Evidence of meeting #17 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was job.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission of Canada
I think that's entirely up to the committee.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB
Okay. So we have these false positions that everyone was complicit in organizing, and then we had them transferred to the ministers' offices. I don't understand completely. Anyway, we don't need to get into all that, but if it took a change in government to bring two examples to our attention, then anywhere in your investigation, did you uncover the possibility that this was an ongoing practice in other departments, possibly, or within these departments?
12:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission of Canada
Just to explain the kind of position, it's almost like having a holding pattern. You're working in a minister's office, and instead of taking your chances through the priority system, you have a place where you can directly start the next day once you leave the minister's office. That's what these things were. They were good, solid insurance policies for people.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB
Some people would call it insurance, but I'd call it fraud, possibly. Certainly, for all these other people who were supposed to be in the order of precedence, all of their rights were violated.
12:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission of Canada
I agree with you, and that's why I revoked them.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB
Certainly you don't have the capacity to go into all departments to ensure that this never happened before, but is there any indication from your interviews that this was an ongoing and common practice?
12:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission of Canada
We did two things. We took a look at what kind of movement we had. We can do that through the pay system, because we have a pay system that's matched and allows us to look at where people move. So this was my comment. There were about a hundred public servants who had moved, at various times, between the public service and the ministers' offices without any kind of break in the system.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB
So from that, you would then possibly assume that maybe not all, but a good percentage of those would have been involved in this type of process?
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
12:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission of Canada
I have no way of knowing that, so I can't go there.
The other thing we did was look at that same pay system to see if we saw any of this flipping back and forth that was a bit of a pattern in some of these. These two stood out. In examining the systems, I didn't see anything else that would make me say I must take more—
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB
And what disciplinary action now will be taken against the deputy ministers and all those people who were involved and complicit in this practice?
12:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission of Canada
I don't have any role in disciplining deputy ministers.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB
Okay. Is there some type of discipline that should be put in place, even to go back retroactively, in your opinion, to ensure that this practice does not continue into the future?
12:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission of Canada
I wrote to the deputy ministers involved and I had conversations. The person who disciplines deputy ministers is the clerk.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB
In your opinion, is a letter as good as a pay cut or possibly being let go?
12:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission of Canada
You're talking about a range of punishments to people.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB
Maybe we should discuss the possibilities of something more than a letter.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Diane Marleau
I think we've gone far enough on that point.
You wanted one quick answer, Madame Barrados.
12:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission of Canada
I'm satisfied that we've done what we should do here and that people were not happy about this. People were quite embarrassed about this. We've done a lot of briefing.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB
It's all the people below that position that I'm concerned about.
12:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission of Canada
But I am more concerned about addressing this in a systemic way so that we don't have the possibility for this.