Government Operations Committee on Nov. 19th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I'll call the meeting to order, even though there are no members of the official opposition here except for me.

Welcome, Mrs. Barrados.

I know that you like to appear before this committee and I see that you have done a great deal of work. You know how it works: you have the floor for 7, 8 or 10 minutes and then, we can put questions to you. Please begin your presentation.

[Maria Barrados, President, Public Service Commission of Canada]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Honourable Members.

I am here to discuss the 2006-2007 Annual Report of the Public Service Commission and four audits that were tabled last week in Parliament, as well as two statistical studies that were also released at the same time.

I have with me today, Linda Gobeil, Senior Vice-President, Policy; Mary Clennett, Vice-President, Audit, Evaluation and Studies; and Donald Lemaire, Vice-President, Staffing and Assessment Services.

This was the first full year of operation under the modernized Public Service Employment Act. We have had an active year at the commission. While the public service workforce grew by only 1.7%, staffing activity increased by 11%, involving more than 110,000 staffing actions. Included is permanent hiring into the public service, which grew by more than 50%, from 5,090 appointments in 2005-2006 to 7,720 in 2006-2007.

We received more than one million applications in response to almost 5,700 advertisements on the commission's jobs website. There is certainly no shortage of interest in public service jobs, but we do know at the same time that there are specific areas where there are shortages.

Overall, we continue to have confidence in the strength of the staffing system. And we feel that departments and agencies have made progress in implementing new approaches to staffing. Most organizations—88%—have developed human resources plans that cover a good portion of their workforce, but they need to strengthen the link between their human resources plans and staffing actions.

We continue to have concerns about weaknesses in supporting the modernization effort. Departments and agencies must continue to strengthen human resources planning. The capacity of the human resources community and the need for better information to support planning and accountability continue to be areas that must be improved.

Let me now turn to two areas of particular concern that are in the annual report.

We are preoccupied with a pattern of recruitment that is being done through the temporary workforce. This is not new, but the size of this type of recruitment is of concern.

Over an eight-year period, more than 80% of the 86,000 new indeterminate employees hired for the permanent workforce had prior public service experience--75% either as casual or term employees. We are concerned there is a heavy reliance on building a permanent workforce through hiring of temporary workers. Hiring for short-term needs is not the best way to meet long-term requirements, and it is not a good way to attract qualified people who already hold permanent jobs. It will be important for departments and agencies to improve their human resource planning and how they hire their permanent workers.

We also continue to be concerned about employment equity, specifically the decline in the rate of hiring visible minorities. While overall recruitment rose by 9.5%, the recruitment for visible minorities dropped from 9.8% to 8.7%. We continue to do work in this area to better understand what is behind this phenomenon where we have observed large numbers of visible minority applicants without a corresponding number of hires.

The Public Service Commission, as part of its mandate, continues to be vigilant in maintaining an impartial public service. There is a requirement that public servants come to the commission to obtain permission before seeking elected office. Ninety-five public servants requested permission to be a candidate in a federal, provincial, or municipal election. Of these requests, 70 were for municipal elections. This is a new provision. Not all public servants were aware of this requirement, and one-third of these requests did not meet our requirement for timely application.

Now, let me turn to our oversight role: we conducted four audits in 2006-2007, three of them on small entities.

The findings of our audits on the NAFTA Secretariat—Canadian Section, and of the Canadian Forces Grievance Board were satisfactory.

However, in the third, an audit of the Office of the Correctional Investigator, we found staffing patterns that compromised the values of fairness, transparency and access. Nine out of 10 appointments were not compliant with the delegation agreement and, as a result, we have placed them under increased supervision.

In an additional audit, we looked at the pattern of movement of public servants to positions on ministerial staff and back into the public service. We examined the years 1990 to 2006. About 157 public servants made these transitions. We examined the nature, duration, and type of work and we retained 58 for further examination.

Of those 58, we found 24 staffing actions dealing with 20 individuals that raised questions. In 15 of these staffing actions relating to 13 individuals, we found a misuse of the staffing system. Special efforts were made to move people into positions in which they had no reasonable intention of staying. This was done to facilitate the movement of the individuals concerned and to ensure they had an easy route back into the public service.

These types of actions create the appearance of a lack of political impartiality and are not in accordance with the values of transparency and non-partisanship. We have concluded there is a vacuum in the policy framework and we have a made a recommendation to the employer, Treasury Board, to fill the policy gap and to better monitor this kind of movement.

Treasury Board Secretariat should develop and recommend to Treasury Board a clear policy statement and guidelines based on the principles of transparency and political impartiality to ensure effective compliance and monitoring. We had hoped for a clear commitment on a timely policy statement.

I would now like to update you on the national area of selection policy, the policy that sets who can apply for public service jobs based on where they live. The commission is committed to implementing national area of selection for external recruitment. We have continued to expand access to public service jobs. We have gone from making one in five public service jobs available to Canadians in 2006 to making more than half of them open to the public in 2007. In 2008, we would expand the national area of selection to cover all full-time federal student work experience jobs. We will be launching pilot projects in December to assess the impact of extending the national area of selection to all non-officer jobs.

We have slowed full implementation to ensure we have the human resource support and tools in place to handle the anticipated large volume of applications that will be generated by this expansion. We now expect full implementation by December 2008.

I have one last comment. We have been working hard to implement the provisions of the Public Service Employment Act. We have dedicated a great deal of effort to building up our audit and oversight capacity. We have also invested heavily in modernizing and transforming our services. Under the Public Service Employment Act, we were directed to take on new activities; in addition, our services have continued to grow.

Given our current level of resources, we have now reached a point where we cannot continue to provide all our statutory activities and support the system as required. We have to find alternative funding mechanisms, particularly because the demand for our support and services has continued well beyond what was expected in the delegated regime.

Discussions are currently underway with Treasury Board Secretariat as to how we can meet these funding requirements. We are looking at options to increase our capacity to recover costs from departments and agencies. The government has made public service renewal a priority. The Public Service Employment Act is a key enabler of the government's renewal agenda.

We are continuing to work with deputy heads, their managers, and the human resource community to ensure effective modernization of staffing and recruitment in the Government of Canada.

Finally, in 2008, the Public Service Commission will soon be celebrating its 100th anniversary. In 1908, Parliament expressed its will by creating a Civil Service Commission and since then, the commission has acted on behalf of Parliament to safeguard the integrity of staffing in the public service and the political impartiality of public servants.

Thank you for your attention, and I am happy to take your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you very much. I'm going to start by thanking you for the work you've done on expanding the national area of selection. As you know, it's something that's near and dear to my heart and near and dear to the hearts of many MPs, especially those of us who come from the regions of the country, because we feel that our people should have access to those jobs as well. So I thank you in advance, because I know you're going to finish the job. And if you don't, I'll come after you.

Thank you.

I'm going to go now to Mr. Silva for seven minutes.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank you for your presentation here before this committee.

I found the point you made towards the end--that if the government is so committed to this public service renewal, why is it not providing the adequate resources to make sure that you can in fact do your job--a bit concerning. Of great concern is the fact that on one hand we know the importance of your job and the importance of the renewal, yet if the resources are not there, there really isn't much of a commitment to that renewal.

[Maria Barrados]

When the new legislation came in, as I was appointed the head of the Public Service Commission, I was asked if I had enough money. At that time, I said that I felt the resources were adequate for where we were. We went through a process of reallocation, economizing, and smart-sizing everything we were doing, before we felt we could make a conclusion as to where we were on the financial situation. I have concluded now that we need more money. We are having very productive discussions with the Treasury Board. We are putting forward a cost-recovery option, so we're not asking for an increase in the appropriation, but we're asking to recover our costs from departments for the services that we're providing. These have been very good conversations, but I feel it's an obligation for me, given the status of the Public Service Commission, to put these issues forward to members of Parliament, because if they are not fruitful conversations, I will have to come back.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

You've outlined quite well, I think, some of the challenges with the new Public Service Employment Act that's come in. But what constraints do you see as problematic for the agencies and the departments that have been assigned the task of implementing the Public Service Employment Act? What is not allowing them to fulfill some of the mandates under the act?

[Maria Barrados]

This is a big change. We've gone from a system of, at various times, trying to get managers more involved, but we really now are in a fully devolved system of staffing in which we expect the managers to take the responsibility for taking on the decisions about the kinds of people they need and hiring those people into their organization. This is the objective of the legislation, and it is the objective of the Clerk of the Privy Council, who is heading the renewal initiative. We are only one full year into this. It is a major change. My major preoccupation, frankly, is that we won't stick with it, and that we don't start some other kinds of initiatives and lose sight of making sure that we get the infrastructure in place to see this thing through.

One thing I've observed, which shows how important it is to stick with doing some of this infrastructure work, is that we've started the planning, so this is very good. But now we need to turn those plans to actually drive strategies. That is the next important step. But remember now, that's after the first full year.

We have serious problems with the HR community's capacity to support managers in the way required. We have to do a lot more work to get the data and the tools there to measure progress so we know exactly where we are, and so that managers have the tools they need to be able to do their work.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

So do you feel then that by next year at this time you'll be in a better position to inform the committee? We've gone through year one, so by year two will there be a better measurement to assess how progress has taken place with the new act?

[Maria Barrados]

When you read the change management literature—and there are many experts on change management—they all say that you really should give something four to five years before you see a significant change. My expectation is that we see change every year. We are doing a lot of work at the commission and doing the statistical work, so you see a lot of numbers in my reports. The idea behind this is to set the benchmarks so that we'll be able to state with more confidence the size of the improvement or where more improvement needs to be made. I expect more improvement every year, and my worry is that we will lose focus and move on to something else without getting the basics in place.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Monsieur Lussier.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Barrados, you were acting president and now you are president on a permanent basis. Is there any limit set on the length of your mandate?

[Maria Barrados]

I have a seven-year mandate.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

I see.

In your document, you mentioned visible minorities. You mentioned applications for jobs by people from visible minorities. Have you any statistics regarding the percentage of jobs currently occupied by visible minorities in the public service?

[Maria Barrados]

Yes, about 8.7% of positions are held by people from visible minorities. However, the proportion of available persons within the labour force is 10.4%. It is really surprising to note that nearly a quarter of all applications come from persons from visible minorities. These people are showing a great interest in the public service.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thus, among a million applications, 25% come from visible minorities.

Is it your objective to reach 10%?

[Maria Barrados]

The public service has set some targets, for instance, one position out of five for those entering into the public service and for management positions. However, I am not expecting a great deal from these targets. I do not know whether it is currently being enforced. Currently, we see that there is a gap between these groups and their representation in the labour force.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Is there any relation with the national area of selection? There are many more visible minorities in areas like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Has the target been adjusted to take these large cities into account?

[Maria Barrados]

I am not sure, given that a quarter of all applications are already made by persons from visible minorities. Many of those who hold permanent positions in the public service have come through temporary positions. I think that the way in which people enter into the public service is a more significant factor.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

You did an audit of the NAFTA Secretariat. How many people work for that organization? About 1,000?

[Maria Barrados]

It is a very small entity. It only has 10 or 12 people.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

How many?

[Maria Barrados]

Twelve persons.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Only 12 persons? Why did you target this group?

[Maria Barrados]

We did the audit because we noticed some problems with this small entity. We set some conditions for them regarding delegation. According to our procedure, if any conditions are set before changing back to normal delegations, we do an audit. The audit is held to make sure that there are no further problems.