Government Operations Committee on June 15th, 2006

[Maria Barrados]

Yes, but it was not because of language issues. Rather, it was related to merit. Language is just one element in evaluating merit.

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

I would like to come back to that question, Ms. Barrados.

In my opinion, when filling a position under the terms of the human resources plan, essential requirements must be determined.

If managers decide that bilingualism is a core requirement, that means that the person hired must be able to operate just as well in French as in English. We cannot wait for them to go through one year's training, no matter who it is. It doesn't matter if the person is anglophone, francophone, or allophone, they must be bilingual and fluent in both languages.

It therefore becomes a matter of principle: one must have both languages. We cannot simply overlook the principle and say that a certain biologist, researcher, or a statistician is excellent, even if he or she is not bilingual. The person must be bilingual.

When a department is staffing positions—and I know that you are not responsible for the armed forces, but only civilian members of the armed forces—and systematically does not respect this basis principle, something has to be done, does it not?

[Maria Barrados]

Yes.

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

This is your responsibility, isn't it? In the case of the armed forces personnel, whose responsibility is it? We want to be well informed so that we can question the right person.

[Maria Barrados]

We don't deal with those appointments. A member of the armed forces must handle that.

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

That is fine, thank you. We will be addressing that question to the right person.

I believe that this issue is very important. It does not only concern the Commissioner of Official Languages. It is a broad issue. This principle hasn't been respected for 30 years, and it is one that is very important for all Canadians and Quebeckers. We feel that enough is enough.

[Maria Barrados]

I should add that the system that allows us to determine the requirements of a position also allows us to determine whether or not requirements for a position are imperative or non-imperative.

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

Of course. I agree with you, Ms. Barrados.

In the document we received this morning, it says that your budget will be decreasing. For 2006-2007, your budget is $112 million, that is $106 million plus $6 million in revenues. I may have the opportunity to ask you a question about the $6 million. For 2008-2009, your budget will be $91 million, but the number of your full-time equivalents will increase.

There must be a very good reason for that, Ms. Barrados, and I would like to know what it is. It is very rare for a budget to decrease when the number of full-time equivalents increases. Usually, employee salaries are very costly.

[Maria Barrados]

It is due to the amount allocated for the entire computer system, for the first two years.

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

Therefore, our researcher was right.

[Maria Barrados]

It is the computer system for the entire government. It is an amount earmarked for consultants and contracts. The other figures are estimates. The PSC will encounter the same difficulties as others do. Many senior employees will be retiring and new ones will be hired at lower levels.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you, Ms. Barrados.

Go ahead, Mr. Albrecht.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for being here today.

One of my concerns is that we seem to be continually adding layers of monitoring and auditing functions. I know that's a function of our society, unfortunately. It's certainly one my concerns, in terms of how many watchdogs do we need to watch the watchdogs.

Having said that, I can see with the example you gave us this morning of the Canadian Space Agency, with 48% non-compliance, and then the Public Works and Government Services Canada example. On page 21 and 22 of your 2005 report, you mentioned a group where out of 25 appointments, 100% of them were non-compliant. So that's obviously a major concern.

Then I noted as well that with the commission for public complaints against the RCMP, there are significant complaints. It would seem to me that a group with that name, “commission for public complaints”, would do all in their power not to have any complaints against them.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Having said that, I have two questions. First of all, what triggers an audit? Is it one complaint, a hundred complaints? Is it a random thing? Is it done everyx number of years?

Secondly, if my math is right, I notice you currently have one for every 185 people, because you say you're responsible for 185,000 staff, and there are roughly 1,000 staff. I realize those are not all management staff; that's the total. But could you give me an idea of what would be an ideal ratio, or a number of staff required to do this job adequately in our current culture?

[Maria Barrados]

Okay, I'll start with your question on audit and what triggers an audit.

We are setting up a system that I would like to see entirely risk-based and risk-driven, which does mean that we come forward with the problems. The idea behind our monitoring system and the monitoring of our delegations is that we start looking for the early warning signs that we have issues. So the approach we're taking is that if departments and agency heads have a problem, fix it, because I will be writing to them.

So when I talk about the overall health of the system, this reflects the results of our monitoring. We write to the departments and say to them, you have a problem.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

How would you identify a problem in the first place? That's my question.

[Maria Barrados]

It's part of the delegation agreement we have. We're saying these are the responsibilities to staff, this is how we expect you to run it, and these are the kinds of measures we expect you to monitor.

We're looking at how many competitive processes you're running; we're looking at how you're advertising these things. Are you advertising them? Are you doing a lot of staffings and not advertising? We're looking for the kinds of complaints you're having. We're looking at employee satisfaction. We're looking at representativeness. A lot of these things can be reasonably non-intrusive, if we get the systems working right so that we have systems that give us these numbers as the first warning signs.

In the case of one small organization that has ten staff and where we can see there is a big problem, I will sit down with that person and ask: what are you doing to fix it? We expect it to be fixed. We have people coming in to tell them how to do it, and then we'll go back to make sure they've fixed it. So it's a risk-based system that we want in place.

You cited examples: the military police complaints commission was one; PWGSC was another, where we were actually asked to come in. At PWGSC, the deputy had a problem. They were working with unions, the unions were not satisfied with what was done, and everyone agreed to have us come in. In the case of the military police complaints commission, it was a lot of staff complaints and some union complaints. We go in and we do the audit.

On your question about what is the ideal size, I'm not sure I have a really good answer.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I just wondered if you had a thought on it.

[Maria Barrados]

It's a very good question, and I worry about it, and that's because the system is in such transition, and I'm not quite clear what the end point is.

On the audit side, I have to benchmark myself against the Auditor General, and I know I don't have the audit capacity I need to have. Her universe is different, and her mandates are different; I understand all that. But I don't have the audit capacity I need, because to do the kind of work we do, where I'm conditioning delegations and revoking jobs, I want to make sure we're absolutely right. And what I'm not sure is what the extent of that service component will be and what shape it's going to take.

At this point, I'm sorry, I can't give you a good answer.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

This was more a philosophical question. I hope we're aware we don't want to come to a situation where were have five people monitoring five people, or that sort of thing. I know that's extreme, but....

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Mr. Alghabra.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to continue my line of questioning from when I ran out of time earlier. First, I want to go on the record as saying I don't necessarily believe arbitrary quotas are the right way to go about ensuring that the public service represents the makeup of society, but I do believe we have a responsibility, and the public service has a responsibility, to perhaps work harder to ensure that we do a better job of reaching out to visible minorities or underrepresented people and ensuring that they have an equal footing or a level playing field when it comes to applying for jobs.

You've said everything we say here is important, so I wanted to go on the record to say that.

The question I have for you is this. Do you automatically table the upcoming reports you're expectnig this year and perhaps next with this committee, or do we need to request that you do so?

[Maria Barrados]

My understanding is that it automatically gets referred to this committee.

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

And I'm not sure whether this was answered earlier: do you know which reports will be issued this year?