Government Operations Committee on June 15th, 2006

[Maria Barrados]

Most members of this committee know that I was at the Office of the Auditor General before taking up my position here at the Public Service Commission.

Neither the human resources planning framework nor the financial planning framework is very solid, and we would like to integrate these two frameworks. Some departments and agencies devote nearly three quarters of their budget to human resources. Having a truly integrated planning framework is major challenge.

The question as to whether or not organizations were ready to receive staffing authorities was important when we started making decisions on the delegations. The assessment allowed us to note a preliminary planning process. That is a beginning. Consequently, we will be devoting more efforts to oversight.

We will be carrying out more audits, because our role is to push and encourage people. Managers are responsible for the implementation of this process. That is not our job.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Kramp.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you, and welcome to all.

I have a number of questions. I know I can't get to them all in my first round, but we'll see where this will start and go.

I'm really pleased that you bring so much auditing background to your position. Specifically, I'd like to know what audits are in process right now, the number of them, and the type of audit, and also what you have planned to audit.

[Maria Barrados]

We have our annual report coming out. We are aiming for or working on a date for the first week in the month of October. It depends, of course, whether Parliament is sitting, so we have to be flexible.

We are also looking at the appointments in the EX group, which is an audit we expect to have come out. We are looking at the student program, which is one of the ones we expect to be part of the package.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

I'm sorry, I'm not familiar; could you just give me a little background?

[Maria Barrados]

The federal student employment program is the summer student employment. There was an audit done three or four years ago that raised a lot of concerns about targeting, not giving students fair access. This audit has gone back to make sure there are improvements.

Our strategy is that we identify problems and keep coming back. I like a term Sheila often uses, that we “specialize in nagging”. We identify something and we have to keep coming back. That's the case in the student program.

Of course, there are our issues in readiness, because as the other questions suggested, we have some of the essential pieces in place, but this is a huge change managers have to go through. We want again to keep at this to make sure these changes occur.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

the second question I have concerns your selection process and the areas people come from. There's been a great deal of concern in many areas across the country from people who suggest they don't have the opportunity to contest an available job because they don't live in that area or they're not of the right demographics. What I'd like to know is whether you have completed any studies on this, from the point of view of the demographics of the actual individuals hired—in other words, from in-house or the exterior, from the different regions, by race, colour, creed, geography, etc. Has any of this factored into your study, or have you completed a study on that?

[Maria Barrados]

We're quite concerned about all of those things, and I can address some of the issues without starting to pull out all the specific numbers—but we can get you specific numbers.

Under the previous legislation, there was the requirement that public service jobs first be posted within the public service. There had to be a justification before you went outside the public service to staff a new job, hence giving promotion opportunities to people in the public service.

That particular clause is no longer in the legislation. We now have a different system beginning to take shape, which means that people can advertise outside much more than they had in the past to fill some of the jobs that are there. That's a significant change.

We watch fairly closely representativity numbers, and we continue to be concerned about the gap in work force availability of, the actual people represented in, and the rate at which we're hiring visible minorities in the public service. We are doing better than many other organizations, but there's still a significant gap between what is available and what we find in the public service.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Do you know how much of a difference in cost there has been in going to this new approach? Has the effort been onerous in cost to come up with a more comprehensive national program, rather than simply an in-house one?

[Maria Barrados]

Now you're getting to the really tricky part. Your question is anticipating my next comment a bit.

In the past—and we're in a transition now—there was a restriction. There was an ability to restrict the geographic area of competition. So any public service manager could decide to allow jobs, if there was one in Ottawa, only from Ottawa-Gatineau, for example, or if it was in Toronto, from only around Toronto. This has raised a lot of concerns, particularly from members of Parliament, who saw a lot of jobs come up that were advertised for outside the public service but restricted geographically. So that meant that their constituents couldn't apply for those jobs.

We had always done that to limit the volume of applicants, because in the public service we have a lot of people interested in the generalist jobs. We have hundreds of applications. For the specialty jobs, it's a different situation. For specialty jobs, we have to compete with everyone else, and we often don't do so well. So specialty jobs are not the same as the generalist jobs.

We have now initiated a process and changed our policy by broadening it. Starting April 1, all jobs for what we're calling the officer level are now open to national competition, so anyone in the country can apply for those jobs. Two things have had to happen with that. One is we are putting in information systems that will allow us to deal with the large volumes of applications. That is now all in place; we're beginning to roll this out.

Your second part of the question is what the costs are. This is a bit unknown, because this is now at the discretion of the managers, as to what they're paying for this. We are providing facilities and support, so that you can do interviews in other ways apart from having people come directly. But there is discretion as to whether you pay moving and relocation costs. That's one part of the cost equation.

The second part of the cost equation is we have to put the information systems in place, so that when people apply their application gets treated and they get treated in as fair a way as everyone else.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

As you're going through this transition process, there are obviously difficulties. You said one of the most difficult things is following up. You start a process, but then to ensure that you're going to get the desired results you have to have some form of assessment of the process all the way through.

We've seen a classic example. This committee has been struggling with recommendations that the Auditor General made back in 2001 for accrual accounting. Yet we've never seen a full implementation, and every time we do a small degree of follow-up, there doesn't appear to be the proper emphasis.

My concern is that we have an adequate means of follow-up to ensure that this is working and effective as we go to the new process within your department.

May I be so bold as to ask you for your opinion on how could Parliament be most effective in giving you the tools necessary to ensure that we are getting a process that works, that's cost-effective, and of course that suits the national identity of what we are as a society?

[Maria Barrados]

Mr. Kramp, this committee is exactly the kind of process I look for. It is very important for me and my organization that we have the dialogue with this committee, because having members of Parliament ask questions on the record focuses the mind, the minds of all the people, and the subjects, which you touch here. You may not be quite aware of the impact this has on the system. People watch what is said at these committees very closely.

It's the system, and it works. In organizations like mine and the Office of the Auditor General, it is important that we continue to have that link with Parliament and maintain our independent point of view. So we will do the follow-up and identify the issues.

Regarding some of the issues I look for, one is strengthening the independence of my office. One of the big issues has been in the process, in the way in which I was nominated. It was through this committee. My nomination was a vote in both houses. The only way I can be removed is through a vote in both houses. This gives me a tremendous independence as to who my boss is. I know who my boss is: it's the people around this table.

I do have concerns about our budgets. I have not had any issues where people have tried to take money from our budgets. One way you control the watchdog, if you like, and the ability for me to organize my organization the way I want is to reduce the money.

Now, the minute I feel that I am in trouble, I can assure you I will come to this committee. But I'm always trying to make sure that we maintain that independent point of view and that ability to function independently.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Ms. Nash, you have the floor.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Good morning, and welcome to our committee. It's a pleasure to meet you.

I have questions in two areas. I assume that like the rest of our society the public service will be affected by a generational change, where a number of people will be retiring and there will be all kinds of openings for new people coming on stream. I know for many organizations this poses big challenges about how they are going to accommodate that change.

What are you anticipating in the public service, and what plans are you putting in place to deal with it?

[Maria Barrados]

We have the same issues in the public service that many have. We had large numbers come into the public service in the seventies; they have moved their way through, and they're all beginning to retire at about the same time.

In my organization, we have moved from the actual doing of the staffing to providing a staffing service to try to help departments deal with this issue. Mr. Lemaire is responsible for it, so maybe I could ask him to give a few comments.

[Donald Lemaire, Vice-President, Services Branch, Public Service Commission of Canada]

Thank you.

One bit of good news, based on the study that has just been completed by D-Code, a private sector organization, which has surveyed 27,000 college and university students, is that they have a very strong interest in joining the public service, either provincial, municipal, or federal. From that perspective, there is a strong interest in joining these organizations.

What we're doing now is working with departments to identify where there are specific gaps, because it's not every place that faces the same challenge. If we take just human resources, which is our main concern, there is a big shortage and already a big gap. What we're doing is launching with our partners, the other departments, recruitment at the entry level. We put in place also a two-year development program to make sure they have proper mentoring and training so that they can achieve the level of performance we expect more senior officials to arrive at.

Also, we're working with different departments now with more specialized targeted recruitment among different communities. The first phase is basically to do the diagnostic, because starting from a general premise that everybody will face the same type of shortage is not a very effective way to identify a proper strategy to meet and close the gap. That's basically the process we have engaged.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you.

Just out of curiosity, you said there were about 185,000 employees in the public service. What percentage of those do you anticipate will, over the next five years, say, be taking their retirement?

[Donald Lemaire]

Generally, the numbers we have up to the year 2010 are that about 40% will be eligible for retirement. Are they going to take it? We don't know. Depending on the group, there are some who stay on a bit longer than the others. But if my memory serves me correctly, those are the numbers that stick in my mind.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Forty percent eligibility--that's a huge challenge.

[Donald Lemaire]

Yes, by 2010.

[Maria Barrados]

That's not to say they will all retire. We see some very interesting patterns in the public service. Human resource management specialists hit 55 and retire. Maybe they know something; I don't know, but they may. A lot of the others leave over a five or six-year period. It depends really on the work they're doing.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you.

I think it's very positive that you're reporting that among students today there is a desire to go into public service. I think there was a period of time when there was a lot of disparaging of public sector staff.

I personally have a lot of respect for them. I think it's a valuable contribution. A key to our public sector is that there not be the accusation of partisanship, and I note in the report that there has been a strong emphasis on being non-partisan and protecting merit, which I think we all value.

One particular issue I'd like to raise--this came up in my riding in Toronto--is about the federal student employment program. I was asked to come in and approve not hirings but the authorization to fund positions that were going to be offered for the summer. I asked about the criteria for this program.

I see you shaking your head. Maybe that's not usual, but I was asked to come in, and it seemed to me highly unusual that I would be looking at these, because we don't want them to be partisan.

But I also had questions about how the program works. I was told that the goal is to offer students workplace experience, summer work experience, especially targeting disadvantaged students. When I asked what it was based on, they said it was the census data from 2001, the number of students in the riding and the percentage of those who are unemployed--which seemed to me a very gross yardstick five years down the road. This is what I was told.

When I asked whether there was a requirement that these students be hired from within the riding, I was told there wasn't, and there was no particular outreach to the especially disadvantaged areas in my riding. Maybe I was misinformed, but it just seemed to me a strange way to go about implementing this kind of program.

I don't know whether I was misinformed. Maybe you could explain the goal of this program, because it does involve hiring.

[Maria Barrados]

I'm a little puzzled by the explanation that you were given. Maybe we can follow up with your office and get some of the details, because that's not the way the program is to operate, and my understanding is that's not the way it operates.

Students apply individually, so there's an application to this program. We get large numbers of students applying--9,000 students who apply for these jobs. What we then do is get a request from a department for a particular type of job, whether they're looking for somebody with a background in science or whether they want a statistician, or usually what kind of background they want.

We, the Public Service Commission, will then look at the databases. We will give them a match of five people, and they can choose one of those five people. That's how it's done.

There may be another process in departments in terms of saying how many students we're going to hire, but we're not involved in that part of it. We're involved in the part of having students apply. They apply directly. We're there to be non-partisan and not have any part in a manipulation of that, to give students an equal chance.

Where we had the problem in the past was when you looked at some of the requests and you would have a request--I'm making this up, but it's the kind of thing you'd have--for a BA in something like anthropology, somebody who had done lifesaving as well, and knew some obscure language. By the time you pulled out those out, you'd have a unique individual. That's what we were so against and we identified in the last audit.

We've gone back to make sure that wasn't continuing, because it is supposed to be an equal chance. But we'll follow up with your office for--

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I was just wondering whether there are two different programs. The one that Ms. Nash is referring to is employers getting grants to hire summer students. They're not hired through the public service. So that's the difference.

[Maria Barrados]

Okay, I'm relieved, because we've been there for 100 years being non-partisan, and we take that—