Government Operations Committee on June 12th, 2007

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

What you've just said is very interesting.

Ms. Jauvin, from the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada, emphasized that the Treasury Board wanted to put forward four priorities. One of them was to have integrated planning, and thus to know whether a specific situation requires that the public service adapt to it in the short or medium term. That solution was put forward at that point, but no planning was developed.

What do you think about the fact that the administration of a federal government, which is significant in terms of services to the public, does not have a permanent audit and counter-audit plan to ensure that needs are met? What advice would you give the Canadian government for being proactive and positive, for identifying significant factors in order to meet needs which suddenly seem glaring in some and perhaps less so in others, but which are predictable for the future?

[Judith L. MacBride-King]

Thank you.

Let me say that at the conference I spoke about—it was in February, I believe, of this year—there were people there from the federal public service and various provinces across the country. One of the speakers asked how many of us were doing appropriate workforce planning. Probably one-third of the people in the room put up their hands. This individual was quite surprised. She was from the U.S. and did a lot of work in workforce planning in the U.S. private and public sectors. She thought it was a large number. In fact, most of the one-third who put up their hands were from federal government departments and agencies and said they were mandated to do that.

That's a good thing. Going forward, it's crucial to have a workforce planning exercise and process in place that's fully aligned with the business plan. It needs to be fully integrated as to what's the business, what are the skills and competencies we need to achieve our goals in this business of serving Canadians, and how are we going to get those skills in the door or ramp them up quickly? So integrated workforce planning is critical, and I commend the federal public service for getting started in that area. Those at other government levels are not where they need to be.

So it's an excellent strategy to move forward; it's the only strategy to move forward. It'll help make decisions like where do we go, what skills do we need, what skills do we not need, how are we going to bring them in, and should we use technology instead of people? There's the whole supply-demand issue. How do we deal with issues like that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Your time is up, Mr. Nadeau. We'll come back to this.

Mr. Kramp, go ahead, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair and Ms. MacBride-King.

I have a little query on behalf of this committee, and I don't know if it's proper or not. You mentioned that you've completed a study on all three levels of government. I'm wondering, if it's not proprietary, if this committee could have access to that study so we could view it effectively. Of course, if there are contractual arrangements with prior clients, I think we understand. But I think it might prove to be an asset to this committee. So I ask for your thoughts on that.

[Judith L. MacBride-King]

Absolutely. In fact, the document was published through the Conference Board. I would say that the federal government departments, cities, and provinces funded the work. So you certainly should have access to the report. I'll leave you some information about it.

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

Fine. Thank you.

Assuming we'll be going through quite a dynamic change, with the real plethora of retirements that will take place in the medium to near future, my concern is the budgetary capacity of a government to do two things. First is to pay for all of the retirement benefits—a significant increase from what is already in place. Then of course is to hire replacement staff. I'm wondering how this will impact the budgetary capacity of government. Do you see that as being a potential problem?

[Judith L. MacBride-King]

The short answer is yes. I'm not an actuary, by any stretch of the imagination. But I think there have already been moves by this government and those of other countries—as much as it makes me cry—to think about extending the age of retirement. In the United States, as you know, it has gone to 67, which will be implemented in just a couple of years. They announced that several years ago. The OECD asked all the OECD countries about eight years ago to consider moving the age of retirement to 67.

The other thing I would say about retirees is that many people leave their organizations but they don't leave the labour market. So there are ways to access that talent and knowledge and deal with some of the pension issues you discussed. I'm not an expert in that area, so I hesitate to go too far down that road.

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

Thank you.

To encompass proper workplace planning and to try to not only identify problems but more importantly come up with solutions, I'm wondering how you would categorize some of the points you've mentioned. Would they be equal in priority, or would certain issues be more important than others?

Are we competitive on the pay scale as a public service? Do we have to educate and train more and mentor or apprentice more? Do we have to simplify the hiring process? Do we need to create different work environments? These are all points you mentioned.

Do you think they're all comparable, or is there a preference there? Should we simply take those and many other tangibles and intangibles under the umbrella of proper workplace planning?

[Judith L. MacBride-King]

I think it's all of the above, because other organizations are getting focused on all of the above.

Now, having said that, there are ways to prioritize. I have a very small firm now, so I can't do the workforce planning for me, because if I go, so goes the firm, but at any rate, what I would do is look at what are the critical positions I'm looking to have filled and make sure that people are there in those positions. What are the critical jobs I need to fill? I would focus there first.

We know the first thing, in terms of learning and development, is that growth development opportunities are important to all of us despite age. So I would look at those things.

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

One thing I find very disturbing is that naturally we have to be prepared and yet we've heard from a number of witnesses, Madam Barrados, etc., on the discrepancy between the number of people who apply and/or want a job and the number of people who are accepted and/or eventually become contributing members of the public service. Is it 1,000 to one? It's a ridiculous figure; that's the point. I cannot imagine going through that kind of a process to find—If 1,000 people come in and only that one person eventually comes through, do 999 of them not have the capacity? Is our process too selective? Is it too bureaucratic? What's seems to be the real problem? We don't appear to have a shortage of applications, but somehow we don't end up with a workforce.

Where do you see the problem?

[Judith L. MacBride-King]

I did see the figure, and it was that over 900,000 résumés or CVs were processed last year. It was a significant number, and I just went, wow, that's phenomenal.

When we ask public servants why they started to work in the public service, by the way, without fail, all three levels of government said, “I needed a job, any job”. It wasn't that they were attracted to public service, for the most part. It was that when they started they were young and they needed a job.

So people will take a shotgun approach and say, “I'm going to send my CV out to everyone”. The other is that of the 900,000 people, how many of those people actually desired and had the skills and competencies that could apply to critical positions or key positions in the federal public service? I don't know. That's one comment I'll make.

The second comment is that it is an onerous process. We have heard that from youth, we've heard that from older, more mature workers who want to work in the federal government—and also other governments too, by the way, but it particularly seems to be an issue here—that they would put in an application and never hear back.

Young people today told us they wanted, as I talked about, a courting process. They told us they wanted high-touch. Yes, they use the Internet, absolutely, and they like to file online. They also like to be able to understand the language of the jobs that are online. It's in code. Often, it's not in a language that youth understand. It's written either in very technical or highly bureaucratized language and they just don't get it. It's not an exciting ad, in other words.

We were told by Monster.ca a couple of months ago that people, when they're looking online, will only spend eight seconds. When they're skipping along through the Internet looking for job postings, they'll only spend eight seconds looking. They don't read a lot, they just want to look, see what's exciting.

Process is important, how people can access that opportunity, the level at which individuals actually contact them, and to be a part of it.

I will give you an example of a story I heard in Calgary a couple of years ago, which is an example of excellence in the federal public service. At the time, the son of the chief administrative officer of the City of Calgary wanted to join the Canadian armed forces. So he called down to the recruiting office and said, “I'd like to join the Canadian armed forces.” The recruiter said, “I would love to have you join the Canadian armed forces.” So the young fellow said, “How do I get to your office?” This person said, “I'm going to come to you. I'll come to your house and tell you about it. And, listen, why don't you ask a few of your friends if they want to come too?” And he did. That recruiter was on top of the game. He knew he had to get out there into the community and have high touch. High touch counts.

So yes, improve the process. And it's not only what you do, but how you do it as well.

Students encouraged more employers, particularly the federal government, to be more on campus, more in discussion with people, and to bring people other than from HR, people who also do the jobs for which you're recruiting.

So these are some of the things they told us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you very much.

Madam Nash.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome. It's great to have someone with your expertise here this afternoon. We appreciate it.

In my riding in Toronto we're experiencing quite a baby boom. But I know if you look at the demographic numbers overall, if our population is going to grow, we're going to continue to need a growing number of skilled immigrants in Canada.

Something we have noted in looking at the federal recruitment and hiring is that while the numbers of women are up significantly, the numbers of people of colour and ethnic minorities are not. We've asked other witnesses about this, and I remember Mrs. Barrados saying they really don't know. They're looking at why the government is not making real progress in terms of better diversity of hiring.

We had a couple of witnesses who said that perhaps the problem is with the number of term or temporary hires, because there wasn't the same kind of equity criteria applied to the temporary hires, but often it was easier to get a full-time hire if you were a temporary hire.

With your expertise and experience in management and human resources, what advice would you give, or what recommendations can you offer, for the federal government to be more successful in our equity hiring?

[Judith L. MacBride-King]

The issue you raise, of course, is of concern to lots of organizations. As I recall, we did some work on this a couple of years ago, and I think the figures for the federal public service weren't as robust; they were low, as in the private sector they were low.

One of the things to do I think in terms of that is to know your market, segment your market. It's like Marketing 101 for people. So if you understand you want to recruit more people with racial backgrounds and more visible minorities, and you're working in Montreal, you know the largest immigrant population in Montreal is from Haiti, and then you would know that population; you would target that population. I would target the population and I would speak in a language, culturally and literally, that they understand. So I would appeal to what appeals to them.

I think the federal government has tried very hard, from what I can see, in trying to remove those barriers, but there is something definitely going on.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

You mentioned the Internet and sometimes the language barrier for youth. I can well imagine for newcomers, even if your first language is English, that the bureaucratese can be a barrier—especially if English is your second language. But we bring so many skilled people to this country, and we all know the problems of credentialism and how that can be a barrier for newcomers. There's an incredible untapped resource. If we could perhaps run some of our job-hiring websites through a plain language filter it might be helpful for us.

[Judith L. MacBride-King]

That's a great idea.

You know, I'm thinking of the RBC, which I'm a big fan of in this context. If you go to RBC's website—and actually, the federal government may want to do that on its job site, whatever the job site is—there's all sorts of information for newcomers to Canada. There's a little bit about banking, of course, but there's information and web links for newcomers to go to and get information--where you can go, even about the culture, the Canadian way, if you like, a bit about how we do things in organizations, how to write a CV. All those things are right there, and I think that's very, very important.

The other point you mention is one of the key barriers, not only the lack of foreign credential recognition but also the lack of Canadian work experience. From my experience in speaking with newcomers to Canada, this can sometimes be a greater barrier, and that I think is something that we as employers can control.

When we asked what advice they would give other newcomers to Canada, we were told by people who were engineers, doctors, nurses, who had senior management roles before they came to Canada, “Get any Canadian work experience on your CV, anything, just to show that you've held a job in Canada.” There's something wrong with that, from my perspective. So I think that's an issue.

We also heard, quite frankly, about some of the challenges. Again, this is en masse; it's not related to the federal public service alone. We heard from people coming to the country from outside that even their names could turn people off. They were concerned that even when they gave their name, “I'm so-and-so, from whatever country”, and their name was not anglophone or francophone, they were somehow immediately put aside. Similarly, we heard about it with accents, that if you have certain accents, it's the same sort of thing.

So I think we have a lot of work to do there, because again, Canada as a nation is competing with Australia. It takes 12 months I think to process a new immigrant to Australia. It takes 24 to 48 months in Canada, which is a problem.

And I recognize that in your riding it's a highly diverse, very exciting area.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Just talking about Australia, I was told there is credential verification for newcomers prior to their acceptance as immigrants in Australia. Are you aware of that?

[Judith L. MacBride-King]

No. Actually, I couldn't speak of it with any authority, but I do know that is an issue, and certainly an issue for newcomers coming to Canada. If there's some way we could quickly expedite that assessment offshore in the Canadian sites, it would be much better.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Lastly—if I have a few more seconds—you've mentioned the Royal Bank. Are there any other models, either government or corporate, that you would see as a model for the recruitment and retention of newcomers or people of colour, ethnic minorities?

[Judith L. MacBride-King]

They're the usual cast of characters, I'm afraid, who are probably excellent in most things. I mentioned RBC. I happen to bank there. Anyway, RBC, to me, is the best in Canada in this context. IBM is excellent. Many of the large financial institutions are quite good, but RBC tops them.

Many of the large international organizations that operate in Canada are quite good. Xerox, I think, is pretty good. I could give you a full list.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

There are lots of places where the government can go to consult and to get expertise to help them with this, which is what I see, and certain others share this, as a serious recruitment issue for the future.

[Judith L. MacBride-King]

Absolutely, there are.

I have been asked to speak at several events in public sector forums with organizations such as RBC and others that do bring that information and insight. So there have been opportunities, and the federal government has sought those opportunities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I would like to add something before I go to the next speaker.

I'm aware of one thing, and that is that the federal government hires a lot of temporary help, and a lot of full-time jobs come from those temporary contracts. That's part of the problem that Madame Nash talks about.

From what I see, it may also be because of the speed it takes to hire a full-time person. But they also limit themselves, because there is a pool of qualified people out there who are already working, perhaps not at the jobs they prefer, who would consider applying for these jobs, but they're not going to apply for a 12-week job if they already have a full-time job, no matter how much better it appears to be, because they don't know what's going to happen after.

I'm wondering whether the federal government shouldn't also reconsider its way of hiring and move away from these temporary jobs, because that's what you're seeing in a lot of cases: short-term contracts, temporary jobs, which can and often do lead to full-time work.

[Judith L. MacBride-King]

If I could just comment on that again, when asked what they are doing to close the gap because of some of the challenges they are having with recruitment—again, in that report that I'm sure you'll get copies of—one of the top solutions cited by federal government departments was to hire that temporary help. It was a stopgap measure to get people in, because the process takes so long.

So I think that is a huge issue. And I would also say that most people today, you're quite right, do not want temporary jobs. They do not want McJobs in government; they don't want McJobs anywhere. Again, one of the greatest advantages of the federal government and large organizations overall, if they can see themselves as one entity, is that there is all this opportunity. They have a huge advantage. The federal government has a huge advantage in the recruitment game. What are young people looking for and what are older people looking for? They want diversity of opportunity. So you can say, as Alberta does, that you'll do secondments for a year from one ministry to another so they can learn and build their skills.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Simard.