Report of the
Spousal Employment Committee
By: Donald Belisle,
FSCA Interdepartmental Liaison and Spousal Employment Coordinator
Bez Babakhani, David Paget, Mandy Bailey, Sue Bogue – Committee Co-Chairs
Well another year has come and gone for your Spousal Employment Committee, and it was a year in which we built on last year’s great achievements.
We have had great success with our regular meetings with senior management, including the then Associate Deputy Minister Marie-Lucie Morin and the ADM Human Resources Gisèle Samson Verreault, during which we continued our wide-ranging and candid discussions on a variety of topics, including spousal employment. These meetings have allowed us to make real progress on a number of spousal employment initiatives.
One of the initiatives we are most proud of is successfully arguing for spouses to retain the right to work from their staff quarters. As you are likely aware there is now a new Conduct Abroad Code. What you may not be aware of, however, is that in its original draft the Code proposed to completely prohibit any and all work out of staff quarters by any foreign service employee or family member. After many months of work and discussions, we were able to come up with what we feel is a fair compromise and that spouses and family members are allowed to continue to work discreetly from their staff quarters.
In addition, with the re-introduction instruction letters to new Heads of Mission. We were successful in adding Spousal Employment as one of the priorities for new HOM’s.
We have also made changes to the Managerial Checklist, as a result of managers contacting the FSCA and noting that the Checklist made it appear that hiring a spouse was a negative. After discussions with the Department, we were again able to change the Checklist to ensure this perception did not continue.
We have also managed to get a pilot course entitled “Finding a job with the Federal Government”. This course, offered by DND’s Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC) has proven to be one of their most popular. While the pilot course was not focused exclusively on spouses, it therefore was not exactly what we wanted. However, we continue to work with the Department and the MFRC to enhance this course and we are hoping to have another trial soon. Given the literally hundreds who tried to attend, there is obviously a great need for such a workshop.
You will also soon be seeing a revamped Community Coordinator program -- we provided our input into the program and though we did not see all of the changes we proposed, we are happy with the new program. Remember that this will be the first year of the program and there will be room for change once the first year has been evaluated.
You will notice that the position is focussed much more on integration at post. We look forward to your response to the program and we will be working with our members once the first year is over to see what worked and what could be improved upon.
All of the accomplishments could not have been done without the tremendous work from our Co-Chairs Bez Babakahni and David Paget who were amazing to work for and I wish them both well in their new assignments. The Association owes them both a debt of gratitude. I am also optimistic and have been working with our new committee Co-Chairs Mandy Bailey and Sue Bogue, both of whom have a number of great ideas and a fantastic energy that will allow the Spousal Employment Committee to further build upon our past successes.