Government Operations Committee on April 17th, 2007

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

That issue does not appear on your radar screen for the time being.

I would now like to talk to you about something very concrete. The committee has heard things about the payroll services. Training people takes some time. Once they are eventually trained, they move elsewhere in the public service, because they can find better paying or more rewarding employment. There are always positions to fill. There's a recurrent problem that needs to be solved. With regard to quality and effectiveness, has the Human Resources Management Agency found new ways or approaches that could be implemented?

[Nicole Jauvin]

You have put your finger on one of our major concerns, and we are indeed dealing with it. We have implemented a recruitment program specifically for compensation officers. This is the first year we have such a program. Officers join the public service at the entry level. We have recruited approximately 100 people. By the way, this is a very diverse pool of people and we are quite pleased with them. We will train these people, and they might find other positions within the public service. We do prefer that people remain at their jobs for at least two years, but having mobility between departments is not necessarily a bad thing. We do not frown upon that. With regard to compensation, that is a fundamental service, and we make sure that people are hired. As I indicated, there is a recruitment campaign underway as we speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I am afraid you have exceeded your time.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

We will come back to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Mr. Kramp, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you, Chair, and good afternoon.

By your earlier statement, you mentioned we have a number of departments and/or organizations of government that are all involved in the human resources business, I guess we'll call it, whether it's the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency, the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Public Service Commission, Canada School of Public Service, and/or various agencies. Are they all doing the same thing? I doubt it. Obviously there are some differences. What do we have for overlap and duplication, and is there competition from within?

[Nicole Jauvin]

We all have clear mandates that stem from a statute. Public servants tend to want to only do what is allowed in their statutes, so that normally, because of the work of Parliament, reduces the possibility of duplication.

Is there overlap? I'll give you an example. If we're preparing a learning framework, there's no question that the school, the institution that will deliver it, is at the table, is with us, and is doing a part of it and we're doing part of it, but that's the extent to which there is overlap.

It's a little tougher, no question, when there are a lot of players around the table, but we're doing our best. To tell you the truth, everybody is so busy that you're happy when somebody takes the ball on something.

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

I'm certainly not wanting to draw a comparison with the private sector, because it is different and I understand that. We almost seem to have so many cooks in the same broth here that I just want to ensure that somehow we're not finding ourselves in a competition that is making it difficult to retain employees.

As an example, are you losing most of your employees to the private sector, or are you losing to other governmental agencies and other governmental departments? Where would the loss provision be?

[Nicole Jauvin]

I would say, personally, for the agency, we seem to be attracting a lot of good talent, so maybe I'm poaching from other people. You can get talent from all kinds of sources in the government. You don't have to necessarily go within the portfolio. And one of the reasons--I probably should have mentioned that right away--there is a little less fear of competition, I would say, is because we're all under the same minister, the President of Treasury Board, and that makes a big difference.

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

Okay.

Do you have any problems finding staff in rural areas? The reason I ask is because there are many members, obviously, who represent rural areas. The majority of main government jobs are located, naturally, in your core areas, but there are many branches and agencies that exist out in the rural areas or in small cities and so on. Do you have any problem with staffing there?

[Nicole Jauvin]

Not that I'm personally aware of, but I would say that it probably depends on some.... Some areas might be a little bit more difficult. In some areas it might be difficult to find the people you need.

I remember going to Whitehorse, for example, and people were all fighting for the one engineer who happened to be there.

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

Might I offer just a potential...? It is something that, to me, has been a problem, and I've seen it many times. It is simply a policy.

As an example, if you're located in the city of Kingston and you want to apply for a government job and/or a federal agency job, there's a stipulation that you have to live within so many kilometres. In an urban core, 60, 70, 80, 90, or 100 kilometres is reasonable. In rural areas, that's not reasonable. I know many people who drive 100 to 150 kilometres one way every day to work. Yet now they're excluded from working for the federal government service, simply because that kind of stipulation is in there. So you're definitely excluding many potential capable workers in many rural areas.

Has there been any consideration given to possibly changing that?

[Nicole Jauvin]

I believe that the new policy the Public Service Commission has just instituted--I believe it was on April 1 of this year--on the national area of selection, which means that any job across the country is open to anyone across the country when they're applying to the public service, will have exactly the impact you're looking for.

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

Has that been implemented yet? Or is it in the process, at least?

[Nicole Jauvin]

This comes under the Public Service Commission. If it has not been implemented, it is just about to be implemented.

You should take credit for that. I know that the Public Service Commission is always talking about the fact that this is coming from MPs who make that point all the time.

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

Thank you.

Do I have time for another question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Yes, you do.

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

Thank you.

In terms of training programs--upgrading, in-service training--are we up to snuff? Do we have the capacity to train ourselves? As one example, for the skilled trades, say the construction trades--our carpenters, our plumbers, our electricians--do we have the proper...? We have such a shortage, as we of course now see in many of the western circumstances. Do we have the apprenticeship programs available within government agencies to handle our own?

[Nicole Jauvin]

As far as I know, we don't, with the small exception of specialized areas, I believe, in the Department of National Defence. There may be other departments that have very specialized areas for which nobody else trains. So they have to train, for example, to repair a specific ship or a helicopter or something like that. But by and large, we don't train for these other trades you mentioned.

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

But of course we've seen a myriad of government programs over the last couple of decades that are available to other jurisdictions, whether it's the private sector or through tax credits or something like that. But you're saying that, really, the public service does not seem to be.... Are they not applicable to these programs? Or do we just need something separate or different?

[Nicole Jauvin]

I guess to the extent that we need those workers, we would expect them to come to us trained. It's a small number, again. If it's a general trade, then we would expect them to come to us already trained. If it's something that's a little bit more specialized that they can't learn anywhere else, then we would obviously have to give them that training. But we're now talking about a very small proportion.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I want to hook on to one of the questions that was asked about the retention or hiring of people in rural areas or regions of the country.

If you go back and look, you'll see that when you have jobs and hire in certain locations outside of capitals, retention rates are extremely high. As a matter of fact, this is extremely effective. Do you have any kind of policy that looks to expand this, rather than centralize all of these jobs in the major areas, where they're poached by everybody? As an agency of the Government of Canada, I think you should be doing more of that. That's the one question from me.

Regarding the other thing I want to know, you mentioned Service Canada—and I think they're great—but you wanted to know what they're like. They're like an MP's office. My staff is very well trained to do a lot of what Service Canada does. But I want to know who coordinates all of this.

In my area, they're going to have to hire ten people to do essentially what my office and Ray Bonin's office do for passports—that is, to check them and send them to Gatineau. Then they'll have to wait, right now for 45 working days to get a regular passport. They can't get an emergency passport, unless they travel five or six hours.

Why wouldn't the Government of Canada say that it doesn't make a lot of sense to hire ten people here to do what's already happening, when we can set up a processing office probably with fewer staff, and actually serve the people in the area? Does anybody look at that? Or is it just Service Canada is now the way to go, and there's no service, but it's nice? It sounds good—nice ads.

[Nicole Jauvin]

First, I don't know everything about Service Canada, but I do know enough to say that this is in development. I would think they would be the first ones to say they're not perfect, and they're always trying to improve. Any way they can improve, they will look at.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

My question was, does anybody look at the difference between hiring ten people for Service Canada and Passport Canada opening an office to actually service the people, so they don't have to wait 45 days? Now they can't get an emergency passport, which means no documentation for at least 45 days.

So does anybody look at that? It's nice to have a Service Canada; it's wonderful that they want to do this. But what I'm asking is, who is overseeing the best use of money and personnel?