Government Operations committee  Madam Chair, I have such a cold right now. Do you mind if I ask Michael to speak in my place?

Government Operations committee  I think they do. I'd have to double-check, but I think they also do—

Government Operations committee  —so they're going to have problems also. And as I say, when you have a compensation advisor who has expertise in all the domains or at doing everything—retirement, transfer of a position, a promotion, or anything—and they are told, from now on all you're going to be doing is pr

Government Operations committee  In fact I had somebody e-mail you, Madame Marleau, because one of the main problems, as we said, with PWGSC, Statistics Canada, all these departments is we have employees who are transferring from their departments to, say, Industry Canada, our department, with a promotion. Of co

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  It was copied to you, and we all got a reply saying that the Canada Public Service Agency and the human resource council has engaged in the public-service-wide recruitment effort to build capacity in the compensation community. I'm part of this recruitment process. I went to the

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  They've made the test so complicated that, as I said, there were 5,800, and they are down to 129. These are the ones who could be doing the job, and that's across Canada.

Government Operations committee  Thank you.

Government Operations committee  Since 2000, we've appeared before all the committees of the federal government, including the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada, PSHRMAC, which is now called the Canada Public Service Agency. We also met Ms. Turmel, who was at the union at the time. We co

Government Operations committee  I think it was 1965 or 1964 when we had our classification.

Government Operations committee  At one point, yes, there was a slight review. I think she can answer this.

Government Operations committee  I know this is surprising to you, but most of us, the compensation advisors, the people I know, are very hard-working people. We care about giving excellent service. We don't believe in your calling this telephone line and getting a ticket number.

Government Operations committee  Yes. And I know employees.... I know a compensation advisor who works at PWGSC and she is working right now on specific actings, overtime for employees. She had this employee ask, “Could you prepare a pension estimate for me if I wish to retire in three months?” And she was going

Government Operations committee  —two people in our section who are working right now, but there are not that many any more, because once they retire, with the present classification problem they don't want to come back. But I wanted to point out something. It takes two years to train somebody in compensation.