Good morning. I'm Michael Brandimore. Madam Chair, honourable members, I would like to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to address you yet again on these issues.
What we derive from the presentation and discussion is that the mandate of the capacity-building group within CPSA is to recruit future compensation advisers and develop a national training program. The recruitment mandate certainly does not appear to be an issue, considering that 5,800 applicants were received. This resulted in 109 positions being filled as of this date. Out of these 109 new recruits, 60 were recruited and employed in the Department of Public Works, which would indicate that 49 went to other core departments.
It was further stated that statistics show that another 100 will be retiring from the public service in the next five years.
Our concern with these statistics is that they do not appear to include departures for other reasons, such as moving to other positions within the public service or promotions. This would definitely increase the numbers to be taken into account for human resource planning.
While this is encouraging, it does not in any way address the issue of retention. It has historically been shown that even in the best of circumstances the trainee programs result in up to 50% of trainees either failing the training program or departing for other positions. The real issue of concern is one of retention, and unless the issue of classification is resolved, shortages will continue to impede the success of any capacity-building initiative developed.
Again, although we applaud this capacity-building initiative, as Mr. Kramp so astutely pointed out on December 12, given that it takes up to two years to train these newly recruited compensation trainees, how could this dramatic improvement be attributed to them? Madame Bourgeois responded by stating, “We have a very dedicated community who have agreed to do overtime to resolve the issues.” And there are retirees who have agreed to come back to assist.
While we agree with Madame Bourgeois' statement, this has to be recognized as a very short-term initiative and not a two-year resolution while the trainees attain the required skills to fulfill the full functions. We're already seeing an increase in burnout situations at work, which is counterproductive, as it means we will lose skilled compensation advisers for yet another reason.
We also have some concerns with the statistics on the backlog within the core departments. As compensation advisers, we deal interdepartmentally on a constant basis, and many of the compensation advisers have stated that they were never asked to provide statistics and still have a fair-sized backlog they are dealing with.
We agree that these types of statistics are crucial to establishing that there are backlogs. However, unless these stats are as factual as possible, they can be more harmful than helpful.