Evidence of meeting #13 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was corporation.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Niki Ashton NDP Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB
Okay, that is encouraging. If there are any numbers, we'd certainly welcome those. I appreciate the positive trend.
I'm wondering, Ms. Vreeswijk, if you have anything to add on this front.
5:15 p.m.
Deputy Minister and President, Canada School of Public Service
First of all, I think the clerk has identified this as a priority for all deputies. There is a concerted effort happening across government.
We house the Federal Youth Network at the school, so we draw on young people, and we try to integrate it right into our curriculum. This year we will be offering orientation for students, because it's really important that they understand both the values of the public service and the opportunities presented by the public service. We will be offering that to all the students who are coming, in all regions of the country.
We also know that a robust learning platform is a key factor in recruitment. The more we are able to provide a modern school environment and demonstrate to young people that they can continue to learn and develop, and make it very clear that the institution of the public service is committed to their development...then that is important also to attract and retain students.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you so much.
Our final seven-minute intervention goes to Madam Shanahan.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today. It's certainly very illuminating and insightful to see how the public service works, especially for those of us who are new MPs.
I'd like to know how we are doing in terms of the participation of women in the public service at all levels. Of course, it's the senior levels that are of interest.
5:20 p.m.
Acting President, Public Service Commission
When we look at the participation of women, do you mean at the hiring level? We at the commission look at every employment equity group across the hiring. Women are doing well, but we realize we may need to pay a little bit more attention to it. What we monitor is not only whether we are hiring, but whether they have the same opportunity when it comes to career progression.
From some of the studies that we're doing—and the numbers are going to be coming out very soon in 2016—the indication is that we are doing extremely well. Basically, there's a bit of a decrease, and we probably need to pay a little bit more attention to it.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
May 12th, 2016 / 5:20 p.m.
Acting President, Public Service Commission
I will attach numbers. I will provide them to the committee, because I do not have them in hand. I'll just double-check while we're talking.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
That's good, because I'd like to know about cultural communities as well, where we're going on the diversity and the indigenous....
5:20 p.m.
Acting President, Public Service Commission
For the indigenous people, I do have the numbers if you want them.
5:20 p.m.
Acting President, Public Service Commission
At this point, the appointment of indigenous peoples is actually higher than their workforce availability numbers, which is a positive signal.
Could we be doing better? We could, because they still have decreased a little bit as opposed to where we were in 2013-14, but they're still higher than the workforce availability.
When it comes to persons with a disability, we're a little bit lower than their workforce availability. On that one there's been a lot of work being done to understand what the issues are. What we're seeing often is that people do not necessarily self-declare as disabled. They self-declare later, because sometimes they're afraid it may prevent their hiring.
We're seeing more demand for adaptative workstations and such. I think the awareness is staying. We're doing a lot of work in universities to be able to create that awareness and understanding and to then train our hiring managers in how to react with people with disabilities.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Help me out a little bit on the numbers. Are we looking at or do we have a numeric target, or is it a proportional percentage of the workforce? How does that work?
5:20 p.m.
Acting President, Public Service Commission
The Treasury Board will require every department to report on their numbers. We're always comparing them against the workforce availability.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
That's good.
Something that has become very important, is emerging in importance, is gender-based analysis, and we add the plus on that. Actually, what strikes me about that approach is it is really going to the heart of what public servants do, which is assisting in program and policy development. To do that, we're really looking at data collection—the accuracy, the quality, but also the scope of data collection and how that informs policy and program development.
We know that one of the problems is also in training. Maybe we could hear from Ms. Vreeswijk on that. I don't know if that is Monsieur Fleury's area either, but can you talk to us about that? We know the workplace is evolving and the work that we do is evolving, and that's part of it.
5:20 p.m.
Deputy Minister and President, Canada School of Public Service
Sure, I'll take a stab at that.
We have worked with the Office of the Status of Women to develop gender-based analysis training. The training that was developed is now on our GCcampus, our online training, so that folks from across the country can access that training. We are continuing to look at our learning platform as a whole to ensure we reflect that priority. We are in the final year of our transformation, so we still have a bit of runway. All of our curriculum is evolving, but the gender-based analysis training is offered.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
I would venture we can go a lot deeper in advance, so that's a heads-up on that one.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Just around the respectful workplace. I used to be a student residence director and our one rule was respect, but respect has a thousand definitions. In the workplace we're talking about harassment, and we're talking about conduct vis-à-vis each other. I suspect that if they don't get the training here, or they don't get the orientation there, then it ends up in your office. Right, Mr. Friday? Please tell me, are the policies we have in the public service today working? Give me a sense of where we're going with that. Mr. Friday, please respond, do you have the resources you need to deal with the cases that are coming to your desk?
5:25 p.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada
I'd say certainly, Mr. Chair. I think our office is sufficiently funded to carry out our work at this time. We receive approximately 80 to 90 new disclosure files a year and about 30 to 35 reprisal files a year. All reprisal cases involve behavioural issues, because someone is retaliating against someone, and it is not uncommon for a disclosure file to include a behavioural aspect, if you will. One of the components of the definition of wrongdoing under our legislation is a serious breach of the code of conduct of the public sector. We do actively look at behavioural issues.
Balancing that with other options that are open to public servants, such as grievance procedures and informal conflict management systems that are implemented throughout government, is certainly an operational challenge. We are called upon regularly in our world to look at behaviour, as well as other types of wrongdoing, such as breaches of acts or abuse of public funds.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you, Mr. Friday. I know you said you would start off with your answers, but you're going to have to conclude with that as well, as we're out of time.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your attendance here. I apologize for the truncated version of this committee, but we will probably be speaking with one another in the upcoming months and years. I do thank you for your appearance, and I thank you for the information. You are excused.
We will resume again in about two minutes, if we can, colleagues, for a brief in camera session on one item of committee business.
[Proceedings continue in camera]