Government Operations Committee on Nov. 19th, 2007

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I guess there are two major problems. There may be other problems with this as well, but it really cuts to two things. One is the impartiality of the public service. I think all of us would desire to see it rectified on that front. There is also the issue of the folks who were legitimately entitled to these types of positions. So on those two fronts, of course, we want some assurance.

Maybe you can comment on this, but my understanding was that, for the most part, these positions involved people who were moving out of the communications portions of the ministers' departments--obviously those are highly partisan positions--and then moving into high-level bureaucracy or high-level public servant positions. So perceived or real, that shakes the trust that Canadians have in their public service as being non-partisan.

I'm wondering, number one, how we rectify that to ensure that these people are dealt with in an appropriate manner to ensure that partisanship hasn't played a part in their current roles. And then the other part is how we reassure the people who would have otherwise been entitled to these positions that they weren't overlooked even though they may have been more qualified.

I think we have to reassure them that in the future they won't be dealt with in this way. And I think we maybe need to remove these people, but maybe you need to continue your investigation before you can comment specifically on these cases.

[Maria Barrados]

We have a chart in our report that shows the occupational groups that were involved. IS--communications--is the largest group, but there were some EXs--executives. And there is a range of different kinds of groups, so there's quite a variety in there.

I agree, absolutely, that it's very important that we do everything to protect the impartiality of the public service and the whole structure of the legislation, and how we have defined “exempt staff”, and have specifically exempted them from the public service. We have the public service requirements and we have to do everything to protect that.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I know my time is running out here, and we'll probably get to continue on that line of questioning, but I do want to just specifically ask something. In the media, I again read that ministers were directly involved in the creation of these phantom positions. It wasn't your impression to me, and maybe the media has it wrong, but that would lead me to question who was involved. A person in a minister's office can't go and strong-arm their way into a department to force a job to be created for them. So if ministers weren't directly involved, somebody has to be facilitating this. So are we looking at deputy ministers? Are we looking at other mid-level bureaucrats, or are we possibly looking at other folks within the minister's staff at that time? I'm wondering if you could comment a little bit on that. Who facilitated this process?

[Maria Barrados]

What we did in this audit is we tried to look specifically, on the basis of what we had, to see whether there was anything directly implicating a minister, and we could not see that. We did see ministers' staff directly involved. All the authorities are in the name of the deputy, so the deputy is the one who holds the authority. So the deputies are ultimately accountable.

I think Justice Gomery said in regard to anybody who works in a minister's office that the minister is ultimately accountable. But for us to do the investigation, we have to actually trace the transactions.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

So would it be your assessment, essentially, that the people responsible for this are the ministers and the deputy ministers, because they are responsible for the activities in their offices?

[Maria Barrados]

That's where the authorities are.

But if I could just add one comment, we have two issues, I believe. One, we have to look at the individual transactions. Now, some of those are quite old, going back to 1990. So when we have very old transactions, one has to be realistic in terms of what one can do in 2007-2008. You can undo a transaction in 1990, but is this going to have any relevance? So we have to be realistic about what we can do here.

The second thing, though, is that I really believe we have to put a very clear policy framework on this, because a lot of people can honestly say, “Ah, but you didn't tell me and now you're saying you think it's really important. Why didn't someone tell us this wasn't correct?” It's because the policy framework isn't there. I really would like to see that.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I have just one follow-up question, although my time is probably pretty much finished.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

You're right into Mr. Albrecht's time—

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I do apologize.

It would be helpful to us if there were an opportunity at some point for us to at least learn the timeframes in which these transactions in question happened, if available to us.

[Maria Barrados]

From 1990 to 2007?

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Of the 20 transactions, what were their dates?

[Maria Barrados]

Of the 20? I think we'll have to write you to tell you that, because if I start reading you numbers, all my little charts are so complicated, I'm sure I'm going to get them wrong.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I do appreciate that. We'd appreciate having that.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Albrecht, there are no Liberal questions, so this round goes to you. You now have about three minutes left of your time.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Just to follow up a bit on that line of thinking, you indicated there were 157 over a 16-year period, or roughly 10 per year.

Without going into detail of each year, were they bunched in any given year or years?

[Maria Barrados]

They tended to be bunched around changes of government.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

That was it. Shocking!

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Just to clarify this, you used the term “misuse of the staffing system”, which is not the same as what we were referring to in our last session when we discussed phantom positions. They're not necessarily the same.

These 13 are not necessarily phantom positions?

[Maria Barrados]

They have many of the features of the phantoms.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Only the two that you spoke of last time were revoked.

[Maria Barrados]

That's right.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Now, many times today you've spoken about the need for a clear policy framework—and certainly I don't think we'd have any disagreement on that. I have two questions surrounding that.

Number one, has the Federal Accountability Act resulted in any improvements to this issue? Is it improving the issue?

Secondly, if we're asking the Treasury Board Secretariat to produce these policy statements, it would seem to me they would be helped by a lot of input from people like you who work with this, as this is your mandate. Have you given thought to developing a skeleton policy framework that could be advanced to the Treasury Board for their consideration and possibly implementation?

[Maria Barrados]

At the time of the discussions on the Federal Accountability Act, I had actually proposed that the legislation address this, because as you may remember, the Federal Accountability Act was very concerned about ministers' exempt staff moving into the public service, giving them priority over other appointments, and removing that priority. I had no objections if the desire was to do that, but I had also suggested that we had to worry about flow the other way. At the time of those discussions, there was a view that this could be addressed through policy. So there could be a policy solution to that. I had been satisfied that if there were a policy solution, I wanted the solution. I was then told that the policy solution would occur, in due course, when, as Treasury Board was reviewing its policies, it came up. So I said okay. But we're doing our audit, and now another year has passed, and I've had a similar response, which is that in due course, as they review the policies, they will get to it. I really think this should be specifically addressed.

In earlier stages of these discussions we had actually put forward proposals on how this could be done. I think the Public Service Commission, under the current legislation, with our current approach, wants to be very respectful of what the employer's job is. We don't want to move in and do the employer's job. I think this is an employer responsibility, given the current legislative framework, but if anyone has any suggestions as to how we can move it, I'd be happy to do that.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

I would just like to follow up, because I think you indicated, in terms of my first question about the implementation having been for one year now, that you've seen some areas that maybe aren't working as well as was intended on paper. It would seem to me, from that experience and also from your experience working with this on a day-to-day basis, that you'd have some valuable input. And it would be my hope that there'd be some level of dialogue between the various silos so there would be better communication. That's really my only point.

Thank you.