the US, DFAIT offered a partnership to other government departments with significant involvement in bilateral relations. Six accepted the invitation, including Industry Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and several others are contemplating joining in the next year. Part of the package offered was that their employees would be able to apply for assignments to the US. Now, each year, employees from the Partner departments can apply not only for the 30 or so new positions funded by the ERI but for all the IBD and PERPA positions that come open.
They’re taking advantage of it. In 2005, of 18 positions offered, six were filled by non-DFAIT employees. In 2006, of 14 positions offered, four were filled by the Partners.
In the most important region of the world for Canadian interests, a place that offers interesting work and agreeable lifestyles, experienced foreign service officers are not vying for assignments. The reasons are complex: a reluctance to serve, disincentives, and now competition from employees of other departments. But if this trend continues, FS officers risk becoming marginalised, relegated to countries and regions of secondary importance for Canada. This would be regrettable and would not reinforce the role of the professional foreign service as a key instrument of Canadian international relations.
I I encourage all my FS colleagues to look seriously at a US posting the next time around, and to work with departmental management, through PAFSO, for a new FSD system more in line with the Department’s needs.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2007) — Spring/Summer 2007 // Printemps/Été 2007, pp. 37–39. Read the rest of this issue →
