Government Operations Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2006

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

A generation is spread over 20 or 25 years. The process began in the best years, back in the 1970s. But we're now in 2006. Thirty-six years have gone by, which corresponds to a generation and a half. At the beginning of the process, people said the next generation would be bilingual, since people who are 50, 60 or 70 years old don't or can't learn another language, and so on.

Our workforce includes people who entered the public service at the age of about 20 or 25. Now they are 30 or 40 years of age, but they are still unilingual and have no desire to learn the other language. That is unacceptable, because bilingualism has been a requirement for these positions for years now. The Government's policies and procedures have been modified ad nauseum. This has to stop. People must comply with the language requirements of their position.

[Linda Gobeil]

Absolutely.

I would just like to come back to the matter of senior executives who are at levels 4 and 5...

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

You mean EX-4 and 5 positions?

[Linda Gobeil]

Yes. People must be bilingual in order to access these positions, except where the positions are staffed through an external process, but they are in the minority.

As for level 1 and 3 positions, as a general rule, incumbents are required to be bilingual, except in certain places. The Treasury Board determines which positions are to be designated bilingual. That gives you somewhat of an overview of the situation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you very much.

[Maria Barrados]

I didn't answer the other questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Perhaps you can do that with the next speaker, while addressing another point.

Mr. Kramp.

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

Thank you very much. I would like to welcome our guests here today.

Just from the tone and tenor of my colleagues on both sides of the table, I think there may be a consideration we all might give a little thought to. It's certainly not the fault of anybody, but with the timing of the report—just out, and now here we are with the witnesses—none of us has had any time to evaluate seriously and in depth the entire report. In recognition that the public service is the direct link between government operations and the public, serving that crucial point where all of the activity and the interaction meet—government responsibilities, procedures and policies, the implementation, and/or the public use or misuse and/or availability.... It's crucial.

When we see the thousands and thousands of positions that are filled and the amazing level of responsibilities you have to administer this entire program, I really believe we cannot, in the space of an hour or two here today, do justice to the many concerns and/or points of interest that I think this committee should thoroughly evaluate. I'd just note that.

At the outset I can go to a dozen points I'd love to be able to run with and get some real feedback from you on right now, but I believe we should bring our witnesses back when we've had some time to digest some of this information and are able to follow it up to get some definitive answers. I'll just touch on two or three now.

I'd like to throw this out just to have my colleagues think about it, so that we might consider bringing our witnesses back when we've had more time to thoroughly see what's in here. I know Madame Thibault has, just on one issue alone, a great number of lingering concerns about why, after a generation, we have not made progress.

Let me just deal with a couple of points. On page 3 you made mention of “phantom” positions. That's really disturbing; of course, we've seen it before. On page 83 you elaborate a little on the phantom positions.

I think this is just absolutely wrong. What took place there was morally wrong. It shouldn't happen; it's not the way business should operate. I see that you have taken corrective action, and I commend you for that corrective action.

What I would like to know is where we stand now, so that this type of thing never happens again. As a matter of fact, I'd like to follow up on this, but maybe my colleagues will undertake it.

What are your thoughts on this?

[Maria Barrados]

Thank you. I'm happy to come back to the committee at any time, and I'm prepared to come on short notice, to talk about any of these issues, so just keep me on your list if you want to follow up with something. If I'm not available, my staff would certainly be available to you.

Concerning phantom positions, we are very concerned too. What we have in Bill C-2 is a tightening up of the kind of flow you see between ministerial exempt staff and the public service. But what you did in Bill C-2 was reduce the ability of exempt staff to go into the public service on a priority basis. In other words, they have to compete, and they can compete in internal competitions. I was comfortable with that proposition.

What we didn't look at was the flow the other way. Over the last eleven years we've had about 250 people come from the exempt staff on a priority basis into the public service, but we've also had 100 public servants work in exempt staff status; we've had that kind of movement as well.

So I believe we've dealt with part of it. We haven't dealt with the other part.

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

In your investigation, did you deal directly with the ministers involved? Did you hear testimony directly from the ministers involved with this?

[Maria Barrados]

In the investigation we dealt with all the people who had comments to make on the transaction itself. So we dealt with exempt staff, with deputies, with departmental officials. What we had is pressure from exempt staff and action taken by bureaucrats, so we had to look at the bureaucratic behaviour as well.

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

Okay. Were you able to positively identify the areas of influence or pressure?

[Maria Barrados]

We came close enough to be concerned about them and to revoke those appointments.

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

Thank you. Was there any recommendation that has come to this House to reprimand individuals involved who were effectively trying to put in place people who maybe did not meet the qualifications necessary?

[Maria Barrados]

The way the system is currently set up...what we did was investigate those appointments, and we revoked the appointments. All the players knew of our concerns, and I feel satisfied that we've done enough about those two particular cases. I am not satisfied that we've dealt with it in a general way, so I feel there's a policy solution or a legislative solution, and being statutory, I favour the legislative solution, obviously.

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

Okay. So what you're basically saying then is we have a responsibility, as a committee and as a Parliament, to help put in place guidelines to ensure that this type of thing...so that it gives you some protection as well, so that you have a clearer set of parameters to draw from. Is that what you're saying?

[Maria Barrados]

It would be very helpful. It's part of what happened under the new Public Service Employment Act. There was new responsibility for protecting non-partisanship for the Public Service Commission. So we're into a new area, and it's part of exercising this new area and looking at what it is we need to have in place. If this committee wants to do more on this area, it would be very helpful to me.

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

Thank you. On page 6, you finished off the one paragraph, and you say, “Our audit also found poor practices in documenting these transactions.” That's regarding the competitive process and the failure to basically have justification for a number of these appointments.

I am concerned with the fact that there is no documentation. Is there no documentation or has it just not been reported?

[Maria Barrados]

I'll ask Mary Clennett to expand on that because she's responsible for audits.

When the auditors go and look in the files, they expect to see the material there. The way you posed me the question, is it anywhere in the department some place, I can't be sure because we expect it to be in the files.

I don't want to sound overly bureaucratic here in terms of what we expect, but these are transactions. This involves people's pay, this involves demonstrating that the requirements for the job are met, and this requires some demonstration as to why there wasn't a competitive process. And it's allowed. You don't always have to have a competitive process, but there has to be a rationale for why.

Mary, do you want to add to that?

[Mary Clennett, Vice-President, Audit Branch, Public Service Commission of Canada]

Sure.

On the “without competition” files that we looked at, we found that in 91% of the cases we did not see the justification on the file. You would have expected to see it on the file. It's not reasonable that it would have been somewhere else. But then we looked at other areas where we looked at other documentation that you expect to see on file, like security clearance, language requirements, letters of offer. On security clearance, we did find areas of non-compliance, but in those cases we've talked to the department and it's reasonable to believe there is documentation that would have existed elsewhere in the department. But you are responsible for putting it on the file.

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

Thank you. Your comment that 91% are non-compliant, for lack of a better word, is just astounding. How would this compare to the private sector? As an example, if you're running your own business, you just can't do it. Is this just a laissez-faire approach from the bureaucracy, and with a system and the lack of rules and regulations that have been implemented and are proposed by Parliament? Or is this management and/or personal lack of oversight? What do you think?

[Maria Barrados]

I don't think we lack for rules. I think we have plenty of rules. You'll notice that I'm not recommending more rules. We have lots of rules. I think we see here sloppiness, and I think we haven't had enough oversight in changing the Public Service Commission. Having the new interest of Parliament in the work of the Public Service Commission, and us doing these kinds of audits, I think thereby we are raising and increasing the amount of oversight, and that should all help move it in the right direction.

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

I recognize that any time you go through transition or change it's difficult, and you are going through an enormous change in your process. Maybe part of that process and change is illustrating some of the errors or weaknesses. My concern is not what was wrong, but where are we going in the future? Have you set any internal goals on this for departmental...such as, as an example, that 91%, should it be down to a 9% level of acceptance rather than 91%? Can you give us any thought on that?

[Maria Barrados]

I haven't set any goals, but if you asked me to set a goal, I'd say I expect it to be 100%. These are transactions that involve people's careers, pay, and other important factors within the public service. So I'm looking for 100%.

As part of the change in the new Public Service Employment Act, we've done a lot of training, much more training than in the past. I speak on every platform that will give me a chance to lay out what the expectations are. There is now greater awareness than in the past. I'm willing to give people the chance under the new legislation, but we have really increased the amount of monitoring and the oversight.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Madame Nash.