Government Operations Committee on June 15th, 2006

[Donald Lemaire]

For the time being, yes.

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I will give you a call because I would like to hear about your vision for the future.

I was being facetious earlier, but there should be a cost for wrongdoing. These wrongdoers need to know how much they're costing the Public Service Commission in terms of audits for failing to comply with guidelines. It must be worth something. They have the resources, but you are the ones doing the audits and catching them out. Given the resources at their disposal, they don't do the work they should be doing.

[Donald Lemaire]

They should even have to pay a premium.

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

That's exactly what I'm saying. Thank you, Mr. Lemaire.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Ms. Nash.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

As I'm listening to your report, I'm remembering how difficult it was for me to hire my staff as a new member of Parliament, so the thought of hiring tens of thousands of staff seems pretty daunting.

There are two areas I'd like to ask you about in my remaining five minutes. The first one is on the issue of employment equity. This is the 20th anniversary of employment equity legislation in our country. It is a goal we hold to make sure that our hiring is fair and democratic and that we're getting the best talent possible. We discussed earlier that there is a generational change taking place starting now, I guess, and over the next few years in the public service. You talked about a report that's going to come later this year.

What I'd like to know is how you will proceed to develop a strategy to take full advantage of the full range of talent we have and make sure we are diverse and fully representative in the public service, and that where barriers are identified there is a strategy to deal with them as quickly as possible.

[Maria Barrados]

Among things we have done to date in the kind of strategy we've followed, one is that there obviously has to be a lot of information, so we did a lot of work initially to provide information on availability of people and on how to apply, and in working with groups to encourage them to apply. I think we see some of the results of that in the volume of applications: we have the people applying, which may not have been the case in the past. But we did a lot of work on it.

On the executive side, under the old legislation, where we were making the appointments, we looked at the representativeness in each department and challenged departments on why they were not considering targeting some of these positions specifically to members of visible minorities to try to get the numbers up. The decision was finally always in the hands of the managers about that kind of targeting.

As Linda was saying, we developed a pre-qualified pool of EX-1s for entry into the public service, who we tested. We advertised, we tested, and they're executive-ready. We are encouraging departments to make use of this pre-qualified pool, because certainly you can reduce your time to staff when you have a pool of people to draw from. So we're doing that.

Your question about going forward is about what it is we do because the world now has changed. I'm going to be looking a lot to that study to pinpoint for us where the problems are, because I think our strategy has to be developed in this area. We will continue to be very active on that file. We take every opportunity we can to discuss it. We report regularly on where the numbers are. We make it one of the things we always talk about that people have to take into account.

But in terms of specific things, I need to be a little more informed about what the problem is, because I think we have them now coming in. We just have to worry about what level it has reached, and what it is about the process that is taking them out, and what it is you can and should do to try to keep more of them in the process.

Having said that, we still expect appointments to be merit-based and non-partisan.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

I hear you saying that once you get that information you will develop a new strategy based on the barriers that are identified in the upcoming study.

[Maria Barrados]

That's right.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

I mentioned earlier that I think the goal of non-partisanship in hiring is critical to an effective public service. I think generally there's a sense that we do fairly well on this as a country. We've talked about the rights of public servants to run for office or to hold office. Can you describe for me, though, what the rights around partisan activities of public service staff are—the right to engage in the election process and that kind of thing?

[Maria Barrados]

That's a very interesting question and a rather complicated one, because under the previous Public Service Employment Act there was a prohibition. Public servants were not allowed to be involved in political activity, until a case went to the Supreme Court in the early nineties. It said this was too severe a prohibition, and that public servants still had rights, and rights to be politically active, but that it had to be appropriate to their job, and it discussed what the risks were for the public service.

That meant those sections of the old PSEA were struck down. Under the new PSEA we have a new section that gives direction on non-partisanship in the public service and that has left it to the judgment of the Public Service Commission. What that means for us is that we have a role in providing guidance. We have little self-administered tests public servants can do.

It's a function of the nature of their job, the profile of their job, and how closely they may be working with the political level. As I tell people all the time, it's actually a very easy test. If you're working with one party that is the government and you have a change in party in government, does it give you a problem? That's the simple test.

So we provide a lot of guidance and a lot of direction. We have a system now that is directional and informative, and we've been doing a lot of training with people. We give advice, but then we also hear complaints. And if there is a complaint of non-partisanship, we can investigate through this administrative review process, and we can revoke and punish.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you very much.

We thank you for coming before the committee. I know we'll be seeing you again in the fall, when you table your reports. We wish you well.

[Maria Barrados]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

I don't think we'll end the meeting right away. There is a motion. Does everybody have a copy? It has been translated.

I believe there is consensus.

Mr. Alghabra.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I submitted a notice of motion last meeting, and the original motion was that the committee report to the House that it calls on the government to implement accrual-based budgeting before 2009. We had several discussions, and I think there is a friendly amendment that was submitted by my colleague from the Conservatives.

Mike, do you want to read the amendment, the whole thing?

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Everybody has a copy of the amendment, including the translation piece?

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

All that I'm asking is for the motion to be read in both French and English so that it goes on the record.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. It is very well written.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

That's good.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Madam Chair, do you want to read that motion so it's on the record?

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Do we have to read it so it goes on the record?

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

We have to read it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

We have to read it, okay.

The amended motion is that the committee report to the House that it calls on the government to evaluate how to implement accrual-based budgeting and appropriations by 2009; and that the committee's fall agenda be set aside to extensively study the implementation of accrual accounting with a view to make a recommendation to the House prior to December 2006.

Do you want me to read it in French as well?

That the Committee report to the House that it calls on the government to evaluate how to implement accrual-based budgeting and appropriations by 2009; and

That the Committee's fall agenda be set aside to extensively study the implementation of accrual accounting with a view to make a recommendation to the House prior to December 2006.

Do you want to debate this, or do you just want to call the question?

[An hon. member]

Call the question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

(Motion agreed to)

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

We're moving forward.