Government Operations Committee on Sept. 20th, 2018

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay.

I want to get back to the issue of the difficulty of outsiders trying to get into the public service. I've chatted with some people on the issue and I understand that locally, if you're applying for a government job, career counsellors help you set up your resumé differently than in the public service, and they train you differently on how to apply for public service jobs. I wonder if the unique requirements of a public service application are being properly communicated to outsiders when they are applying, or if they're getting the exact same application or job posting as an internal person, who obviously has the advantage.

[Patrick Borbey]

One of the functions that falls under Véronique's responsibility is our outreach. We have literally hundreds of outreach events every year at universities, colleges, even high schools and job fairs. We go to visit indigenous communities and second-language minority communities and we actually spend time with people to help them understand how to apply and what's available—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

This is one of my great worries. If the average Canadian with a university degree doesn't know about such things as “business line clients”, when we're dealing with aboriginal applicants and English or French as a second language, I can only imagine how difficult it is for them. I want to get a really strong understanding that in the public service—it sounds like you don't have the legislative ability to change this—we are tackling that issue of people who are not in the public service being excluded from jobs.

When you were here the last time, we talked about the name-blind recruitment project and table 7 in it. You haven't got it in front of you. We talked about how we have the name-blinding so that we're screening out for race, etc., but those in the public service still enjoyed a massive advantage in screening over those applying from the outside. Even with name-blinding, people currently in the public service have a massive advantage. It is excluding Canadians from applying. I just want to get a good sense that this is a big issue, if it is big enough that outside private sector counsellors are training people on it. I want to ensure that the public service is going to tackle this issue.

[Patrick Borbey]

I think we were just saying the obvious: that if you're already in an organization, whether it's the public service or otherwise, you already have a certain advantage: You know the organization and the culture. That does give you an edge when it comes to competitive processes.

If we move forward as we were talking about in terms of new technology, we can take a lot of that out of the process so that when people are applying, they will be applying to a job that requires good writing skills, not one that requires you to know how to write a briefing note for a minister. Writing skills will be the primary thing that we will be assessing, rather than necessarily making a link to.... For somebody who is going for a promotion for a higher-level job, maybe knowing how to write for ministers might be very important, but for most entry-level or basic-level—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

That's the majority. That's what we're concerned with.

You've mentioned a lot of great things that you're working on. How long will it take, from the second you walk out this door, to perhaps get to a much better state, where you're satisfied regarding attracting outsiders and treating them—to be honest—fairly?

[Patrick Borbey]

I think it's going to be a continuous improvement process. I've talked about some plans that we have right now. These are plans that could see a new technology being rolled out within the next two years. We have to see what is going to be available, and we're going to go at this stepwise—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Is there, perhaps, an ability to report back to us in six months with new numbers, and then a year from now with some more new ones?

[Patrick Borbey]

I am happy to report on it.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Fantastic. Will it be measurable within six months and one year?

[Patrick Borbey]

Yes. Again, I think our annual report that will come out within the next few weeks will actually demonstrate some progress that we've made already in some areas.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Mr. Peterson, for five minutes, please.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being with us once again.

Mr. Borbey, when we were talking about the length of time between first application and being hired, we're looking at a 197-day average. How much of that length of time might be attributed to the number of applicants and the workload that would be on the manager or the HR person who's responsible for that? Would that be a large portion?

[Patrick Borbey]

That's a great question. If the manager receives, after the competition poster closes—let's say it was open for three weeks—a report from the HR professional that says, “Good news—you had 350 people apply for your poster”, well, bad news—you had 350 people apply.

There's a screening process that has to kick in. Again, if the planning has been done in advance and the screening tools are clear, then that can immediately start. However, a manager may say that they never expected this and that they're not sure how they're going to get down to the 30 or 40 they want to evaluate. They may call us and ask us if they can have a cognitive test, for example, applied to the 350 applicants. We would set that up. It has to be scheduled. Right now, a lot of our testing is done in situ. That's why we want to go towards Internet-based testing, which can accelerate the process as well. That all of a sudden adds some time to the process that maybe that manager hadn't thought about originally.

That's how things go from les voeux pieux, you know. You want to make this happen as quickly as possible, and all of a sudden it's added 30 days to the process.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

First of all, what obligation is owed to these 350 applicants? Do they all have to be fairly assessed? Are the tools available to do that expeditiously? Maybe they're not, and maybe that's part of the problem.

[Patrick Borbey]

You're absolutely right. We owe it to Canadians. All applicants have to be treated fairly, with respect and transparency.

That's probably one of the reasons we end up with a lot of delays, because there is this concern about making sure we don't make any mistakes along the way and that everybody has been properly assessed. I suspect that outside of government the screening process may be much faster because there's less concern about that.

Of course, people have access to recourse if they feel that they haven't been treated fairly as well.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Right.

Based on all this—and this is just my assessment based on an hour today—I think it's maybe fair to conclude that although 197 days is probably too long, we shouldn't be using private sector jobs as a comparator, based on some of these inherent obstacles in the system.

[Patrick Borbey]

I think if you're looking for a nuclear safety expert, having the best person for the job trumps having that person within 90 days or 120 days. We have to keep that in mind as well.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

It's obviously always a bit of a balancing act.

Is there an ideal target number in mind? I mean, you don't want to get into the situation of offering jobs that people are not taking because it's taking so long. Then you have to start all over.

[Patrick Borbey]

We've taken the modest approach, because of what I described earlier about this being a diffused responsibility, that we will immediately try to find a 10% improvement. That's our first objective. It's a starting point.

We've already shaved a couple of days off in the priority system, the process that we used to use for.... We've already found a couple of days there. We are testing a new approach to a second language evaluation that could significantly reduce the number of days. Quite often, there's a 30-day or 40-day waiting period associated with scheduling a language test. We're already making some movement in that area.

I think 10% is easily achievable, but we have to go way beyond that.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I have a question for Mr. Trottier, if I have a minute.

Maybe you can elaborate a little bit—as generally as you want—on the interplay between Treasury Board, the public service and even the CHRO. Does that lengthen the process too? Are people worried about stepping on each other's toes? How does this whole dynamic play out?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

If you can elaborate in less than 45 seconds, I'd truly appreciate it.

[Carl Trottier]

I think that Mr. Borbey has explained very well that the PSC is responsible for the staffing policy and oversees the working policy.

We like working with departments to see where the gaps are and how we can help departments look at how to better fill those gaps, be it women in scientific roles, indigenous people, or persons with disabilities.

That's the focus we're taking, but from the recruitment perspective primarily, it's the Public Service Commission.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

All those are being measured, I take it; I think we've seen a report on some of the metrics on those.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Mr. McCauley once again, for five minutes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I want to switch tracks a bit.

I want to get to the hiring of veterans. I have a whole bunch of articles here that I'm going to refer to, but what's your level of satisfaction on the job we're doing on hiring veterans, either medically discharged veterans or other veterans?