Evidence of meeting #166 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 jobs.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Page, what's the capacity of LinkedIn to offer services bilingually, and is that an issue that the federal government should be aware of? Is it completely seamless?
4:25 p.m.
Government Lead, Talent Solutions, LinkedIn
Yes, it's completely seamless. Everything's available bilingually.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
That's good to hear.
It seems that some of the work is already being done. Some of the stuff is always organic. As it happens, the market dictates some of the procedures that we take, but it's good to see there is some progress already going on in that.
Ms. Stinson, your presentation was about four or five minutes, but it was jam-packed with so much amazing information, and there are so many questions coming from that. I'm a bit of a stats guy. I love stats and studies. I have a few questions that may be definitional.
Did the study go from 2005 to 2014?
4:25 p.m.
Research Associate, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
Yes.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
That's almost 10 years.
Were there control groups of women and men, or was this looking at different categories of women?
4:25 p.m.
Research Associate, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
We sliced and diced the data in a lot of different ways, but the analysis we have done looked largely at what happened to different groups of women. Occasionally we also asked what happened to men, but that wasn't our consistent comparator. It was more focused on what's happening within the universe of women.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
You said there was an increase in the number of precarious workers.
4:25 p.m.
Research Associate, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
Yes.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Was that increase a percentage or a number of raw workers?
4:30 p.m.
Research Associate, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
It was both. We were dealing with raw numbers, and then we calculated the percentage increase.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
So it's not the case that there were x number of workers and then all of the new ones became precarious workers. Some of the existing workers would have changed to precarious work.
4:30 p.m.
Research Associate, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
I believe so. It wasn't following jobs to know exactly, but it certainly appears that this is the general trend over time. There's a decline in permanent positions and an increase in precarious ones.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
That was my question. Is the increase in precarious work a new development? If you were hired in the last three or four years, would you more likely be precarious than if you were hired in the four or five years before?
4:30 p.m.
Research Associate, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
It appears so. It appears that it's gradually increasing, but it's not necessarily that new. I was looking at this question from 1997 to 2007, and there was an increase during that time too.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
You kind of alluded to it, but are managers incentivized to hire precarious workers?
4:30 p.m.
Research Associate, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
I think the cost incentivizes it. I've listened to some of the earlier testimony to this committee, and it seems that delays in hiring could also be a factor that a number of people were raising. Sometimes it's faster to contract out or get a temporary position than to go through a longer, formal, permanent hiring process.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Is that one of the attractions of a contract worker, that the same process doesn't necessarily need to be followed and can be done more expeditiously than hiring a full-timer?
Maybe Mr. Borbey or Mr. Fleury could comment.
4:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission
Yes. Certainly, if we focus on casual employees, they fall outside the Public Service Employment Act. These are contract arrangements that don't have to meet merit.... But we do track them, and we report them in our annual report. We have noticed that the use of casual workers is on the upswing.
But we've been through cyclical.... During the last 15 or 20 years we have also seen increases in casual work. Some of it may be related to uncertainty, budgetary or otherwise. We are looking at this and I'm particularly concerned with the gender impact of the rise in casual work. That's certainly something we are tracking and want to watch very carefully.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Welcome back to several of you, and welcome to those who haven't been here before.
Mr. Borbey, you may have covered in your opening presentation—forgive me, as I wasn't here—the infamous 197 days that we're talking about.
I don't think you find that acceptable, but what should it be? What are the departmental goals?
4:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission
On behalf of the whole system we've committed to reducing that. By the way, we've reduced it already from 197 to 193.5, and that's the baseline we're working toward.
4:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission
Within its own direct influence the Public Service Commission is trying to do what it can to reduce those days, but the vast majority of it is outside our direct control where we could exercise influence.
Right now I believe we're tracking at 181 days in the most recent—
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
4:30 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission
In our departmental results framework we talked about reducing it by 10%. That's our first step. Again, can we go beyond that? Absolutely.
