Evidence of meeting #147 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 hiring.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
President, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
No, not at all. In fact, we would not advise our members to enter into that process. It doesn't protect them at all. It's going to be a career-limiting or a career-ending move if they do.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I've heard that repeatedly. It's shocking that for 300,000 Canadians we do not have proper whistle-blower.... I really hope the current government will act on the very good report put together by the members of this committee.
Conservative
President, Canadian Association of Professional Employees
In the PSES we've been talking about, the results for that actually—
Conservative
President, Canadian Association of Professional Employees
That's an astronomical number. They have grounds to file complaints.
One of the big problems that we face in our union is that a lot of our members, when we meet with them and say that they have perfect grounds to file a grievance or a complaint, and they'll say, “Well....” There's going to be another competition and they don't want to be seen as a troublemaker.
With this best fit that we talked about, as soon as you speak out against, maybe, your current manager, they say that you're no longer the best fit for the promotion. When your whole career trajectory and your whole future rely on your boss liking you, are you going to file a complaint against him or her?
President, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
Not to mention, it's only something like 2% of those complaints that are ever won. You go to all that trouble—
President, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
—and all that risk only to have a very low chance of success.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
When you pile that on top of all the regulatory...and all the difficulties we have as it is to hiring people, then we....
President, Canadian Association of Professional Employees
When you are successful, the best thing they can do is put you back in the pool. But if there's a competition where there are only three jobs and they put you back in the pool—
President, Canadian Association of Professional Employees
—five months later, all those three jobs are gone, or the best three jobs are gone.
Conservative
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Thank you very much.
I'm going to follow up on my colleague's line of questioning, but I'd like to begin by thanking you and your members for keeping democracy going.
In my 14 years here, I've sat on all manner of committees. I've been involved in all manner of debates. I've been involved in extremely tedious and profound work, extremely explosive, and much of which resembled the Jerry Springer show. Throughout it, it was the clerks, the analysts and the translators who kept this machine going, with incredible professionalism. Politicians play by World Wrestling Federation rules about everybody else, but we reserve Italian soccer rules for ourselves. If we ever feel we've been slighted, we're all over the floor whining and howling. However, in all my years, there's never been a complaint against the staff for the work they do, for either being partisan or for being unprofessional, and particularly with the translators, who have to do the extremely difficult work of taking all of our gobbledygook and making it sound reasonable or understandable without causing needless—
Liberal
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I have no concern. I know they will translate that perfectly clearly.
That said, I'm really concerned to hear your conversation where you used words such as “deep distrust”,“fearful” and “cynicism,” and being worried about speaking out. To me, there's something fundamentally wrong if the people we trust with our democracy are working in an environment where they don't feel their value is respected and protected. I would put to you that there is much harder, better work we need to do in terms of respecting the work being done by the civil servants.
President, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
We recently did an update to a survey of our scientists, particularly on the muzzling of scientists. Although when we took it in 2013 some 90% of our members felt that they were being muzzled, that number is down to a little over 50%. However, a little over 50% of scientists still feel that they are being muzzled. Despite the declarations that they can now speak openly about their work, they still can't really speak openly about their concerns.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I want to move on to the issue of staffing and having a wider market pool.
When I was on this committee some years ago, we were looking at high turnover rates in certain areas and regions outside the national capital. As I said, I'm more than willing if you want to help us get more employees into the Timmins and Kirkland Lake offices. They do excellent work. The conditions are great. You're going to really like having your staff there.
They always called it “the empire strikes back”, the deputy ministers who like having things under their control, who didn't like it out in the field, but it seems crazy to me. If we're going to be attracting the best and the brightest and supporting middle-class jobs, we could probably have a devolution of work further afield and be more efficient.
Mr. Phillips, I believe you raised that. How would we make that operable?
President, Canadian Association of Professional Employees
It's really case by case. It depends on the department. It has to be operationally feasible. Sometimes you actually have to be in the same room with people to work on things. Translators are a good example. Our translators work all across the country. You give them work, and as long as they have access to the Internet to use the tools they need in order to do that, they can work anywhere.
If you're looking into it, you might want to talk to Statistics Canada. I know they're working on a workplace modernization. They're one of the front-running departments working on how you open up the office so that employees can work from anywhere at anytime. That's fundamental. They're doing some really good work over there. I don't know exactly what they're doing, because I'm not there anymore, but I know they are proceeding on that.
That's an area where, if you want a resource to consult to see what's going on, they are actually looking at opening it up and allowing people from across the country to work from wherever they are.
President, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
I would really appreciate it if one of the honourable members would ask me about telework.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I wasn't going to, but it just so happens that it's fourth on my list of questions. I'll just bump it up one.
Go ahead. Tell us about telework.
