bout de papier, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1984) — June 1984 // Juin 1984, p. 3
I was delighted to have been asked to convey a brief message for this edition of the bout de papier, celebrating 75 years of External Affairs.
There is no doubt that the changes that have taken place in government, particularly over the last 20 years, have been momentous. Technological advances and an ever-increasing requirement for specialization have forced departments to review their operations and, when necessary, to reorganize in order to meet the challenges of the future. We are all today members of a new department with a fundamentally changed mandate and a role in government which is essentially different from the department that was created by the External Affairs Act of 1909.
Where change has not been necessary is in the role and basic functions of the Canadian Foreign Service. Regardless of our past departmental loyalties and affiliations, we remain the interface at the governmental level between Canada and the rest of the world. We can continue to take justifiable pride in the high calibre of our membership and in the professional approach we take to our work both abroad and in Ottawa under often difficult and trying circumstances. In this vein I would like to share with you an anonymous tribute to the Foreign Service Officer which I came across while serving in Tel Aviv:
“As nearly everyone knows, a Foreign Service Officer has practically nothing to do except to decide what is to be done; to tell somebody to do it, to listen to reasons why it should not be done, why it should be done in a different way; to follow up to see if the thing has been done; to discover that it has not, to enquire why; to listen to excuses from the person who should have done it; to follow up again to see if the thing has been done, only to discover it has been done incorrectly; to point out how it should have been done; to conclude that as long as it has been done, it may as well be left where it is; to wonder if it is now time to get rid of a person who cannot do a thing right; to reflect that he probably has a wife and a large family, and that certainly any successor would be just as bad, and maybe worse; to consider how much simpler and better the thing would have been done if one had done it oneself in the first place; to reflect sadly that one could have done it right in twenty minutes, and, as things turned out, one has had to spend two days to find out why it has taken three weeks for somebody else to do it wrong.”
In sharing this anecdote which demonstrates the kind of frustrations that have beset us all at one time or another, I would like to wish all our colleagues a ’Happy Anniversary’ and another successful 75 years.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1984) — June 1984 // Juin 1984, p. 3. Read the rest of this issue →
