Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. On behalf of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, thank you for giving us this opportunity.
I have with me Betty Bannon, who's the national president of the Union of Taxation Employees.
I want to first of all thank the standing committee for inviting us to appear this afternoon.
The CRA is an important part of the government's operation and structure. It is one of the largest definable parts of the government, and, notwithstanding its mandate, is well respected by the majority of Canadians. This fact is in no small part due to the skill and hard work and dedication of the 26,000 PSAC-UTE members who work for the CRA.
I should like to say at the outset that while this five-year review is legislatively mandated, a fundamental restructuring of the CRA would not fit well with PSAC, our component--the Union of Taxation Employees--or the thousands of members we are privileged to represent who work for the CRA. Let me say off the top that I acknowledge that the government has every right to restructure and reorganize the operations, but these rights should be tempered. They should be tempered in the case of the CRA because of the enormity and complexity of the restructuring that created the CRA a little over five years ago, a process that is still incomplete, in terms of some significant human resource issues that we'll address in a minute.
Members of the committee should understand that the adoption of the legislation that created the CCRA was not the end of the process. The CCRA workforce that was represented by the PSAC and by UTE and CEUDA--which is the Customs Excise Union Douanes Accise--which are our two components with members who were transferred from Treasury Board to the CCRA, went through a certification process that took fully 18 months and cost our members tens of thousands of dollars. More importantly, we were not in a position during this period to exercise our full rights with regard to collective bargaining, and let me explain that.
While we negotiated with the CCRA management during the period and successfully reached an agreement, the Public Service Staff Relations Board deemed our agreement to have been an agreement in terms and conditions of employment rather than a negotiated collective agreement. Thankfully, we were able to reach an agreement at the table, because until we were certified by the PSSRA, we did not have the right to strike or the assistance of a third party through the establishment of a conciliation board.
There are consequences to restructuring, particularly when the restructuring changes the official employer of the government department or agency workforce. As members of the committee are aware, despite its relative youth as an independent agency of the federal government, the CCRA has gone through a significant restructuring in its own right. On December 12, 2003, Canada Customs was transferred to the Minister of Public Security and Emergency Planning. Notwithstanding our position that this was an appropriate restructuring of government operations, it had a significant impact on our members who were transferred to the Canada Border Services Agency as well as on those who remained in the more narrowly defined Canada Revenue Agency.
In its first report, “The First Five Years”, the CCRA had this to say, and I quote:
In 2003 the Agency initiated the development of a new classification standard for the Program Delivery and Administrative Service occupational group, which covers approximately 75% of the CRA employees. However, the work has been temporarily put on hold as a result of the departure of Customs to the new Canada Border Services Agency.
Leaving aside the fact that we don't believe that the CRA, like the federal government in general, has moved quickly enough to update what is truly an antiquated classification system, there can be no doubt that restructuring within government departments and agencies delays the process, with significant negative consequences for the workers we represent.
I said at the outset that governments have every right to restructure and reorganize their operations, but in addition to the tangible impacts of restructuring, some of which I have outlined in the CCRA, CRA, and CBSA situation, there is a view strongly held within our membership that there is no stability within the government's administrative structure, and that while change may be a good thing, constant change undermines the morale and the effectiveness of public institutions.
As a result, we strongly encourage the government, and particularly a government in a minority Parliament, to take a step back and allow some of the restructured departments and agencies, including the CRA, a period of stability, a period of time to complete some of the processes, including classification, that are both necessary and desirable.
That said, there are issues at a more micro level where we think change can and should take place. I will start with a few comments on collective bargaining, and Betty Bannon will talk briefly about union-management relations, and particularly staffing and staffing recourse issues.
