Government Operations Committee on June 5th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I will call the meeting to order.

We will continue our study of compensation, pay and benefits, throughout the public service. We have before us the Treasury Board Secretariat, and I'll allow them to introduce themselves. As well, we have someone from the Canada Public Service Agency.

You know the rules: you make a presentation and we ask the questions.

[Hélène Laurendeau, Assistant Secretary, Labour Relations and Compensation Operations, Treasury Board Secretariat]

We shall proceed.

I'd like to thank you, Madame Marleau, for our being here today.

I am here with two of my colleagues, Phil Charko, assistant secretary of pensions and benefits for the Treasury Board Secretariat, and Rick Burton from the Canadian Public Service Agency.

I'm Hélène Laurendeau, the assistant secretary of labour relations and compensation operations for the Treasury Board Secretariat.

We are representing the portfolio that supports the Treasury Board as a committee of ministers, and we're here as a representative of the employer for the Treasury Board. The division of responsibility—just to give you an idea—between our two organizations is that....

The Treasury Board Secretariat is responsible for compensation planning, collective bargaining, terms of employment, pension and benefits policies as well as refund policies and pay administration.

The Canada Public Service Agency is responsible for human resources planning, including demographic research and analysis, designing the classification policy framework, developing policies for the executive group, developing policies in the areas of employment equity, official languages and ethics.

We are here today to provide you with some details on a couple of important things with respect to compensation: how compensation is set; how people who perform duties in the public service are paid; and how pay and benefits services are delivered to employees who are performing duties in the public service. You have in front of you a general deck, which will be followed by a more detailed deck to be presented by my colleague Mr. Burton.

In the presentation itself, on page 2, we will go through very quickly how compensation is set in the federal public administration, with a primary focus on core public administration; the make-up of the federal public administration itself; who is involved in the management and administration of compensation, pay and benefits, in departments within the core public administration, and their specific role; and we will also cover with you the two main service delivery structures for the administration of pay and benefits in departments within the core public administration.

Let's start with how compensation is set in the federal public administration. Sound management of compensation is fundamental to attracting and retaining staff and renewing the public service. Recently, the Treasury Board adopted a policy framework for the management of compensation as part of its policy review initiative. That framework sets out specific principles and approaches to manage compensation.

All Treasury Board decisions—and those decisions can be taken directly by Treasury Board or through collective bargaining—with respect to compensation are to be guided by four overarching principles: external comparability, which is basically about being competitive with, but not leading, the compensation for similar work in the relevant labour markets; internal relativity, which is basically about reflecting the relative value to the employer of the work performed; individual or group performance, which is basically about rewarding performance where appropriate and practicable, either based on individual performance or group performance, depending on the types of jobs we are referring to; and the fourth, and not the least principle, is affordability, which is obviously a key overarching principle in determining compensation for the federal public administration. The cost of compensation must obviously be affordable within the context of the commitments to provide services to Canadians.

The compensation framework can be found on the Treasury Board website, and if the members of the committee would like to have a copy of it, we could make sure we send you a copy of the compensation framework itself.

What I just covered is how compensation is set for the federal public administration.

What is the federal public administration and what does it include? That's what we cover on page 4 of the deck.

The federal public administration, in the widest sense, includes five main elements. The core public administration includes all employees of departments named in Schedules I and IV of the Financial Administration Act. The core federal public administration is made up of the departments for which Treasury Board acts as direct employer. These are all departments for which Treasury Board, as central employer, conducts collective bargaining and sets the terms of employment.

The federal public administration also includes 27 separate agencies.

Those are also known as separate agencies in English.

These are agencies such as the Canada Revenue Agency and Parks Canada which, although they are totally dependent on the public purse, have some latitude to conduct their own collective bargaining. Nevertheless, they must comply with the compensation policy framework.

and must obey the same principles I just covered. It also covers the RCMP

the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, including both its regular members and its special constables and civilian members appointed under the RCMP Act. As you certainly know, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is not a unionized workplace but its decisions are nevertheless governed by the compensation framework I mentioned.

The compensation framework also governs the Canadian Forces, including officers and non-commissioned members enrolled in the Canadian Forces, as well as Reserve Forces.

Finally, Crown corporations make up the last element of the compensation management framework.

Our presentation today will focus on the first element, which is the core public administration and its activities with respect to pay administration.

We're trying to help you understand who is involved in the overall management and administration of compensation, pay, and benefits, and their respective roles.

On the top left you start with Treasury Board Secretariat, which manages the compensation reserve and provides planning and reports on compensation. Treasury Board Secretariat also ensures that the government decisions on compensation remain aligned with the compensation framework and the four principles. It also establishes policies and issues directives with respect to how pay is supposed to be administered and how pensions and benefits are supposed to be administered within departments. It also provides support to Treasury Board in making decisions on compensation, and it performs the activity of negotiating collective agreements.

On the top right you have the Canada Public Service Agency. With respect to the core public administration, it is responsible for designing occupational group structures, that is, for determining how the workforce will be divided into groups with respect to specific responsibilities. It is also responsible for design classification standards. This is how we can prioritize among the various jobs, between the low-level jobs and the high-level jobs, within the various groups that constitute the occupational group structure.

The agency is also responsible for developing the classification policy framework, for maintaining the integrity of the classification system, and for monitoring how the classification system is used. It is also responsible for executive compensation.

On the top left is Public Works and Government Services. It is basically the service provider. It requires that the departments provide administrative and other services that are required for the disbursement of pay, employee benefit plans, and superannuation pension plans. Basically, they are responsible for making sure that policies are applied and that information is properly input in the pay system to make sure that paycheques are issued to every employee and that pension cheques are issued to every former employee who is entitled to a pension, of course.

It operates and maintains the public service payroll system. It is responsible for the system itself, its maintenance, and any coding or development that is needed to meet the requirements that are determined by a compensation decision. Public Works also delivers training on the application of the technical functions of compensation. That's the technical part. The policy part is provided by other training. It also delivers pension administration.

Departments have an important role to play. Deputy heads of the 36 departments that comprise the core public administration are responsible for ensuring that the terms and conditions of employment are administered in accordance with collective agreements and other compensation decisions, directives, policies, or standards. They must as well provide the most suitable organizational structure and allocate the necessary resources to make sure that compensation services are provided to their employees. They of course also have to classify jobs, and they ensure that their internal staff have taken the required training and have the skills and competency to administer pay, pensions, and benefits.

If I were to depict the interaction between those four pillars of activity with respect to compensation, I would say that the Canada Public Service Agency is primarily responsible for organizing the workforce in a logical and appropriate manner. Treasury Board Secretariat is responsible for making sure that once the workforce is properly organized, decisions with respect to how they should be compensated are made. That's true for pretty much everybody except the senior cadre, which is still part of the agency.

Public Works and Government Services is there to actually support the systems and the IT framework that actually delivers and prints the paycheques. Departments, however, are the ones that know what this workforce of 186,0000 is supposed to be doing on a daily basis. They're the ones who can determine what their duties are for job description purposes and therefore how they should be classified, because they know the activity. And from that we can determine what their pay should be, based on their experience and where they should be pegged in the pay structure that has either been negotiated or determined by Treasury Board decision.

Departments as well are the interface with that same workforce. They are there to provide the services to make sure that whoever is performing X duties has a proper job description, that this job description is properly classified, and that they are appropriately paid for the classification group and level. They are also the ones who know the individual employees who may have access to other compensation benefits such as specific premiums for duty-related issues. So they're the ones who can use the pay structure and provide who fits in a particular position to be able to instruct Public Works and Government Services to issue the proper cheque. They are the ones who control overtime. They are the ones who know who the supervisors are as opposed to the worker bees. This is pretty much how this big wheel works.

On page 6 you have the two main service delivery structures for the administration of compensation, pay and benefits, within departments. We know two basic models. These models once again have to be decided by the deputy head of each department, depending on their clientele, their level of activity, and what is most suitable to reach out to their workforce.

The first model is the most common, which is the generalist model. An employee has an inquiry; they need to have an explanation on their paycheque or they need to know when their promotion will be processed. They formulate an inquiry to a generalist advisor, who will in turn provide them with advice on pay, understanding the pay structure, or understanding how their paycheque is structured, on insurance and other benefits, and on pension.

The second model, which we call the specialized model, starts again with an employee inquiry or information that is required by the employee. The first level of processing is a call centre for general inquiries. Once the inquiry is determined, the request for information is then channelled to either a pay advisor, who is a specialist in pay, an insurance advisor, who obviously is a specialist in insurance, and the same thing for a pension advisor.

The two models, as I said, currently exist. All the people who are providing these services are known, generally speaking, as compensation advisors, and we have approximately 2,100 of them scattered all over the core public administration.

That pretty much covers my general presentation. I don't know how you want to proceed, Madam Chair. Would you like questions on that before we move to the second presentation?

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

You realize, of course, that the real reason we brought you here was not so much that we didn't understand how it worked, but because there have been some real problems in people getting paid. That's been a challenge. We can't blame Treasury Board, because if they don't get the information, they can't issue the cheques properly. That's really what was at the bottom of the request we made.

While I know Public Works has said they were catching up on a backlog of about 2,000, I wondered whether you looked more closely at this and where the problems really lie. We've had a lot of correspondence that says the bulk of the problems were in those departments where they have become more specialized. But I'm not sure where this is.

Frankly, it's been very disturbing to hear that someone who had an acting position, maybe for one month in December, and here it is now the month of June and they still haven't been paid the extra for that acting position. Most people who work for the public service are not rich. If they are expecting to receive some money, it would be nice if they received it. There have been a lot of stories like this across the public service.

I think it's our job as a committee to make sure the government is operating properly and doing the basics, which is paying our employees. It's very disturbing when I hear that the lowest of the low are not receiving their paycheques, that somehow there's a problem, and when you call they tell you there's a problem and they're working on it. If you don't pay your income tax to the Government of Canada, the day after, you're penalized and you're charged interest.

I think we have to make sure our people are paid, and quickly and right away and in the right amount. That's really what brought this about.

[Hélène Laurendeau]

The second part of the presentation, which will be provided by my colleague, Mr. Burton, covers in more detail what has been done to try to address some of the issues that pertain to this specific community. If I could, I'd suggest that maybe he could go through his presentation and we could take the questions after, if that suits you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Certainly.

[Hélène Laurendeau]

I wouldn't want to close without saying that this is something that does preoccupy us at the central agencies, and we are in fact quite mindful of making sure that we simplify as much as we can, at the front end, compensation to alleviate the complexity of having to issue paycheques. We're making every possible effort to actually reduce the burden, but at the same time, we also have taken some measures to work with the communities, and I think Mr. Burton is well placed to speak to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Could you please proceed, maybe for five minutes?

[Rick Burton, Vice-President, Human Resource Management Modernization Branch, Canada Public Service Agency]

I would be pleased to.

My name is Rick Burton. I'm the vice-president of HR modernization at the Canada Public Service Agency.

The purpose of my presentation is to describe the public service-wide compensation capacity-building work and results in the compensation community.

I will describe the context and the capacity-building methodology.

A few words on community demographics and

priorities and progress to date.

Finally, I have a short comment on classification of compensation advisors.

Compensation advisors have to be seen in the context of a broader effort that we're undertaking to rebuild the capacity in the human resource community. Compensation advisors we see as part of that community of interest, and we're taking care to make sure they're included in our efforts.

Overall our goal is to develop a healthy, sustainable human resources management committee so that we're delivering relevant quality service based on evolving roles in human resource management, which, as you probably all know, are changing dramatically.

Our key focus in the initial efforts was on the HR specialists themselves, because that's where we actually saw a real challenge that we needed to fix in terms of capacity. Our second focus of the initiative is to focus on compensation advisors, and that work began in earnest in March of this year. I'll have some more to say about that.

The next slide, slide 5, makes the point--I hope it makes the point--that we've taken a very rigorous approach to making sure that we know the nature of the capacity issue. Quite often you hear dramatic stories, but when you dig into them, they don't turn out to be the reality; in some cases they are. We want to be sure that we take a very rigorous approach.

You can see the lists of things we've done here; I won't cover them all in detail. We've surveyed the heads of HRs, those people in departments that Hélène referred to, who actually are the focal point for HR management. We've had an interdepartmental working group with our central agency, going to look at the whole issue of compensation community. We've done a number of focus groups, particularly in the regions, because we wanted to be sure we were getting the regional input and not just hearing from headquarters in various departments.

The most important step in this is that in August and September we conducted demographic analyses of the current and future needs of the compensation community, and we've consulted best practices literature to find out what's going on in the private sector, and so on, that we can bring to bear on the community in the public service.

We've presented our plan to a committee of deputy ministers. I want to make the point here that this is a public service-wide initiative, and deputies are very concerned about the health of this community and the HR community generally. We wanted to be sure they endorsed the approach we were taking. The plan we've developed is in an annex in your report; I think I missed one annex in my earlier comments.

I've attached three annexes. The first one talks about the general approach we're taking to rebuild the HR capacity, and I can take you through that later, if we want to, in question period. The second one talks about our approach for the compensation community. The third one, when I get to it, will refer to the work we're doing for the professional development of the community, which of course includes compensation.

Finally, we've consulted over 650 compensation professionals across the public service, and we continue to do that.

The next slide covers some of the demographics of the community. I'll just go through it very briefly. As Hélène said, there are roughly 2,100 employees in the compensation community. The community, on average, is 45 years old, which is only a year and a half older than the average of the whole core public administration that Hélène referred to, and 55% of those 2,100 employees in the community are actually at the AS-02 working level, the compensation advisors who we generally refer to now when we're talking to you. The average salary in the community is $51,700.

We're making good progress in terms of the makeup of the community in terms of representation in the areas of people with disabilities and aboriginal people. However, we're not doing so well on the visible minority representation, which, as you can see, is slightly lower than the workforce availability for visible minorities. The good news is that we're over our target in our recent recruitment campaign in terms of attracting visible minorities, so that is a good news story.

Perhaps the key issue, in terms of some of the earlier discussions that have gone on, is that the attrition rate projected over the next two years is 10%. If we compare that to two years for which we actually have records in the overall core public administration, it's 10.5%, so it's not, in our view, a crisis, but it's definitely something that needs to be managed, and that's why we've taken this public service-wide view to it.

I should say too that training is an issue—and I'll touch on it in a minute—but it does take a considerable amount of time to train compensation advisers, anywhere from one to two years. We've done a lot of work to put new systems in place that ease their work, but Hélène can tell you that when you add up all the collective agreements and all the overtime definitions, there are about 71,000 payrolls that these folks have to deal with.

Then, finally, there are 258 vacancies across the community. Again, that represents the whole 2,100, so when you break it down to the 1,500 or so who are actually the compensation advisers at the working level, it's not that many.

Priorities for action are as follows: attract and retain qualified candidates to ensure community health and renewal; provide common training and career development; and formalize the transfer and acquisition of knowledge, expertise and skills.

Progress to date on the community. I think when our president, Nicole Jauvin, was here back in April, she mentioned that we were about to engage in a fairly massive recruitment campaign, so I'd like to just give you an update on where we are at this point.

Our first annual recruiting drive is under way. We received 5,800 applications from across Canada, including people inside the public service. We ensured a commitment to build a representative workforce, and as I referred to earlier, we are now able to meet our visible minority targets in those areas.

We've come out, through a very structured assessment process, with 128 qualified candidates, with strong representation, as I said, from the visible minorities: 29%. That breaks out about almost half and half: 58 who are external to the public service and 70 who are internal. So while there has been a concern I think expressed with people moving out of this group, there's a certain healthy vitality of people who want to move into this area. So I think it's good, from a career progression point of view.

Departments have committed to hiring 113 of these candidates, and this we're planning to do every year for the next four to five years until we really build up the capacity. Some of the issues here revolve around how many candidates can a department absorb and train and manage in a year. It still leaves us a few extra, where, if the department has a pressing need, we now have people in a mini-pool who can actually be picked up fairly easily.

We have developed a professional development framework, as I said earlier. The third annex in your package does lay out that framework, and you'll see that we have quite a learning program for the HR community, as a whole, including compensation advisors and including a program for certification.

Curriculum development certification training is under development. I want to say as well that there has been excellent support in the community, across departments and agencies, in this effort, and I want to acknowledge the work that the Public Service Alliance have done with us, who represent these advisors. They've participated in these discussions and held their own. And many of the things that we're hearing are common, and it gives us some comfort that we're tackling the right issues. The next recruitment drive is scheduled for September of this year, so we'll continue the process.

Finally, I would like to just say a word about classification if I could. Classification is about internal relativity, as Hélène said: how do we measure the relativity of work within the public service? Not the work outside, but inside the public service. It's about group and level, so are you a member of this group or that group, and then within that group where do you come in the pecking order?

In the evolution of the work assigned for compensation and benefits advisor, they've been reclassified, as you can see on slide 9, three times, from a CR-04 to a CR-05 in 1989, from a CR-05 to an AS-01 in 1997, and from an AS-01 to an AS-02 in the year 2000. Some of this is meant to track and reflect the evolution of work and the complexity of work. Collective agreements are more complex now; there are more complex transactions. These compensation advisors do play an advisory or an analytical role. I want to make the point, though, that they are not financial advisors, so there's a limit to where they can go in terms of providing advice to employees.

There has been no significant change to the work since 2000. There was a classification grievance, resolved in 2003, which confirmed the classification at the AS-02 level. This was an interdepartmental grievance committee that looked at the work right across the public service and confirmed that it was at the 02 level.

In our system, classification decisions are final and binding unless it can be shown there has been a significant change in the work, and, as I said, there hasn't been since 2000.

I don't want to get into the details of where we're going more broadly in classification or form, unless you ask me, but we are looking at this group of people who are members of the AS community, who themselves are part of a broader group, the PA community.

If I could take you to the other handout that I hope you have with you, I'll just take you to one point there, just so you see where the compensation advisors fit into the whole job structure of the public service.

Every job in the public service you can find on this page, and the colour code reflects union representation. You can see the numbers in each group and so on. So I'll take you to the very top left-hand corner. In the yellow you will see a group called the program and administrative services, or the PA group, as we refer to it. It comprises many former groups in the public service, including the administrative services group, which is the AS group.

The compensation advisors are within that AS group; they're not exclusively the group, but they're members of that group. So you can see where it fits in the broader context of classification.

Our reform efforts are towards modernizing the standards, one by one, and describing the work in each of these groups, and we're making fairly good progress in doing that. We intend to look at the PA group, because you can see that it's 89,000 strong, which is almost half of the core public administration that Hélène referred to.

That's the end of my formal brief. If at some point you want to go through the three attachments I provided, I'd be happy to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you. Excuse me if I didn't hear it correctly, but I haven't heard what you're actually doing with the departments--and this would be more to Treasury Board--to make sure this backlog doesn't exist anymore. That's really the question.

This is what started this all: the people who weren't getting their transfers. They were getting paid, but they were getting paid based on their ex-jobs; some people weren't getting paid at all if they were new term people. These are the things that have concerned us at the committee, and that's why you're here. Basically, we want to know whether you have done anything to make sure that all people are getting paid right away or within the timeframes that are established.

[Hélène Laurendeau]

There are a couple of measures I can point out to answer those questions.

As I mentioned earlier, we are making a lot of efforts to try to streamline at the front end, as much as possible, compensation decisions. I can point to the way we have handled the retroactivity for the CX group, which is the corrections officers. We had a very long retroactivity, and we were able to strike a significant deal with their bargaining agent so that we would simplify the assurance of cheques, as opposed to having to review four years of pay history, as is the normal practice.

We were able to agree with them to actually have a form of lump-sum payment per level, with a view, specifically, to simplifying how the retroactivity would be issued and relieve the community that would have had to otherwise take every CX one by one and review all their employment history for the past four years just to issue their retroactivity cheques. So we try as much as possible at the front end to come up with creative measures, with the help of our bargaining agents when they're ready to actually agree to these things, to actually simplify the front end.

We're also making efforts to try to simplify the measures that will come when we need to address compensation issues--that's really at the front end. In terms of supporting the community, as part of our policy review initiatives, we paid significant attention to streamlining descriptions of the things they have to administer and the advice they have to provide.

This policy initiative is not yet fully finished, but we have consulted with the community extensively to understand the greatest irritants, the biggest areas of lack of clarity, so that we could actually do two things: clarify the rules they have to apply and provide the appropriate training to make sure they are properly equipped to actually administer pay in the best and most efficient way and in the least complex fashion.

The third measure we're thinking about--and we're still pretty much at the study stage--is to facilitate down the road the IT that supports all the pay administration functions. Currently, in every department you can have different IT structures to actually administer pay and speak to the system at Public Works. We're hoping to galvanize the system to actually simplify it so that people would actually not get lost from one IT system to another.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

A point of order, Mr. Bonin.

[Raymond Bonin, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

We've been at this for 36 minutes. We're not talking about the things we asked to talk about. We're concerned with employees who are not getting their money. We want to know if they have their money, how many are not getting their money, how long it's been since they got the money that is owed. Otherwise we're wasting time here. We've heard presentations like this before.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Okay. We'll go to the questions directly.

Monsieur Simard.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

In fact, I don't think we are hearing what we're supposed to be hearing here today.

First of all, we're here because there have been problems lately with certain employees not getting their cheques or the proper amounts and that kind of thing. I'm assuming that's not a regular thing in government. I'm assuming there was a hitch or something that caused these flaws to happen.

First of all, I wonder if you could explain to us how long ago this happened. Has it been going on for a year, two years, or the last six months? What kind of a hitch was it? Is it because of a lack of resources? Is it because we're putting in a new IT system? That's what we're here for. You can explain the whole system and how you function in it, but this is why we're here.

I'd like you to define “compensation community”. What is it?

[Rick Burton]

The compensation community is the group of people directly related to paying people or dealing with their benefits.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Your staff.

[Rick Burton]

Yes. Those are the 2,100 folks I was talking about.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Why don't we call them staff? They're the people working who are working with you.

[Rick Burton]

You're right.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

There have been issues lately of people getting the wrong amounts of money or not getting their cheques. Can you explain to us what has been happening?

[Rick Burton]

I can't. It's not something.... I hear these things, and I've certainly been approached by one of the unions that was quite concerned about this in a certain area. As far as I know, there were steps taken to resolve that particular issue. I don't personally know where this is or whether it's a problem across the public service. I think we've maybe all had situations where a pay has been late, but I don't know that it's widespread; at least I don't have evidence of that.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Obviously we have the wrong witnesses here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

That's right.

From the very first time I brought it up a lot of people have been telling us there are major problems. I think the Deputy Minister of Public Works mentioned there was a backlog of 2,000 people on classifications and promotions. The last time he was here he said that 1,000 of them had been caught up. I don't know if the rest of them have been caught up and whether there's a backlog of others in other categories who also haven't been paid. I know they've addressed some of the issues, but I'm not sure they've all been addressed. That's really our concern. That's why we're talking about this now.

When you hear of term employees working for three weeks and not getting paid for three months, there's something wrong somewhere. I don't know what it is, but there's something wrong. This is what started it. Since we brought it up there have been all kinds of incidents that have come to us. We know it's still happening, but we don't know to what extent. We don't know who's in charge.

What recommendation do we make to make sure this stops?

[Hélène Laurendeau]

If I may, I will make an attempt to be a little more specific in addressing your concern. In terms of having global figures from every department as to whether there are pockets of problems, we don't have those figures centrally. However, we do know from interacting with these people, from the questions they're asking us on the interpretation of our policies, and also because we interact with our colleagues--the bargaining agents--that there are pockets of difficulty.

You referred to Public Works. I think Minister Fortier explained what was specific to his own department. When I was explaining to you earlier that the deputy ministers are responsible for the delivery in their department, to a certain extent they actually are better placed to speak to the reality of their own department. We, at the central agency, can certainly make every effort to assist, to clarify at our end, to streamline as much as we can, but we do not hold the actual total of all the difficulties that may happen in the system.

It would be inappropriate for me to say that we don't know there are pockets of problems. We know anecdotally where they are. The departments themselves would be able to tell you whether they have a backlog, such as Public Works did when they came and explained to you. We also know that since then they've been working very hard at putting a dent in the backlog. As far as we know they are pretty much up to date. They're slowly, but fairly steadily, reducing the backlog in that department.

That's the limit of what I could speak directly to.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

That's interesting. Just so I understand the process, is your organization responsible for cutting all the cheques for the public service?