Government Operations Committee on Nov. 28th, 2006

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

I know a number of my colleagues on the committee will probably have further questions on this. I'd like to look to another matter for a second.

We're going through quite an analysis on accrual accounting and the demand that's going to place on the public service. We recognize that you could potentially be running into a shortfall of people in the auditing section if we were to adapt to that, which makes me think a bit more of a broader public concern.

Does your department have any data available on comparisons with other jurisdictions, on a per capita basis, of public servants employed, be it federal-provincial, be it other jurisdictions? As an example, when we were comparing the auditing capacities, we compared with other countries. We compared with England, New Zealand, Australia. Per capita, what do they do staff-wise?

As an example, Switzerland has a flat tax regime, so obviously their revenue people would probably be in the hundreds, where ours might be in the tens of thousands in staffing requirements. Could you give us a bit of an overview on any comparisons that your department has done with other jurisdictions?

[Maria Barrados]

I have a couple of comments in leading up to your question. The issue is not so much with the accrual accounting but is with the accrual budgeting. We basically have the accrual accounting, but we don't have the accrual budgeting side of it.

With the government, we have done a lot of recruitment in the financial area. It's called the FORD program and we've actually done very well bringing people into that program. Where our issues are is that as we get new requirements--we now have more requirements for internal audits. I have requirements on the audit side and I'm sure the AG does as well--we have to work up our recruitment there. They're usually not trained in the same way, so you need to get those expertise and train them. We're gearing up to doing that. I think we can do that.

On your issue of comparisons with other public services, that's a very interesting question, and actually I've had the same preoccupation. We will be doing some benchmarking with the Australians, who in many ways are like us. You have to try to benchmark with people who have a lot more in common with you in terms of your system, federal--for them it's commonwealth state, federal-provincial, roughly the same size. Their approach is a little different in terms of centralization and decentralization.

We're interested in doing that and we have that work under way. Unfortunately, I don't have any specific results, but if you have specific questions, we can--

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

Do you have a timeline? It would be most interesting to have that cost analysis comparison.

[Maria Barrados]

The cost for what, exactly?

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

The comparisons between the two systems on a per capita basis.

[Maria Barrados]

Of...?

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

With, say, Australia. What is broken down departmentally--

[Maria Barrados]

Costs for staffing and things like that?

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

Yes.

[Maria Barrados]

I'll get back to you on how far we are on that.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I just have a couple of questions to follow up.

I want to start with employment equity. I have a question about the gathering of statistics. Having gone over the document and looked at your aggregate data, I just want to be assured that when we're talking about visible minorities, we're talking, in some cases, about women as visible minorities. I have a question about how they are counted. I'm assuming that if a woman is a visible minority, she would obviously be included in one category, as among women, and in another, as well, as among visible minorities. Is that the case? Okay.

When we look at the data and reports and juxtapose 2004-05 with 2005-06, we clearly see that work needs to be done in the area of visible minorities and the success rate, no question about that. I guess my question is, how do you see this improving, in your opinion? What should government be doing?

I know there has been a lot of discussion in this town. In Ottawa alone we have new Canadians and visible minorities who have more post-secondary education than the mean. We have people, in other words, who are highly qualified but who just can't punch through that glass ceiling. So there is obviously a policy question there.

But I'm hearing from people that this was delegated most recently to deputy ministers to deal with. I'm just wondering if that's a problem. If we have this delegation occurring, and it's not rendering the results needed, should we be looking at something else? That's my first question.

The second question is about the issue of the flow between the public service and ministers' offices. We've talked a little bit about that. I know some commentators—I'm thinking of Mr. Savoie—have suggested this just be banned outright over a certain threshold. I know you don't agree with that. Clearly there needs to be tracking, and I'm delighted to see these data are being gathered. After all, there are certain people who were involved previously—Mr. Guité is one who stands out—who were brought into jobs from the public service, and no one was really monitoring that movement. So I think it's long overdue, and I'm glad to see you're doing that.

You're going to be gathering the data, but right now, from what we know, are there some interim measures that should be taken, in your belief? Maybe they should not be as draconian as Mr. Savoie is suggesting, but at least some monitoring to say.... For example, when a public servant decides to put their name forward in a municipal or provincial election, there should be some process to monitor this. It's certainly been identified as a problem, both by you and others, and if there is a problem, then should we not be doing something about it?

Those are my first two questions.

[Maria Barrados]

Thank you for that.

In terms of whether the delegation system is the way to go, whether it is appropriate, I think you can ask a lot of questions about the appropriateness of delegation. We went through a big change in the legislation with the Public Service Modernization Act and changes to the Public Service Employment Act, and we went for a delegated model. We're one year into that model. I think we have to give it a go. We have to try to make this work before we start tinkering with it.

An important part of the delegated model, the way we have structured it--and I believe there is only one country that comes close to how we've done it--is that we have given the authority to appoint and revoke to the Public Service Commission. We delegate. The legislation encourages delegation. But the Public Service Commission can remove the delegation. So if the performance isn't good or there are really big problems, we can remove the delegations or condition the delegations, and we do that. Every time we do that we report on it.

I think we have to keep at it, but we have to watch it very closely, and that's why I have a preoccupation about having the monitoring and the audit capacities in this delegated system.

In terms of the question about the flow between public servants and ministers' offices, this is a worry. It has been an ongoing worry for me. If you look at a province like Ontario, they have a much clearer approach. Their approach is that their public service commission gives permission, so there has to be a request for permission. They monitor and they have a policy framework around it that is very strict. So it says if you're an executive, you cannot work in a minister's office as exempt staff for more than six months, so to help short term in the transition. Otherwise it is two years. You're allowed two years and that's it--one time for two years and no more.

I have suggested that we go that way in terms of a policy solution. There's been some reluctance on that. I haven't really had any uptake on that, but we certainly will continue to monitor it within the ambit of what we can do, because there are limits as to what we can do at the Public Service Commission. But in the ambit of what I can do within the statute, we will continue to watch this and report on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

You still have two minutes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Great. I have two other questions.

One is on the use of consultants in the public service. I'm very concerned about how consultants are being used in the public service. It is recent, but it also goes back the last three or four years, at least since I've been talking to public servants about it.

The fact of the matter is that we are having consultants being brought in who don't fit into the accountability framework that most of us are used to. So these are different and separate from being brought in as exempt staff from the public service or people from minister's staff who then are dropped into the public service. I'm talking about people who are consultants. Has this been a concern of yours? Is it something you're looking at?

Secondly, the government most recently announced that they've put together a team formed with people like Mr. Tessier and others to talk about how to improve the public service and also to look to the future to recruitment and other issues. I have a lot of concerns about this, in that none of the nine people presently are working in the public service, and I'm very concerned about the gap left vis-à-vis their mandate and how it connects to the present-day public service.

If you look at the last government, one of the problems we had with the previous government, my party at least, was that public servants weren't being consulted. They were being told how to do things without being asked what the problems were and what the solutions were. I'm concerned we're seeing the same thing with both consultants being brought in and, secondly, a nine-person panel being brought in that does not have the connective tissue to the present public service.

I would like your comments on those two points.

[Maria Barrados]

Thank you for that.

First on the subject of contractors, we deal with employees; our domain is staffing and employees. When there's a contractor and there's a contract, it should not have an employer-employee relationship. If it has, then you have a contracting problem. You contract for a piece of work—and I think there's a role for that kind of thing—but you're not expecting it to be substituting for an employee, because there are all kinds of obligations that come with being an employee, and rights and protections.

I can't really comment on that further, but certainly as an organization we are concerned about people who are not full-time public servants, with how they are used—and casual people. If they're really casual, it's not a problem, but if they're used in other ways, it becomes a problem. Similarly, something like executive interchange has a lot of value, but you don't want it to substitute for an employee, and if it does, and if you do delegations, then they have to be properly trained.

I can't offer much more, because it gets outside of my ambit.

With respect to the team of advisers on the public service that has been set up, I really had no input into the composition of that team. I think the question of why that team was put together that way is probably something that more appropriately goes to the Clerk of the Privy Council.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Certainly. I'm sorry to interrupt, but you haven't been consulted by them to date? That's fair enough—they've just announced it—but they haven't contacted you, or the government hasn't, about this whole process or procedure and what they're attempting to do?

[Maria Barrados]

No.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Mr. Alghabra.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and good afternoon, Ms. Barrados. It's good to see you again.

I want to ask you a question. You can tell there's interest in trying to understand the gap of representation. We had that issue raised the last couple of times you visited this committee, and obviously we continue to try to understand the situation. In your opening remarks, you highlighted the fact that the commission pre-qualified 41 visible minority candidates for entry into the executive group. Do you know how many in total the commission pre-qualified for the executive group?

[Maria Barrados]

I'm turning to Donald Lemaire, if he can help me on this.

It tends not to run that way, and he may want to elaborate on this a bit. The way the system works, by and large, is on an individual position basis. There's a poster for a position, or there is a decision about filling a position, and you fill the single position.

There are some other programs and initiatives that do groups of people. They deal with groups, but that's the exception rather than the norm.

In this particular case, because we felt there was a problem with the number of visible minorities in the executive group, what we did was say, we'll identify a group for you and tell you they're executive-ready, and then you can just appoint them. You don't have to go through any competitions; you don't have to do anything. You just match skills and needs.

That's the reason for that particular example. In your broader question, I think I know where you're going. You're asking, what proportion are they? I don't think I can answer, because the system doesn't work that way.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I just want to understand this pre-qualification, then. Are you saying that this is an exception, that you did this on purpose to ensure that visible minority candidates were readily available for departments looking to hire executives?

[Maria Barrados]

That's right.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

So you don't normally do pre-qualification?