Government Operations Committee on June 5th, 2007

[Hélène Laurendeau]

Treasury Board isn't; Public Works is, based on information that is transmitted to them by—

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

By every department.

[Hélène Laurendeau]

By every department.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

So if the departments are falling behind, Public Works can't necessarily submit the right cheques.

[Hélène Laurendeau]

That's correct. It's basically what is encoded in the system that will produce the cheque at the end. That's why the effort needs to be all around the wheel—streamlining at the front end, making sure that the people who actually do the coding understand, and that at the tail end the flow of information gets to Public Works so that the cheques can be issued with the lowest risk of error possible.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Can you at least tell us from what you're hearing lately, your interaction with people, whether or not this is normal, or whether there is actually a problem happening right now?

[Hélène Laurendeau]

As far as I know, and once again I want to be very prudent, there were pockets, primarily due to the fact that we've been having issues of capacity with respect to the number of people who could actually work on these things. That's what Mr. Burton spoke to, making extra effort to make sure that we recruit and train and equip the people so that we do not fall behind in what needs to be produced.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Are you talking about hiring people in your organization?

[Hélène Laurendeau]

No, in every department.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

In every department.

[Hélène Laurendeau]

That's why we talk about a community that is spread in all the departments but is doing jobs that are very similar, based on the same sets of rules that are set centrally.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I'm just going to fall in here. I thought somehow that Treasury Board was responsible for the overall operation. Would Treasury Board not be the one that would look at which departments are having the problems and which aren't, and how big is the problem, or does that just go on around you? I'm sorry, I'm having a bit of a difficulty understanding why you're not aware where the problems are and just how bad they are, if they are.

[Hélène Laurendeau]

I must admit that at the aggregate level we don't. As I said, we know anecdotally from the interaction we have with departments when we hear about problems, but we don't have a central place that would actually collate all the information on all the pay transactions that happen all across the government so that we could actually press a button and tell you, this department has a high risk of error or is in a backlog situation. Departments have that information at their end.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

We will continue with Mr. Nadeau.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Do the Treasury Board ministers and the minister of Public Works ever talk to each other? Do you talk with minister Fortier about problems that arise, for example regarding compensation of government employees?

[Hélène Laurendeau]

There are regular contacts between officials at the Treasury Board Secretariat and people responsible for pay administration.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Did you know that this was the main reason for our being here today?

[Hélène Laurendeau]

We were told we should provide information on the role of central agencies in this area.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Here is what has me wondering so much. I met minister Fortier in his office in March. I went there with blue collar employees of the federal government. They clearly explained, in person and in a friendly way, that new employees have to wait for three months before getting their first pay cheque. There are also term employees who for some unknown reason get paid much later than they should. Even some senior executives get paid late when they move to another position.

We raised all these issues with minister Fortier. I am very disappointed to see that you are discussing this situation as if it were inconsequential. You have no figures and no specific information. However, according to our documents, at least 2,000 people are affected and minister Fortier anticipated it would take at least six more weeks to get on top of the problem.

So I would like today to get an update on the pay situation of federal public servants. Is there anything you can tell us in that regard?

[Hélène Laurendeau]

I read the transcript of Mr. Fortier's testimony. I believe he was talking about Public Work and Government Services employees. Unfortunately, I do not have any more details on this department than what minister Fortier gave you himself.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

You should go and talk to minister Fortier himself or his executive assistant who was also at the meeting. We provided him with a lot more information showing that there is a serious problem. Also, a month ago, I met with Mr. Nantel who was also with us at that meeting. He told me there had been no improvement, that employees still are subject to delays in payment, which is extremely unfortunate. In a society such as ours, with a government as structured as ours and which has all the required processes in place, it is incredible that we cannot manage to give employees their pay cheque in time.

Madam Chair, I would like to have another meeting with those witnesses here today in September or October in order for them to provide us with figures and a progress report.

Another issue that was raised at this meeting is that of the compensation advisors. The government hires employees to become compensation advisors through competitions, etc. Then they are trained, which takes quite some time. We give them training to enable them to do the work. The next thing you know — minister Fortier said so himself — these people take a position elsewhere in the public service because the salary of a compensation advisor is less than that of other positions.

We are not talking here about secondments but about people who want to be transferred. This means that those employees who are supposed to ensure that pay cheques get issued on time move elsewhere. So we have unfilled positions and we must again train other people to fill them. We find ourselves in that situation after having spent so much time training these employees who leave.

I strongly suggest to you to consider whether the salaries paid to those people in those key positions should not be adjusted in order to make all that training they received useful. If there are so many transfers, maybe it is a sign of a problem. I do not know their hourly rate, but it seems to be something that needs a closer look.

I am not asking you for answers. I am simply outlining some potential solutions that have been proposed by employees, people in my riding who have met with Mr. Fortier. It so happens that I live close to them, which is fortunate. These are people working in Gatineau and Ottawa. I imagine that for someone who works elsewhere in Canada and encounters such a problem it would be rather difficult to get the information and to be able to talk to someone who can do something about the problem. We had that opportunity last March.

Madam Chair, I sincerely wish that something can be done along the lines that I suggest. I am not smarter than anyone else. These potential solutions were suggested to me by government employees, people who have this problem or have experienced it. We must find a solution once and for all and pay an adequate salary to those compensation advisors. New employees, term employees and even sometimes managers who change positions are penalized and must wait a long time for their pay cheques.

As I said, I am disappointed, but I am not asking you to shoulder all the blame. But you should be talking more to each other, because this is an issue that people raise with me all the time and for which solutions exist.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Do you want to answer that first? Do you want to try that?

[Rick Burton]

I'll try to answer one part, and for sure we'll come back to update you on progress.

On the whole issue of the health of the staff who performed these functions across the public service in every department, what I was trying to outline is how we're trying to improve and rebuild that capacity. I think we're making fairly good progress on that. It involves a heavy training program, a recruitment program, and so on. With respect to the issue of people moving out of the group because of, say, the perception of low pay, just as an example, I mentioned that there's a lot of movement into the group and there's movement out of the group. From a career development perspective, that's healthy. Many people move out of the actual working level of being the people who do the operational pay and benefits, the transaction part, to become supervisors in the broader staff structure that's in the various departments.

The other thing is, and this goes back to capacity, and it may not be evident, but often departments will offer opportunities to other people to do the same kinds of work only in another department because they don't have the capacity. So some of the movement you see isn't necessarily out of the group. It could be within the group but just from one department to another because they're all dealing individually with their capacity challenges. That's why, in this case, we decided to take a public service-wide view and do this recruitment right across the board on behalf of all departments. We'd be happy to come back and continue to show you progress.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Kramp.

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

Thank you, and welcome.

I'd like to take this right back to a very, very basic principle. We've as yet to determine whether there is a problem. We've heard there's a problem from a number of people, but this committee needs to have that verified. You are a part of that answer. Number one, we need to know if there's a problem. If there's not a problem, then there's no sense us carrying anything any further, once we have identified whether or not there is or not. If there is a problem, then we need to know how to fix it--what plans you have in place, or what suggestions you or other departments should or could make. I think it's almost that basic a principle, and we, as a committee, have not been able to determine that because we have not had the information from the various people. We've had rumour and discussion and complaints, so we need to know if what we're hearing is valid. Somehow, some way, we need some activity from within your organization.

You mentioned how the cogs of the wheel have to work together effectively. Well, wonderful, but if there's no effective communication within all of those cogs, and all that information isn't being disseminated through, you're not going to have that information. I find that very, very difficult when I compare that--and this is not a comparison, but maybe an anachronism between public sector and private sector, and I'm not suggesting one is superior.

Let's just take our banks. They do payroll services for people across the nation. They do hundreds and hundreds of thousands of cheques and transactions and look after that. People don't get their paycheque late. It's there. How? Why? Why can't we do that as a government? Is it because a particular agency or a particular department is falling down, or is it because there's a lack of communication between all departments or because somebody's not doing their job, or we have a system that isn't effectively communicating internally? We don't know. We need to know that so that we can make a recommendation to Parliament to suggest how this place should work so people can get paid.

I think that's a very, very simple request, and I'm just trying to take it to that base guttural level, because people need to get paid. If they are getting paid and you have that information and you can determine that and bring that to this committee, then we'd be thankful, and we can go back to the people who are complaining and say, well, no, there's really not a problem.

We need to be assured. I hope I'm making myself clear on behalf of the committee to suggest that we just need answers. The people have put forward a complaint and we must follow it through. We recognize we're not asking you to bear the brunt of this on your shoulders. We're certainly not here to harp on you as witnesses, to suggest that this is just your problem. If it's a system problem, if it's an overview problem, if it's a communication problem, if it's just simply a lack of direction, or if there's a weakness in any particular area, we need to know that. There are comparables out there. How many people work in the distribution of the payroll system for the government? How many people work in the payroll system for, say, private sources? Is it comparable? Is the efficiency rate similar and/or the same? Should we maybe be hiring this out or farming this out, or should we do more and more ourselves? We need to make intelligent decisions, and with that, we need information.

That's it. Thank you.