bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1987) — Spring 1987 // Printemps 1987, p. 51
I need your help. Some weeks ago, after PAFSO had released a sharply worded protest about yet another non-career head of post assignment, I had an installment on what the late Andy Warhol described as every man’s fifteen minutes of fame. Mine lasted, at most, fifteen seconds.
As President of PAFSO I was asked by the National to explain our objection to the appointment of Jean Drapeau. Because I believe strongly that the number and frequency of such assignments over the past two years has been a threat to the career service, I accepted the offer to be interviewed. Some of you at headquarters may have seen the result. For those of you abroad, let me describe it this way. If you looked at the face of the speaker there was no time to read the caption identifying him as a spokesman for PAFSO. If you read the caption, there was no time to take in the speaker’s visage. No loss in itself, but it leaves me wondering if there was any time to hear the message.
There I was, eight or so minutes of carefully explaining that we have nothing against Mr. Drapeau, that we understand that any government will want, from time to time, to appoint particularly qualified people in whom it has particular confidence, that many outsiders have, indeed, brought special talent and distinction to the foreign service but that FROM THE PRESIDENT OF PAFSO i no previous government has appointed so many amateurs in such a short time, and that this sort of appointment has a deeply felt effect on an already shrinking professional service. Eight careful minutes cut to about as many seconds. Our message distilled to a flip sentence that suited the story that the CBC wanted that night.
The experience has made me think again about what it is we have to say and how we should say it. That’s where all of you come in. Our doughty campaign against non-career appointments has been applauded privately by the otherwise silent senior officers whose immediate interest it serves at least as well as our own. It has attracted very little attention outside the service except when we have taken on the big fish or when it suited the national media producers’ own needs for another barb to use against the government. It does not seem to have slowed down the latter.
I am not suggesting that we relent. The country has been well served by a professional, career foreign service, leavened occasionally by well qualified outsiders. What we have witnessed lately looks like an attempt to change the nature of the service. As such, it puts at risk not just your career, but a tradition of service and excellence.
I do not make the latter claim lightly. Any reading of Canadian diplomatic history reveals a depth of ability and dedication second to none. At the same time, we have to admit that we have carried along no small numbers of less than brilliant performers at every level. Other people know that too.
If we believe that the foreign service is under attack and if we believe that a protessional, career service is not just preferable, but superior, to any other model, then, more and more, in a hostile political and bureaucratic environment (nobody out there loves us!) and with a shrinking personnel base, we are going to have to prove it. This is not another “buck up and do your best” piece. We are going to have to show, over and over again, why we are better at this than amateurs. I mean it when I say I need your help. I want to be able to point to examples of excellence, of service beyond the call. I want to have lıving examples to cite when I talk to the media and to the Minister.
My last column was by way of exhortation. This one is asking for cards and letters. Let me know about the extraordinary people who make up the service and the remarkable things they are doing. I hear someone sniffing that it isn’t dignified. That kind of stateliness will doom us. What I have in mind may not make the National but it could show us at our best. By Len Mader
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1987) — Spring 1987 // Printemps 1987, p. 51. Read the rest of this issue →
