Government Operations Committee on July 28th, 2016

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

No, was Minister Foote aware? Because, again, one of our issues is that we heard for so long that it's only 77; don't worry, it's being tackled. It was a lot bigger.

I'm just wondering how we we thought for months that the issues involved just 77 people when in fact it was a lot more. How did we miss these other 80,000?

[Marie Lemay]

Again, I don't want to say that we're comparing apples and oranges, but the 77 were the complaints that we were tracking through the pay centre. If you remember what I said earlier about getting the information from the users as much as we could, the issues that were out there, we got some.... Actually the unions were very vocal in mid-June in passing on, through the minister and others, some of the issues they were hearing. That's when we decided to create and promote the form because we realized, my goodness, there is a lot of information.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

So the 77 were only what came through the pay centre?

[Marie Lemay]

Yes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm probably out of time, but how are you set up for income tax time if there are issues from 2015 that we're back-paying? Is issuing T4s going to be a mess?

[Marie Lemay]

Our colleagues from Finance are also involved in our discussions. Our objective is to clear everything that we can before the end of the year, because that obviously would the ideal situation.

But we have—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

And that was more of a “good luck” with the question.

[Marie Lemay]

As I said, the finance department is involved also, so we have a whole-of-government approach on this one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Madame Lemay, Madame Di Paola, and Monsieur Liddy, thank you so much for coming.

I hesitate to say “good luck”, because that would imply that luck is required in your efforts to remedy the situation, but I know, on behalf of all of the committee members, and on behalf of every single government employee, we wish you the best of luck in getting this situation fixed.

I know you have expressed yourselves quite eloquently that you are seized with this. I assume that you, in your expertise, will do everything in your powers to get this quickly resolved.

[Marie Lemay]

That's the commitment that we're making to you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We will suspend for just a couple of moments and then ask Madame Lackie and Madame Daviau to please approach the table.

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

Mr. Chair, before we end the public meeting go into the private section of the meeting, I would like to propose something. I would like to propose that when they sit down, we change the interventions from seven to five minutes. Everybody has to catch a flight.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I'll leave it at seven minutes, but if you only want to take five minutes, that will expedite things.

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

Okay, fine, that's perfect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Ladies and gentlemen, we'll reconvene now.

Thank you very much. We have before us, Donna Lackie, national president of the Government Services Union; and Debi Daviau, president, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.

We'll start with Madame Lackie.

If you have opening comments, please go ahead.

[Donna Lackie, National President, Government Services Union]

First, I would like to thank you for inviting us here today to speak. I am the president of the Government Services Union, one of the components within the Public Service Alliance of Canada. We represent the pay administration, and certainly the Miramichi pay transformation that's embedded within Miramichi and the compensation advisers.

We're working very closely, and have for the last five years, with the former PWGSC, now PSPC, in the rollout of the pay transformation. We support pay transformation and we see the value of it.

Five years ago we struck a committee with the employer, with the PSPC, called the Transformation of Pay Modernization Union/Management Consultation Committee, and we meet on a quarterly basis. For the last five years, I and Chris Aylward, the national executive vice-president of the PSAC, have attended those meetings to talk about issues relating to the transformation.

As we went through each wave of transformation, and through the training with the newly hired consultants and the compensation advisers, we became very close to this new community of compensation advisers. There are between 400 and 420 compensation advisers at any one time in Miramichi administering pay.

I will tell you that it is one of the most complicated jobs one could possibly imagine. The majority of the people who work in Miramichi are recent hires. They're new to government, and they're certainly new to the pay community. Learning 27 collective agreements, administering federal government pay with 27 different bargaining agents, is a phenomenal task. I have almost 30 years in government and I can imagine what it must be like to be hired off the street to learn this task.

The pressure of the rollout, knowing when the program of Phoenix was to roll out, the transfer and the wave of files that would come through, was extremely strenuous. People couldn't keep up with it. From my perspective, the biggest struggle that we suffered was trying to get the employer to slow down. We met numerous times and asked them to do that.

We said, we see the value and understand the intent of the outcome of this project, but we're getting calls on a daily basis from broken compensation advisers in Miramichi. We have people emotionally upset. We have people crying coming to work, crying going home at night, and they fear losing their jobs. They value the jobs they've received in the Miramichi. They're very proud to be working for the Government of Canada, and the pressure they take home every night must be very burdensome to their families as well.

We approached the department and asked them to ease up on that last rollout of files, that last transfer of 130,000 files. We asked them to please ease up and let them get caught up, because they don't understand. They're struggling to deliver pay. But the rollout went ahead.

I understand there's an obligation on the party of the government to issue pay on a timely basis, so not only do I represent the pay community, but I also sit here for the PSAC representing over 130,000 people who deserve to be paid every two weeks for services provided. That's a basic employment standard rule. We work very closely with our pay and compensation community and they tell us what the problems are and we appreciate that support.

We have developed a very good working relationship with Madame Lemay and her staff. We take issues to her, including crisis issues, and we get calls every day. I know Debi will speak to her issues. I hear from people who are going to food banks, who've extended their credit cards, who can't pay their rent and who can't pay their child care providers. So we are absolutely in a crisis situation here from the human factor perspective.

Our members at the pay centre are under immense pressure, because not only do they process pay, but sometimes on a daily basis they also have to tell people, “I'm not paying you this week. This is a pay week, but you're not scheduled to be paid. We don't have it. We haven't been able to process your pay.” That is a terrible situation to put a new compensation adviser in to have to tell somebody there's no pay this week.

We repeatedly brought it to the employer's attention that we were concerned. We were concerned from what our members were telling us in Miramichi, that they were not going to be able to deliver pay. When you go from 2,700 compensation advisers who have more than 10 and 20 years experience and you drop that to 400 new hires, a lot of them new to government, that's an unrealistic expectation for something as complicated as pay.

The training needs were never met. Initially, a new hire in Miramichi was given an 18-month learning plan. After two years, it was dropped to 12 months. That's too short a window, because they would be training in the morning and be online and on the phones in the afternoon. It wasn't consistent training.

We were concerned about pilot testing. I've heard this today. We were very concerned that pilot testing wasn't done on a cross-section of risk pays. Thirty per cent of the pay administration is complicated. Whether it's for ships' crews, high-voltage workers, or students in Parks Canada, pay administration is complicated.

We asked for that second rollout to slow down and reported the problems, but we weren't listened to and the problems escalated. We now know, through all the lessons learned, that through the training and through the testing we couldn't rely on the technology. The technology was failing. We had pay administrators in Miramichi who couldn't get answers. They had no one to get answers from when they were trying to input pay and nobody could tell them. They were so creative that they were creating their own cheat sheets. A pay administrator would figure out how to solve a problem. They would huddle. They would bring everybody over to the desk and they would write little cheat cards and they would share them with each other and say, “Here's how you solve this pay problem.” They became very self-sufficient.

I don't believe that was the intent.

We're always open to discussion and we've proposed many recommendations going forward. The bottom line is that it has to be fixed. People have to be paid. There's no question about it. That's a reasonable expectation.

The adverse effects on these new compensation communities has just been overwhelming. There are 40 new people who were hired in January in Miramichi, but they're 40 new people off the street who do not have compensation experience. You need to have experience to do compensation. We have reached out to the retired community. We supported the department to try to encourage these people to come back, but there are people who are offended and felt they were dismissed rather quickly and rather cursorily, and don't feel the commitment. So we've reached out and pleaded with them as well, that there are 300,000 people who need to be paid and we're begging for their support. We understand their disappointment and frustration with their former employer, but we're asking for their support.

My expertise is not technology. I'll let Debi speak to that area from a Shared Services perspective, but we did not feel that the appropriate project management of the technology and the rollout at Miramichi was there. It takes experts and takes years to manage this kind of project and we were very concerned about it. We voiced our concern at every turn. So we find ourselves here today. It was a very exciting experience for us to sit and listen to the proceedings. I know Debi and I both share our concerns. The bottom line is that we will do whatever is necessary to ensure that our members get paid and that the Miramichi people, who have worked so very very hard, are respected.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Madame Daviau, please.

[Debi Daviau, President, Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada]

I'd like to begin by also thanking the committee for the opportunity to testify today on what has probably become the single most important and pressing issue facing our members today, and I don't take that lightly given that we are also in a crucial round of collective bargaining as we speak.

I'm here representing the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. We have over 50,000 public service professionals working in departments and agencies across the public service. These are doctors, nurses, scientists, researchers, and those in informatics, etc.

As you are all aware, serious problems persist within the government's Phoenix pay system, and many PIPSC members continue to go without pay or are missing significant parts of their pay. Despite recognition of the problem by senior officials and an apology from the government, we remain without a solution and with no clear timeline for individual and collective remedies.

PIPSC has been sounding the alarm. You asked that question earlier. PIPSC has been sounding the alarm since early in April, which is some months after PSAC started sounding the alarm. We met with Ms. Lemay prior to the second wave, and we did also request that this transformation be delayed until at least, at a minimum, the problems that arose out of the first wave were rectified. We were told at that time that this was not in the cards. They were unwilling not to flip the switch on the second wave, and it was imminent. They had assured us that they had gone through the problems that were raised in wave one, and almost all of those had been resolved. That, unfortunately, was not the case.

We have some 400 cases that are formal cases. That means people who contacted their union to file a complaint because they no longer took it on good will that they were going to be paid. Many of those are still from phase one, that is, dating from February. We are now seeing in the last couple of weeks new pay issues arising, which is of particular concern. Now we're not just talking about the ones that existed when we first implemented the system, but as we are fixing the system in some areas, it is creating new problems in other areas.

The problems continue to add up. We've had northern nurses, where recruitment and retention is already an issue, quit over their pay problems. They're a particularly hard-hit group because they work their regular hour shift work and rely on overtime for a significant portion of their pay. This is in an area already suffering from lack of good health care services in the north.

We've heard many stories of new parents returning to work and going without pay for months as they struggle to cover child care and housing costs; and students so hard hit that managers are pooling money together to help them with their groceries.

I was at a meeting recently in Alberta, and a spouse of one of my members asked why employees were still going to work without pay. He noted that as a small business owner, his employees would not show up if they weren't paid. With passion, another one of my members, a nurse practitioner, got up and explained that they continued to do their work regardless of the pay because they believed in the work and were loyal to Canadians and to the service they provided to them.

The federal government shouldn't be taking advantage of the dedication and the hard work of federal public servants. We need to fix this problem.

For members who have contacted our national union, we currently have 360 cases, 138 of which are critical. What's a critical case? It's a person who receives zero pay or doesn't receive enough pay to make ends meet. This doesn't always capture all the individuals who are facing this problem. This is just the number of people we know about. And we know from the government's own numbers that tens of thousands are affected.

As a first step, we need to see immediate action to get emergency pay directly from departments and agencies. If this is the only way to help those employees who are going for multiple pay periods without pay, then departments really have to get better and quicker at it. It seems to be a workable solution except, it's not working.

Because of the continued problems with Phoenix and our desire to do something to help our members, the PIPSC board of directors has instituted a loans program for our hardest hit members. We are offering loans to our members, which is way outside of our mandate, to ensure that they can make ends meet. We hope this will alleviate some of the genuine stress and harm being done to our members by this poorly executed transition to the new pay system.

We've also written to the President of the Treasury Board and to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement. So when you asked did she know about this, well, she ought to have known about it. My union and the other 17 federal public sector unions have been very vocal about describing not just that there are issues but also what those issues are, and even offering up solutions.

We're now working with the Treasury Board to establish concrete steps to ensure that our members are paid and are compensated for additional financial penalties; and yet people from February are still not being paid. We're sending these urgent cases directly to the Treasury Board Secretariat, but we have yet to see very many of them resolved—and certainly not in the timely and effective way that Ms. Lemay seemed to characterize as the way they would now be taken care of.

Many questions need to be asked and answered, when it comes to solving this mess. My top questions, for starters, which I'd like to put to the committee, because I believe my role here is more to ask questions than to answer them for you, are the following.

A commercial product, a so-called off-the-shelf product, appears not to have been adequately tested. I understand from reports that perhaps up to 16,000 records were tested. This is more than likely way too low a number for a system that has been said in the past to have more than 70,000 rules it may need to apply.

What were the testing protocols and timelines? Can we see reports and evidence of the testing processes? Clearly, the results are not reflective of what's actually going on. Is it possible to test 70,000 rules with only 16,000 records? Wouldn't it be difficult to test the interaction of all of those rules with each other with only 16,000 records?

Was there a contingency in place, if Phoenix failed? I think we could say that it's failing.

It seems doubtful right now, but can we go back to the old system, or are there other answers that we need, to ensure that going forward we have a system that works?

Our union has been raising concerns with outsourcing and contracting out as well of many public services. We've seen the use of outside contractors balloon, especially in the IT sector. We have evidence of other projects that are over budget and late, such as the government's email transformation, which was outsourced to Bell and CGI. To what extent was the testing and implementation of this transition outsourced to IBM or other companies, when our members stand ready to do it?

We would like to see this committee look seriously at these questions and to continue to strive to find a solution, so that our trusted, hardworking public servants can be paid. I'm sure you can all agree that public servants should not be paying the price for the failures of the pay system.

We at PIPSC remain at your disposal—both the government's and this committee's—to help in identifying the issues and the accompanying solutions. Anything we can do to get money into our members' pockets for their loyal service is not too much work for us, including bringing me off my vacation to come to report to this committee. I remain available to you.

Thank you so much for this opportunity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you both for your statements.

We'll start with Madam Ratansi.

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

Thank you both for being here. We appreciate your presence here.

I have a question for you, because all of us, as we have been discussing, find it unacceptable that any person is not paid.

What is the morale of the staff in Miramichi? They must be facing a lot of negative press.

[Donna Lackie]

I will tell you that the morale in Miramichi is at its absolute lowest. Last night I received an email from one of our members in Miramichi who is so depressed that in her email she told me they had found an employee in the bathroom crying the other day. I shared that email last night at 10 o'clock with the deputy minister and have asked that on-site mental health experts be brought in to support the workers in Miramichi—not a 24-hour EAP officer on a phone. We need on-site mental health to support these people. They're carrying the weight of the entire federal public service on their shoulders.

So to your point, yes.

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

Thank you very much. We were quite worried about this. We know that this is not only a financial issue, but also an emotional issue for people.

In the July 14, 2016, CBC article, the associate assistant deputy minister, Ms. Rosanna Di Paola, who testified today before the committee, said that the system is functioning as designed and that they had tested the system inside out.

Do you agree with that?

[Debi Daviau]

If the question is to me, absolutely not.

I happen to come from an informatics background and, as I mentioned, you can't test over 70,000 rules on an off-the-shelf product that you configured for... You can't even find a comparison for this kind of project. But a system that has to manage over 300,000 pay files definitely needed more than a little bit of testing. When they came to the conclusion based on the 16,000 they tested that they weren't ready, they should never have moved forward.

In my view, this was about saving money and not necessarily about modernizing or improving the pay system.

I have to admit that I got irritated when I heard from the deputy minister—who, by the way, we are working very well with, and I want to be clear here that departmental officials have worked openly with us to try to resolve this—that the whole justification or goal behind the modernization of the pay system was to ensure its sustainability. From my perspective, you had 300,000 public servants who were being paid correctly before the transformation, and now you have 80,000 of those public servants who are not being paid correctly. Clearly, the solution did not meet the needs of the project.

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

I appreciate your input, and I appreciate why the deputy minister does what the deputy minister does, because as career public servants they have to go with what the previous government said. They are at a loss themselves. The previous government did not listen to any input from you guys. The system has come into place. When you have sunk costs of $310 million and a system that is said to be ready, what is one supposed to do? I appreciate that.

I understand that the deputy minister and the minister visited the Miramichi pay centre yesterday. What sort of feedback do you have?

[Donna Lackie]

I was very interested in that feedback. They staff there were very encouraged and very appreciative of the minister and deputy minister's appearance. The minister was very clear with them that she understands they're under immense pressure. She understands they have a very difficult job to do.

I don't believe there were any solutions provided to them. I know they were most anxious to have possible options presented to them, but they were not forthcoming. But they did appreciate the conversation and the fact that the minister and the deputy took the time to come and meet with them, so yes.