Government Operations committee  It was Assistant Auditor General.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for those very kind words. The Public Service Commission is preoccupied with a lot work that's inside government. But it is a really important organization to protect the integrity of our staffing system and the non-partisanship o

Government Operations committee  This is a preoccupation. We've spent some time looking at that. We asked people if they think the staffing processes they were involved in were fair. People who haven't won a competition tend to be more likely to think it wasn't fair than the people who won. That is probably not

Government Operations committee  Information to people seems to be a factor. Sometimes they're not getting the information on how things are going and where they are in a process. People outside the government are not complaining as much as people in the government. There are a number of things we're looking a

Government Operations committee  The public service in this respect is different from a lot of private organizations. We are a position-based system where the jobs are advertised. So employees can apply for other jobs and move themselves. In fact, I was complaining at the committee last year that there was too m

Government Operations committee  We have actually tried to do comparisons of the staffing processes and we tend to use, as a proxy, time to staff. So we will do comparisons on time to staff, and that gives an indication of how long it costs. That's not been terribly successful. The reason for that is there are a

Government Operations committee  First, on where we stand on the comparison of cost effectiveness, I think we're pretty close to the experience in the United States. I think the Australians are faster than we are, but they—

Government Operations committee  Yes, on time to hire. But they have a more decentralized approach to what they've done. I think if you make comparisons with countries like India, you will find they're completely on a different scale. We're talking about years. The EU, for example, was taking a long time and ca

Government Operations committee  On the language question, I have a group of specialists in the psychology assessment centre who assure me that the level of language proficiency, whether for English or French, at the CBC level is the same. So the language competency required for English or French at a B level is

Government Operations committee  I can only talk about my own experience and my views of the Public Service Commission. I've been appointed through a parliamentary process. I was nominated by the Prime Minister. I believe it was Prime Minister Chrétien at the time and, subsequently, Prime Minister Martin, becaus

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  There was a big change in the legislation in November 2003, probably the largest change we'd seen for about 30 years, with the Public Service Employment Act. It came into force piece by piece. So it didn't come into force all at once. It came fully into force in December 2005.

Government Operations committee  It is my experience that an effort is being made to make all services available in both languages. The Public Service Commission of Canada is in charge of language proficiency tests. We are very concerned about the success and pass rate of those tests. In addition, the tests have

Government Operations committee  We actually do have a breakdown in the report. We have a map and the number of applications and the number of positions by province. So we have that information. I must say, though, that Alberta is one of the areas where we've had more challenges with bringing people in, becaus

Government Operations committee  I think we're pretty well aligned, but I'll do the calculations for you and get back to you.