When it was Revenue Canada, it came directly under the Treasury Board. When we negotiated a collective agreement, it was with Treasury Board. When they changed over to the agency, the first thing we had to do.... It was a brand-new organization and had to go through a certification process involving the Public Service Staff Relations Board, and that slowed down the process. More importantly, even though we managed to get an agreement in place—and we had this legal definition by the board and our position on it, which was a collective agreement—they said it was the terms and conditions of employment. That's not the essence.
The problem is that the CCRA tends to link itself far too directly, even though they've been separate agencies, with the Treasury Board. So they send their people to the negotiating table with us, and the problem there is they have no mandate. Each time we've negotiated collective agreements with them in the past, it's had to involve the president of the PSAC meeting with the commissioner and other officials to conclude a collective agreement, because they don't seem to want to give the mandate to the people they put at the table. We believe that's where the agreement should be started and finished, without having to go into a discussion between the head of the agency and the head of the union. So these are the problems created by the changes.
In terms of the classification review, that was well under way, but once they divided the Canada Border Services Agency, or took the customs offices out and put them in the border services, they stopped the process. These are the types of things that get started, get stopped, and it's very difficult to get them started again. So we'd like to see some sense of stability, in order to get them to work out all the wrinkles of being a new agency.