bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1993) — Fall/Winter 1993 // Automne/Hiver 1993, pp. 36–37
Political patronage in the foreign service was one of the big issues for members of the Canadian foreign service during the recent federal elections. The number of political appointees both as the Head of Post and below had increased dramatically in the last ten years. As a result, the President of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officer (PAFSO) wrote to four of the major political parties asking for a commitment to a professional foreign service. bout de papier has now discovered that members of the foreign service played a much more active role on the issue during the elections than was originally expected, going much beyond the PAFSO letter. There are some who believed foreign service personnel played a key role in the elections results.
DAPPER Citizens Movement
The national headquarters of Diplomats Against Political Patronage in External Relations (DAPPER) Citizens Movement is located in a shopfront office on Rideau Street in Ottawa. The stark offices have the stale ambience of the aftermath of a national day reception. Half empty glasses of 1984 St Esthephe stand forlornly on the wooden tables. Serving platters of hors d’oeuvres — smoked salmon, prunes wrapped in bacon, flaky puffs of crab, and the devilled eggs — lay on photocopiers, printers and fold-up seats. The chairs for the string quartet from Kemptville are still neatly arranged under a bank of television sets. It is much like any election office, the day after the election.
Geoffrey “Spunky” Boothwick, former Second Secretary, Political Affairs, Canadian Embassy in Chile, steps out of his tiny office in the back. He brushes the Ritz cracker and pâté crumbs from his patrician lips and flicks the back of this hand over his vest, making sure that no crumbs stay on his dark pin-striped suit.
“DAPPER made political patronage in the foreign service the central issue of the election. You’d be a fool not to admit it.” He takes a flaky puff of crab from the serving plate.
“First, there was our two hundred page campaign document, Taking Away Opportunities, which set out the arguments — pro and con — on political appointments in the foreign service.”
He continues, “I think the parties appreciated the objective, non-polemical, and reasoned approach in the document. Here on the first half of Page 156 we outline the advantages of political appointments. The rest of the document shows the other side of the coin-crippling costs, career genocide for a generation of the best and brightest Canadians, and the meltdown of Canadian foreign policy.”
Boothwick reaches for his demi-tasse of espresso coffee which a white tuxedoed servant brings to him. “Thank you, Alfonso. I guess it was rather a pity that the document did not get out in time for the election. We redrafted it a lot to get it just right. In fact we still are redrafting. The document should be ready at the end of November if we can get it signed through our office here, which is patterned on the External Affairs bureaucracy. In any case the spirit of the document infused the campaign”
“As for the campaign itself,” Boothwick continues, “we did not get distracted from our game plan. All across the country we had foreign service officers, relatives, cousins, school chums, and pen pals going to the all party meetings to keep the issue in front of the Canadian public.”
Boothwick pops a video into a VCR. “This is typical of our campaign. It’s an all candidates meeting in Thunder Bay.” The screen comes alive. It shows a table of seven candidates facing an audience of about fifty people. In the back row, a well-dressed man in a three piece blue suit rises, shifts his umbrella with a hand-carved wooden handle from his right to left arm and reaches for the floor microphone.
He begins to speak. “Gentlemen and ladies. It is a great pleasure to be here in your, er our, electoral riding and I bring the best wishes of my Department, er my best wishes, for the successful election of all candidates here present. Yet I believe that all of you are ignoring the foremost issue facing the Canadian public-jobs, jobs, jobs in the foreign service. Briefly, it is the position of my Department, er I mean, my position that there should be none for you lot. Can I hear your views on this subject of utmost interest to my authorities, er to me, so that I can report back to myself? Thank you and my highest regards to your leaders.” The screen shows all the candidates looking puzzled at each other and shrugging their shoulders.
“You see!” Boothwick exclaims, his pale blue eyes sparkling with excitement. “It was like this all over the country. This constant forcing of our agenda. I admit it was a bit of a struggle in Quebec, trying to get the sovereignty thing off the front pages and in the West placing the issue in the context of Western alienation. But then again, our media events helped our cause. The Head of Posts, holding hands around the Lester Pearson statue on Parliament Hill and singing “We shall overcome”, was particularly moving. Pity the national press did not pick it up.”
Boothwick looks ahead with his self-confident regard, tugging on his lapels to straighten his suit. “Yes, I can assure you. This was an issue the Canadian public could identify with. With the campaign we ran, you won’t be seeing many political appointees in the foreign service in the near future.”
Campaign Headquarters of Major Political Party
“Political patronage in the foreign service as an issue in the campaign? Zilch. Who cares? The only time was Senator Rizutto’s statement that defeated candidates would be found jobs in diplomatic posts. But that didn’t last long. Too bad.” Allan Reid Cleggmeister, campaign pollster, sighs. “The DAPPER Citizens Movement? No, I can’t say I’ve heard of them. You heard of them, Marcel?
Marcel Cote-Rivard-Tremblay-Morin, a leading party strategist and organizer, is smoking a cigar in the corner of the small hotel room. “Yeah, they’re those puffs from External. We’re still waiting for the press release they promised us at the beginning of the campaign. No, DAPPER didn’t kill us. Know what did? IPBFSPP.”
Cote-Rivard-Tremblay-Morin gets up from his chair and adjusts his trousers up to cover his slight paunch. He take a deep breath of cigar smoke and sits on the edge of desk in the room. “We should never have agreed to it.” He shakes his head slowly.
He continues. “Never heard of it, eh? Not too many people have. External Affairs senior management was concerned over the number of political appointees in the posts abroad. Their ADM personnel talked us into IPBFSPP. He demanded reciprocity. So all political parties signed on to IPBFSPP — the Interchange Program Between the Foreign Service and Political Parties.”
“We were hurt the most. As we had the greatest number of political appointees overseas, we had to take more External personnel for assignments in our electoral ridings. About fifty of them. Now, that had an impact on our campaign.”
Cote-Rivard-Tremblay-Morin brushes his thick hand over the stubble on his face. “They gave us a Head of Post to run as a candidate in Saskatchewan. He kept inundating campaign headquarters with messages, memorandums and faxes about what kind of car and driver he needed and how his wife needed it during the day. It was difficult to win Moose Jaw with a candidate in a BMW driven by a Filipino.”
“There was the Assistant Deputy Minister they gave us to run as a candidate in Trail, B.C. He kept wanting to have power lunches with the other candidates. He also refused to share any info with our other candidates in B.C. Said something about it wasn’t their bailiwick. Also something very bizarre — he didn’t seem to know how to operate a telephone.”
“Then there was the FS they gave us to work as a speechwriter in Truro, Nova Scotia. She kept on insisting on drafting a text and faxing it to at least thirty people to comment on it.”
“The Director General they gave us as a campaign organizer in Metro Toronto kept organizing staff meetings that kept most of our canvassers off the street. He wanted briefing books of issues revised continually. He couldn’t make decisions either. Kept wanting to refer every decision to the eighth floor. I think that’s how he called Campaign Headquarters.”
“We had some great CRs and ASs working for us in Ontario. Great as canvassers, good organizers. I don’t think their hearts were into our campaign however, kept muttering something about “stick the wage freeze in your ear.”
“The communicators External gave us for our logistics and communications were quite an independent lot too. They wouldn’t allow us into the campaign offices if they were sending a fax or making a phone call. Something about security.”
Cote-Rivard-Tremblay-Morin gets to his feet. “You know, all in all, it was a big mistake. If people are hired to do one job, they should do it. You should just leave the professionals to do the job they know.” He stops and pauses. “Do you know what I mean?”
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1993) — Fall/Winter 1993 // Automne/Hiver 1993, pp. 36–37. Read the rest of this issue →
