Government Operations Committee on April 17th, 2007

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

We are going to give you a hand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Warkentin.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate your coming in this afternoon. We certainly appreciate your perspective. We've had a number of different perspectives as we've gone through this--I guess I wouldn't call it necessarily an inquiry--looking for information. We certainly don't want to see what's happened out west happen in the federal government.

I'm from a riding in Alberta, and unfortunately even the federal government is now experiencing some difficulty in attracting employees. I know of one specific situation. I know that Canada Post is a crown corporation, at arm's length. I'm sure that you don't have much to do with them, but they've actually had to close a post office permanently, because they were unable to find people who would work for the wages that were offered. Without question, nobody expected this five years ago even, never mind ten years ago, and we don't want to see the federal government come into this type of situation.

I know that Mr. Poilievre is the one who initiated this discussion. We look down the road and certainly don't want to see our generation and our children's generation having to face this major crisis if it isn't looked at. We do appreciate your attention to it.

I know that Madam Barrados had expressed that she was certain that there wasn't a problem--certainly not in the immediate term, but maybe not in the longer term--based on the number of applications that were coming in. I would just implore you to reconsider that methodology, because you know as well as I do that those applications wouldn't come in if all those people got a job. Next week that draw may dry up. For sure, there has to be some other type of mechanism in terms of identifying the possibility of a crisis out there.

The chair has even talked about this, with regard to some of the possible inefficiencies within the federal government. Often many of us, especially MPs, hear from constituents and experience ourselves the problem with red tape, or whatever you call it--bureaucracy--and possibly inefficiencies between different groups.

Just looking at the different arms of our human resources department within the federal government, of course, we have PSHRMAC, which you represent, and then we have the Public Service Commission of Canada, and then we have the Treasury Board Secretariat, and we have the Canada School of Public Service. I know that they each have their own identified mandates and their responsibilities. Then beyond that, we also have the temp agencies that provide the federal government with public servants as well, at least on a term basis.

I'm concerned—and I'd like your comments on this—that we're losing valuable information. I guess I should say, in addition to all of these, we also have all the HR departments within the crown corporations and the different departments. With all of this and all these different groups, are we experiencing the same types of inefficiencies and red tape and bureaucracy in our HR experience as we are in some of the other departments? If so, what information might we be losing? Where one group might be experiencing a crisis, and if the right hand is experiencing a crisis and the left hand doesn't know what's going on, I can just see that this might explode, and we might be in a real situation by having these inefficiencies.

Would you concur that there are possibly some inefficiencies because there are so many different people doing similar activities?

[Nicole Jauvin]

You've chosen my favourite subject. I absolutely believe we need to do significant damage to the existing HR systems and processes and so on. I'm not sure it's because there are a number of players involved. I think it's just that over time we've built up systems that are frankly not efficient. I've seen some statistics with respect to the number of people you need in the public service to do some very simple HR systems processes, compared to the private sector. Okay, there are reasons for that, but that being said, they're not acceptable, in my view. That's certainly something that has to be addressed. It's not going to be easy, because we have a number of departments that have their own systems and that don't necessarily want to change their systems. There's always a good reason you do something a certain way, and we certainly don't want to get into big IT exercises. That's not the point.

What I think we need to do is start with the basics, look at our processes, and develop some generic processes so that if you're staffing a job at National Defence and you're staffing a job at the agency or you're staffing it in Health Canada, you're doing it the same way, with the same number of steps. You do it in a way that's efficient. Those are very basic things, but we really need to fix that. That's why it's the fourth priority in this, and it's one I am taking personal responsibility for--she said bravely.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Right. Well, we certainly do appreciate that.

I think this may be something our committee wants to look at further. Especially with the enthusiasm that you're now taking on this cause, if you are, then obviously you have identified that there are issues that have to be resolved.

Now, do you find that it's across the agencies and across government, this perspective that's the same? Would you ever venture to say what types of efficiencies we might find in the system, in terms of manpower, that we might be able to allocate to other places, such as the passport processing folks?

There is no question that the federal government has a lot of people. I'm just wondering, for how many people could we find more effective places for them to be?

[Nicole Jauvin]

And it's also about what these people are doing.

You can probably find a much more efficient use of people once your processes are more efficient. And I know that in the private sector, I've been told, they look you in the eyes and say to you, “There's a very, very high percentage of savings once you start doing a bit of rethinking in your processes and you start the cleaning up.”

Then that allows you to use the technology, not to make up big systems, but to use the existing technology so that you do something once, not five times by hand.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Yes, and that's maybe the question we have to look at as a committee, how we might be able to find efficiencies within the federal government. Again, the chair has identified a situation where ten people have been hired in your constituency, ten in my constituency, simply to transfer paper. They're collecting paper and passing it on. We have to see at what levels and at what places we can find efficiencies.

We appreciate your helping us to be in this discussion.

[Nicole Jauvin]

I appreciate the support.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

No problem. We are behind you 100%.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

One of the other neat tricks with the public service is that you open a call centre. They ask questions because you haven't been able to process the actual thing that you're supposed to be doing.

I recall years ago, when EI was always backed up and we were getting calls. So what they did was they opened a call centre. Well, that didn't satisfy the people. Eventually they actually got the systems in place; the cheques got out on time. The need for this massive call centre really isn't there, and the people aren't half as frustrated.

So I often wonder whether we can tackle the problem right off the bat, where it is, instead of trying to placate people, which doesn't really work anyway.

One of the big problems is that you have all these term employees. You said to me that after three years they become permanent. Well, no, they don't. They have all kinds of tricks to prevent them from becoming permanent. It's not unusual for people to work at term jobs within the public service for years on end and they never become permanent. So I think you need to look at how you can be that loyal to your employer if you never know whether your job is going to come to an end at the end of the year or what's going to happen. You don't build up loyalty and you don't really build up the kind of expertise that you need.

Are there any other questions from anybody?

Mrs. Charlton hasn't been recognized.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you.

I apologize for coming into this process late, so some of the questions may have already been asked. I'll know, when my colleagues are rolling their eyes, that's the case, so just do cut me off at that point.

On the upcoming retirements, yes, there's a downside in terms of the loss of knowledge, the inability to transfer that knowledge, but to me it seems it also represents a huge upside in an economy where we're losing tons of decent-paying jobs. There is an opportunity within the public service to provide those jobs and to give some hope to young people. I find that side of things really exciting. But of course that kind of change needs to be managed and monitored. So I just have a couple of questions that come out of that.

To my mind, delaying retirements isn't the answer to the problem. It may be a stopgap, but I don't even think it's a desirable stopgap. So I wonder, first of all, whether you might comment on whether that is part of the strategic thinking.

Secondly, I don't believe that EE targets are part of the criteria that are looked at with respect to temporary, casual, or student employees, and yet in many ways those categories, it seems to me, make the natural feeder pool, if you will, into permanent positions. I know that my colleague Mr. Albrecht talked about visible minorities, but employment equity really should go far beyond that.

I'm not sure whether you have statistics, for example, on the disabled community, on native Canadians. The outreach for each of those groups is a little bit different because really the process starts with recruitment, not just with the hiring. If you don't get the right people to apply we'll never change the numbers. So I wonder if you could comment on that a little bit.

Then the last question--because I know that I'm limited in time--is temporary, casual, and student employees are one part of filling job vacancies, but I know there's also been, at least in recent history, a trend towards contracting out, and not contracting out just specific jobs but rather entire projects and the staffing associated with those projects. I wonder if you can comment a little bit about, first, the numbers of potential employees that would affect who otherwise might be in the public service full-time, because they too will take experiences away with them that we then can't benefit from within the public service.

I'm sure that will generate a bunch of more questions, but I'll stop there for now. Thanks.

[Nicole Jauvin]

I'll be brief in my answers so I can give you opportunities to have more questions.

On delaying the retirements, it is not an objective of what we're doing to delay retirements. I think, first of all, people who are ready to retire and want to retire should be allowed to retire, and that shouldn't be the issue.

I think the issue arises when you're thinking about knowledge transfer, and there it's a little different. What we need to do is manage those retirements. We may be able to find some better tools than what we have now. We have some, but they're limited in terms of what we have to allow this knowledge transfer.

I'm with you. I think everyone is with you on that one. The objective would not be to delay retirement.

With respect to EE targets, it's not that for casuals we don't have any EE targets--well, that is true--but the issue is more that we don't actually count them. We were saying a little earlier that if we could count them and if we could know, we probably would have a little bit of a different picture from the one we have now.

On the visible minorities in particular, I think we might have a different picture, but we don't count so we don't know. For all the other groups, all the other employment equity groups, we are actually over. If you want to be in the numbers game, we are over the total workforce availability. It's just the visible minorities where we're a little bit under, and we find that's still not acceptable.

Did you want to add something, Karen?

[Karen Ellis]

All I would say is I think you make a very valid point about the feeder pool. As we think about how we get into better planning so that we know when a short-term type of hiring approach is suitable for operational needs versus when we need to do a more thoughtful, reflective process for recruiting, that starts to make you think explicitly about EE representation, and that's a good thing. So you've made a good point.

That's why the first priority in the renewal planning is really doing thoughtful planning in every department. That starts to explicitly get at the very types of things you're talking about. It's only by sitting down and actually saying this is my business, these are the kinds of people I need, this is the population I serve, how do I get the best team together and how do I recruit it and develop it, that you start to get into a very personal engagement of people who are managing and hiring.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Has there been a trend line of percentages of casual, temporary, and student employees? Has that number actually risen over the last decade and a half? If it has, is part of the planning process in terms of HR management to reduce those numbers? In a very competitive environment for particular skills shortages, whether they be among the trades or whether they're in the professional categories, I think offering only temporary employment is often a barrier to attracting the best and the brightest. Are those numbers increasing, first of all? Secondly, if they are, is there a concerted effort to bring those numbers back down and offer permanent employment earlier in the process?

[Nicole Jauvin]

The numbers are quite high. While some of the terms might be going down, the casuals are going up, so overall the final number is still much too high.

We find that the answer is essentially that we need to do better integrated planning. We need to make sure that we have a clear sense of what the departments individually need to do that, so that they have a sense of what they need and they know this is their demographic picture. This is what it should look like, this is what they need to get there, and this is where the decisions to hire, even for short-term purposes, can start to be made in a corporate fashion, as opposed to being made just at the very local level of someone hiring for a staff of five people.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Is there a reason why it needs to be done in the ministry silos? It seems to me that if you knew that the vast majority of your casual or temp positions were administrative in nature, you may well, if you didn't deal with ministry silos, be able to offer a number of permanent positions where the workplace might just change. So the workplace would be temporary or casual, but the employment would be permanent, which would mean that the employee would have all the benefits of tons of experience, frankly, in a number of different workplaces.

[Nicole Jauvin]

You're absolutely right, and we do, but not for everyone, because as I was saying.... I was giving the example of the border guards. There's only one department, really, that needs border guards, so that's fine. But there are nurses, some administrative assistants, some scientific applications—

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

IT.

[Nicole Jauvin]

IT is another one, finance, and so on, where departments can group together and say, “Wait, we need three. We need five. We need 10. We need 1,000.” Then it's much easier to look at all of this together. By and large, if the requirements are the same, then you can choose someone from those pools.

First of all, the process should be a little bit cleaner and faster, when you've decided to hire, because you can go straight to a pool. This is the direction we're going in.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I'm not talking about hiring from a pool, but rather establishing permanent employees of the public service who, as employees, may go to different ministries to fulfill the similar function. So a nurse is hired not as a casual employee or a temporary employee, but rather becomes a full-time employee. At one point the nurse may work for this particular department and then three months down the road may work for another one, but doesn't in the meantime lose the ability to have the other benefits that come with working in the public service as a permanent employee.

[Nicole Jauvin]

Well, that, in effect, is indeterminate employment. Once you're in the public service you can do that. There's nothing to prevent you from doing that. We can do some development programs where we help people move from department to department, if that's what they wish. But once you're indeterminate, you basically can decide to stay where you are or to move around. Nothing will stop you from doing that.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I don't think that answers it, but anyway—

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Okay, thank you.

Madame Bourgeois.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have one last question.

Ms. Jauvin, in a reply that you gave to someone whose name escapes me, you talked about the culture of the public service. What is the public service culture?

[Nicole Jauvin]

The public service is an institution, and of course the majority of people who work there experience more or less the same thing. So we have values that are important to us and that make up who we really are. The public service is not for everyone. That is why I talk about the public service culture. It is not really for everyone. Normally, people who pursue a career in the public service are comfortable in that environment. Therefore they are part of that culture. That is how I would describe what I meant.