Evidence of meeting #173 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 military.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
It's a tough question, and you have only about 10 seconds left.
If you want to think about that—
Assistant Deputy Minister, Employment Conditions and Labour Relations, Treasury Board Secretariat
We will give you an answer that you don't want to hear, but in terms of the recruiting and how to recognize the skills of our veterans, it's really the Public Service Commission that has the programs and the capacity—
Conservative
Assistant Deputy Minister, Employment Conditions and Labour Relations, Treasury Board Secretariat
His explanation that he has to cut and paste the same information over and over again is a consideration for the Public Service Commission. I don't know if they've been here.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I think I'm out of time, but that's a great answer.
Thank you.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Welcome, Mr. Rea.
You mentioned that you spent a whole day filling out an application form. It must be really frustrating. Why did it take all day? Were there redundancies? Could there be some improvements?
As an Individual
The cut-and-paste feature, fortunately, is a huge time-saver, but in a lot of the jobs I would apply for, they would ask very specific questions. For instance, they would ask for three example of when I had to counsel someone in a disciplinary matter. Well, I could not just cut and paste that from a previous job, because that question had never been answered.
You have to be very specific and clear in how you answer the questions, because you don't want to have any accidental overlap with other job applications. You have to go through and actually write it out. The best way I found was to read the question and then draw the answer from memory or from my notes, instead of cutting and pasting and trying to figure out how to wordsmith it so they would understand my qualifications.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Mr. Gay, regarding the vacation scheduling vote, what percentage of employees with a military background would have been affected at the time of the vote?
National Negotiator, Public Service Alliance of Canada
I don't know; I don't have that exact figure. I'm not even sure how we would get that information. We could, I suspect, request it from the employer, and they could provide it, but there were enough people who raised the issue that we had the plebiscite.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Did the union negotiate anything else for the veterans in the past? Was there anything else?
National Negotiator, Public Service Alliance of Canada
We've tried other things, but the employer said no.
National Negotiator, Public Service Alliance of Canada
For instance, there was the matter of granting employees leave without pay to ensure that they.... I don't want to get too far into the details of this complicated stuff.
In terms of continuous employment, if you take a leave of absence for more than three months, you stop accruing for the purposes of a pay increment or additional matters. We've taken the position that if you are on leave without pay because you are on military service, you shouldn't suffer any loss in the accumulation of continuous employment. The Treasury Board has said no to that. That's an example.
That's still a live issue at the bargaining table, I would point out to my counterparts. I'll just leave it at that.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Employment Conditions and Labour Relations, Treasury Board Secretariat
We won't bargain at committee. We'll leave that for the table, if you don't mind.
National Negotiator, Public Service Alliance of Canada
I'm just answering your question, Ms. Yip.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
That's okay.
Do you feel you could be successful in the future in any other veterans issues?
Liberal
National Negotiator, Public Service Alliance of Canada
Absolutely, and we made that proposal because there have been issues in the past when people have been called up for service. In the case of the Canada Border Services Agency, which is an employer we deal with directly, there has not been consistency. For example, when the war was going on in Afghanistan, there were people who got deployed overseas and their continuous employment was recognized. There were other people, though, who got deployed and their continuous employment was not recognized.
What we propose in bargaining is based almost exclusively on what we get from the membership. We get a lot of proposals from folks, and it's an entirely democratic process. We have an elected team that vets all the proposals we get, and there's a prioritization exercise. I'm not in a position to say, one way or the other, what's going to happen in the future. It depends on these democratic processes.
I can tell you, though, that we have made proposals in the past. I expect this will continue to happen because this bargaining unit is a law enforcement group predominantly. In this bargaining unit, perhaps more so than in others, there tend to be a lot of former Canadian Forces personnel who come to work there because it has to do with law enforcement. There's a certain skill set folks get in the forces that can transfer over to border services.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Our final intervention will be five minutes.
We'll go to Mr. Masse.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
To Mr. Williams and Ms. Hassan, one of the reasons I was asking about the correlation before the medical discharge is that PTSD and other issues are in fact quite often linked to mental health. I know you have a memorandum of understanding on mental health. How is that going with enhancing or bridging that?
That would seem to be a mechanism that we have in place right now that actually helps in this matter.
What is in place with our memorandum of understanding on mental health? How are we looking to enhance that? That would be a natural bridge to some of the problems. We know from our previous discussion that we have a gap in the medical discharge information coming from our good veterans, like we have with Mr. Rea here.
How are we looking to augment our memorandum of understanding on mental health, to use it perhaps as a jumping point to make a more formal improvement in the connection between medical issues and discharges from one department, being that of Mr. Rea's, to that of the public service?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Employment Conditions and Labour Relations, Treasury Board Secretariat
The issue of mental health is one that is very close to our hearts. There was a MOU that was co-developed with the bargaining agents and that addresses issues of mental health. Since then there's been the creation of a centre of expertise on employee wellness and diversity, which will serve as an organization where all issues will be addressed.
In the previous round of collective agreement there were also agreements signed with the bargaining agents to look at what we call “employee wellness support plans”. Those plans relate to the sick leave regime and have been in discussion with the bargaining agents. There are a lot of initiatives currently under way that will help address the issues that current and former employees are actually living through.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Since the memorandum of understanding, would you say that you've taken a step forward in improving the issue of mental health?