Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on May 9th, 2006

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

May I interrupt, Mr. Chair? As a measure of respect for your position, I think that it is up to you to determine whether my remarks are relevant or not. It is not up to my friend and colleague from the Conservative Party who, until further notice, is not chair of this committee. He is a member of this committee, just like I am. So that is what I am suggesting, unless he gives me permission to judge whether or not his comments are relevant; that would only be fair and ethical, would it not?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I am leaning towards Mr. Poilievre. Just try to keep your comments relevant. You're getting really close, but go ahead.

A point of order, Madame Jennings?

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Is it not the practice, if there is a point of order, that the time on a member's—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

It is.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

On this point of order that Mr. Poilievre raised, I wish to make one observation, if I may.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm allowing Mr. Sauvageau to proceed, so I don't know why you want to argue.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

It's not an argument.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay.

[Ruth Dantzer]

There are two things I would like to add. First, as far as respecting official languages is concerned, whenever we hire a new public servant, we address that very issue and the act for two days of every training session. That is a big step.

Secondly, and I am no expert in the area, but in most cases the choice is left up to the deputy minister when it comes to non-imperative staffing.

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, and thanks for coming today.

I did have the opportunity prior to this committee meeting, about a month and a half ago, to have a briefing from Treasury Board on the work that you're doing. It is really interesting. I'm hopeful for the opportunities for public servants to find opportunities to receive more professional development. I think that's critical for any public service.

I would encourage you to seek opportunities—and maybe this is planned already, and I hope this is the case—where you can have managers and people who are at other levels working together, taking courses at the same time. Maybe that's happening in the orientation. In other words, people at the highest levels, ADMs, are working with clerks, etc. I think this is something that would be helpful.

As was mentioned—I'll be blunt about it—there are a lot of disheartened people presently in our public service. Any way that we can encourage people to work together to seek common outcomes would be terrific. I would also declare an interest, being the son of a public servant.... My father was involved in management schools back in the 1980s with the public service. It was something that was near and dear to him. I'm glad to see it is being extended beyond just management. I think that's really critical. Indeed, I would like to see members of Parliament take advantage of the orientation. I'm quite serious about that, actually, because I think it would provide people with a shared experience again--members of Parliament working with public servants. If we can have the opportunity to have the same kind of training as they're having as public servants, I think this would be an opportunity that should be open to public servants as well as MPs.

I want to turn to the oversight. I know a comment was already made with regard to Bill C-2 and, for instance, whistle-blower legislation, and how you as a school would respond to new pieces of legislation. So we have Bill C-2 in front of us. At some point, we will predict, it gets passed. How do you go about responding to that; for instance, the idea of whistle-blower legislation that would be changed? Would you then go out and design courses specifically for that? Then who would they be available to?

Just start with that question.

[Ruth Dantzer]

The process that has been described is actually very accurate. We basically have a scanning function that looks at lobbyist registration, for example, whistle-blowers, new legislation that public servants actually have to be aware of to do their jobs, and changes in terms of the Lobbyists Registration Act. Those things would come into our scanning process probably in the spring or the fall.

We would start planning in September for the next year. We would get together with the policy leads; the school is a deliverer and not a policy lead. We would get the policy leads from the Treasury Board Secretariat or the Privy Council Office, as the case required, and we would design a course. We would then pilot it and move it.

In terms of the target audience, that's an interesting question, because if you go back to this priority to professionalize functional areas, I would suggest that human resources, the HR group, would really need to know about whistle-blowing to ensure that the measures are put in place around that executive table.

At the school, we found that there's a much broader audience for a lot of general management knowledge about the public service. Normally we would have a professional kind of course that would be available to the professional group, and then some piece of it might be available only to public servants at large.

The third aspect I want to make sure I emphasize is that when legislation as important as whistle-blowing comes into effect, it's actually brought into every one of our courses that go across the public service, because it's a new piece of information that they need in order to model a functioning public service.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I only have a couple of other comments.

When we're looking at the ILPs, the individual learning plans, are those done by the individuals themselves? Does a manager work with an employee of the public service? Is there then oversight in terms of whether you fulfilled your goals and have taken the courses, etc.? I'm assuming that's the case; I've forgotten if that's from the briefing, if that's the case.

The other thing I wanted to quickly touch on, because of time, is the importance that I see here in talking about a diverse workforce and whether we can broaden the scope of accountability. I know that within my riding, and certainly when you look at the public service, we don't reflect the population at large, and that's a key issue. I know that we can get into who does what and who has purview over making sure our public service reflects our population. I only want some feedback.

I see the courses there. Are they're available to all or are they ones that managers must take in terms of diversity in the workforce?

[Ruth Dantzer]

On the two questions, first with respect to the individual learning plan, a major change with respect to the school in terms of the learning policy is that individual learning plans will now be guided by government priorities.

In the past, individuals could choose whatever learning plans they wanted, and it often had a perverse effect. They would choose to take a pre-retirement course, for example, one of our most popular courses. You're now going to see individual learning plans more closely aligned with departmental learning plans, where the deputy head has basically worked with the executive and said these are the areas we need to focus on, and the school will be there to support that learning plan. It may be that we have to become much better regulators, and what are the best practices in terms of regulations?

On the learning plans, the oversight is actually going to come from departments and from individual managers to ensure that every public servant has a learning plan. I think that is getting out. It is both bottom up and top down.

With respect to managing the diverse workforce, this is again a value of the public service, so you're going to see it being spoken about at orientation. It is one of our rules. The environment you're in now is one that expects diversity and official languages, but it also carries through in terms of most of the authority delegation, because there is law that applies. At every level where people are signing off on HR, they would have some. There are also courses that would be for specialists and some that are more general, but it is across the board. That would be what we would consider a value and an ethic for the public service.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you. That concludes round one.

Mr. Tonks, for five minutes.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

I think mine will be a little shorter than that, or it will require a little less than five minutes, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Dantzer, thank you very much for being here. I hope you're not taken aback by the simplicity of my question, because I very much appreciate the professional development that has taken place with respect to the checks and balances, the understanding of how policy development works with policy implementation, and the dividing line between that. We should all respect what our roles are.

My question is really a very simple one, and it's from the perspective of professionalism. What would be your view on the $1,000 mechanism with respect to whistle-blowers? Do you think that is a fundamental ingredient of the legislation? Would you provide us with an opinion on that? I know there may be a difference of opinion in terms of the relevancy and the need for that in a very well-defined and an accountable civil service as it relates to our parliamentary system.

[Ruth Dantzer]

I actually don't have an opinion on it. With respect, my expertise is really in learning and transfer of knowledge. I don't feel either equipped or positioned to respond to that question.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Supplementary to that, I note that in your syllabus, or in the terms of reference, the architecture of learning values and ethics is a fundamental part of it. Do you not then think that within the context of values and ethics there should be a discussion with respect to the relevancy of being paid...? Let me put it another way: the relevancy of there being a mechanism, and whether it's necessary for $1,000, or any amount of money, to be paid to be a professional. Do you think that should be discussed in the values and ethics portion of your syllabus?

[Ruth Dantzer]

Values and ethics is discussed in the syllabus, as is the policy on rewards and recognition. They're both discussed. What is promoted in the values and ethics section is to have a discussion about what the intent is and what is going on. That is encouraged, and there's free time and actually lively debate on all aspects of values and ethics in any of the courses I've attended. It's something that, from my experience, most management tables spend a lot of time talking about: acceptable behaviours.

I don't think that answers your question, but that's the best I can do.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

That's good enough. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

That appears to be it, Ms. Dantzer. Thank you very much for coming this morning and giving us your time.

We'll recess for a couple of minutes and then we'll have another go at this report.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We're going to reconvene. We have a few more minutes, and I'd like to have another try at this report.

Monsieur Poilievre.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

I have a motion I would like to table at this time.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Is this a notice of motion?