Government Operations Committee on April 1st, 2019

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm going to follow-up with a question. Obviously we started this program. Maybe in five years people will move up. The longer they're in the public service, the longer they'll move up and we'll meet full representation. Do we look at that as well? We know we're on the right track, so we don't have to focus or...?

[Patrick Borbey]

Yes.

We do some modelling and of course we look at particular categories. I would say that right now we have a particular focus on persons with disabilities, doing some modelling on what we need to do to increase representation there.

We are also just completing a study on the promotion rates for each of the employment equity groups, which we will be releasing in May. It will look at data going back 20-plus years, to see how each group has faired along the continuum towards executive types of positions.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What I'm trying to get at is that I don't want to be chasing down this way when the solution, the real issue, is here, so that we avoid just focusing there, as opposed to backfilling more.

In your—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. McCauley, you have a couple of seconds left.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay. Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I suggest that we move now to Madame Mendès for five minutes.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Hello everyone.

I was very struck by your presentation, Ms. Stinson. Your statistics were quite eloquent.

First, I'd like to put a question to Mr. Fleury.

I understand why the public service made this change at a certain point and opted for short-term, temporary contracts. It was at a time when we were tightening our belts and trying to find economies of scale everywhere in government.

But since the government realized that this precariousness was growing in scope, have you begun to reverse this and to offer more secure employment, or are you maintaining the same level of precarious employment in the public service?

[Jean-François Fleury]

According to the most recent annual statistics, 86% of public service jobs are indeterminate, or permanent.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

What does “indeterminate” mean?

[Jean-François Fleury]

It's the same thing as “permanent”.

As I mentioned earlier, that figure varies according to whether it includes temporary workers or not. I will in fact want to meet with Ms. Stinson to discuss this. The remuneration of temporary workers is considered contractual payment rather than a salary, which complicates the distinction. The percentage of indeterminate positions has been increasing for a few years. I also believe that hiring temporary workers through agencies, or the practice of giving employees casual status, is being gradually replaced by fixed-term contracts, that is to say, by slightly more “permanent” jobs.

The profile is changing. As I was saying, it is really important that we have a good grasp of this profile for the future. Several studies have shown that having a very high percentage of permanent jobs reduces the possibility of hiring the best workers from the demand economy. So this is a good time to carry out these analyses and develop a staffing strategy for the future.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

This confirms the impression I had from Ms. Stinson's remarks. We note an increase in the number of precarious jobs in the public service, as well as discrimination—deliberate or not—against women, particularly women from very specific visible minority groups. We are depriving ourselves of the talents all of these people could contribute to the public service.

Once again, I don't want to assume that that is deliberate, and I prefer to believe that it isn't. But the fact remains that these are undesirable, unintended consequences. We need to address this problem as expeditiously as possible, according to my understanding of the study and of what is being proposed. If we want tomorrow's economy to benefit from these skills, we will have to provide sufficiently attractive working conditions to encourage these people to stay in the public service. We agree on that, correct?

[Jean-François Fleury]

Absolutely.

As Mr. Borbey was saying, we have statistics, such as the ones on persons with disabilities or indigenous people. In-depth analyses are being done on gender balance, but also on occupational groups and what they do within government. We use all of that information to devise strategies to fill potential gaps.

As was said before, we need to make sure that we go down the right track and get that right. So right now we are spending a lot of time looking at all that data.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

That is because in terms of the occupational gender differences, it is quite apparent that a large majority of women occupy the lower-ranking jobs in the public service, which also tend to be more precarious. I'm not even sure why they are the ones who are so overwhelmingly in these positions, in the lower ranks of office work and administrative jobs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Unfortunately, that question will have to go unanswered because we're out of time.

We'll go now to Mr. Blaikie for three minutes.

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

Mr. Borbey or Mr. Fleury, I'm curious to know the following. A policy seems to have been adopted in the last little while that gives local managers a fair bit of discretion in the hiring process. What's the role of the HR department in that? Obviously the HR department is there for a manager to call if they want advice, but do they act more like an auditor who reviews hiring decisions after the fact, after a number of hirings have been made, and then have some findings as to whether or not the hiring processes were being conducted properly?

Or are they involved in the hiring process and is that a place where delay gets created in the back-and-forth between the manager who is doing the hiring and whoever in HR is involved or implicated in the hiring process?

[Patrick Borbey]

We live in a delegated model, and it's not just in the world of HR. It's in the world of finance, contracting, etc. We have been delegating that decision-making authority as close to the front-line manager as possible, and that's obviously where the authority lies. But it has to be done in the context of an overall frame that we set. The deputy ministers also determine how their human resources should be organized within their department.

Therefore, the role of the human resource adviser can be very much as an adviser, or it could be a someone who is more focused on ensuring accountability afterwards, or doing some monitoring. It varies from department to department, but clearly we're concerned about the fact that sometimes the staffing file and the 50 candidates or so are caught in-between because either the human resource manager is too busy to be able to pay attention to it or the hiring manager is not focused on it. It's on the corner of his or her desk, and we want to see it in the middle of the desk.

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

Do you have data on which departments have a model where HR is more implicated in the hiring process as such, versus what I'd call more of an audit model? Do you notice any differences in the length of time it takes to make a successful hire between the two models?

[Patrick Borbey]

Again, human resources would be involved in hiring in any department, but the role they play would be different.

I would say that a lot of it comes from the leadership at the top. If a deputy minister sets the tone, you can see progress. I've talked about cases where deputies have decided they are going to reduce the average time it takes and focus the attention on this, and we see the results. Clearly, leadership is very important, but there are many factors at play here in determining how long it takes to get a position staffed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Colleagues, we'll have time for two more interventions of five minutes each.

On my list I have Monsieur Drouin.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had seven minutes, but I'll have to settle for five.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Thank you for being here.

Mr. Borbey, I know you've appeared on many occasions before this committee.

Ms. Stinson, I do have a couple of questions about precarious work and how you define that. I know it's an issue, but I have also met a lot of people who would say, “You'd call me crazy in my generation, but I would never stay in the same spot or even grow within the same organization for 30 years.”

How do you balance that within the Government of Canada, perhaps allowing for people to grow within the Government of Canada, knowing there are various different opportunities?

I would seek your advice. Do you have any advice for those—I won't call them millennials because, as I say, I'm an old millennial, but I look younger—

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

By a month.

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

—by a month; but I would say it's an issue. Perhaps millennials don't feel that the Government of Canada is the right place for them to work, knowing that they want to hop from job to job because that's the environment they enjoy.

[Jane Stinson]

I think there is a difference between your desire to work your whole life in one job and actually offering stable employment. When you offer stable employment you do provide pathways for people who want to move from one job to another because they know it's going to be there, that it's not going to disappear. It's not being converted to something short-term. I think those two are quite compatible.

For individuals who want to have variety in their lives, as I certainly have in mine even though I'm not a millennial, you need to have career paths and opportunities internally to address that. It's not by creating temporary and insecure employment. In fact, I'd argue that temporary and insecure employment makes it much harder for millennials to plan their lives and to figure out what their career path is.