Government Operations Committee on March 12th, 2009

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

This is quite an interesting question.

Monsieur Gourde, were you perhaps thinking of addressing these questions to the next witness who is from the Privy Council and who deals with public service renewal?

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

It's for both of them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

I'm going to let Ms. MacPherson off the hook from reviewing her career for us and thank both her and Mr. Kennedy.

I think colleagues will agree there's been an improvement in ATI procedures, they're within budget, and there are no major disagreements.

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Yes, ATI responses have improved. I guess you weren't listening. I'll just note that; the record will show that.

I want to thank the witnesses for appearing.

[Marilyn MacPherson]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

In this phase of the meeting, colleagues, we're going to be interviewing Ms. Patricia Hassard, who was recently appointed to the position of deputy secretary to the cabinet in senior personnel and public service renewal.

I just want the record to show that we're not reviewing this appointment because of any perceived weakness or anything. Ms. Hassard has a very good record and an excellent career in the federal public service. We're reviewing this appointment, first, because members have agreed that we should be reviewing appointments on a random basis just to better show that we are doing it to assure continued quality of these appointments; and, second, because the committee was looking at some public service issues and her appointment to her current responsibility is related to those.

Colleagues may wish to ask questions about the public service or public service renewal within Ms. Hassard's mandate, but the main purpose is to generally provide the parliamentary review of her appointment.

Ms. Hassard, you don't have to make a statement, but if you would like to, if you've prepared something, we'd be delighted to hear it, and then we'll go to questions.

Before you do that, could I just alert colleagues that we have a draft report on the agenda. It's been prepared by staff, and it's also in relation to the appearance of the Public Service Commission. If members are satisfied with that draft, as is, we could move adoption of it or go in camera to discuss it briefly. If there is any member who is dissatisfied with the draft and wants to deal with it later, we'll deal with it later and not today. I'll just give members notice of that. I'd like to wrap up about 10 or 15 minutes before the top of the hour.

Ms. Hassard, over to you.

[Patricia Hassard, Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Senior Personnel and Public Service Renewal, Privy Council Office]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and in particular thank you for that clarification of why I was called before you. I must say, there have been moments when I thought maybe I'd won the lottery.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Or lost the lottery?

[Patricia Hassard]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I am very pleased to be here today and to tell you a bit about myself and my appointment as Deputy Secretary, Senior Personnel and Public Service Renewal with the Privy Council Office.

Let me begin by briefly introducing myself. I understand that you have received a copy of my curriculum vitae for your review.

I think I'm one of the few public servants in the national capital region who was born and raised in Ottawa. I come from a long line of teachers--I know a couple of you are teachers--on both sides of my family who encouraged me to pursue a life in the public service. I would call myself a career public servant because it is my calling. In fact, I can't imagine doing anything else. It's been my whole career.

My first experience with the federal government was as a Tour Guide in Dawson City, Yukon, for Parks Canada. I spent the summers giving tours of historic sites from the gold rush era and swatting mosquitoes. In the winters, I went to law school at the University of Western Ontario.

Administrative law, as you know, governs the relationship between citizens and their government. While administrative law was my favourite subject at school, it was not necessarily my best mark. I did my articling in London and came back to Ottawa to join the government and to practise administrative law.

As you can see from my CV, I did start out doing legal research at the Canadian Transport Commission, and I ended up becoming the assistant general counsel. I found that my strength and my interest as a public servant was in management and in building capacity in organizations. You will not find many people as curious about organizational structure or how decision-making processes work as I am.

I moved from a director role in the new National Transportation Agency into a counsel and director of operations role in the Legislation and House Planning Secretariat at Privy Council Office. This was my first tour of duty in Privy Council Office. I learned a lot about parliamentary business, agenda setting, cabinet processes, and electoral law. I also learned a lot about how to manage people, or how not to manage people, depending on your point of view.

After a number of years in L&HP, I moved into a Director of Operations position in Security and Intelligence Secretariat. The role was similar in that it involved support to Cabinet, but the subject matter was completely different and fascinating to me.

I then spent three years over at Elections Canada where I met some of you. The Elections Canada mandate, I believe, is a noble one because of the democratic tradition it represents. I was there for the general election of 2000. This was a landmark election because it was the first time the federal government used the national register of electors.

In 2001, I went back into the security world at the Solicitor General, first in policing and then in national security and emergency management. I was there for the creation of the new department, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada.

Now I find myself back in a core role in the Privy Council Office with responsibility for leadership of two secretariats. One of them is senior personnel, and its mandate is to support the government on Governor in Council appointments. The other is a newly amalgamated secretariat called the public service renewal.

I have an excellent team and we are working hard to help shape the senior cadre so that the public service can continue to provide professional non-partisan advice to the government and high-quality services to Canadians.

Let me stop there. I'd be pleased to take any questions and answer them to the best of my abilities, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Thank you.

I'll just note for the record as well that on several occasions throughout those years, her career path and mine as a legislator intersected for all kinds of different reasons. “Intersected” is a vague term, but you can say that Mrs. Hassard and I bumped into each other around committee meetings around Parliament Hill in relation to her functions with the public service.

Mr. McTeague.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Mrs. Hassard, you'll appreciate the fact that our chair has been around here long enough to bump into a lot of people over the years, and he is given to name-dropping from time to time. I'm not sure if that will help in his riding, but only time will tell.

Mrs. Hassard, thank you for being here today, and thank you for your presentation. It's very kind of you to offer a little bit of background on yourself for those of us who have not had the experience of bumping into you from time to time.

According to the chart I have here, you report to the national security advisor to the Prime Minister. Do you find yourself having to work collaboratively with Madame Morin as the advisor?

[Patricia Hassard]

Thank you for the question.

I think you might be looking at a chart that has a dotted line to her. There's an important distinction there. I actually report directly to the Clerk of the Privy Council. I do report, functionally, through Marie-Lucie Morin on my issues, which are public service renewal and appointments, but not on national security issues. She does have that dual role.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Unfortunately there's no legend here that tells us the difference between the connect-the-dots and the lines. We'll figure that out shortly.

Let me ask you a question on the subject of renewal. This is a question I asked the earlier witnesses.

The issue is whether or not, and how, one tackles the question of mobility in the public service at precisely a time when there is greater need for critical mass and experience in particular areas. One thinks, for instance, of EI, but there are certainly more.

What is your plan? What is your interest? How do you see your role in being able to keep these horses moving in the same direction?

[Patricia Hassard]

I may answer that question by providing a little more background on what public service renewal is. I think the question about mobility will be in better context in that circumstance.

I think people use the term “public service renewal” without actually knowing how broad it is. First and foremost, it's actually about dealing with the business of government and having government get better at delivering results for Canadians. It's not a time-limited program or project. It's not an HR initiative. It's an ongoing process of the senior leadership and the whole of the public service to adapt to the 21st century and to have a public service that is relevant, dynamic, and excellent at what it does, capable of providing high-quality advice to government and excellent services to Canadians.

I think Madam MacPherson made a couple of the points in her presentation, but I think there's a need to explain the rationale for public service renewal in a little more detail.

It is clear from the Prime Minister's advisory committee on the public service that a country that has a strong public service is going to be a more prosperous and healthy country. They said, “In this [economic] context, there is no doubt that a strong and innovative Public Service is more important than ever.”

We believe that to make the public service better, we should continue our efforts on renewal.

We also have some pretty serious demographic challenges. We are a little bigger than we were in 1983, but we have actually aged considerably as a public service compared to other sectors in the Canadian economy. In 1983, 42% of public servants were over 40. Today, 66% are over 40. That's a significant number.

We also have a couple of alarming statistics, in that one-quarter of public servants will be eligible to retire, without penalty, in 2012. That's 25%. And 50% of our executive cadre will be eligible to retire in 2012. We have some work to do to bring the next generation forward and have them ready to replace the baby boomers when they go.

There's one other complicating factor, which is that during the recession of the 1990s the government did not hire and did not recruit. There is a missing generation of leaders, who we are now realizing we don't have.

On the public service renewal, a good part of it is about reaching into the public service and attempting to bring forward the next generation of leaders.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you for that.

Maybe I could ask how much in the way of resources you have to achieve the objective you're seeking.

[Patricia Hassard]

That's an interesting question. Actually, we're using existing resources. I have a small team on the appointment side. I now have a consolidated secretariat on renewal, but the resources for that came from the Canada Public Service Agency to the Privy Council Office. We had both been working on this issue for some time.

The expectation of the senior leadership is that they will do renewal. They will invest more in people management. They will spend a lot more time on the development of their employees and doing excellent integrated business and HR plans. That's part of their function. It's not a project or a program in the sense that it has additional money devoted to it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Thank you.

Colleagues, we'll go to five-minute rounds at this point. We have half an hour, and Mr. McTeague just had over five.

Madame Bourgeois, for five minutes.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

If you don't mind, Mr. Chair, I'm going to leave a little time for my colleague, who would like to ask a brief question.

Good morning, Ms. Hassard. I really like your curriculum vitae and your approach. You seem to me to be a straightforward person, with lots of common sense. It is very nice to have you here.

You say, on page 4 of the French version of your presentation, that your are working very hard to help shape the executive cadre. When Ms. Barrados, from the Public Service Commission, came to appear before us, she told us actually that managers and the executive cadre should benefit from further training so as to make better use of the staffing process. I would like to know whether you work in collaboration with Ms. Barrados. That is my first question.

As for my second question, you talked about human resources with my colleague from the Liberal Party. I'd like to know whether you will have a budget and, if so, how much will be dedicated to renewal of the public service in 2009-10.

[Patricia Hassard]

Thank you very much for the questions.

Concerning the first one, about the development of the management skills in the executive cadre, there is now mandatory training on financial, human resource, and access to information authorities before they are delegated to a manager. Everyone who receives those delegations has to go through a training program at the Canada School of Public Service. That's one way we are attempting to improve our cadre.

There is another way we're doing it. We have now developed a program called the advanced leadership program. It's only for 25 to 30 people, and they are absolutely the highest-potential people we have in the public service. We have developed a nine-week program for them, which ran once last year and will run again this year. The purpose of that program is to take them at a mid-career level and bring them forward; in other words, expose them to a lot of new ideas, internationally and domestically, and a lot of new approaches to big problems and have them come back to the public service much better equipped to take on some of the senior roles.

We also have another program called Leaders Across Borders, which is doing something similar in conjunction with the United Kingdom and Australia and New Zealand. This is a little exchange program, in which a dozen of our senior leaders go to those countries and theirs come here for a week to share best practices in the Westminster tradition.

We also have another program called “Canada at 150”. This is a really novel idea that has worked out very well. Departments were asked to identify fairly new recruits who had about five years' experience and were showing a lot of interest in the policy issues facing Canada. They have gotten together three times as a group—150 of them. Their purpose is to look at the challenges facing Canada in 2017, when it will be 150 years old. Some of the work they are doing is showing great promise. They will have one more event before they present their report. They are people from all over the federal government. It is one of those interesting new ideas, which seems to be stimulating a new generation in their commitment to and experience in public service.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Monsieur Roy, do you want to ask a question?

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I can assure you, Ms. Hassard, that you won't have any trouble with mosquitoes today if you go outside. But that's not what my question is about.

I have seen for myself in some departments a fairly serious problem regarding senior officials, the executive cadre. These people were often appointed temporarily. I'll give you an example. In Vancouver, there is a large Fisheries and Oceans office, not to actually name it. In two years, there were three acting managers. It wasn't working anymore at all. There were serious internal problems. The trouble was that the historical culture of the department was not being passed on, and that meant that the office was totally dysfunctional. During the Fraser River sockeye salmon crisis, the problem was identified and determined to be serious.

Instead of appointing people temporarily, appointments should be more long-term, permanent, so as to avoid a lot of problems pertaining to the operation of certain departments.

[Patricia Hassard]

Thank you for the question.

I think there are concerns about the situation you raise, not particularly as a result of the acting appointment, but because of the fact that in some professions and in some departments there is an extraordinary amount of churn.

I think the president of the Public Service Commission was here recently. Some of the statistics that came from her study on mobility are quite startling. The personnel administration category had 74% movement in one year. The economist/sociologist category had 71% movement. The executive category had 55% movement.

This is a complex issue. It's not due to just one cause. I think in large measure it's due to the retirements and the domino effect that leaves positions vacant. There are a lot of lateral moves and a lot of promotions. I think it also could be a sign of an organization that's in transition. It's hard to put your finger on exactly why this does happen, but I think the impact on the quality of the work and the attractiveness of that workplace as a place where people would want to work becomes a little bit questionable. There is a serious impact about knowledge transfer and a lack of continuity.

On the other hand, there is actually a positive side to this, in that those vacancies, those positions that are open, do give the government and the managers an opportunity to hire people with a different skill set. It does give them an opportunity to maybe change the way the nature of the work is done or improve the processes.

I think you have to look at both sides of it, but it is a serious issue. I think we would like the norm for tenure to be at least three years, but it's not something we have been able to edict, let's put it that way. We do attempt to do that with our senior cadre, the deputies, but given the demographics and the operational needs, we find ourselves in a position where we have to move some of the people around to get them the breadth so that they can eventually move up. I think it will be a challenge until probably after 2012-13.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Thank you.

We're coming close to the end, but we have room for another round or two here.

Mr. Brown, for five minutes.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

I was interested in what my colleague Mr. McTeague was touching upon in terms of mobility. I know that at one point in the last Parliament this committee touched upon that a little bit, too, and I share his concern that this is one of the integral aspects of maintaining the integrity of the public service.

One aspect we've looked at before--and I'd be interested to know your thoughts on it--is how the geographical dispersal of the public service can help enhance the integrity of the public service. One statistic that I found interesting in the last committee study was that there is less turnover and there is less retraining when there are public service jobs in small towns. It tends to be the large urban areas where there are the greatest challenges. What thoughts have been given to taking advantage of this opportunity to have jobs in areas that would ensure less mobility?