Government Operations Committee on Feb. 27th, 2019

[Carla Qualtrough]

To the best of my knowledge, no, but as you can appreciate, I assumed this role in July 2017, and it was well under way.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

So, the ATIP that we have saying so from the government—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. McCauley, I'm sorry. We're completely out of time.

We'll go now to Mr. Drouin.

You have five minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm just going to make one comment on the integrity framework.

I was in Ottawa before 2015, paying attention to this particular issue. Mr. Nicholson would recall this because he was sitting at the cabinet table. The original integrity framework proposal included affiliates, and that was taken out of the equation because the government of the day understood that if an affiliate was accused of wrongdoing in other countries, this would have severe consequences to companies in Canada and, most importantly, to employees in Canada. So, there is no big conspiracy about one company's trying to get away with it. It was about employees, and it was impacting a lot more than just one particular company.

Let's go back to Phoenix, Ms. Qualtrough. Thank you very much for being here. I do have a lot of public servants in my riding, and one of the things they constantly ask me is how we are doing on this. What progress can I tell them we've made since this thing started?

[Carla Qualtrough]

I don't mean to sound cheeky, but when I was here a year, a year and a half, two years ago at different committees, the marching orders to the team were how do we stop the numbers from going up. Now the marching orders are how do we make the numbers go down more quickly. So, we've definitely had a turnabout on this file.

As I said, we've reduced the queue by 160,000 transactions. We have 1,500 employees working on this. We will have every department as a pay pod client, so public servant satisfaction is continually going up. We have emergency pay in place. We have modified the tax law so that public servants will only have to pay back net overpayments instead of gross, which was a major pain point and something that worried us all until we managed to slay that dragon. There has been definite advancement, but it's not quick enough.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I've noticed that your department has been pushing for pay pods, and obviously there have been successes with the pay pod model. Can you talk to me about that?

[Carla Qualtrough]

What we had tried at first was to take a transactional approach to addressing these issues, thinking there would be efficiencies in attacking all of one type of transaction at a time. Certainly I would refer to disability and maternity leave as those cases where we still do that.

However, what we heard from public servants in how they were experiencing this was that they weren't being made whole. Therefore, we needed a model that would address all of the transactions of a particular employee at a time.

Of course, that meant we weren't necessarily reducing our number of employees, but we were reducing the number of transactions. As we moved into a pod model, which was the suggestion of the employees at Miramichi, we noticed greater client satisfaction and greater employee satisfaction in Miramichi because we were taking more of a people approach to this.

What I predict, if you'll indulge me, is that this will be stabilized. Backlogs within departments will be achieved on a rolling basis, corresponding to when a particular department went into a pod model.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

For Joe and Jane Porch, when we talk about a pay pod, what does that look like?

[Carla Qualtrough]

Thank you for asking. It's a fun way—

I'm being cheeky; I apologize.

It's a way to describe a team of compensation advisers and other experts who are tasked with dealing with the pay issues of a particular department.

Les, can you tell me about the team members for a given pod?

[Les Linklater]

Certainly.

We have experienced compensation advisers. We have support staff who are able to help with more straightforward transactions. There is a data analytics capacity to be able to predict and channel the workload to the appropriate staff who have the skills to be able to deal with particular transactions. There are also coaches and mentors so that when people hit a sticky wicket there's somebody they can reach out to in order to get help to deal with the work that's in front of them.

All of that help works with a team lead, who has the liaison function with the department and agency, both with their human resources and financial groups, to make sure that the flow of information goes between individuals and they build the relationship for the department within the respective pod.

[Carla Qualtrough]

What we have seen is the expertise developed within the pod with respect to the particular department or agency. The group tasked with working with Veterans Affairs, for example, would know the kinds of nuances of that work, the type of overtime they do and the quirks in the collective agreement. It's a very important relationship that's being built and we are being very well served by them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. McCauley, we're going back to you for five minutes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you very much.

I just want to bring this to your attention. This is from an ATIP document and actually states:

Following a direction from the Prime Minister's Office to undertake consultations over the summer of 2017,

It goes back to my question of whether the Prime Minister ordered it. This is right from an ATIP document from the government itself, so it was.

Minister, let me ask you a question, please. The Clerk of the PCO, in the justice committee, referring to SNC and the potential for them to get a DPA, said, “The matter was never discussed at cabinet, never.”:

Is he correct that it was never discussed at cabinet?

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order on relevance.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Madam Ratansi, I'm still paying quite a bit of attention here.

Again, we're talking about the integrity regime. The relationship to the estimates is that the officials before us, plus the minister, have come asking for $25 million to enhance the integrity regime.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

It's $2.6 million.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

DPAs are part of that integrity regime. The minister and others, even members on the government side, have referred to the SNC-Lavalin affair.

I understand where you're coming from, but there is a connection that I can see, so I think there is some relevance.

Mr. McCauley.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Okay, until we see—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Is there an answer, please?

[Carla Qualtrough]

As a point of clarification, the DPA is a Criminal Code tool. It's not part of the integrity regime.

I'm happy to answer, although it will not be satisfactory to you because I will say that the decision of whether or not to proceed with a DPA is definitely within the purview of an independent public prosecutor.

Whether or not that regime is discussed at cabinet I believe would be covered by cabinet confidence.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay.

During that same testimony, the Clerk of the Privy Council said that there were concerns raised by the Liberal caucus about potential job losses at SNC. Were you one of those people in the caucus who raised those concerns?

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Chair, I think that's—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Please. I said I have been listening intently and that if I thought there was a line we were either getting close to crossing or crossing, I would intervene.

I think we've reached that line, Mr. McCauley.