Dear members,
Autumn has well and truly arrived in the National Capital Region. The maples are turning, the mornings call for a sweater, and yesterday we finally got to put Diplomatic Notes into your hands. It’s been an eventful couple of weeks, so let me catch you up. In this update: where PAFSO stands on Havana syndrome, the launch of Diplomatic Notes, my visits with members in Bucharest and Paris, congratulations to Paul Raven, a call for a volunteer for IRCC’s Occupational Health and Safety Committee and the documents for our Annual General Meeting.
Havana Syndrome: Our Members’ Safety Comes First
Many of you will have seen the series of recent articles on Havana syndrome in The Globe and Mail, one of which I was quoted in. I want to be clear about where PAFSO stands. Our concern is the health and safety of our members and their families, and the duty of care the Employer owes to everyone it sends abroad. Members who are injured or fall ill in connection with their service deserve to be believed, and to receive timely medical care, fair compensation and, where needed, ongoing accommodation. Those serving where the security situation can change rapidly need accurate information about threats to their safety. National security considerations should never become a reason to withhold support from affected employees, or to delay applying what Cuba should have taught us about risk management, health monitoring and emergency response.
I was glad to hear the Prime Minister say plainly that the government owes “a duty of care for Canadian diplomats who serve on the front lines on behalf of Canadians,” and that he expects to be briefed on the new information and to act from there. That’s an important acknowledgement, and we’ll be looking for it to be reflected in what comes next. We’re following this closely, and I’ll keep you updated as things develop.
Diplomatic Notes Is Here
Yesterday we officially launched our 60th anniversary retrospective Diplomatic Notes: Canada’s Foreign Service Community in Its Own Words.
For more than four decades, PAFSO’s magazine, bout de papier, has been where Canada’s Foreign Service tells its own story. To mark PAFSO’s 60th anniversary, Diplomatic Notes brings together a selection of its most memorable articles in a single bilingual volume. Organized by decade from the 1960s to the 2020s, these first-hand accounts by more than 70 officers, spouses and family members take readers from Montevideo to Moscow, Kigali to Kabul, Baghdad to Bogotá. They cover embassy closures, evacuations, refugee resettlement, summits and elections, as well as commuter marriages, growing up abroad and pets that follow their families from post to post. This isn’t the simplified public image of diplomacy, but the lived reality: demanding, varied, absorbing, sometimes dangerous, sometimes funny and always deeply human.
Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate with us, to my co-editor Lillian Thomsen and our managing editor Farhana Cynthia, and to everyone whose writing fills its pages.
The e-book is free and available now. You can download it from the bout de papier website as an EPUB and add it to the reading app or e-reader you already use. It’s also on Kobo and Apple Books. If you weren’t at the launch and would like a print copy, you’ll be able to order one online by the end of the month, and I’ll share the details as soon as ordering opens.
In-Reach With Members in Bucharest and Paris
In my last message, I mentioned attending the Public Services International (PSI) Fightback Conference in Madrid, and meeting with PAFSO members at our two missions in Spain. The following week, I travelled to Bucharest and Paris for additional productive discussions with FS members at those posts. It was great to hear about their working conditions and concerns, especially regarding healthcare abroad and the handling of relocation and posting cycles. I’ll be following up on these issues with our office now that I’m back.
I also want to offer a special thanks to Julia McNeil in Bucharest and Marc-André Desmarais in Paris for helping me connect with their colleagues. Many thanks also to Jeff Marder and Kevin Rex in Madrid and Bucharest, respectively, and Nadia Berger and Marc-André Jacques in Paris, for taking the time to meet with me to hear PAFSO’s perspectives and offer their own valuable insights as management.
Congratulations to Paul Raven
On September 24, at the National Joint Council (NJC) Seminar, our own Paul Raven, who leads PAFSO’s Labour Relations team, received a Special Recognition Award for his collaborative leadership and advocacy at the NJC.
The NJC is where public service bargaining agents and the Employer sit down together to work out the directives that shape so much of our working lives, from relocation and travel to occupational health and safety. It works by consensus, which means progress depends on people who can build trust across the table, listen as carefully as they argue, and find common ground without giving up what matters. That is exactly what Paul does, and it’s wonderful to see it recognized by the people who work alongside him there. He does this work on behalf of every one of our members, and the whole PAFSO team joins me in congratulating him.
Volunteer Needed: IRCC Occupational Health and Safety Committee
We’re looking for an FS member at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to join the department’s Occupational Health and Safety Committee. Committees like this one are where workplace health and safety concerns get raised and dealt with, so it matters that FS members have a voice at the table. To be eligible, you must be a member of the FS group and based in the National Capital Region. If that’s you and you’re interested, please email info@pafso-apase.com at your earliest opportunity to let us know.
Annual General Meeting: Documents Now Available
Our 61st AGM is on Monday, October 19, at 1600, Ottawa time, and will be held virtually. The meeting documents are now posted on our website, in English and in French. You’ll need to log in with your pafso.com account to see them. If you don’t have an account yet, you can register on the website here.
Registering for the meeting itself is a separate step. If you haven’t done so already, please email agm-aga@pafso-apase.com with your name and department, and we’ll send you the formal invitation. The AGM is your chance to hear directly about the past year’s work and to have your say on the year ahead, and I hope to see many of you there.
As always, should you have any other concerns at work, do not hesitate to reach out to us. That’s what we’re here for. Are you having issues with your pay? Do you feel harassed or discriminated against? Do you have a grievance or a staffing complaint? Or do you just want some clarifications on our collective agreement or the FSDs? Whatever the case, PAFSO is here for you. Just send us an email with your name, department and a detailed description of your concerns. You can click here to learn more about all the member services PAFSO has to offer. For anything and everything else, please send us an email at info@pafso-apase.com and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
Before I write to you again, Thanksgiving will have come and gone. For those of you in Canada, I hope the long weekend brings good food and good company. For those of you at missions where Monday is an ordinary working day, or far from the people you’d most like to share a meal with, I hope you find a moment to mark it all the same. Wherever you are, I’m grateful for the work you do and for the way you look out for one another. It’s what makes this association what it is.
My next message to you will arrive on October 16. Until then, please take care of yourselves and each other.
Pamela Isfeld
President of PAFSO