Government Operations Committee on Nov. 9th, 2017

[Brian Pagan]

Ninety per cent is done, and seven tables, 10%, are outstanding.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Right.

PSAC has filed a complaint against the government with the public service relations board about the missed deadlines to implement contracts. They are asking for compensation. What risk are our taxpayers at for this complaint if it proves successful? Why did we not get those agreements honoured?

[Brian Pagan]

Mr. McCauley, the situation or the challenge before us is working through implementation of the Phoenix pay system. When the—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Would you say the reason why we weren't able to honour the agreements in time is solely or 99% Phoenix?

[Brian Pagan]

Phoenix is the way in which we pay our employees, so the fact that things have not been implemented is—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What risk are we at, compensation-wise, ballpark? Are you able to guess?

[Brian Pagan]

I can't comment on a legal issue.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The $253 million for anticipated shortfalls, for public insurance, is that from new benefits? Is this from additional public service workers? How did we end up with a quarter of a billion?

[Renée LaFontaine, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary, Corporate Services Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Yes. It has both aspects, actually.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Break it down for me. How much is new employees? How much is new benefits?

[Renée LaFontaine]

In terms of the total of $253 million, about half of that, $126 million, is increase because of payroll. When you increase your salaries and some of your benefits are based on the salary that you make now, that actually increases the amount of the premiums that you pay for that higher level of salary, so we factor that in. That represents about $57 million. We've also noted a 7% increase in the cost of health care, so that's part of it as well, and $48 million is related to that.

The final figure is the.... The long-term disability program for senior management in the public service had a premium holiday for a while, because they were actually a little ahead in terms of their planning for funding. That premium has now been put back on, so that's increased as well. Then you net against that the increases that employees are going to pay for their share of the premiums, and the total is $126 million for that.

The remaining $126 million is actually a contingency that we put in for the total envelope that we use to plan for making sure that we have money in our reference levels to pay for all these costs, and we have a 5% contingency every year, which is normal.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay. Thank you.

In the supplementaries we have under the TBS, there's funding of $7.7 million for the web renewal initiative. Can you break that down? How much have we spent so far, and will that cover the whole initiative or is that just the first go at it?

[Renée LaFontaine]

I can do that one as well. Our total ask for web renewal is $26.2 million over six years. In these supplementary estimates we're looking for $7.7 million in the second year of the program.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What are we going to get for $7.7 million?

[Renée LaFontaine]

The focus this year is going to be on.... Ten institutions have gone through our web renewal plan and have streamlined their websites, making it easier to find and access information for the key Canadians who use them. We added four new departments this year: Health Canada—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Are you trying to move the departments over bit by bit?

[Renée LaFontaine]

We're focused on the top kinds of services Canadians look for online.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay. That's good.

[Renée LaFontaine]

We're focused on 70%—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Right. I'm going to move on. The $4.3 million for the Canadian digital service, is that like the web initiative? Is that just a start, or is that the be-all and end-all cost?

[Renée LaFontaine]

It's the same story. The Canadian digital services budget 2017 announced—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Is Shared Services or a different department doing that?

[Renée LaFontaine]

No. We're setting up Canadian digital services inside TBS, and it's going to be a key branch within our organization.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you. Just quickly, there's $3.7 million for executive leadership development programs within TBS, I'm curious, who exactly will this be used for? When you say “executive”, will it be department head level, DM level, and is this considered a taxable benefit if it's a training program to put someone through a specific program like an MBA, CPA, or anything like that?

[Renée LaFontaine]

That's a good question. We're going to give this training to our own senior managers. We're proposing to train 25 EX-04s and EX-05s this year, and about 50 EX-01s to EX-03s. This will be the first year of the program.