Evidence of meeting #6 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was management.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat
Do we have measures in terms of, for example, what judges have to stay on—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Mr. Julian...
Sorry; go ahead and respond, please, Ms. Meredith. I'm just letting Mr. Julian know that he can't ask you any more questions.
Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat
We don't have the kind of regime that judges have to stay on in a supernumerary status that will allow them to work a shorter time but still receive their full pension benefits in the future. As I mentioned, there are opportunities to work on a casual basis, if there's mutual interest in bringing these people back. However, there are no special part-time provisions, let's say, related to the pension plan.
Liberal
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Again, to our guests, I'd like say thank you for your candour and participation today.
I want to stress, if I may, something that Madam Meredith said in response to a query by my colleague, Mr. Julian, and I'll quote her directly, where she said, “It's not actually a cut in spending; it's a freeze in spending.” I think that's the key I'd like to stress with the committee today.
Madam Hassard, I have a question for you, if I can. In the text of your presentation, and very good remarks, you made a couple of very strong comments. You said that “Public Service Renewal is our top management priority”. A second thing you said in regard to the renewal was that “it is about making sure that the federal public service continually improves its ability to deliver on the business of Government”. I think that's well said.
During Mr. Warkentin's questions, I think perhaps both of you indicated that you were working towards a more efficient and more effective public service. I'm trying to get a sense from you if you have any estimates of the savings from that process of strategic renewal, beginning a couple of years ago, basically.
That may not be fair to you, Madam Meredith, because you just recently came into your role, but I'm trying to get a sense of how effective that policy has been in terms of financial savings and personnel.
Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Senior Personnel and Public Service Renewal, Privy Council Office
When we embarked on the renewal initiative, the underlying objective was not cost saving, but to make sure that the services and policies and programs were as high quality as possible and that the government and Canada were well served. So it's not something that we have tracked during the public service renewal initiative.
As I mentioned, we have very much tracked the accomplishments during those times and have set strategic directions, on which I can assure you we've made some progress. I think we are in a somewhat different game at the moment with the operating freeze. I don't want to sound like Pollyanna, but I think there's an opportunity as well as a challenge, and that opportunity is to find ways of working smarter and doing our work more efficiently and looking at our processes and things that might be old-fashioned or redundant and actually improving them.
So I do think this is the time where we're going to have to play our part in fiscal restraint, and that's the approach we would like to take.
Conservative
Ed Holder Conservative London West, ON
In talking about tracking the accomplishments, do you have any sense of what you've been able to achieve? I appreciate what you said about this not being not related to personnel cuts or to achieving savings by losing personnel, but more about trying to do things more effectively and more efficiently, things that Canadians would expect a responsible government to do.
Are you able to elaborate on any of those accomplishments since you undertook this renewal strategy?
Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Senior Personnel and Public Service Renewal, Privy Council Office
Thank you for the question. I do have a number of things I wanted to say.
As I mentioned, there were four pillars of our renewal initiative. I think probably the most important one was planning, in that our HR planning was done in isolation from our business planning. So we made it a commitment that these two exercises would be integrated. With integrated planning you have a better sense of where your gaps are, where your priorities are, and how you allocate your resources. And I think that it's fair to say that now, after our third year, we have embedded a culture of much more sophisticated planning in each of the departments.
I think in terms of recruitment, we've had a series of very successful enterprise-wide job fairs across the country, and these have improved the brand of the public service, which was a little tarnished. We've engaged students and some of our new recruits in excitement about being in the public service, and I think it's given them a bit of pride and has actually made us a more attractive employer. We've also steadily been improving our diversity within the public service.
In terms of employee development, that was another one of the pillars: every single employee within every single department must have a learning plan. I think in the first couple of years the deputies were reporting that they actually had done learning plans; the question was whether they were appropriately linked to what the business needs are. I think that as we remain consistent, we remain committed, every year we see progress in that regard. And of course when you have employees who are motivated by being developed in their positions, you have a much more engaged workforce that's going to be more creative and more committed to your mission.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you for being here.
As I was listening to points of order and questions coming through and I listened to your presentation, I think I know where the confusion came through. Because you're the chief human resources officer who represents the government and you stated that you provide strategic enterprise-wide leadership, I think that's what people wanted to know. With the demographic shift, with the freeze, how do you balance the two as a chief human resources officer for the Government of Canada? And how do you then know or not know about what impact is happening in British Columbia or Manitoba, in the public service as a whole? Because there must be a plan somewhere that you're aware of, whether it's option analysis, etc.
So if you could perhaps explain that to us later on, we would at least get a feel for what your job really is and whether we were asking you the wrong questions.
Thank you.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
