Government Operations Committee on April 1st, 2019

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

More generally speaking, in terms of privatization of delivery of certain services, is that understood in the literature to have an effect either way on the nature of the work, whether it's permanent or precarious?

[Jane Stinson]

Yes, there's definitely a lot of evidence that privatization increases precarity, just by the nature of it. You're taking what presumably was a full-time permanent job and you're now putting it out to tender for contract, which by definition is a defined period of time, right? So it definitely contributes to precariousness.

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

Those factors you identified that affect women, and particularly racialized women, in terms of precarious work within the civil service would apply as well when we see services privatized and then delivered in the private sector. Not necessarily all the time, obviously, but those trends would hold.

[Jane Stinson]

Generally speaking, yes.

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

Okay. Thank you.

We've talked a little bit about the nature of work, in terms of whether it's permanent full-time, with full benefits, but in terms of the kinds of jobs that women are hired into within the civil service, do they tend to be certain kinds of jobs? Is there work to do to make other kinds of jobs where women have perhaps been traditionally under-represented in order to increase their participation? Would you say that access to the various types of work isn't gendered, or is there work to do, and what kinds of things might this committee recommend if there are problems in that regard?

[Jane Stinson]

Definitely women's participation in the labour force and in the federal public service is gendered. We did not look at an occupational breakdown of where precarious employment was occurring, so I can't answer that—

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

Okay.

[Jane Stinson]

—and be specific about which positions or which jobs. Frankly, I think it's a problem, generally speaking, throughout the public sector or throughout the federal public service. It would be helpful to apply those recommendations across the board to try to curb this trend and reverse it and create more full-time jobs.

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

Great. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much, Mr. Blaikie.

We'll now go to Mr. Jowhari for seven minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be sharing my time equally with my colleague Ms. Ratansi.

I'm going to start with Mr. Borbey.

I was looking at the submission you made, and I did some quick calculations. One of the things I noticed is that the percentage of students they hire compared with the number of applicants is very, very low. Under the PSR program it's about 16.5%, or 711 out of 4,300, as you mentioned. Under the RPL program it's 21 out of 1,500. I understand that the level of expertise needed under the RPL is very different. I just did some rough calculations based on the number of 13,000 that are hired versus what you mentioned in your response to one of the questions, that there are roughly about 72,000 applicants. The percentage comes to about 18.5%. These are very low numbers.

I understand that we've gone from 197 to 181.

Why are we not recruiting? Are these people not available by the time we get to them? What's the reason these numbers are so low?

[Patrick Borbey]

I'll ask my colleague Madame Poliquin to answer, please.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Sure.

[Stéphanie Poliquin, Vice-President, Services and Business Development, Public Service Commission]

I think there are a number of reasons why we're not maximizing the use of these inventories. I would just like to clarify that there's the number of applicants, but then we use that number when they start meeting the merit criteria. For example, for PSR, we go from 17,000 applicants to about 5,000 candidates whom we deem qualified and place in these inventories. That said, 711 is still not the number we're looking to achieve.

I think there are a number of reasons why they're not using it as much. First, I think the DNA of our hiring managers is about looking inside first. Even for entry-level positions, they're looking to hire within their own organizations. Going outside is not a muscle that has been developed just yet, and we are nudging the system to get there.

There's also more of a tendency to post one job for one position. Managers tend to have a number of set criteria for a position, and expanding it to make it generic is still not something they're familiar with. When we have these inventories that are entry-level positions, for PSR for example, they have very few requirements to meet because they're entry-level jobs. Managers haven't shifted their paradigms to recruit this way. Again, we need to nudge the system and train them to use the system.

Finally, it's about just being familiar with the programs. The Public Service Commission is continuing to do outreach with the hiring community to make sure they maximize the use of the programs we have.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

If you could suggest one thing we could do to turn this around, what would that be?

[Stéphanie Poliquin]

If I could do one thing, I would provide pools that are more assessed, so the hiring manager could have access to fully assessed candidates to recruit—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Are you referring to the consolidation of the pools, or just accessibility to the pool?

[Stéphanie Poliquin]

I'm talking about putting candidates who are fully assessed into the pool, so that managers wouldn't have much work to do. The Public Service Commission would have done the work, and they could just draw from it.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

My time is over.

Ms. Ratansi.

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

Mr. Page, of your 15 million members, do you have a breakdown of how many are millennials, women, minorities or indigenous people?

[Michael Page]

We don't have a breakdown along all of those measures. I don't have them with me, but that is something I could provide. We would have a breakdown by male versus female, as well as age, to an approximation.

There are certain types of information that we don't explicitly request right now. It's a longer-term discussion around what people want to publicly share. We have some of that information, though.

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

Listening to everything that's going on, how would you help the government ensure that women are not in precarious positions? How would you ensure that the recruitment process is a little faster? What sorts of tools would you be able to provide?

[Michael Page]

In terms of supporting women not to be in the more precarious positions, there is one giant piece there, which is around hiring contractors. That's something that's often done, because it's felt there is a specialization that certain private organizations can provide to get those people quickly.

By contrast, with the 15 million people on LinkedIn, basically almost any type of talent you would ever want to recruit is there. At scale, with a couple clicks of the button, you can pretty much communicate with them. At this point in time, it's almost never done, other than by a handful of departments, within the federal government.

The vast majority of people who come to the federal government fall into the bucket of the 10% to 30% of the population that is actively seeking a job. Most of the labour force or most employers are looking at those individuals, but also at the 70% to 90% who aren't necessarily going and looking at the GC jobs website or at a job board. The whole mechanism by which LinkedIn works is that it enables you to take those jobs at scale and easily present them to the overall labour market and say “Here are jobs you may be interested in”, as we term it. That allows you to tap into a gigantic pool of people who have very specialized skills but who aren't currently get communicated with.

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

Mr. Fleury, you have not been asked a single question. You are from the office of the chief human resources officer, whose job it is to help people in their recruitment process. Listening to what Ms. Stinson said, I was really shocked, because I was under the impression that the Public Service Commission was doing a good job of hiring visible minorities and women.

The research really opens up a new Pandora's box, saying, “Where are these women, and why are they in precarious positions?” How would you address that issue that has come up?

[Jean-François Fleury, Assistant Deputy Minister, Governance, Planning and Policy Sector, Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat]

First, I really want to have the time to dig deep into the methodology. I think there are issues happening in terms of skills and workforce availability. In terms of workforce availability as it stands, we are meeting all of the benchmarks. That doesn't mean we're meeting them in all of the different subcategories. For example, we know that we need more indigenous executives. We know there is a shortage of women in scientific and STEM-related jobs.

On the precarious side—