Government Operations Committee on Feb. 5th, 2008

[Patty Ducharme]

The classification system is an antiquated system. I believe it was Madame Boudrias who spoke in December when she appeared in front of the committee and said that most of the job descriptions and the classification system itself are older than many of our members. They are 40-plus years old. Work is being done that was never anticipated by the employer or probably by the average worker, and trying to address that issue using job descriptions is one method we have used.

It is obviously a huge problem. The medical adjudicators' case is a perfect example. Frontier border services officers is another perfect example. We have many members who work under this antiquated classification system who need to see immediate relief.

In 1999, when the pay equity complaint came down, the employer was told to come up with a gender-neutral classification system. It's 2008. That hasn't happened. We continue to wait. We continue to pressure the employer. And quite frankly, it is time for the government to push Treasury Board to deal with this issue.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Given the impending turnover in terms of retirement, is there a sufficient plan in place to train people? What's the training time to get somebody up to speed, to know the complexity of paying across regional and provincial borders, pension, etc.?

[Jill Ronan]

It takes up to two years to train an adviser in the compensation and benefits area. We tend to say it takes up to five years to become a fully competent compensation adviser.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

So has there been an effort to start to prepare for the wave of retirements?

[Jill Ronan]

Yes. Madame Boudria stated that they have a five-year plan now. They were five years late starting, but they do have a five-year plan now. We have a slight concern with the fact that they are looking at only 100 positions in the next five years, but that's their job too.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

My last question is on the issue of technology. As politicians we are extreme generalists, and our friends at Treasury Board will say, “We've heard this and don't worry, we have a great new computer system. Once it's installed we'll press all the buttons and say it's excellent and it works for us.”

I always think of a story that a friend of mine who worked at a South African gold mine told me. They did all their accounting by hand, year after year, and they were never late until they brought in a computer program that was going to speed up work. He said for the next ten years they never managed to get an accounting fact sheet in on time because there was always a problem with the computer.

It might be anecdotal, but with the complex issues you're dealing with in the various provincial jurisdictions, do you actually think there is a program that can do this in a quick way? Or will we have to go back to tried and true trust in the expertise of the people we're hiring?

[Jill Ronan]

We believe it has to be a balance of both. There can be a pay system that makes the transactional portion of our functions more streamlined and will allow managers and employees to self-serve in certain areas. But there is no pay system that will be able to accommodate the complexities of the function.

CPSA themselves stated in their evidence of December 12 that even if these work tools are brought in to streamline the transactional portion, the advisory portion of the compensation adviser's job will still be there and will possibly be increased because of managers and employees using a self-serve type of system.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I will go to Madame Folco.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first meeting for me as well, so I may limit myself to more general questions. What I understand is that you've been promised major changes for 40 years now. Changes have been made, but not enough, obviously, from what you've explained to us.

With regard to the pension administration system, there's also an intent to transform the operational processes and services. In your opinion, how do you view your role if that transformation is ever made? How do you see your role changing following that? In other words, you've described the present situation to us, but what I'm asking you, in a way, is to submit a wish list to give us an idea of the direction you'd like to take in future.

[Diane Melançon]

I can tell you that, even if, for example, the government transferred all service buy-backs for pensions to Moncton—that's already been done, a few years ago—if it transferred all those duties to Moncton, that would reduce our workload a little, but it would be a very small reduction because the Moncton people would nevertheless have to communicate with us. We're the ones who have the files of all the employees in each department. We would have to confirm whether they had leave without pay, their salaries, and so on. It's always the same thing. That's what happened a number of years ago, and, ultimately, there were so many problems in Moncton that everything was transferred again to each of the departments. That's why we in the departments have the files.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

The question I'm ultimately asking you, Ms. Melançon, is if the operations were transferred to Moncton, perhaps in the not so near future, could you foresee the files going to Moncton as well and everything being done from A to Z in Moncton itself? That's the question I'm asking you.

[Jill Ronan]

That's a very good question. In fact we felt that on December 12 the employer was kind of misleading when they said the pension functions would be devolved to the centralized pension team in Shediac. In fact we'll still retain a portion of the approximately 18% of our functions that are pension-related. We'll still have to commence pension contributions for new employees; we'll have to continue making any changes or data corrections to them.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Excuse me for interrupting, Madam Ronan. You say we'll still have to do this, so how do you see it in idealistic terms; how do you see that relationship in the future? Do you see what I mean? I'm asking you to transfer it to the future and say this is where it's at, these are the mistakes, and these are the weaknesses. Where do we go from there?

[Jill Ronan]

We mentioned early in our evidence that years ago superannuation did the pension function. There were a lot of issues with things not being done correctly because they didn't have the resource documents and weren't meeting with the clients, so for many reasons it was devolved over to the compensation advisers. Decades later we're doing the full circle thing and going back to putting the pension functions with superannuation. I guess we're saying that 18% of our functions really isn't going to have a huge impact, so we would leave it with us.

Our wish is for Treasury Board to hire enough resources to accommodate the standards they have set for what a compensation adviser should have as a client base, which is approximately 175 clients.

Our other wish is that they classify us at an accurate group and level that will encourage new compensation advisers to come on board and make it a career. Historically, compensation advisers, once they got into compensation, stayed in it for their whole careers.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

A fascinating life.

[Jill Ronan]

Yes. We have to create a career path. No initiative for capacity-building will be successful without it.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

We'll go to Madame Faille.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is my second meeting, but it's the first time I have spoken. I worked at the Canadian Human Rights Commission. I was there in 1989-1990, when the complaint was filed, and I looked into this matter, since I was working in the Secretary General's office. I knew the public service until 1993: the reorganizations, the position equivalencies, the general positions. So I understand your dissatisfaction.

I remember that I understood nothing about my T4 slips, when tax time came, or about the amended T4s that I received later. So I pity the Revenue Canada officer who had to examine those documents, because it must have been hell for him. I also felt a great deal of frustration. I was very active in union business in the public service. I remember some situations where the government representatives arrived at the bargaining tables without a mandate. That's frustrating because the research and the work were done, but the members were penalized. So I'm happy to be sitting on this committee and to be addressing this question in full knowledge of the facts.

I'd like to ask a question related to the news. You said that you had been in negotiations with the government since 2000. In my experience, you could go back even further, since history seems to repeat itself.

Since 2000, have you always been negotiating with the same officials? If not, with whom did you start those negotiations?

[Diane Melançon]

At first, it was with our union, of course, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, of which Nicole Turmel was president at the time. That led to nothing. I should give her some merit, however, because, just before she changed unions, she ultimately admitted that these old problems existed and that something should be done.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I know who you started with on the PSAC side, but with whom did you negotiate on the government side?

[Diane Melançon]

I'm going to let Jill speak.

[Jill Ronan]

As was explained earlier in the December meeting, in 2000 we were reclassified from AS-1 to AS-2. At that time we put forth a letter to Madame Boudrias, who happened to be the assistant deputy minister at DND at the time, because grievances had to be interdepartmental. We put our concerns forth at that time. Madame Boudrias advised us to submit a grievance, which was the correct procedure.

We went through the grievance process. Because of the national impact any grievance process would have, because of our group, we requested that Treasury Board chair the grievance process. To cut a long story short, that grievance process did not work. We were working with PSAC in the meantime. We eventually submitted a human rights case because we could not get any action taken in any of the venues available to us within the federal public service.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Again with the same officials?