Yes.
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.
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.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
—every single job be available to every single Canadian?
4:35 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission
Yes. And I think I'm on record as having said that I would favour moving towards a system where we would have—
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
4:35 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission
I'm not the one who makes decisions. Decisions on whether positions are going to be open are made by individual managers on a case-by-case basis.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
What would it take us to get to a place where all Canadians are treated equally with equal access to government jobs? Is it telling the deputy ministers?
4:35 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission
I think the study might be a very good way to get that message across more broadly.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
There's no one directing them saying only go internal. There's no minister, deputy minister, saying do it like this?
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
The last time we had you here we heard from the unions concerns about nepotism, which was actually reported in some of the newspapers. I'm wondering if giving these deputy ministers or managers the power to only hire as they see fit ties into this exclusion of regular Canadians from applying for government work, or even to some of the complaints about nepotism.
4:35 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission
Yes, and I would say I would be very careful. Internally advertised processes do not mean there is nepotism. They mean that the pool of candidates—
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
But there were complaints. We heard several witnesses complain of nepotism. I don't mean someone hiring their brother, but hiring their friend or hiring this person. Were heard complaints about that at committee when you were actually here.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Is this kind of a by-product of giving them the ability to hire as they see fit?
4:35 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission
No, I don't think so. I think all managers are delegated with the responsibility of ensuring that they meet the principles and values associated with the Public Service Employment Act. We have monitoring. We have ways to be able to audit—
4:35 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission
—and investigate cases where there is alleged nepotism. Certainly that's not acceptable.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
4:35 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Mr. Borbey, I just want to follow up on that same line of questioning.
Is there a documented difference in the length of time it takes to hire if it's an internal-only process versus an external process?
4:35 p.m.
President, Public Service Commission
Yes. We measure and track both. On average, it's a little bit shorter, I think about 10 days shorter, for an internal process.
But again, those are advertized processes. If you're hiring from a priority, if you're hiring a former student, if you're hiring through the post-secondary recruitment program that our department offers, it can be much shorter than that. There are lot of other mechanisms.
With the 197 or 180 days, we are talking about the most lengthy processes, the most complex processes, and therefore it's normal that they take a lot longer.
But we have processes that can take.... Madam Poliquin ran a process that took 30 days. There's a wide range in terms of.... Again, if managers are focused, if there is no downtime when the file lands on their desk, if they immediately pay attention, if they use the most efficient assessment tools, they can certainly cut a lot of that time.
4:40 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Okay. Thank you.
To our witness from the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, I'm curious about the numbers that demonstrate a rise in precarity within the civil service. Is that increase just for positions that have been converted to contracts, or some more precarious form of employment within the civil service umbrella? What role would contracting out services play? What kind of information do we have on that? Would it mean that these numbers are actually somewhat lower than what might be the case because contracted out work, to the extent it would be precarious work, isn't represented in the statistics?
4:40 p.m.
Research Associate, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
The devil is always in the details.
When I looked at what's included in the PSES employment status, it does say “Contracted via temporary help services agency”. It also refers to term employees, which is, I think, often another form of contract employment.
Yes, it does include contracted out services. I'm not sure whether it's an underestimate or not. I think you'd need to look a little more carefully as it, but it does include some of those categories.
Also, one of the issues that does exist is that the budget estimates for the past year would mention, say, $40.7 billion allocated to all personnel costs and $13.2 billion of that allocated to professional and special services, a number of which would be contract workers. But it's hard then to get a breakdown of that data to really understand what's going on with the number of jobs where benefits are not...and the rate of pay, etc.
