I'll certainly try.
Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to speak today at the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.
My name is Greg Phillips. I'm the president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, otherwise known as CAPE. CAPE represents approximately 15,000 economists, policy analysts, translators and interpreters—such as those people behind the window who defend Canada's linguistic duality. We also represent the amazing analysts at the Library of Parliament—some of whom are here today—and the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
For many years, our membership has raised issues with respect to the staffing process, including its fairness and transparency. These two core principles are at the heart of my message tonight.
Of course, there are aspects of the process that do work very well. I will not be delving into those today. I would rather spend our time today discussing what we would like to see fixed.
I intend to focus on four main areas: improvement to fairness and recourse mechanisms, length of time to run processes, arbitrary language requirements coupled with no funding for language training, and unbalanced and unfair use of geographic area of selection.
Regarding fairness in the staffing process and the recourse mechanisms, the process itself is neither transparent nor easy to understand for our members. For example, it is often unclear why a person has been screened out of a process. Mechanisms available to employees to get those answers, especially in the informal discussion process, are often ignored or carried out in a hasty manner. It has resulted in a deep distrust of the process. Despite that, employees remain fearful to speak out or file a complaint, in that they may be labelled as difficult.
On the issue of management's accountability for their decisions in the staffing process, the extremely limited grounds for challenging staffing decision has led to a cynicism amongst the employees in the process and a feeling that managers cannot and will not be held accountable.
Finally, when a staffing decision is successfully challenged, the recourse is minimal and the position is usually already filled.
Regarding the length of time it takes to run a process, the system itself is cumbersome and complex, which results in multiple delays. The changes to the PSEA have not led to a faster hire process as was envisioned under the new legislation many years ago. We have heard from many of our members that staffing actions take too long. It can be even worse for external processes. When competing with the private sector for the best and the brightest, this can be seen as a very significant barrier and a detriment to the public service as a whole.
Even in the case where an employee is offered a position, the additional time it takes to verify or conduct a security clearance, and/or verify or conduct language tests often results in a loss of our best candidates. We submit that this process requires more staff and more funding.
The overall result of the length of time it takes to run one process means that hiring managers are constantly looking for workarounds to the system in order to obtain their candidate of choice. This means that hiring decisions are often open to abuse, and the system becomes about who you know, rather than who is the best person for the job.
Regarding the language requirements, the feedback from our members has consistently demonstrated that more and more positions are being arbitrarily assigned a higher language requirement without any justification for doing so. This is not just an issue for the employees who do not meet the level, but also for hiring managers who cannot fill the positions with qualified candidates.
Besides ensuring that positions are correctly evaluated for the language requirement needed for for the duties of the position, the single biggest complaint we hear is that no funding is available for second language training. It is logical to conclude that if there is an increase in bilingual imperative positions, there must also be a corresponding increase in training and funding to meet this need. However, we are certainly not seeing this, particularly in the professional categories. This presents the possibility that someone exceedingly more qualified for the job does not get it, while someone who simply meets the bare minimum requirements obtains the job because they were fortunate enough to have access to language training early in their career. This concern also has an impact on priority entitlements, including veterans, who are often unable to meet that one requirement.
Regarding the arbitrary use of geographic areas of selection, the area of selection, or AOS, chosen for each competition is often unbalanced and unfair. It appears chosen to both ease the work requirement for the competitions—fewer applicants mean less work for the competition—as well as to minimize relocation expenditures.
This is a public service that represents all Canadians. Regional office job competitions are typically open to everyone across the country, but the jobs, often the better and higher-profile jobs, in the national capital region are limited to just those working in the national capital region. In today's day and age, with the technological advances open to us, geographic distance should not be a limiting factor in selecting the best candidate for the job.
As such, it is our submission that unless there is a reasonable justification for not opening up the job competition to the broader population, the AOS should be as expansive as possible, so that we are obtaining the best and most representative candidates to reflect the Canadian population.
Having set out many of our concerns, it is useful to briefly discuss some possible solutions.
Regardless of what is implemented or changed, my first recommendation is that it be done following proper consultation with the bargaining agents. This means consultation from the ground up on changes and improvements to the PSEA and any staffing policies. This will not only result in a better outcome and buy-in, but will achieve the goal of harmonious labour relations and effective joint problem-solving.
My second recommendation is consistency for competitions across departments, including increased funding for more regular auditing of all departments, not just for a select few each year, in addition to consistency in how the process of applying language requirements or geographic area of selection is carried out. Increased funding for auditing departments will be a big step towards greater consistency and fairness.
My third recommendation is increased funding for, and access to, training for staff advisers, so hiring managers can receive prompt and correct advice and assistance with their competitions.
Regarding training for second language requirements, if we are changing positions to require a language profile of CBC, for example, we need to make sure there are qualified candidates available and funds for language training. If not, the positions either remain empty or are staffed by assignments, which have more flexible requirements than the particular language requirement of the position. Overuse of assignments results in a cascade of staff in acting assignments rather than permanent positions. In the long term, this has the effect of wasting both time and money.
The fourth recommendation is that, rather than pushing managers to return money to their budgets, the process allow them to staff at their appropriate levels. Often the pressure to reduce the budget or return money at the end of each fiscal quarter, coupled with the daunting task of running a long staffing process, results in managers asking staff to do excess work. This has a cascading effect in that staff become burned out or move to greener pastures, thus compounding the staffing difficulties.
Fifth and finally, our members have been very concerned about the outsourcing of the public service employee survey, which was talked about earlier today. We know it is best carried out by Statistics Canada, a world-renowned statistical agency. The results of this survey are critical to an exceptional public service. CAPE staunchly opposes the contracting out of this valuable HR tool, a tool that both management and unions have relied on for a very long time.
On a Phoenix side note, due to the fact that transferring files and changing positions is creating additional pay problems, many staff are not applying to competitions for fear of causing issues in their pay. This is not necessarily part of a problem with the staffing process per se, but it is worth mentioning to the committee, as stories of these decisions are common.
The public service has become accustomed to avoiding risk. However, all risk can be managed, and without some risk, innovation and improvement become impossible. Investing in staffing will not only have an impact on the resources required for the process itself, but also improve the morale, quality of work and resolve of the public service as a whole.
Thank you.
