Government Operations Committee on April 28th, 2015

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

When I was a young boy, one of my favourite TV shows was Dragnet. The star was Jack Webb, who played a guy named Joe Friday.

[Joe Friday]

He did, indeed.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Are you named after Joe Friday?

[Joe Friday]

I am named after my grandfather, Joseph Friday. The name is actually Belgian in origin, and it was anglicized to “Friday” from “Vendredi”.

As I always say, my grandfather, after whom I'm named, had the good sense to die before the Dragnet TV show came on, so he didn't have to face a lifetime of jokes. But if my cellphone were to ring right now, you would hear the Dragnet theme song, so it's something I have a great deal of fun with.

[Some voices]

Oh, oh!

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I think his favourite line was, “Just the facts ma'am”, which gets me to a question after I've already used up most of my time.

Whether it's a member of the public or it's a member of the public service who has a complaint, I'm interested in the process. Presumably someone reviews it as to whether or not it's a frivolous claim or a legitimate claim. Once that's established, is there then a hearing? How does that hearing work? If the person that's complaining or the defendant, or opposing person, objects is there an appeal?

[Joe Friday]

I will quickly speak to the process, which we have built over a period of time and for which we have restructured our organization around the needs that we have identified as we have processed cases.

We have an initial case. The first decision-making point is after disclosure or a complaint comes in. It goes to a trained case analyst who looks at the information—only the information provided by the discloser or the complainant—and analyzes that against the requirements of the law. There's always a lawyer assigned to every file from the beginning to the end. A decision then comes to me to either investigate it or not. If my decision is to investigate it, then it goes into the hands of an investigator who then goes out and does the external evidence gathering and identifying who the witnesses are. It goes into the department and we give notice to the deputy minister or the chief executive. Until that time, it's all internal and private. When someone comes to us, we don't broadcast immediately that we've had a disclosure, only if we're going to investigate. Then the rules of natural justice and procedural fairness kick into place and we have to give notice to the affected parties. We advise them of their ability to be accompanied by a representative of their choice, legal or otherwise.

At the end of the evidence gathering, a preliminary investigation report is provided to all of the parties in the case. The act specifically says that a hearing is not necessary, but everybody who could be adversely affected by a finding must be given a chance to respond to the case.

We do this on a preliminary basis. If there's any more information, or any different perspectives to be brought to bear, that is taken into account, again with the assistance of our legal services group. Then a final investigation report is provided to me with a recommendation as to whether there was a founded case of wrongdoing. If I agree, we then report it to Parliament. If I don't, the case is closed.

The focus on the procedural fairness and natural justice rights of all parties is something that we take extraordinarily seriously in addressing the issue that I believe you have raised with respect to whether there is a hearing and when people get a chance to go forward.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mr. Tilson.

That does conclude the time we have set aside for Mr. Friday, the Public Service Integrity Commissioner. We thank you for your time, speaking to your main estimates and your reports on plans and priorities.

We're going to allow you time to excuse yourself and welcome our next witnesses.

I'll suspend the meeting briefly.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

We'll reconvene our meeting of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. As our witnesses and our guests today we have the Office of the Public Service Commission and the acting commissioner, Ms. Christine Donoghue, to speak to her main estimates and report on plans and priorities.

We will give the floor to Ms. Donoghue, and you can introduce the rest of your delegation if you like.

[Christine Donoghue, Acting President, Public Service Commission of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I'm happy to be here to talk to you about this important subject. We're very pleased with the work that we're doing.

I want to introduce my colleagues, Gerry Thom, the acting senior vice-president for policy, and Phil Morton, our chief financial officer, who will be here to go through the numbers with you.

As you're eating, I will speak slowly so it'll give you a longer lunch.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

That's very considerate of you.

[Christine Donoghue]

Again, thanks for having us. I'd like to take this opportunity of meeting with you today to discuss our main estimates, as we are required to do, and our reports on plans and priorities.

The Public Service Commission is responsible for safeguarding merit-based appointments and making sure that appointments are free from political influence and, in collaboration with other stakeholders within our system, to protect the non-partisan nature of the public service. As you may know, we report independently to Parliament for our mandate, and we also administer programs on behalf of departments and agencies in order to recruit qualified Canadians from across the country.

Under the delegated staffing system that we manage, it is set out under the Public Service Employment Act. The Public Service Commission fulfills its mandate by providing policy guidance and expertise, conducting effective oversight, and delivering innovative staffing and assessment services.

Now, I would like to turn to our strategic priorities for this year.

Our first priority is to provide independent oversight on the health of the staffing system and protect merit-based staffing and the non-partisan nature of the public service. Those are our main principles. The commission oversees the staffing system through regular monitoring, and conducting audits and investigations, where needed. Based on these oversight feedback mechanisms, we are able to assess the management of staffing and identify areas for improvement.

Throughout the year, we will continue to provide policy guidance and advice, and work collaboratively with organizations to enhance our support to address not only issues detected through our oversight, but also to promote innovation in all aspects.

We are adapting our approach to auditing small and micro-sized organizations, which have significantly fewer staffing activities. That means we are distancing ourselves from the standardized approach—the one-size-fits-all approach—and adapting our mechanisms to the organizations' needs and structure.

As for political impartiality, we will continue to engage with stakeholders on issues related to merit-based staffing and non-partisan public service.

The Public Service Commission has developed a number of tools available on our website to inform public servants on both their legal rights and their responsibilities related to political activities. These tools are redistributed across a number of departments. For instance, we have an online tool to help public servants self-assess their own particular circumstances in order to make an informed decision about whether to engage in a political activity. We also launched a video to inform public servants of the process involved should they wish to become a candidate in a federal, provincial, or municipal election, and we are working on other tools presently for other portions of our mandate.

Our latest staffing survey found that employees' awareness continued to increase. Over 75% of respondents were aware of their rights and their responsibilities with respect to political activities, which is up from 72% in a previous survey.

Our second priority is to enhance our policy and oversight frameworks to ensure that they are fully integrated, thus improving the staffing process across the public service. It is important for us to be consistent in the actions we take with our partners, the departments.

We have more than 10 years of experience with full delegation of staffing authorities to deputy heads. Our staffing system is mature and works well. Organizations now have in place strong internal capacities to monitor their own staffing processes. The operational realities and staffing needs of organizations have evolved.

As a result, we are currently reviewing our policies and associated guidance with a stronger focus on our role of providing expert advice and support to enable deputy heads to exercise their delegated authorities.

As part of our focus on integration and modernization, we are also adapting our oversight mechanisms to a risk-based approach, while providing support through outreach activities and training sessions for organizations and stakeholders.

Our third priority is to offer support and expertise in staffing assessment to delegated organizations and stakeholders. We are modernizing our processes, systems, and tools in close collaboration with stakeholders, based on a single-window approach. We continue to modernize our services, to expand the use of technology, and to make it more user-friendly.

Over the years, we have made significant progress in moving from paper-and-pencil testing to online testing. Approximately 70% of PSC's tests are now administered online. This means reduced operational costs, better security features, faster scoring, and quicker communications. The results are now available within 24 hours, as compared to 15 days, which was the case prior to online testing.

For the post-secondary recruitment campaign, the use of paper-and-pencil exams was reduced by more than 90%. We went from 33,000 exams in 2010-11 down to 2,600 in 2014-15. Operating costs were reduced by over 29%, from $736,000 in 2010-11 down to $500,000 in 2014-15. We saw similar efficiencies in our second-language evaluation testing. More than 92% of them are administered online.

We also support departments with their own online testing, which are on our testing platform, by hosting their standardized online tests. We currently host 14 standardized department tests on our platform. For fiscal year 2014-15, we estimate that these tests will be administered to more than 20,000 candidates.

Other key innovations include unsupervised Internet testing. This allows organizations to identify candidates early in the hiring process who are more likely to succeed in subsequent supervised testing. This type of pre-screening reduces costs and time to staff, while increasing the quality of hires. We estimate that, during the fiscal year 2014-15, unsupervised Internet tests were used in 35 recruitment processes. We believe that the use of unsupervised Internet testing for those processes reduced the cost of testing by over $500,000 for hiring departments.

This type of testing has two other important advantages. First, it increases access to public service jobs by allowing applicants to take the test at the location of their choosing, no matter where they live in Canada. Second, it provides greater accessibility by removing testing barriers for persons with disabilities, who can now use their own adaptive technology at home to do their exams.

We will continue to look for ways to innovate, to improve user experience and expand access to opportunities in the public service.

Staffing and recruitment are an important part of the commission's role. Last year, we reported an increase in hiring and staffing activities for the first time in nearly four years. While student hiring was up by 8.6%, permanent hiring of new graduates was down.

We are concerned that the portion of employees under the age of 35 is also down. Those trends have implications for the renewal and future composition of the public service, and we continue to look for the best mechanisms to attract and recruit graduates.

Our post-secondary recruitment campaign is one of the tools that we use to recruit graduates. Last fall, the commission, in collaboration with departments and agencies, participated in more than 20 career fairs in all regions of Canada.

This year we have aIso focused on preparations for the implementation of the Veterans Hiring Act, which received royal assent on March 31. We are continuing those preparations in order to move to full implementation of the legislation. Once it comes into force, this act will change different mechanisms that support the hiring of veterans and current members of the Canadian Armed Forces into the federal public service.

We have been working very closely with our colleagues at Veterans Affairs and the Department of National Defence, and are ready to implement these changes. The draft regulations are now close to completion.

Given our responsibility for administering the priority entitlements within the federal public service, we want to make sure that the entitlements of the medically released Canadian Armed Forces members are fully respected. We are considering additional initiatives to support veterans as well as current Canadian Armed Forces members in bringing their valuable experience and skills to the federal public service. For instance, the commission itself is looking to hire veterans to help Canadian Armed Forces members and other veterans to navigate the Canadian public service staffing system. We're also working right now to finalize training modules and to help human resources advisers and are hiring managers to apply these changes in the system.

Finally, I would like to speak to you about our financial situation. In our main estimates for 2015-2016, the commission is authorized to spend $83.6 million. In addition, it has an authority to recover up to $14 million of the costs of our counselling and assessment products and services provided to federal organizations. We have sufficient resources to deliver on our mandate, and we will only spend what is needed.

For the commission, the most serious risk would be not being able to fully respond in a timely manner to government-wide transformation initiatives and to realize efficiencies. However, we continue to closely monitor all possible scenarios in our planning.

Mr. Chair, we recognize that our responsibilities form but one of the many elements of the overall framework for people management in the public service. ln order for that whole to remain modern, effective, and responsive, we continue to explore ways in which we can better perform our roles with respect to the merit and non-partisanship of our system.

We look forward to working with departments and agencies to achieve the priorities that we have set out. We will continue to foster strong collaboration and relationships with parliamentarians, bargaining agents, and other stakeholders, so that Canadians will continue to benefit from a professional and non-partisan public service.

Thank you very much. We're ready to take your questions.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Ms. Donoghue. That's very helpful.

We'll go immediately to questioning with five-minute rounds.

We have Mr. Denis Blanchette for the NDP.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to our guests.

My first question is about your overall budget. You just said that you have the resources you need. However, your budget for this year will be about $1 million lower than it has been over the past two years. How will you manage to deliver on your mandate while absorbing that additional cut?

[Christine Donoghue]

Thank you very much for the question.

I want to point out that, so far, the commission has not spent all the money from its budget because it is evaluating new work methods to help it achieve economies of scale. The commission can become more efficient by using new technologies and by better integrating the way it develops its policies and oversight tools.

The commission is planning to manage its activities next year and over the coming years based on the spending requirements that are absolutely necessary. That is why it has managed to achieve economies of scale. Faced with any unplanned changes, the office would be able to react and use previously unused funds. So far, we have not spent all the money from our budget.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Your report on plans and priorities indicates that you are worried about being unable to adjust to changes. I'm trying to express the idea properly. You mention that the processes are mature. After all, your organization has a lot of history behind it. So the practices have been established for several generations, if I may say so.

How will this make you transform your services and the way your budgets are spent? Of course, some things are taken for granted, such as your relations with departments. You also want to transform your organization in order to adapt to the new realities you are facing.

I would like to know what the organizational and budgetary implications of the transformation are.

[Christine Donoghue]

We did not take the transformation lightly. We did not decide on our own to undertake a transformation. This is a transformation we have been working on for a year, in very close consultation with the people who are delegated under the legislation.

The consultations are ongoing. Given the system's maturity, we have to acknowledge that it is time to let those people do the work, let them assume their responsibilities, and be there as partners to balance out the commission's involvement.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

How will that change your budgets, based on your three programs, in the upcoming years? It will definitely have an impact.

[Christine Donoghue]

We are basically foreseeing a change in the way we work. We do not really anticipate major budget cuts, as our roles will change. Before we can determine how our budgets will be affected, we need a number of practices.

As you can see in the report we submitted, our budgets will remain relatively stable over the next three years. Of course, we are rethinking our work methods as we move forward. We will assess the potential financial impact.

Did you want to add anything?

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Unfortunately, we'll have to leave it at that for this round. We're going to keep this quite tight, and perhaps you'll have an opportunity in the context of other questioning to expand on that, Mr. Thom.

Mr. Warkentin, five minutes, please.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks so much for being here. We appreciate your coming here to testify. Obviously, we're reviewing the estimates.

I'm generally comfortable with your explanation and thank you for bringing all of those details forward, but one thing that stood out for me that I'd like to talk a bit about is the issue of recruiting young people.

It seems as though there's a challenge for young people to get that first experience, that first job in their area of expertise. We hear concerns about that being the case, and definitely in the private sector. My concern is that it doesn't seem as though the Government of Canada is much different in allowing for that first opportunity, that first job.

Having been a manager, I can certainly understand why managers are looking for people with experience. There's an incredible wealth that can be brought to the table by somebody who has had experience in the job or in the material they have been dealing with.

Have you done any assessments as to why or what could be done to transform the way hiring is done, to allow for that first experience, perhaps through co-op programs or different things? Have you done any studies in that area?

[Christine Donoghue]

First of all, on the reasons that we've seen a decrease in the hiring of youth or the entrance of youth, recruiting youth is not actually difficult. They are applying for the jobs or to the processes that we have for student hires. Attracting youth is not what is difficult. What is difficult, especially in the past two years because of budget reviews and stuff like that, is that the hiring level has gone down and a lot of departments favoured hiring people with more experience.

We've now entered into discussion with the system as a whole and gone back to the importance of recruiting young professionals for the public service, because representation of all factions of Canadians is important within the public service. We have been doing a lot of work. The most important work is internally, in convincing departments that they need to hire these young potential public servants.

We can attract over 12,000 young people to apply for jobs; we can qualify 6,000 of them. The problem is that only 112 are offered positions, so we are changing the approach and how we're thinking. We continue to work with our partners within the system to see what the issue is and why we are not hiring youth. As I said, part of it is because of some of the cuts in the past, but the system is picking up slowly.

Gerry has been responsible for putting forward some of the recruitment strategy, so I'll let him add to this.

[Gerry Thom, Acting Senior Vice-President, Policy Branch, Public Service Commission of Canada]

Thank you.

To the point that young Canadians need jobs, we're working with departments at different levels. We're working at the deputy minister level, doing presentations. We're working with different communities, like the young professionals network, the middle managers network, and so on. We're trying to work with them to bring people into the government.

Let's say that we have the jobs identified and so on. What we need to do, and what we've been doing over the last couple of years, is more outreach. We've been going to job fairs—over 20 job fairs in the fiscal year we just finished—which is good because there are expenses that come with it and so on. This time we are doing it in a more informed way. Before we go to the school, we check to see who is going, so there is more convergence with the other departments. We're not doing it all ourselves.

All of the deputy ministers are champions of a university somewhere in Canada. We weren't working very closely with them before; now we are. Before we go to the school that they are championing, we get a briefing from them. We give them a briefing. When they go, they tell us, and when we come back from the career fair, we do a little survey and we send that to them. We say that when we went there, about 500 people came and so on.

What's interesting is that there is interest, as mentioned by the chair. We have one big campaign during the fall, the post-secondary recruitment. This is a big campaign to recruit from outside. There are roughly 18,000 applications, roughly 13,000 individual applicants, and they go through the tests and so on. We give them a little survey and we ask them questions.

It is interesting that a lot of younger Canadians think that the jobs are all in Ottawa. If they don't want to come to Ottawa, that is one thing. However, it is not true, as 60% of the jobs are in the regions and roughly 40% in the NCR. They think that the jobs are all bilingual, which is not the fact either. They think that the jobs are all at entry level. When we do those campaigns, they think it's for entry level and that, for instance, there are administrative jobs only, which is not the fact. There are all kinds of scientist jobs, engineers, nurses, psychologists and so on.

To wrap it up, we're trying to do better outreach and to build a relationship with all those schools and the community. We can't go everywhere. The communities are kind of our ambassadors at the same time.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mr. Thom and Mr. Warkentin. We'll have to stop it there. Thank you very much.

We'll go to the NDP, Tarik Brahmi.