Government Operations Committee on Nov. 28th, 2006

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

The members of the committee will recall that when Madam Barrados came before us earlier on this fall, many felt that they hadn't had much of a chance to prepare for her coming to the committee, so we asked her to return to us. She has further wise words to direct towards us, so I will ask Madam Barrados to please begin.

It's your turn.

[Maria Barrados, President, Public Service Commission of Canada]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It is my pleasure to appear before your Committee to discuss further our Annual Report and the three audits we tabled on October 3. I have with me today Linda Gobeil, Senior Vice-President of the Policy Branch, and Donald Lemaire, Vice-President of the Staffing and Assessment Services Branch.

I would like to begin by making some introductory comments on areas of particular interest from our last meeting. The PSC is a key player in ensuring that federal organizations remain accountable to Parliament, and to Canadians, for the appropriate exercise of their staffing authorities. We have been entrusted by Parliament to protect merit and non-partisanship in the management of human resources, independently from Ministerial direction.

In the spring, we released a study on priority appointments of ministerial staff into the public service. Bill C-2 does away with this priority, but does not deal with movement from the public service into ministers' offices. As we discussed in October, we had investigated and revoked two appointments, of public servants who had worked as exempt staff, that had been made inappropriately. We now plan to examine in greater detail through statistical analysis, audit and potentially investigation, the issue of movement of public servants into ministers' offices and back into the public service. We will report the results of our work to Parliament. Our intent is to determine whether there are more irregularities than already reported. Our examination will go back as far as records allow, to the early 1990s.

We are also planning to address representativeness. Closing the gap between the workforce availability of employment equity group members and their representation in the public service continues to be a concern. The PSC is urging departments and agencies to address this gap in their long-term human resources plans. Different means are available. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of pre-qualified pools of employment equity candidates. Last year, we pre-qualified 41 members of visible minorities for entry into the Executive group. To date, 22 have been appointed.

We are also conducting a “drop-off“ study to discover why there is such a gap between the application and appointment rates of members of employment equity groups, particularly of visible minorities. In our recently completed study that examined external recruitment over a five-year period from 2000 to 2005, we found that 25.7% of the applications were from visible minorities, while 10.5% were appointed — above the workforce availability for the jobs in the study, demonstrating a strong interest in working with the public service, and a potential to close the gap in representativity in the public service. We will continue to examine this issue in greater depth.

With the coming into force of the new PSEA, the PSC's priorities changed. We need to play a stronger oversight role in a delegated staffing system. We are conducting more audits and need to increase our capacity by training and developing auditors.

We were given new responsibilities in overseeing the political activities of public servants. Employees have to seek PSC approval to run for election. The responsibility for municipal elections added under the new act has had a significant impact on our workload. Since January 1, 2006, we have received 76 requests for approval to be a candidate, of which 67 were for municipal elections.

We are changing the area of selection policy to broaden access to public service jobs. We implemented the public service resourcing system to help departments screen the larger volumes of applicants that resulted. We have taken the approach of phasing in the use of national area of selection so that by December 2007 all Canadians will have access to most public service jobs open to the public.

Even with full delegation under the new PSEA, we have found that we are continuing to receive a substantial volume of requests for our services. Many departments and agencies lack the human resource capacity and expertise necessary to staff under the new regime. We are committed to supporting the implementation of the new PSEA.

We have realigned our own priorities and reallocated our human and financial resources internally. We have now reached the point at which we cannot do much more reallocation without dropping activities. We have made every effort, including implementing zero-based budgeting. We received a clean opinion on our financial statements from the Auditor General. We are now working with the Treasury Board on a funding solution to meet the steady demand for our services and our new responsibilities under the new PSEA.

I will now turn to the subject of a strengthened link to Parliament. In both the House and the Senate, the PSC proposed amendments to Bill C-2 that would reinforce our independence and strengthen our link to Parliament. Many of these proposals were considered outside the scope of the bill. We will continue to raise these issues in the required five-year review of the PSEA, which will also provide an opportunity for Parliament to examine how well we have done and what types of changes need to be made.

Finally, I appreciate any comments you might provide on how we can improve our accountability to Parliament in our reporting or with respect to the issues we examine. We are dealing with a large, complex system, and we need to be sure that we meet our objective of ensuring merit and non-partisanship in the public service.

Madam Chair, thank you for the invitation to appear before your Committee. I would be pleased to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you very much for coming before the committee.

We'll start with the Liberals, and the first one is Mr. Bains.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

My question is a continuation of a discussion we had with PCO officials who appeared before the committee, and one of the areas we discussed when they were presenting the supplementary estimates was with respect to an aging population, specifically with respect to a void that would exist in the public service sector when the baby boomers retire, in terms of senior executive positions as well as middle-level positions.

They indicated to us in their discussions at that time that PCO was taking on a leadership role and was working with the deputy ministers and working with civil servants to come up with a strategic plan to address that issue. They had, I believe, a plan in place with the private sector, some sort of exchange program they were talking about.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could elaborate on that, if you are aware of such plans, such initiatives--how to address this issue on a going-forward basis, and specifically, what initiatives or partnerships exist with the private sector.

[Maria Barrados]

Thank you for the question.

The way our system is set up, the Public Service Commission is the organization that has the appointment authorities. We are set up to be independent of ministerial directions, which means I am not closely involved with the work of the departments and agencies when it comes to those things that are directed from ministers, as how they might do things.

In the case of the work that is being done now, we have a division whereby the Public Service Commission does the staffing and the appointments, and the government—PCO—does the planning. The plans are set in terms of what the needs are. The Public Service Commission is responsible for making sure the frameworks and the policies and the mechanisms are in place to fill those needs and to do these properly.

To date, I've had only brief conservations with people at PCO about where they're going. Many of the preoccupations they have are the same as mine, in that we need to recruit, and to recruit the right people, for the openings we have coming up.

But I can't really elaborate any more on their plans. I don't know any more than what I've read in the newspaper about their work with the private sector, although I am of the opinion that it is always useful to get as much input from as many people as you can, because they can always inform what you do.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

I appreciate that.

In line with that, the question I have now is with respect to recruitment and assessment. In your total spending—you spend about $112 million, I think the supplementary estimates indicated—approximately $64 million is set aside for recruitment and assessment.

In your opinion, is that sufficient? Obviously there has been an increase year over year, over the $88 million that was set aside previously. Now that you've taken a substantial increase, do you feel it is sufficient for recruitment and assessment, in light of some of the challenges I just suggested—especially on a going forward basis, when there'll be a set of retirements, an attrition that will take place? And how do you deal with that on a going forward basis?

[Maria Barrados]

There is one area in the recruitment and assessment area where I feel some real pressures. This is on the assessment side, on the French language testing side. We realize we have to redo our tests. They're 25 years old, and it is time to renew them, and we need to give better feedback to people. That is an area where I have some real pressure.

The other area, though, in my organization where the pressure is very high is on the new activities I have for political activity and for the oversight requirements that I have. I can reallocate resources, but I don't want to take resources away from recruitment into those oversight areas. I'm now in a position where I feel I will have to either drop some services or get some new resources, and we are having those discussions with the Treasury Board.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

One of the issues you've presented in your opening remarks with respect to the gap of representativeness—one of the areas we discussed last time you were in committee, as well—is with respect to the inequity that exists, or the lack of representation of visible minorities and women and so on.

You have indicated in your opening remarks that you're conducting a drop-off study to discover why there's a gap between the application and the appointment rates, specifically with visible minorities. Do you have a timeline associated with this report?

My question, which we discussed last time as well, is this. We set these goals and targets, and time and time again we don't meet the targets. What accountability measures are there in place to hold people accountable for reaching these targets, and will this report examine that as well?

[Maria Barrados]

As far as the timeline on the report is concerned, we have the report completed now. It's in the process of being translated. The full report will be released as soon as we have it translated.

I feel that's the first step, because what this report did was demonstrate what the statistical amounts were. We could see that the drop-off occurred between applications and actual appointments. But the other part of this report is a little more encouraging. For those jobs that were being examined, the appointment rate was higher than what you would estimate you would get if you just did it on labour force availability.

We have to do two things. We have to look much more closely at why we're getting this drop-off, because there is a very high interest in working in the public service. The second thing we have to do is come up with a better estimate for the rate at which we expect appointments of visible minorities in order to close the gap. In a way, we now have high turnover. We're seeing more movement and we're seeing more turnover. This is also an opportunity to try to get these things right.

We have to do those things right away, and we're starting the work on them. We'll try to get those things into our next annual report.

On the question of how you hold people more accountable, these forums are very effective accountability forums. As well, in our reports we regularly monitor and examine, we give feedback to individual deputies, and we show examples. We are working on these things to move the system more rapidly. We have to say that progress is being made, but it's not happening fast enough.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Do you believe this is the most appropriate way of holding them accountable? Are there any suggestions that you have and could propose to further strengthen accountability? Obviously this is one good example of how we can hold them accountable, but I feel this is not sufficient enough. Can you give examples, from your experience, of how we can further strengthen accountability so that people meet their targets and, in certain instances, even exceed them?

[Maria Barrados]

We've taken a number of initiatives to encourage people to do more. I am of the school where it's encouragement and transparency. One of the things we have to do is have greater transparency in the reporting of the results. I'm pushing that very hard myself, but I think that in all the accountability exercises there should be an expectation that you have the numbers. People from departments should be prepared to discuss those numbers when they come. That kind of question is interesting on the part of members, and I will continue to be interested in it and report it.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Do have time remaining?

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

You got your eight minutes.

Madame Thibault.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I wish to thank Ms. Barrados, Ms. Gobeil and Mr. Lemaire for joining us once again. We much appreciate your presence here.

Ms. Barrados, as you well know, it is not my intention to try to catch you off guard. In the highlights contained in a document that was provided to us in October 2006, it is stated that there was a majority of organizations that were ready to assume delegated authority. In your opening statement, you give us a bit of a warning. You are honest and you say that: “Many departments and agencies lack the human resources capacity and expertise necessary to staff under the new regime.“

You say “many“, without indicating whether there are 14 or 22 of them. Could you give me an order of magnitude? Is this something you mention because it continues to worry you?

Secondly, when all of the implementation efforts were made, my impression — and please correct me if I am wrong — was that with delegation of authority there would also be the necessary resourcing. The latter is perhaps in the right balance, but perhaps it was taken away from you through a reduction of your budget, given that there was no delegation in this area.

Do these departments and agencies have the necessary funding? Was this situation to be expected? If not, is it due to other factors? This could cause recruitment problems. I have been told by several union representatives that in the area of human resources this or that department did not have the necessary resourcing to take care of payroll or other things.

You also say that you are working with Treasury Board in order to find a funding solution. You will understand that that ties in with my previous question. Is this because you were too generous with the transfer of funds? I am not saying this to be cynical, but jokingly.

I will limit myself to those questions for now. I will then have further questions regarding one of my favourite subjects, namely official languages.

[Maria Barrados]

Thank you very much. I will try to answer, and Linda may have something to add.

Let us first deal with the matter of our concerns with regard to the delegation of staffing authority: in other words, were the departments truly ready to be given these powers? We proceeded to define a certain number of essential elements. It is not ideal, but these are essential elements. We for example reviewed the policy in place, offered training, provided communication, and they undertook an oversight role and launched a planning process. Obviously, in order for the system to be complete, all of these elements are required.

We decided that the system was at a stage where delegation was possible. You have to begin somewhere, but we still have concerns with regard to human resource management planning. We have concerns with regard to the oversight capability as well as the computer systems. One must have the necessary systems and means to supervise these things.

In our view, this is the first step. We have the framework, we have the legislation, it is a wonderful accomplishment, but we must do much more in order to truly get the system working.

We also have questions with regard to the resources required. Do departments have sufficient funding? I am convinced that the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada does not have all of the needed capability. Is it really a matter of funding? I am not so convinced, because we detected a problem with regard to staff renewal within the Agency. A lot of people have retired, a lot of new people have thus inherited their responsibilities, and the number of people in human resources has remained the same: there has been no drop.

We must deal with the situation by first considering the response capability, the training and the appointment of people presenting the necessary skills, before asking questions about resources. I continue to have concerns with regard to the lack of investment in the computer systems that are needed. Was it planned for? It is difficult to say. We at the PSC have always had concerns as to our capability regarding the system and the computer side of things.

With regard to funding, were we too generous with the first allotments? I believe that we behaved responsibly because with the new act, there is a change in responsibilities and it is my belief that we did a fair reallocation in accordance with this change of responsibilities.

Linda, would you like to add anything?

[Linda Gobeil, Senior Vice-President, Policy Branch, Public Service Commission of Canada]

Further to what has been said, we are indeed still in a transition period. There is a new act in place, as you know.

The departments are, however, very much aware of our concerns. We have mentioned three in the area of human resource planning and, if they forget, we are here to remind them and this is what we do on a regular basis.

We have observed the same thing with regard to the Human Resources Group, in other words a deficiency. Some initiatives have, as a matter of fact, already been launched. We mentioned this financial resource problem earlier and we are wondering if what is lacking is not perhaps rather access to these people. We are already starting to see results. We are crossing our fingers and we continue to hope that all of this will remain promising.

With regard to the systems, we still have problems in that area. All of that to say that the departments are well aware of the situation and the problems. We are here to remind them about what they have to do. We will have to see in the future to what extent these concerns will remain.

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

Do I still have a bit of time? One minute? I will take 30 seconds, so that you have 30 seconds to respond on the matter of human resources planning.

The lack of planning never ceases to surprise me, and I believe it surprises a lot of people. Sometimes, one is unable to do anything about it because one has simply inherited some new situation; it simply lands on your lap, etc. But in this case, have you seen improvements over the course of the last year? Are departments better planning their human resource needs?

[Maria Barrados]

We have undertaken an analysis of the system and of the progress accomplished. There has indeed been some progress. More efforts have been made and, in some cases, planning has improved. I am however unable to give you an overall picture at this point in time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Kramp.

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

Thank you, Madame Chair.

And welcome, again.

There are two or three areas I'd like to explore. To use your words, I want to slip to the phantom positions just for a second--not to dwell on it, but just to be reassured. You've categorized it as irregularities. And the movement to and from ministers' offices that apparently took place--none of us want to see interference in any particular manner.

Could you elaborate? You mentioned you wanted to get a handle on this, and that we were going to have further examination. Obviously it's within the purview of this committee to potentially call ministers, department heads, whoever was directly involved with a possible shortchanging of the accountability and ethics of what we should be doing. Could you give us an update on the status of your investigation and where you see it going--timelines--and perhaps the depth of the investigation process you see your department carrying out?

[Maria Barrados]

We are pursuing this because of the interest expressed at this committee, and also the interest expressed on the part of the President of the Treasury Board.

The last time I was here, I was asked if I had seen any of these other irregularities. In that short term, for some of the things we looked at, we had not seen anything that really struck us. But following the question, we decided the wise thing to do was to go back much further, so that's what we are intending to do.

The first step of what we have to do is look at the statistics, and our source of information is the pay records, because we can trace from the pay records whether somebody worked as exempt staff and went into the public service, and went from the public service to the exempt staff. We can identify those patterns.

I have to remember we're talking over a fairly long period of time. We're talking about a number of people who were in exempt staff positions, a fair number who moved back and forth. That's not to say all of these are a problem, because there is a value and there is a role in our system for public servants to be working as exempt staff and then coming back into the public service. We have always been worried that this was not monitored and not regulated.

Our first step is to look at the numbers--our databases--and identify those patterns we feel look irregular, or look odd. What I mean by that is that a movement in and out for a short term is not one that gives me a particular concern. Lots of movement back and forth begins to look a little worrisome. Movements across long periods of time, one exempt staff...it's the different patterns we're going to isolate. That work has started, we are doing that now. I need to know how many of these positions I see are at risk.

The other thing we intend to do is go back as far as our records possibly can, so we will go back to 1990. If we can go back further, we will. We want to make sure we get a good period of time and get a number of transitions, because most of this activity occurs over transition, so we want a number of transitions. We expect to have that information, that first analysis of what numbers we're talking about, in January, so we would have a handle on what numbers we're dealing with.

Then what we propose to do is throw that into full audit mode. The auditors would identify individual cases that might present problems, like the two we had reported in the last annual report, and investigate those--those individual investigations.

That's our approach. Our first step is in January, and by the time I see the size of what I am dealing with, then I'll be in a better position to say how long the rest of it would take.

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

In your brief examination to this point, have you found other incidents beyond the two that just jumped out?

[Maria Barrados]

No, I haven't.

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

Okay, thank you very much.

[Maria Barrados]

But we are just looking at the statistical patterns. Take no assurance one way or the other from that, please.