Evidence of meeting #143 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 job.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President, Public Service Commission
I'm not satisfied.
We have placed, I believe, over 525 veterans since the new requirements came into effect in 2015. Again, I'm focusing primarily on those who were medically discharged for reasons attributable to service or not attributable to service. Those are the numbers I'm using. We also have mobility rights for veterans as well.
Again, there are various benefits that are available to veterans in the public service.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I appreciate what you're doing, but can I ask what we're going to ramp up? I'll read off the headlines. These are all from the last few weeks: “Over 400 disabled [vets] waiting on priority list for public-service jobs”; “Disabled [vets] finding doors shut to jobs in federal civil service”; and an interesting one, “Liberal senator raises concerns federal jobs for injured military personnel [are] going to senior staff”, but not to line staff—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Last, we have “Failure to hire more veterans causing anger”. It's not a one-off thing. It's quite a large issue.
President, Public Service Commission
These are not recent issues, and we've addressed those issues. I'm prepared to share the material that I shared with the senator, because that was actually hearsay. So—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Sure, if you could, but on the rest of the issues, what are we doing concretely to solve this?
President, Public Service Commission
Please, let me get to it, because I was going to say that we have, on a monthly basis, about the same number of new vets who are being added to the priority system as we're able to place. We're doing a good job of placing. We're placing on average 20 to 30 per month, but we're also getting new people joining.
What we have done is that we've set up almost what we could call a “concierge service” to support them, because we realized that there was too much of a passive approach to managing the priority. We've actually had somebody call every veteran who was on the list to find out if they actually were actively searching for work or if they were not. In some cases—very many cases—they were not ready. They could not at that point consider jobs in the public service. Even if we referred them to jobs, they were not responding or they were not able.
That's the first triage we've done. Now we're focusing on making sure that for those who are ready to work, and who are able to work, we place them as soon as possible.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
For the ones on the wait-list, is that just because they might be on a wait-list in, for the sake of argument, Regina, Saskatchewan, and there's not an opening there? Is it language? Are there specific obstacles?
President, Public Service Commission
There are issues of a mismatch between the way they sometimes describe their experience and the skills they've acquired in the military. There's not a direct link to the NOC, to what we call the occupational codes, so that's something to help bridge in order to help veterans describe what skills they bring and match them with what we need in the public service.
I agree with you. There's an issue of mismatch for regional jobs. We had a whole effort at the Invictus Games. We had a number of departments there with jobs ready to offer, but at the end of the day we were not successful in placing anyone because there was a mismatch between where people wanted to work and the jobs that were available. For every initiative like this, we learn as a result and we try to adjust our approach.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Are you able to communicate directly with them, or are you going at it in a roundabout way such that it has to go through Veterans Affairs?
President, Public Service Commission
No. We have the mandate to communicate directly with them.
We now have two veterans on staff. Primarily, one of them makes all those calls, because sometimes the calls are a little bit difficult. This is a veteran calling a fellow veteran to try to see how we can accelerate their integration into the public service.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
How are we communicating to those who are leaving the service that we have this available for them? Again, do you have access the second they're out of the service, or does that have to come through someone else?
President, Public Service Commission
Yes, there's a process with National Defence. We're working closely with National Defence and Veterans Affairs in terms of preparing people for moving at the right time to kick in that entitlement, because that entitlement has a time limit.
President, Public Service Commission
It's five years, but again, if for the first two years of that entitlement that person is not even able to contemplate work, then we also advise them to be careful and—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Is five years enough? Do we need to extend that to better serve those veterans?
President, Public Service Commission
That's the legislative provision that we're managing.
Conservative
President, Public Service Commission
We have not run into issues related to the five years at this point, because it's relatively new. I don't have any indication that it's a problem.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you very much.
Go ahead, Mr. Jowhari, please, for five minutes.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.
I'm going to go back to you, Mr. Borbey. I'm going to ask the question that everybody else has asked, but with a slightly different approach.
You've mentioned that from the time you post to the time someone is hired, it takes about 197 days. I know that some of my colleagues have made an attempt to try to figure out this process. What are the key elements of the process that are taking the longest?
With my background as a former engineer, especially in the industrial engineering field, I'm familiar with the processes. When you look at the process and length of time, you try to break that into subprocesses. You see which ones you could alternate, which ones you could parallel, and which ones could be reduced in time.
If I were to ask you to name the three top subprocesses within the hiring and onboarding and which processes are consuming the most time within the 197 days, what would you say those would be?
Acting Director General, Policy and Strategic Directions, Public Service Commission
I would say it was the development of assessment material, and then the scheduling of the assessments—for instance, getting a large number of candidates for interviews.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Wouldn't the development of the assessment criteria be part of the planning that happens before the hiring starts?
Acting Director General, Policy and Strategic Directions, Public Service Commission
In some cases it is, and in some cases it is not.