Government Operations Committee on April 19th, 2018

[Charles Tardif]

The idea of the process was to get a good representation of the jobs currently available in the government. We wanted to have, as you mentioned, entry-level positions but also more senior positions and different types of categories.

We have a number of administrative assistants. When you refer to AS, those are administrative assistant positions, but we also have biologists, engineers, and economists. We also have people working in general trade. The idea was to represent all these categories of employment, so that's why you see the variety here in the tables that you referred to on page 13.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

You had picked five occupational categories. Can you tell me, overall, how many occupational categories exist? It's five out of how many: five out of 100, five out of 10...?

[Charles Tardif]

It's five out of six. The only one not included was for the executives.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Perfect. So from an occupational category, we are covering almost 90%. From the 27 positions within these categories, what percentage are we covering?

[Charles Tardif]

That's a good question. I cannot give you a—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

That's fine. Could you perhaps find that information and send it to us?

[Charles Tardif]

Yes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

In general, one could say that from an occupational category we are covering a lot. We are covering the comprehensive, and on classification it looks like we're covering different levels.

Coming specifically to table 6, when you look at the traditional versus the name-blind recruitment, we've gone from 46.3% under operational, for example, to 36% under name-blind. As I look at it, there seems to be a large statistical difference. The other ones are averaging probably about 3% to 5%. Why is there such a significant difference? Compare it with table 8, which is specifically talking about visible minorities. There's almost no statistical difference. I'm trying to reconcile this. Why is there such a statistical difference in one category? When it comes to visible minority, I don't have any statistical variance.

[Charles Tardif]

It's all about the sample size itself. Usually the larger the sample size and the more candidates, the easier it will be to predict the right information. If you have a very small sample size, a large difference can't be determined or can't be identified as easily.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

How would you categorize your sample size?

[Charles Tardif]

For that operational category, if you refer to page 13, we have only one process that ended up in that category. We are much lower here compared with all the others. As you can see, we have only 87 candidates.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay.

[Charles Tardif]

That's much smaller, for example, than for administration and foreign service, where we have hundreds of candidates. That explains the difference.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

In your final report, just before your conclusion, you talk about some of the challenges, let's say, associated with the pilot project. You list about five items. One of them is that the process is very cumbersome.

You talked about introducing some of the automated processes, and I know there's a plan to do another study in the future. How can the lessons learned from this study help you streamline in the future some of the challenges you've highlighted here so that we're not spending another $250,000, or so that the $250,000 we're going to spend will give us a lot more in benefits?

[Patrick Borbey]

Yes. We're taking what we learned, including the fact that it's more labour-intensive than we had anticipated not just to anonymize the information but also to ensure that it's done consistently across—imagine—2,200 applications. It's pretty significant. It also added a certain amount of time to the process. We're all concerned about ensuring that our recruitment processes are as efficient as possible. One of the reasons we'd like to look at some technological solutions is to reduce some of that burden.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

How would you, at the end, summarize the result? I know that you did a conclusion and made comments in your presentation. Do we have an issue—yes or no?

[Patrick Borbey]

Do we have an issue? The study was not meant to determine whether there is an issue related to discrimination in the public service. The study was to determine whether the use of a technology or a tool, an approach called name-blind or anonymizing, has an impact on the screening rates. We looked only at screening.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Does it have an impact on the screening rates?

[Patrick Borbey]

Well, we concluded that it doesn't, at the end of the day. It doesn't have a beneficial or a detrimental impact, particularly if you're worried about barriers, or conscious or unconscious bias, related to visible minorities.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I find it a little bit hard, because I'm looking at the statistical difference in the other categories. When it comes to visible, we don't have any statistical variance. That's a challenge for me, but we can talk about that another time.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much.

Are there any questions? No.

I will take this opportunity to ask you a question. You were talking about sustainability and renewal of the public service, and saying that it is important because there is a lot of retirement. People were talking about how we've all done a good job, but as Mr. Drouin pointed out, people who complain are the people who are not in the upper echelons. It's very difficult for them to become deputy ministers or ADMs.

Do you hire outside the public service for those positions, the way a CEO would be hired? Would you do that? And would that be a name-blind or anonymous application?

[Patrick Borbey]

Thank you, Madam Chair. That's a good question.

When it comes to the upper echelons of the public service—deputy ministers, deputy heads, and associate deputy ministers—that is under the responsibility of the Privy Council Office. Those are Governor in Council appointees. They fall outside the jurisdiction of the Public Service Employment Act. All the way up to senior or deputy minister falls under our jurisdiction. Yes, certainly I know—my colleague might want to talk about talent management, for example—that diversity is an extremely important factor that we consider in talent management.

Do you want to talk a little bit about it?

[Carl Trottier]

Sure.

With regard to talent management, it's actually quite a rigorous process at the public service in terms of determining the learning plans for the individuals, the skill gaps, and how we can support those employees to finally develop and access the higher echelons and move through the ranks of the public service. It's a process that happens yearly. It's a process that is done in quite a rigorous manner by committee, by department, and finally by the public service at large through each year.

With regard to your previous question about hiring, my colleague mentioned that it is managed by PCO. It would be hard to provide some stats on that right now, but there are in fact signs of mid-career hires that are coming. I'll speak to the level below deputy, where in fact there are some mid-career hires happening. There are some efforts needed to increase those mid-career hires, though, that need to take place. That's what we're working on right now.

[Patrick Borbey]

From the Public Service Commission's perspective, we recognize that not only do we have to focus on external hires for entry-level positions—which is great—but also, in some cases, we need to find people at mid-career.

The issue is that they're not usually on our website looking for job opportunities, so we're thinking about ways we could be more proactive. In fact, one of the experimentations we want to do next is to look at whether an employee referral program could be piloted. When you're looking at very hard-to-staff jobs.... I'll talk about my own parish. Psychologists are very important to our work. It's almost impossible to attract them through our regular recruitment programs. Again, it could be something where colleagues, psychologists who are currently working in the government, could refer professional colleagues—not their brother-in-law or their sister, but professional colleagues—who may not be thinking of a career in the public service but who could actually really contribute to our workforce.

That's something we're looking at to see if we could do a better job at attracting at that level, as well.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

What are the next steps for this pilot project? Where does it go?