Government Operations Committee on May 28th, 2012

[Guy Giguère]

If you're a union employee, you would be looking for advice from your union representative, for one thing, who might direct you to what recourse you might have under our act. When there's an appointment, the notice is provided to the employee who did or didn't get whatever. It will tell them that they have a right to recourse, and that would be through the tribunal. They're directed to the tribunal. If it's a disciplinary measure, they would go to the PSLRB.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

What did employees do before you existed?

[Guy Giguère]

They went to the Public Service Commission. There was a different regime. My colleague from the Public Service Commission could answer that better than I can. In 2005, the regime changed. Instead of having the Public Service Commission, which has a broad mandate in the public service, address appeals, an independent tribunal was created.

Anne-Marie could answer this also.

[Anne-Marie Robinson]

I think Mr. Giguère has said it correctly. We used to have what we called an appeals function. Individuals could bring forward complaints related to staffing transactions. That role was transferred to the new tribunal.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Why?

[Anne-Marie Robinson]

I'm not sure. At the time, I think it was partly the restructuring of the commission's mandate overall. We put in place a delegated model of staffing in the commission's role. We put more emphasis on broader oversight of the system and on setting policy for the system. We do investigations in certain limited circumstances. Then it was also deemed necessary by Parliament at the time to have an independent tribunal look at specific staffing complaints.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Ms. Robinson, and thank you, Mr. Wallace.

We're well over time on that one, and the last round will be to John McCallum for the Liberals, five minutes.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, and thank you all for being here.

I have two questions for Ms. Robinson. I understand the budget implementation act will no longer require Treasury Board to publish annual employment statistics on the demographics of the public service, but that your group does. My understanding is you only publish for people who come under your act. Will valuable information be lost as a result of this decision?

[Anne-Marie Robinson]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.

I'm not aware of that decision, but I can communicate that the PSC will continue to report to Parliament annually and will continue to publish all the information under our jurisdiction, which represents around 220,000 public servants.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Assuming what I said is correct, would the disappearance of this information from Treasury Board pose problems of incompleteness of the data?

[Anne-Marie Robinson]

It's hard for me to comment on that. Given that I haven't seen that provision, I'm not sure which data you're referring to specifically.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Okay. Another thing I've been told is that the Canada School of Public Service, which currently has a board, will no longer have a board but will report directly to a minister. If that is the case, will that pose problems in terms of arm's-length behaviour of the school? Do you think that's okay?

[Anne-Marie Robinson]

Again, it's hard for me to comment because I don't have any specifics. I'm not aware of that type of decision nor do I have any specifics around it. But I would say it's important to have a good planning process in place so that the school can work with departments and understand what the needs of departments are so that it can carry out its training for the public service in a way that's relevant and cost-effective.

I apologize, I'm not familiar with the governance mechanisms for doing....

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

I have one more question, which is for three people, perhaps not the disclosure protection group, but for the other three. It's my feeling that in this environment of lots of job losses and cuts and downsizing, that might cause an increased workload for all of you. Given the budget you have, do you think you're well placed to deal adequately and professionally with, I would suggest, this impending increase in your workload in the next year or two? Perhaps the three here who are affected by that could answer.

[Guy Giguère]

We didn't know this was coming, but we always try to be as efficient as possible at the tribunal and to implement new processes that would simplify and accelerate the hearings, so we did the settlement conference project, which was new. We have volunteer mediation, but if somebody declines mediation, a few weeks or a month before the hearing we'll call a settlement conference to give the parties the opportunity to settle their differences, and it's by a member.

Also, another project that we have starting this year is expedited hearings. So instead of taking three days of hearings, we could have a hearing in half a day or a full day—

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

You're saying you'll be in good shape.

[Guy Giguère]

We're doing our best to be in good shape. As I mentioned, it's hard to predict our caseload, but we're doing our best.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Ms. Robinson.

[Anne-Marie Robinson]

Yes, certainly resources are tighter now, so we're watching the situation very closely. The one area that we're really watching closely is the priority administration system. It will take some time. I think members are aware that when persons are declared surplus or affected, there's a period of four months or so where individuals will make decisions about whether or not to remain in the public service and go into the priority system, or take one of the departure options. All of those individual decisions will take four months or so, and then we'll start to see persons entering the priority system in the fall. We're watching that volume very closely. It's critical that the commission is able to manage that program really well through this, so we have had some discussions with Treasury Board, and we may need resources, depending on what those volumes are.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

Finally, Mr. Bloom.

[Casper Bloom]

Ultimately, they all come down to our board, because the cases that aren't resolved in their boards or their commissions finally come to us. We feel very comfortable in handling them because we're in the process of trying to render our board as effective and as efficient as possible. To do this, and I mentioned it in my notes earlier, we're working with the parties. We have created a client consultation committee and we work together for that very purpose, to make not only the board but the parties more efficient and effective as well, so we can handle more cases and handle those cases efficiently, and it's working.

Although we are expecting more cases to come to our board, we're not too concerned. We can handle it.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you all. That's it.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mr. McCallum.

That's just about it for time. I apologize that we don't have more time to spend with you today, but thank you very much for your presentations. Your briefs were very useful to us, and we appreciate your taking the time.

We're going to have to ask you to now adjourn from the table.

We will continue with the votes on the main estimates in these categories we've just heard about.

First of all, we have to deal with these votes that have been presented to our committee. We need the unanimous consent of the committee to cluster the votes into groupings so that we can expedite the voting process. Do we have consent to deal with these votes in clusters?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.