Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
On behalf of the 84,000 supporters of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we welcome the opportunity to speak about the changes in Bill C-4, and we thank you for inviting us.
There's no question that something has to be done about the work environment in the Government of Canada. It's a toxic environment. Workers can't work. Leaders can't lead: 193,000 full-time equivalent workers and fewer than 100 dismissals.
When leaders lead and managers manage, they get human rights complaints. They get grievances. They get group complaints, individual complaints, policy complaints, and very often these things end up in the Federal Court of Canada. It's a toxic, terrible environment.
Whether these solutions will be effective, who knows? Government is a highly complicated organ. But what we do know is that people don't like going to work in the Government of Canada.
This report, produced by a management committee, PSMAC Subcommittee on People Resourcing, reported this: 50 million days worked in the Government of Canada; 7.6 million paid leave days taken; 2.1 million paid holidays.
Taking out paid holidays, 15% of the days that Canadians paid for were not worked in the Government of Canada.
But we know that in the departments of government where people have strong commitments to their mission—the Attorney General, the environment department—absenteeism is much lower and people have a commitment to the job. Their commitment to the mission surpasses the horrors of spending a day working in government employment.
So we're happy that the government is taking seriously its obligations to do something. When this government took office, the average compensation for a federal government employee was $86,000 a year, all in the cost to Canadians of having one worker work for the government all year. Five years later, from 2006 to 2011, that had gone up to $111,000. The Parliamentary Budget Officer projects that it will be $129,000 per employee by fiscal 2015 if nothing is done. So there's an urgent problem.
I'll just close with one case summary. There's a foreign service worker with a six-figure job description who was proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to have spent more than half of his time...or 75% of his time, for seven months, surfing the net, reading news and sports, and downloading questionable material. This was proven. He was dismissed, and he was reinstated by a Public Service Labour Relations Board adjudicator. You know, there isn't anybody working out of government who could get a deal like that.
We urge leaders of all parties to create a work environment where Canadians can go to work for the Government of Canada, do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, be treated fairly, and have an avenue of appeal, if they feel they haven't been treated fairly, that's effective, efficient, quick, and just.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.