Government Operations committee  Thank you for your question. The issue of funding is not an issue we looked at directly, but in fact we raise it indirectly. The comment about not having sufficient systems is actually a funding-related issue. In order to modernize the systems that support HR, there will be a r

Government Operations committee  On the entry level, we have done better. But we still have this phenomenon that we talk about in the report as “drop-off”. In terms of applications to the public service--and I mentioned there are high numbers of applications, there's a lot of interest--we're seeing a higher prop

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much, and good morning. I have with me, from the Public Service Commission of Canada, Linda Gobeil, senior vice-president, policy; Mary Clennett, vice-president, audit; and Donald Lemaire, vice-president, staffing and assessment services. I am here today to disc

Government Operations committee  That's right.

Government Operations committee  That's a very interesting question and a rather complicated one, because under the previous Public Service Employment Act there was a prohibition. Public servants were not allowed to be involved in political activity, until a case went to the Supreme Court in the early nineties.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much.

Government Operations committee  This is a process we are currently reviewing. Mr. Lemaire may be able to give you further information on the $6 million amount.

Government Operations committee  Among things we have done to date in the kind of strategy we've followed, one is that there obviously has to be a lot of information, so we did a lot of work initially to provide information on availability of people and on how to apply, and in working with groups to encourage th

Government Operations committee  For a process involving only five people, on average, it takes half the time. In my opinion, it is too long. That is an average. Sometimes it takes less time, and sometimes it takes more time. We have to carry out an evaluation on processes that took place before the act was amen

Government Operations committee  It is discretionary; it's left to the commission. I haven't talked about all of that in my list of responsibilities, but what was added in the new legislation was the responsibility for non-partisanship, specific direction in the legislation about public servants being candidates

Government Operations committee  We would not look at that. But being one of those people who is compensated that way, I obviously have some interest. Most of the studies I have seen show that at entry into the public service in the more junior levels it's more than competitive, and often more generous than the

Government Operations committee  Yes, we are also responsible for the RCMP public complaints commission--they've changed their name, and I tend to confuse the name. We're responsible for them. We did an audit on them, and we were not very happy with their staffing practices either.

Government Operations committee  Are you talking about any one of the specifics, or are you talking in general?

Government Operations committee  What we're finding is that in those two cases we didn't find political influence. That's an important consideration here, which we didn't find. That's not to say it doesn't exist, but we didn't find it. What we found was a lot of hand-picking people and saying, “We're going to us

Government Operations committee  My understanding is that it automatically gets referred to this committee.