Government Operations Committee on Nov. 8th, 2018

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

If you had something such as that for the budget process, presumably somehow we got to the $745,000 number for vote 40, so how is this any more detailed than what was prepared for the budget?

We were told that what goes into the budget is this high-level costing, and the nitty-gritty comes when you file a Treasury Board submission, because that's when you have a sense of how many staff you're going to hire, how you're going to support those staff, and the other things you're going to do.

Therefore, what would be in the Treasury Board submission that you've submitted—without a commissioner weighing in, because you don't have one yet—that wasn't in the high-level spending estimate for the budget?

[Matthew Shea]

We have our best guess as to how it would be spent. We have a breakdown—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We're going to have to leave it at that, Mr. Shea, only because we're completely out of time.

However, what I will say to all of our witnesses, particularly since in a couple of instances we've had incomplete answers because of a time shortage, is that should you have more comprehensive responses to some of the questions that our committee members have posed, I would encourage you to submit those written responses directly to our clerk. It would be to the benefit of our committee for you to do so as expeditiously as possible.

With that, ladies and gentlemen, I will suspend for just about five minutes while we have our next panel of witnesses approach the table.

Thank you all for being here.

We are suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I'd like to reconvene, if I may.

We have two sets of witnesses. One is from the Canada School of Public Service and the other is from the Public Service Commission.

I would like to welcome all witnesses here before us.

I believe, Mr. Sarantakis, you will be going first, and I believe you have an opening statement. If it could be 10 minutes or less, I would appreciate it greatly.

[Taki Sarantakis, President, Canada School of Public Service]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm pleased to return to the committee in my new capacity as the president of the of the Canada School of Public Service, and I'm very pleased also to be bringing my experience at the Treasury Board Secretariat to the school.

I am here today with my colleague Marc Bélisle, who is vice-president of the corporate services branch of the School of Public Service, to discuss the Supplementary Estimates (A) and the activities the funds will support.

The school is the common learning organization of the Government of Canada. We equip public servants with the knowledge, skills and competencies they need to fulfill their responsibilities to Canadians.

The school is preparing for a fast-paced digital future with ongoing refinements to its business model and its curriculum. Our mission is to keep learning as relevant, responsive and accessible as possible for Canadian civil servants.

We deliver learning, both in person at 13 locations across the country and online. Through the school, more than 270,000 public servants have access to about 100 instructor-led courses and about 300 online training schools. The school remains committed to a path of continuous improvement to serve Canada and Canadians. We want public servants to have learning at their fingertips wherever they are, whatever their learning preference, so they can do their jobs today and to be ready for their jobs tomorrow.

The school is getting ready for the road ahead by adding a host of innovative services to federal departments and agencies.

As a concrete example, Minister Brison, the President of the Treasury Board, recently announced the Digital Academy, which the Canada School of Public Service will build in partnership with the Office of the Chief Information Officer and the Canadian Digital Service to modernize training for federal civil servants in terms of their digital capacity and their digital ethos.

Other new projects of the school include leadership in the Free Agent initiative, temporary policy “surge capacity” for departments' own initiatives, and a new focus on disseminating trends in public policy and public administration throughout the federal government.

We're also refocusing the school along five new business lines to better position us to meet the demands of the future. In addition to the Digital Academy, which I mentioned Minister Brison launched less than a month ago, the other four business lines are as follows: indigenous learning, respectful and inclusive workplace, Government of Canada and public sector skills, and transferable skills. Going forward, every learning product at the school will fit into one of these five areas.

In delivering these changes, the school's most important resource is its people. Supporting employees means ensuring compensation and quickly resolving any pay issues. That brings us to the almost $100,000 allocated through the supplementary estimates.

I'll briefly outline the work under way at the school in this respect.

In June, the school was selected to be part of the rollout of the new client service delivery model for pay stabilization. This is commonly called the pod system. Our collaboration with our pod system run by PSPC has been very good for improving quality in respect of our Phoenix issues. We established a series of escalation processes whereby we worked to deal with Phoenix issues as rapidly as possible. We've actually started reducing the backlog in our open cases significantly, in the order of 25%.

The pod overall has been very helpful to the school. In addition to the school's responsibility for its own employees, we have offered training to other federal government employees, whereby we've hosted material that has been put to us by PSPC.

In conclusion, Mr. Chair, the school continues to work hard to modernize itself and to serve the Canadian public service, and through them serve Canadians, in the best way possible for the future.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much, and belated congratulations on your recent appointment.

[Taki Sarantakis]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Monsieur Borbey, it's good to see you once again. You have an opening statement, sir.

[Patrick Borbey, President, Public Service Commission]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Hello, and good afternoon.

I am happy to appear before you today, accompanied by Eva Jacobs, our general director for finances and administration, to discuss the Supplementary Estimates (A) of the Public Service Commission of Canada.

The Public Service Commission of Canada promotes and safeguards merit-based appointments. In addition to this, it protects the non-partisan nature of the public service in collaboration with our stakeholders throughout the public service.

The PSC reports to Parliament directly on its mandate. An Order in Council was recently passed, designating the president of the Queen’s Privy Council as the minister who will table our annual reports and other reports to Parliament on our behalf. We expect that our 2017-18 annual report will be tabled in early December.

I'm expecting it's going to be a very good read.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

It should be a page-turner.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Patrick Borbey]

Our Supplementary Estimates (A) identify $99,196, which was provided for in Budget 2018. These funds were allocated to us for only one year in order to help us address the backlog related to the Phoenix pay system, as well as to strengthen our internal capacity to resolve the human resources and pay administration issues. The formula used by Treasury Board Secretariat to allocate funds to organizations takes into account the size of the organization itself.

This one year of funding was provided to all organizations supported by the Miramichi pay centre. The PSC is working hard to regularize the pay situation of its employees and is taking action on as many fronts as possible to minimize the impact of Phoenix issues. Generally speaking, we seem to be following the same trends as other departments and agencies served by the pay centre.

The PSC’s planned FTE count for 2018-19 is 813. With respect to errors in pay, at this time we have 327 employees who have been overpaid and 124 who have been underpaid. The average overpayment is about $6,200. I should note that in the case of about 35% of these individuals, the overpayment is less than $1,000. Since 2016, we have issued a total of 244 emergency salary advances to 146 employees.

We took measures to ensure that commission employees receive accurate pay as quickly as possible. We hired a senior level employee to oversee and address pay issues. We established a working group made up of both human resources and finance officials. The group works closely together to obtain a comprehensive and integrated view of pay issues within the Public Service Commission, and we implement strategies to support our employees.

Our managers and employees took mandatory training to ensure they understand their roles and responsibilities in the HR-to-pay stabilization process. Measures were taken in regard to timely data capture, as well as the accuracy and integrity of data related to pay. We actively participate in the HR-to-pay coordination committee meetings led by Public Services and Procurement Canada.

Additional efforts have been dedicated to maintaining a high level of accuracy in our salary management system, which is critical to providing accurate data that allows us to monitor pay transactions, identify anomalies and take appropriate action before we approve pay transactions.

Our efforts include reconciling actual salary expenditures to salary system-generated forecasts for every pay file; investigating variances and bringing these to the attention of the pay centre, as appropriate; intercepting pay in which amounts are unusual, in order to address these early on in the process and prevent underpayments and overpayments; and developing and implementing a departmental emergency salary advance process.

Mr. Chair, earlier this week, on November 6 and 7, senior Public Service Commission officials visited the pay centre to further develop partnerships and to collaborate with them regarding a new approach to processing pay transactions as we move to the new pay pod model that was mentioned by Taki. This new approach will result in more efficient and comprehensive resolutions of pay issues and a reduction of backlogged cases. We expect to move to the pay pod model in May 2019.

We thank you for your interest in our supplementary estimates and, more generally, for the interest you have shown in the Government of Canada staffing process, including, since we are celebrating Veterans' Week, the hiring of veterans.

We would be pleased to answer any questions you may have about our supplementary estimates. We would also be happy to answer any questions in regard to hiring within Canada's public service.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much, all of you.

We will start with Mr. Peterson for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here with us today and for informing us as we go over these estimates.

I'm going to start with you, Mr. Sarantakis. Welcome to the role. Congratulations on the new role.

I don't think we've had you before at committee.

[Taki Sarantakis]

No, it's my first time.

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

Could you take a minute or two to talk about some of your vision for the school, what your mandate is, and how you're going to make sure that our public service continues to have all the learning resources that it needs?

[Taki Sarantakis]

The mandate of the school has always been to train civil servants in what's called the “common learning” of the Government of Canada, meaning things that are applicable to people as civil servants.

Upon my appointment, I was given a very strong mandate from Minister Brison to make the school a value-added organization, to make it an organization that civil servants want to use frequently to not only improve what they do now, but to further their functions and skills in the future.

As part of that, we're doing a little bit of a reorganization. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we're flipping the school inside out and saying, “Here are our five business lines.” They are business lines that align very well with what Canadians expect from us, I think.

The first is indigenous learning. We're going to set up a unit to help the indigenous population within the Government of Canada, and also to kind of teach the indigenous fact, because that's very important to Canadians.

The second is an inclusive and respectful workplace. As a large organization, we have a lot of issues in the Government of Canada that are not uncommon to other large employers, things like harassment and inclusion. You have survey data in front of you that shows these things. We want to teach our civil servants how to better cope with things like difficult conversations, how to promote harassment-free environments, etc.

The third new business line is what we're calling “Government of Canada skills”. These are skills that are specific to you as a civil servant. If you become a manager, a director or an assistant deputy minister, they might include your financial delegations and the like. It's kind of the nuts and bolts of being a civil servant.

The fourth is the flip side of that, which we're calling “transferable skills”. These are skills that you learn and use everywhere, whether you're at Amazon, IBM, a small organization or the Government of Canada. These are things like project management, risk management and communication.

Our final one, which is actually the first one I mentioned, is our Digital Academy. We want to make sure that Canadian civil servants are among the most digitally literate in the world. If you go on our website, you'll see a couple of things that we've started. The first is Minister Brison's vision for digital, which is on our website. The second is that we've already started doing some work on artificial intelligence, and you can see a couple of very interesting videos on how the future of artificial intelligence will impact the civil service.

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

Excellent. Thank you for that response.

Mr. Borbey, this kind of segues into your role. I know you've been before this committee a number of times. Most recently, I think we were talking about some of the delays in hiring and how we can help address that issue and how we can prioritize some of it.

Working with the school, do you see this as a bit of a change in the vision of the learning model? Do you see this as dovetailing with your ability to hire and retain quality talent?

[Patrick Borbey]

Yes. Once we hire and select individuals, when it comes to orienting them into the public service and then accompanying them throughout their careers at various stages, I think the school plays an extremely important role with what their learning requirements may be.

We have always worked closely with the school, and we will continue to do so. There are three specific areas where we work closely.

First are courses related to staffing. Before managers are even delegated authority for staffing, they have to go through a curriculum and demonstrate that they understand the requirements of the staffing system. That's an area where we collaborate. In fact, one of our employees is on secondment with the school and helps deliver some of that training.

The second area that is extremely important, as we continue to want to expand our student employment, is the orientation when students come in to help them make the transition into the government. We provide learning events tailored to their specific needs. For example, last year we worked very closely with the school on a learning program tailored to our indigenous summer employment opportunity, which is delivered across the country. Again, the school has the capacity to do that across the country, so there is a good partnership there.

The last one I would mention is leadership development. As we continue to see the need for renewal in the public service, we need to make sure that our top leaders are well equipped to deal with the issues Taki talked about, creating the right kind of workplace and environment, one that is respectful and harassment free. Through our Personnel Psychology Centre, we help the school in assessing candidates for leadership programs and developing the right kind of coaching and support based on the tools we can use, including psychometric assessments, in some cases.

Those are three ways we work closely with the school.

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

Excellent. Thank you for sharing that with us. I see that your requests are not only identical in amount but identical in purpose. Is there a reason the numbers are exactly the same? Is there some cap on this number?

First of all, congratulations on targeting it as a priority to get resources to make sure that employees are paid on time. I'm glad that you guys noticed that it's a priority and an important role, and the amounts are exactly the same.

[Taki Sarantakis]

The amount actually wasn't determined by us. It was determined by Treasury Board Secretariat on a formula basis. The formula spat out that this is what you get, this is what you get, and so on.

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

Okay.

[Taki Sarantakis]

We're similarly sized organizations.

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

Yes, I imagine the number of employees or something would be a big factor in that formula.

[Patrick Borbey]

Yes.