We shall proceed.
I'd like to thank you, Madame Marleau, for our being here today.
I am here with two of my colleagues, Phil Charko, assistant secretary of pensions and benefits for the Treasury Board Secretariat, and Rick Burton from the Canadian Public Service Agency.
I'm Hélène Laurendeau, the assistant secretary of labour relations and compensation operations for the Treasury Board Secretariat.
We are representing the portfolio that supports the Treasury Board as a committee of ministers, and we're here as a representative of the employer for the Treasury Board. The division of responsibility—just to give you an idea—between our two organizations is that....
The Treasury Board Secretariat is responsible for compensation planning, collective bargaining, terms of employment, pension and benefits policies as well as refund policies and pay administration.
The Canada Public Service Agency is responsible for human resources planning, including demographic research and analysis, designing the classification policy framework, developing policies for the executive group, developing policies in the areas of employment equity, official languages and ethics.
We are here today to provide you with some details on a couple of important things with respect to compensation: how compensation is set; how people who perform duties in the public service are paid; and how pay and benefits services are delivered to employees who are performing duties in the public service. You have in front of you a general deck, which will be followed by a more detailed deck to be presented by my colleague Mr. Burton.
In the presentation itself, on page 2, we will go through very quickly how compensation is set in the federal public administration, with a primary focus on core public administration; the make-up of the federal public administration itself; who is involved in the management and administration of compensation, pay and benefits, in departments within the core public administration, and their specific role; and we will also cover with you the two main service delivery structures for the administration of pay and benefits in departments within the core public administration.
Let's start with how compensation is set in the federal public administration. Sound management of compensation is fundamental to attracting and retaining staff and renewing the public service. Recently, the Treasury Board adopted a policy framework for the management of compensation as part of its policy review initiative. That framework sets out specific principles and approaches to manage compensation.
All Treasury Board decisions—and those decisions can be taken directly by Treasury Board or through collective bargaining—with respect to compensation are to be guided by four overarching principles: external comparability, which is basically about being competitive with, but not leading, the compensation for similar work in the relevant labour markets; internal relativity, which is basically about reflecting the relative value to the employer of the work performed; individual or group performance, which is basically about rewarding performance where appropriate and practicable, either based on individual performance or group performance, depending on the types of jobs we are referring to; and the fourth, and not the least principle, is affordability, which is obviously a key overarching principle in determining compensation for the federal public administration. The cost of compensation must obviously be affordable within the context of the commitments to provide services to Canadians.
The compensation framework can be found on the Treasury Board website, and if the members of the committee would like to have a copy of it, we could make sure we send you a copy of the compensation framework itself.
What I just covered is how compensation is set for the federal public administration.
What is the federal public administration and what does it include? That's what we cover on page 4 of the deck.
The federal public administration, in the widest sense, includes five main elements. The core public administration includes all employees of departments named in Schedules I and IV of the Financial Administration Act. The core federal public administration is made up of the departments for which Treasury Board acts as direct employer. These are all departments for which Treasury Board, as central employer, conducts collective bargaining and sets the terms of employment.
The federal public administration also includes 27 separate agencies.
Those are also known as separate agencies in English.
These are agencies such as the Canada Revenue Agency and Parks Canada which, although they are totally dependent on the public purse, have some latitude to conduct their own collective bargaining. Nevertheless, they must comply with the compensation policy framework.
and must obey the same principles I just covered. It also covers the RCMP
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, including both its regular members and its special constables and civilian members appointed under the RCMP Act. As you certainly know, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is not a unionized workplace but its decisions are nevertheless governed by the compensation framework I mentioned.
The compensation framework also governs the Canadian Forces, including officers and non-commissioned members enrolled in the Canadian Forces, as well as Reserve Forces.
Finally, Crown corporations make up the last element of the compensation management framework.
Our presentation today will focus on the first element, which is the core public administration and its activities with respect to pay administration.
We're trying to help you understand who is involved in the overall management and administration of compensation, pay, and benefits, and their respective roles.
On the top left you start with Treasury Board Secretariat, which manages the compensation reserve and provides planning and reports on compensation. Treasury Board Secretariat also ensures that the government decisions on compensation remain aligned with the compensation framework and the four principles. It also establishes policies and issues directives with respect to how pay is supposed to be administered and how pensions and benefits are supposed to be administered within departments. It also provides support to Treasury Board in making decisions on compensation, and it performs the activity of negotiating collective agreements.
On the top right you have the Canada Public Service Agency. With respect to the core public administration, it is responsible for designing occupational group structures, that is, for determining how the workforce will be divided into groups with respect to specific responsibilities. It is also responsible for design classification standards. This is how we can prioritize among the various jobs, between the low-level jobs and the high-level jobs, within the various groups that constitute the occupational group structure.
The agency is also responsible for developing the classification policy framework, for maintaining the integrity of the classification system, and for monitoring how the classification system is used. It is also responsible for executive compensation.
On the top left is Public Works and Government Services. It is basically the service provider. It requires that the departments provide administrative and other services that are required for the disbursement of pay, employee benefit plans, and superannuation pension plans. Basically, they are responsible for making sure that policies are applied and that information is properly input in the pay system to make sure that paycheques are issued to every employee and that pension cheques are issued to every former employee who is entitled to a pension, of course.
It operates and maintains the public service payroll system. It is responsible for the system itself, its maintenance, and any coding or development that is needed to meet the requirements that are determined by a compensation decision. Public Works also delivers training on the application of the technical functions of compensation. That's the technical part. The policy part is provided by other training. It also delivers pension administration.
Departments have an important role to play. Deputy heads of the 36 departments that comprise the core public administration are responsible for ensuring that the terms and conditions of employment are administered in accordance with collective agreements and other compensation decisions, directives, policies, or standards. They must as well provide the most suitable organizational structure and allocate the necessary resources to make sure that compensation services are provided to their employees. They of course also have to classify jobs, and they ensure that their internal staff have taken the required training and have the skills and competency to administer pay, pensions, and benefits.
If I were to depict the interaction between those four pillars of activity with respect to compensation, I would say that the Canada Public Service Agency is primarily responsible for organizing the workforce in a logical and appropriate manner. Treasury Board Secretariat is responsible for making sure that once the workforce is properly organized, decisions with respect to how they should be compensated are made. That's true for pretty much everybody except the senior cadre, which is still part of the agency.
Public Works and Government Services is there to actually support the systems and the IT framework that actually delivers and prints the paycheques. Departments, however, are the ones that know what this workforce of 186,0000 is supposed to be doing on a daily basis. They're the ones who can determine what their duties are for job description purposes and therefore how they should be classified, because they know the activity. And from that we can determine what their pay should be, based on their experience and where they should be pegged in the pay structure that has either been negotiated or determined by Treasury Board decision.
Departments as well are the interface with that same workforce. They are there to provide the services to make sure that whoever is performing X duties has a proper job description, that this job description is properly classified, and that they are appropriately paid for the classification group and level. They are also the ones who know the individual employees who may have access to other compensation benefits such as specific premiums for duty-related issues. So they're the ones who can use the pay structure and provide who fits in a particular position to be able to instruct Public Works and Government Services to issue the proper cheque. They are the ones who control overtime. They are the ones who know who the supervisors are as opposed to the worker bees. This is pretty much how this big wheel works.
On page 6 you have the two main service delivery structures for the administration of compensation, pay and benefits, within departments. We know two basic models. These models once again have to be decided by the deputy head of each department, depending on their clientele, their level of activity, and what is most suitable to reach out to their workforce.
The first model is the most common, which is the generalist model. An employee has an inquiry; they need to have an explanation on their paycheque or they need to know when their promotion will be processed. They formulate an inquiry to a generalist advisor, who will in turn provide them with advice on pay, understanding the pay structure, or understanding how their paycheque is structured, on insurance and other benefits, and on pension.
The second model, which we call the specialized model, starts again with an employee inquiry or information that is required by the employee. The first level of processing is a call centre for general inquiries. Once the inquiry is determined, the request for information is then channelled to either a pay advisor, who is a specialist in pay, an insurance advisor, who obviously is a specialist in insurance, and the same thing for a pension advisor.
The two models, as I said, currently exist. All the people who are providing these services are known, generally speaking, as compensation advisors, and we have approximately 2,100 of them scattered all over the core public administration.
That pretty much covers my general presentation. I don't know how you want to proceed, Madam Chair. Would you like questions on that before we move to the second presentation?