PAFSO Awards
Bernard Etzinger

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6/14/07

Thank you for your kind introduction Norman.  Et bonjour à tous mes amis, collègues, anciens patrons et patronnes.  Je suis très heureux d'être parmi vous ce soir.

The last time I spoke publicly to a crowd that included my friends and family was at my wedding in 1995, also the year I joined the foreign service.  Some of the people who were at that wedding are here tonight - mom, dad, Andrea, Marta, Tommy, Catherine, Sean, Kaska.
 
I asked a couple of people for advice in what to say tonight. Basically the advice came down to this: tell a story or two; avoid talking about process and remember the team. So I'll try to do that.  Lastly, someone else said "Don't be maudlin."

I like to tell people I have had three exotic postings - one in New York, one in Silicon Valley, and one in Washington, DC. DFAIT doesn't market the US as exotic - but I think it should - not to mention setting up a US stream and recruiting for it.

For me, the definition of exotic is the difference between what you think you know about something compared with what you actually learn about it once you experience it. Heading to New York in 1996 I thought I knew so much about the United States.

Leaving Washington in 2007, having spent nine of the past 11 years living in the neighbourhoods of the Upper West Side, Naglee Park and Capitol Hill, at the same time working in the Canada-US neighbourhood, I realize that I have still barely scratched the surface.

I have also worked with three wonderful teams during those times, four, counting Ottawa and some of them are here tonight - hi Heidi, Mike, Sean, Vikas.

Teams with people who were innovators, who were creative, Canadians, Americans and other nationals. People who believe in Canada, people who work hard.

So here are a few stories.

On posting in New York - 1996 - Budget cut time. The discussion around the table centers around what to cut and why. The first thought is cut the library. The opposing view says transform the library and have them run the internet site. A very senior member of the Consulate asks why do we even need an internet site, much less a library? Luckily, an opposing, but unpopular view is held by the Consul General. After much grumbling, the library survives and Canada in New York.org is born. New York would quickly be knows as the birthplace of new media, and a hotbed for the flow of ideas and technology for Canadian innovators looking to make it big.

Back in Ottawa in the office of the Assistant Deputy Minister for the Americas - Christmas 1999 - The Department is on pins and needless waiting for the Millennium. Millions have been spent on preparing for Y2K and the e-Armageddon to follow. The first report comes in that night from our Head of Mission in Wellington, New Zealand. Millennium fireworks but no planes falling out of the sky.

Meanwhile, at the same time Ahmed Ressam tries to sneak across the US border on his way to blow up LAX. His very public arrest becomes the first time since Ken Taylor's rescue of Americans in Iran that Canada pierces America's consciousness. But the government, citing Westminster tradition, balks at putting Canadian law enforcement in uniform on CNN, on Fox to tell our side of the story. And so on the internet, the vacuum emergers into which the urban myth that Canada is a hotbed of terrorists rushes in, and when 9/11 hits - and the Boston Globe says that two terrorists came from Canada, it's taken as truth.

And just a few weeks ago, a man with TB decides to fly to Montreal because he figures it's easier to get into the US that way than by air. He is portrayed as the coughing Ressam, so to speak.

Then, Washington - 2005 - Frank McKenna is Ambassador and has come up with the idea of creating a national network of expats and friends of Canada who can defend, promote, and network for Canada. At a brainstorming session in the Embassy, in developing that concept, the room is filled with interns, senior and junior officers. The skepticism is palpable among the senior officers. One of them rises to ask - what can 30,000 people do for us that 300 diplomats can't? We' ve got over 30,000 members now, and they are our network.

What I've learned over the past twelve years is that the department has to be careful when it chooses to control rather than to influence.

Because the things we can directly control are shrinking in a world of networks. The opportunities for us lie in knowing what we can influence and having the courage to do it.

What I've also noticed is that now, after being in the foreign service for 12 years now sometimes I am the skeptic, questioning the junior officer, or dismissing the idea because I have the experience to use a detail to trump a concept. It's just too easy to fall into that trap. And that's not the right signal to send to our new officers, or our interns, or anyone.

What I've learned in Washington, is that our message matters and we need to invest in the message. First and foremost it's media. To mash together McLuhan and Tip O'Neill - All media is global. You can't say one thing in one place and then say a different thing elsewhere. But we can reach out globally to media, and show the results back home. And while we could always do more in the world, we will diminish what we do right now, if we don't tell our story.

I've also reached three personal conclusions over the past twelve years.

First, that this public service abroad and in DFAIT, CIC, CIDA and elsewhere has some of the most talented, hard working, quirky, smart, funny, connected and fun people I have ever met. That fact is our greatest asset. We diminish that asset when we measure them by whether they are Foreign Service, rotational or not, locally engaged or not, officers or not. It is a team of believers and that's gold for any institution, but especially for government.

Second, Canada isn't only a country that exists beside the United States. Our existence stretches out worldwide, like a matrix, linked together by networks, by over three million expats, and by millions and millions more for whom Canada is a business partner, aid partner, military partner, or simply a state of mind. Our presence abroad is more than just a string of government outposts. We are nodes in those networks, and our work as embassies and consulates should be to enable the flows of people, ideas, capital and technology that feed our global presence and nourish Canada back home.

Je dirais que nous devrons apprendre une autre langue aussie - la langue de technologie. In Silicon Valley I saw the proof of how the nature of power and sovereignty was being transformed by the technology of networks. Countries are and will remain sovereign. But their power will lie in how they recognize and relate to the explosion of sovereignty that has arisen at the individual level - and that is aggregated in new networks - whether those networks exist for good or for evil.

Looking back, it all boils down to a single question posed by my first Consul General - who is in the room tonight, when he asked, "if our office was to disappear, would anyone notice?"

That is our challenge - not just to be noticed, but to be vital. To customize our diplomacy, our message and our purpose into this rapidly evolving world of networks. And that means knowing our networks, leveraging them, and investing in them. And by making our hierarchy help, not hinder the answering of that question.

Finally, the team. My last five years in Washington have been extraordinary. We have done so much because people have believed. And I would just like to say a few names in closing - Terry Colli, (pause), Dan Abele, Alexi Aldrich, Charlie Martorana, Anna Gibbs, Pam Lambo, Kate Grumbacher, Barbara Donohue, Johanne Fernie, Vikas and Kathy Sharma, Chef Thomas Naylor, Jeremy Adler, Sara Cohen, Nat Richard, Rob Sinclair, Wynne Walper, Farhaan Ladhani, Frank Branker, Erica Fensom,  Lt. Col. Jamie Robertson, Ingrid Summa, Amgad Moustafa, Tara Azimi, Tristan Sanregret, Neelam Chawla and Murray Smith. Not to mention the new team, being led by Sally Southey and Roy Norton, and Bill Crosbie, including Jonathan Sauve, Nicole Currier, Michelle Mahoney, Konn Hawkes, Sonja Panday, Jennifer MacIntryre and Carolyn Strauss. Beyond Washington there's Kevin O'Shea, George Haynal, Curtis Field, and Peter Boehm - and that just scratches the surface. Not to mention the leadership of Michael and Marguerita Kergin, Frank and Julie McKenna and Michael and Margie Wilson.

There are so many others in Washington, at Consulates and in Ottawa, and throughout Canada that I could name.

A special thank you to Colin Robertson and Maureen Boyd - for making the effort to get this ball rolling tonight - but also for inspiring so many of the believers mentioned above.

Another special thank you to Debra Hulley, our Believer-in-Chief - for tonight, for Pafso, for bout de papier, for believing in the foreign service.

And lastly for Marlene - while the Department may own me at times, I belong to you. Without you this award wouldn't have happened and 1995 would have just been another year.

Thank you PAFSO for this award tonight.