Ethiopian SNAFU
Last month, BBS pointed readers to a blog post extracted from an e-mail sent by a Canadian member of Op Augural:
Since that time, and despite numerous attempts to obtain some official clarification of the situation from the CF, we have heard nothing. Nothing until now, that is: Michael Friscolanti of Macleans has a story in the January 29th print edition of the magazine that deals with the issue in greater depth than anything we've seen previously (unfortunately, I can't find hide nor hair of it online):
This article brings to light two specific problems at DND right now.
The first concern is the complete lack of information on this issue up until now. From the time the first blog post went up on December 23rd, through when it was picked up at a high-traffic site like small dead animals, and now finally in the mainstream press, the government and DND have locked down information on this, and hard. I've been beating my head against various walls at NDHQ for the better part of a month now to get some context and explanation for this story, and have gotten precisely nowhere. Good on Friscolanti for chipping this much information out of the DND monolith.
The point here is that he shouldn't have to. Stonewalling is old-school PR, anathema to today's best practices. You screwed up? Fine. As a friend of mine reminded me recently, crow is a little more palatable fresh than stale. Own up and tell people how you're going to fix things.
The CF pushes good-news stories when it serves their purposes, but they won't talk about the bad-news ones? That's bullshit, and the real communications professionals within the organization know it. Why they have as little influence on the overall public affairs strategy of the CF as they obviously do is a mystery to me.
The second problem is a failure of leadership: how the hell are the two soldiers in question supposed to plan their finances for six to eight months while the government decides whether they're worthy of a reprieve? They are apparently victims of a tiny but incredibly punitive administrative cock-up - you don't mess around with deployed members' pay, period. What happens to them if Cabinet, in its infinite wisdom and perspicacity, decides to throw these two soldiers under the Revenue Canada bus? This issue should have been mitigated administratively as soon as it came to light, pending a more permanent solution from Cabinet. That nobody in senior leadership has taken the initiative to protect their troops on this point is damningly telling.
(If, in fact, someone with clout has put a stop-gap solution in place, and I just don't know about it, then I refer you back to my first point about effective communication. Don't let a bad-news story sit out in the public domain unchallenged for weeks on end hoping it slides under the radar and goes away quietly. It won't. Even if you think you got away with it, some enterprising newsroom researcher will stumble across it in Google-cache months later and dredge it up into the light of day for all to see. And at that point, mark my words, it will have taken on the rancid whiff of cover-up since you didn't deal with it up front.)
Besides, it shouldn't be taking six to eight months to "rubber-stamp" a true solution. If it's a "rubber-stamp" you need, get a junior officer to run around and collect signatures on a memo. But if it takes more than half a year, it's not truly a "rubber-stamp" now is it? One way or the other, those supposedly in charge of this communications and administrative cluster**** need to sort themselves out.
"Well, guys. I just want to add another injustice to how the CF are being treated. As you know, I am at Addis Ababa with TFAA, supporting the African Union in Sudan. This month, someone in Ottawa has decided that our mission should have the Risk Level down graded from Level 2 to Level 1 and have our danger pay reduced. In addition, with Risk level reduced, the tax exemption was gone. This is retroactive to June 2006. Well, the pay system took all the taxes owed in one shot and for my Dec pay, I owed the Feds $11000.00. This is just bloody insane. I have lost 25 lbs in the last four months and got intestinal amoebic infection twice and is constanly on Anti-biotic which leaves this metallic taste in your mouth. At any given time, 60 to 70% percent of the TFAA members are down with something. In october, all members had dystentery, amoeba infection, and one repatriated member had malaria."
Since that time, and despite numerous attempts to obtain some official clarification of the situation from the CF, we have heard nothing. Nothing until now, that is: Michael Friscolanti of Macleans has a story in the January 29th print edition of the magazine that deals with the issue in greater depth than anything we've seen previously (unfortunately, I can't find hide nor hair of it online):
Operation Augural, Canada's contribution to the African Union mission in Sudan, is classified as [Risk Assessment] Level Two. As a result, all 12 deployed members (two in Khartoum, four in Darfur and six in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) receive a monthly operational allowance of close to $1,600. From there, things get trickier. Although not automatic, the federal cabinet does have the authority to approve tax relief for Level Two missions on a case-by-case basis, which it did for Op Augural. But the ruling applies to only half of the troops. Those stationed in Khartoum and Darfur earn tax-free wages, but not those in Ethiopia. DND has asked cabinet to extend the relief to everyone, but a decision has yet to be made.
...
All will be fixed, of course, if cabinet declares Ethiopia a tax-free zone. Isabelle Bouchard, a spokeswoman for Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor, says her boss hopes the request is rubber-stamped by the summer. "He fully supports it," she says. "And he doesn't expect any push-back." For those two soldiers, summer can't come fast enough.
This article brings to light two specific problems at DND right now.
The first concern is the complete lack of information on this issue up until now. From the time the first blog post went up on December 23rd, through when it was picked up at a high-traffic site like small dead animals, and now finally in the mainstream press, the government and DND have locked down information on this, and hard. I've been beating my head against various walls at NDHQ for the better part of a month now to get some context and explanation for this story, and have gotten precisely nowhere. Good on Friscolanti for chipping this much information out of the DND monolith.
The point here is that he shouldn't have to. Stonewalling is old-school PR, anathema to today's best practices. You screwed up? Fine. As a friend of mine reminded me recently, crow is a little more palatable fresh than stale. Own up and tell people how you're going to fix things.
The CF pushes good-news stories when it serves their purposes, but they won't talk about the bad-news ones? That's bullshit, and the real communications professionals within the organization know it. Why they have as little influence on the overall public affairs strategy of the CF as they obviously do is a mystery to me.
The second problem is a failure of leadership: how the hell are the two soldiers in question supposed to plan their finances for six to eight months while the government decides whether they're worthy of a reprieve? They are apparently victims of a tiny but incredibly punitive administrative cock-up - you don't mess around with deployed members' pay, period. What happens to them if Cabinet, in its infinite wisdom and perspicacity, decides to throw these two soldiers under the Revenue Canada bus? This issue should have been mitigated administratively as soon as it came to light, pending a more permanent solution from Cabinet. That nobody in senior leadership has taken the initiative to protect their troops on this point is damningly telling.
(If, in fact, someone with clout has put a stop-gap solution in place, and I just don't know about it, then I refer you back to my first point about effective communication. Don't let a bad-news story sit out in the public domain unchallenged for weeks on end hoping it slides under the radar and goes away quietly. It won't. Even if you think you got away with it, some enterprising newsroom researcher will stumble across it in Google-cache months later and dredge it up into the light of day for all to see. And at that point, mark my words, it will have taken on the rancid whiff of cover-up since you didn't deal with it up front.)
Besides, it shouldn't be taking six to eight months to "rubber-stamp" a true solution. If it's a "rubber-stamp" you need, get a junior officer to run around and collect signatures on a memo. But if it takes more than half a year, it's not truly a "rubber-stamp" now is it? One way or the other, those supposedly in charge of this communications and administrative cluster**** need to sort themselves out.
posted by Babbling Brooks at 4:50 p.m.
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