Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 24th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Let's bring the meeting to order, colleagues.

I apologize for starting a little late this morning. There was a meeting before this one that ran over time. But we are here now, and let's proceed.

I would like to remind members that at least the first part of this meeting will be held in public. We potentially have three items to discuss today. Of course the first item is a continuation of last Tuesday's meeting, which was a review of the estimates. If colleagues remember, we were interrupted by division bells. We will be continuing on that. However, I would like to keep a little time at the end of this meeting to deal with a draft report on private members' business, which should have been circulated before you this morning.

As well, I've been advised of and have received a motion in the name of Mr. Preston. If it's okay with Mr. Preston, I'd ask that we deal with it at the very end, if there's time. Mr. Preston, the reason for that is there is an unlimited amount of debate time on such a motion. It's to make sure we keep moving, if it's okay with you.

I see you nodding. That's good. Thank you very much.

If there's time left, we will deal with the motion, which you all have received as well.

When we deal with the draft report on private members' business, I will suspend the meeting so that we can go in camera, as we are dealing with a draft report. We will go public again when we deal with the notice of motion in the name of Mr. Preston.

Colleagues, moving on then, pursuant to Standing Order 81(4), today the committee is examining the main estimates for 2007-2008, vote 5, House of Commons, under Parliament, referred to the committee on Tuesday, February 27, 2007.

Colleagues, this is simply a continuation of last week's review. In front of you, you should have the Speaker's statement from last week, the chart, and the estimates page out of the blue book. All have been given out once again this morning to refresh your memories so that we can continue with our meeting this morning.

I would like to again introduce and welcome back the Honourable Peter Milliken, Speaker of the House, and the Clerk of the House, Audrey O'Brien.

Thank you so much again. My apologies for interrupting what was going very well last Tuesday.

Mr. Speaker, we would simply ask that you introduce your team today, and we will then continue with our questioning.

[Peter Milliken, Liberal, Speaker of the House of Commons]

Obviously the clerk is with me, and you're familiar with her. I also have Marc Bosc, the deputy clerk. Louis Bard is in charge of all the financial stuff. You know Kevin Vickers, the Sergeant-at-Arms. Claire Kennedy is the chief financial officer, and Rob Walsh is the law clerk.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much. We appreciate that.

Welcome to everyone.

Colleagues, we finished our first round of questioning last week. We're beginning our second round of five minutes.

Monsieur Proulx will start the five-minute round.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Milliken, good morning to both you and your team.

Ms. O'Brien, last week, we started to talk about temporary or part-time employees hired by the House of Commons. You told me at the time that, wherever possible, you try to give more than 700 hours of work to employees. My own enquiries indicate that it is very rare for employees to actually reach the required number of hours to be eligible for employment insurance benefits. I am told that, coincidentally, when they approach 700 hours, something happens and their hours are reduced, so that employees practically never reach that level.

Could you continue your explanation in that regard or, if you like, repeat the comments you made last week? Do you have any good news?

[Audrey O'Brien, Clerk of the House of Commons, House of Commons]

Mr. Chairman, I will continue the answer I began to give to Mr. Proulx last week in answer to his question. I am afraid that I am not in a position to give you any good news. The clarifications I will provide will not elicit feelings of great joy, either in you or in part-time workers.

I would like to place all of this in the context of the seasonal jobs that we have here at the House of Commons. I believe that I stated last week that we had tried to resolve the problems with respect to part-time workers. This is an issue we have been grappling with since 2001, I believe.

In some areas, we have trouble predicting in advance how much work there will be. For example, we will need additional staff in the restaurants and cafeterias if there is a lot of demand for catering services. Also, depending on the amount of work generated by the committees, we will need more or less staff in parliamentary publications.

Having said that, we always need a pool of so-called seasonal workers. We have therefore established a group of workers that we call indeterminate accredited seasonal workers. These people work when the House is sitting, and are assigned primarily to Parliamentary Publications and Restaurant Services. For these workers, there is no problem obtaining the 700 hours you refer to; I will come back to this in a moment.

At the time, we had a pool of part-time workers. Some of them worked more that 700 hours. However, under labour legislation that governs our activities, those employees are entitled to benefits. Otherwise, we would have been abusing part-time employees. At the same time, we need seasonal workers. That is why we established the group that we call accredited seasonal workers. They receive all the benefits the union has negotiated, even though they are seasonal employees.

We have 12 such positions in Parliamentary Publications, including eight full-time equivalents, and 27 in Restaurant Services. We posted competition notices so that part-time workers could apply for these jobs, which have been filled. Those workers now have benefits such as dental insurance, pharmacare, and so on, under certain conditions, but they are seasonal workers.

The workers you are referring to are the ones who work part-time. We fairly regularly recruit par-time workers in order to be able to dip into that pool whenever we need additional manpower, which happens on occasion. So, if there are a lot of committee meetings, we can call on these workers. They must, indeed, work fewer than 700 hours a year.

Overall, seasonal staff represent 5 per cent of the House of Commons total workforce, which is about 100 people. Part-time, on-call employees represent about 11 per cent of the House of Commons staff complement, or about 200 people.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

If I understand correctly, Mr. Chairman, neither so-called seasonal employees, nor so-called part-time employees will ever have an opportunity to work 700 hours. Those human resources are managed in such a way as to ensure they will never reach 700 hours and, consequently, they will never have access to employment insurance benefits.

[Audrey O'Brien]

No. I'm sorry; I did not make myself clear. Seasonal workers can work more than 700 hours, something which occurs fairly regularly. So, that does apply to season workers.

Only workers who are on call do not work 700 hours.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Could we be given a report, in which personal information would obviously have been blocked out, giving us an idea of the number of employees in these different categories, how many of them work 700 hours and how many hours the others actually work?

Ms. O'Brien, would it be possible to ask your staff to produce such a report and forward it to our Committee clerk?

[Audrey O'Brien]

Yes, I can provide that.

As I already stated, that would obviously change the working conditions of people who are on call. I should add that many of them are satisfied with the current regime. They are students or people who, for one reason or another, choose that kind of a work regime.

It is also important to point out that these individuals can always apply for seasonal or full-time employment.

We will prepare a report and send it on to you.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

We went a little bit over time there, but I think we'll have time for this today. It's okay. We are malleable here.

Monsieur Guimond, you have five minutes on the clock.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am looking at a table which illustrates year-over-year changes. Under the heading “Services to members — Language training service”, you have an increase of $442,000. I would like to know how many members of Parliament and how many employees have used that service. Is that in the same chapter?

I would also like to know in what language the training was given. Are there more anglophone members of Parliament and employees who have received training in French, or is it the opposite? That is my first question. Perhaps you could forward that information to the clerk as soon as possible.

Second, our clerk will see now that I am quite single-minded. Last year, when you appeared before the Committee and provided testimony, Mr. Speaker, I asked you whether you were going to set up a system or charter of succession planning in order to avoid… For example, if Mr. Vickers were to quit his job tomorrow, we would want to be sure that Parliament could continue to sit. I cited the example of Mr. Vickers, but I could talk about any of the important people accompanying you today who are sitting right behind you. I'm sure you understand that the idea here is to avoid the kind of quasi-melodrama we experienced when Major General Cloutier died. He had held that position for many, many years and it was clear that no succession planning had been carried out. Have you put in place a succession planning program?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Peter Milliken, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

As you know, Mr. Chairman, following the death of the former Sergeant-at-Arms, the clerk replaced him while continuing to carry out her duties as Clerk of the House, which ensured some continuity.

To explain the concept of specific succession measures, the clerk is probably better able to address your question than I am.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

I even described her as an octopus. Ms. O'Brien was the octopus — the woman with six arms, the House of Commons Venus de Milo.

[An hon. member]

But the Venus de Milo was missing an arm.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Yes, you're right: the Venus de Milo was missing an arm. I guess I didn't have the correct mythological reference!

[Audrey O'Brien]

Mr. Chairman, I consider that to be a compliment, coming from Mr. Guimond.

In answer to the first question, I would say that training is given primarily in French, simply because of the number of Francophones and Anglophones in the House. I am also in a position to confirm that most of the resources are devoted to training members of Parliament, as opposed to staff. I will obtain the specific numbers in that respect and forward them to the Committee clerk.

With respect to your question about succession planning, I very clearly recall your comments and our lengthy discussion. I personally experienced the tragedy of Major General Cloutier's illness and death, and I consider this to be a very high priority, particularly since, because of the demographics within the House of Commons, as an institution, as is the case all across the public sector, we will soon be facing a wave of retirements that require us to do some planning.

We avoid situations where heirs apparent await someone's departure. Behind the key positions, we want to establish a pool of people who can succeed the incumbents — in other words, two or three people who will be in a position to apply for the job and occupy the position of someone who has decided to retire.

For example, in a very specialized area such as procedure, many procedural clerks will be retiring. Because we began generally recruiting procedural clerks four years ago, we already have new employees in place who are working and have some knowledge of the House of Commons. They will be in a position to replace a committee clerk when he or she retires, rather than continuing to act as assistant committee clerk.

This year, we lost a senior clerk and filled that position by means of a competition. The individual in question will be leaving at the end of June; there will be two months of overlap to ensure appropriate knowledge transfer. That will free up an assistant senior clerk position. Two assistant senior clerks have left the House of Commons to take jobs elsewhere. We will also be filling those positions in the coming days.

With respect to informatics, we are luckier because our staff is much younger. However, we do expect to lose about 22 per cent of our management staff. There again, we have introduced programs, department by department, to identify people with potential. We want to provide them with training, send them on courses or give them responsibility for special projects that will test them and allow us to ascertain their future potential.

So, I would say that things are on the right track.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much.

We also went over there, but I do believe we have the time for that this morning

Monsieur Godin, please.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, Mr. Speaker and Madam Clerk.

I know that at the Board of Internal Economy, you share the secrets of the powers that be, but have there been any discussions on MPs' budgets regarding the problems we are currently experiencing with respect to passports? To be perfectly honest, I consider the current situation to be unacceptable. Passport Canada is now opening a passport office in Edmundston, New Brunswick. People can go there and staff will be on site to help them determine whether the information filled out on the passport application is correct, to ensure there are no mistakes, and so on. In our ridings, we have to do that ourselves in our own offices. Right now, my office is completely snowed under with passport applications. One employee spends her entire day dealing with passports, and I am not the only one to be in that position. I was talking to Tony Martin, the member for Sault Ste. Marie. It's the same thing for him. When you talk to MPs, you discover that most of our employees are doing the work of the Government of Canada, because there are not enough passport offices in the regions. Now it's the MPs' offices that are doing that work. I think that you should be looking at whether we are going to have to do the government's work and supply us with the necessary staff in order to do that. While we carry out that work, other things are being neglected in our offices.

I have been forced to ask one of my employees to deal only with passports. When checking them, we ensure that the application has been completed correctly and that there are no documents missing. Also, if a passport does not arrive on time, people come to our offices, because they want to know when they are going to receive it. The Passport Canada office has even cut its phone lines: you can't even talk to them anymore, because they no longer answer the telephone. They have even changed their telephone number and you can't call them. It's an absolute mess. That is the way it is now, in 2007, and it will be even worse in 2008, because people will want to drive into the United States. We are not even seeing the tip of the iceberg, and we are the ones doing the work for Passport Canada. I wanted to mention that to you, Mr. Speaker, so that when you are in discussions with the others, you can give some thought to this problem that members of Parliament have been telling you about. Something should be done.

As regards staff, I would like to get some clarification. I have been talking with restaurant employees. They tell me that even though they have been working here for 15 years, when someone is laid off, they cannot move into the jobs of new cafeteria employees. Even though they have 15 years of seniority, a young person who has just been hired stays, and they have to leave. There are clearly some staff relations issues there, and this is something that should be looked at.

I don't like to see Parliament turn a blind eye to the problems that are out there. It is quite clear that we are having trouble supporting health and safety. This is an area where we still cannot really do much. People do whatever they like. We have employees, and yet we are not capable of giving them 700 hours of work. I think we may even face this problem earlier than we thought. If there were to be a snap election, that would also have an impact.

Let's take the example of the pages. If an election were to be called, they would be paid until the spring, right?

[Audrey O'Brien]

Yes, you have…

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

There are employees here who have families and children. If something happens all of a sudden, they have to go back home and don't have work anymore. I think we should make a little bit of room within the big machinery of Parliament or government. I'm not talking about picking up coke cans in ditches. It seems to me there should be something available for these people.

For example, we need people in translation. It seems to me that the people doing translation could be transferred to departments to translate there. It would be simple. In any case, we had to rely on volunteers to get the translation done in Vimy. There could be some people here who can do it professionally. These are things that we can do. It just isn't right, and I do not accept the rationale that it is because we don't want to pay them benefits. To be perfectly honest, that is unacceptable. We need to find some way of helping these people out. As members of Parliament, we continue to receive our salary even when we go back to our ridings during an election. Employees should also receive theirs.

[Audrey O'Brien]

Mr. Chairman, I just want to make two comments. First, I have to say I am in a rather delicate position because we are already at the bargaining table discussing collective agreements. There are some things that I…

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

It's a good time to be doing that.

[Audrey O'Brien]

Yes, but we are currently in negotiations. It's a little difficult to…

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

I can help you!