Government Operations Committee on July 28th, 2016

[Marie Lemay]

We established the categories and the timeline you see here relatively recently, actually, after analyzing the scope of the backlog and deciding to create temporary units to deal with the problem.

As I said earlier, we believe it is unacceptable that people aren't getting paid. We did not think this was even a possibility. We had to find a way to help people quickly, to make sure they would be paid and to understand the problem. That is what led us to establish the first and second categories. As for the third category, that timeline was set to complete all transactions submitted before June, in other words, the backlog.

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

You said it's unacceptable that people aren't getting paid, and you're absolutely right.

Would it be possible for an employee to be classified as priority one first, but later be classified as priority two, because of another problem?

This morning I spoke to someone who had accumulated 375 hours. She was paid this week. That problem was resolved, but she didn't get her bilingualism bonus.

Could that be considered priority three, where other allowances should be resolved?

[Marie Lemay]

Yes, that's possible.

[Gavin Liddy]

Normally, I think, if someone is classified as priority one and his or her file includes other requests, we would try to resolve everything at once.

[Marie Lemay]

That is our goal, but we probably weren't able to achieve it last week.

Our goal is to resolve everything when dealing with one file. The question is whether that's possible right now.

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

How many compensation advisors have you hired since the crisis?

[Marie Lemay]

We added 40 people in Miramichi in January. We now have 57 employees in Gatineau, but we are planning for another 115. They've been hired and will begin working in the coming weeks. The Winnipeg centre has 20 people, and that number could go up to 50. There are another 40 people. I'll let you do the math.

[Gavin Liddy]

That's about 240 people.

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

Let's look at priority three, as an example. If the committee were to meet in November, can we expect all those problems to be resolved?

How did you establish this timeline?

[Marie Lemay]

The people doing the work have been very diligent. The figures we have given you include our predictions and the number of people who will be in the various centres. We wanted to divide up the work to figure out how to get it all done. Each centre has been given specific transactions to address.

Of course, if there are 20 people instead of 40, production is not as high. Also, as we indicated earlier, we have to provide some training for the first few weeks, so those first few weeks are a little less productive. We took all that into account to ensure that our timeline is respected.

I'm very hopeful that we'll get this done quickly. It's important to remember that some problems are beginning to be resolved and that for some people, this has to happen tomorrow, not in October.

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

Would you say this timeline is “conservative”?

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, but that will be the only partisan term I use today.

Are these figures “conservative”?

[Marie Lemay]

We believe these figures are realistic.

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

Okay.

What is the purpose of the call centre in Toronto? You said that it is filtering calls. Are you encouraging employees to call that centre?

[Marie Lemay]

First of all, we now know how many people need to speak with someone at the pay centre. As Mr. Liddy mentioned, before Tuesday, we didn't even know that some people were trying to call, because their calls weren't getting through. Going forward, everyone should be able to speak with someone.

This allows us to triage the issues. As I said earlier, as of Tuesday, we were able to see, with supporting stats, that not everyone needed to speak with a compensation advisor. This means that the compensation advisors in Miramichi can focus on the files they need to work on. We hope this will free them from having to deal with files that people with no experience in compensation can take care of instead. That could make things easier.

We have made the following commitment: if people call the pay centre in Miramichi and have a category one or category two problem, someone from the pay centre will call them back within 48 hours to follow up on their file.

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

There was no way to keep track of how many people called Miramichi and waited on hold for a while, only to hang up when they were fed up?

[Marie Lemay]

That's right.

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

Is there any way to keep track of those calls now?

[Marie Lemay]

Yes, we now know the exact number of calls and the wait times. As I said earlier, the response time is under four minutes. That is a considerable improvement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We're going to go into a five-minute round. I would just remind all members again that we will continue to ask questions as long as needed, but we do have Madame Lackie and Madame Daviau waiting to answer any questions you may have of them as well.

We will go now to Mr. Richards for five minutes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I just have one quick question, and I think my colleague might have one or two as well, so I'll pass my time to him if I have some left, and I expect I will.

I want to return to where I was at in my last intervention. I'm sure there are hundreds, if not thousands, of civil servants paying attention to what's occurring here today, those who have been left without pay, wanting to make sure they have answers. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't have the answer to this question for them. I know we touched around the edges of it earlier in a question that I think Mr. Grewal had asked.

I want to ask it directly and give you an opportunity to respond, because I think it's important that the public servants who are watching have the answer to this question. It's regarding the reimbursement of expenses. There are expenses people would have incurred as a result of not being paid, and I know you'd indicated that was going to be addressed and fixed, but I wonder if you can tell them when they can expect to see a reimbursement of those expenses resulting from this rushed implementation.

[Marie Lemay]

What I can tell you at this time is that discussions are ongoing, as we speak, between Treasury Board and the union. People are seized with this. There's a real desire to be able to share a process very quickly, but I don't have a date. I believe it will be imminent, because it is a real issue, as we all recognize.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I appreciate the word “imminent”. I hadn't really heard anything else that gave me any sense of this, and so I appreciate it. I hope that is accurate and that it's meant in the way that I would take it to be meant, because these are obviously real people with real lives. There are real consequences here and there are real expenses, and they need to be paid as quickly as possible.

I hope, if anything, we've left that impression today. I'm sure you're well aware of that, but I hope we've left the impression of how urgent and important it is that these people be treated fairly and expeditiously with what they need and what they require.

With that, I'll turn it over to my colleague Mr. McCauley.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Great.

Following up on Mr. Richard's question, I think we heard earlier today that there are about $15 million to $20 million in added costs that we're looking at in addressing all of this. Are these various fees that we're going to cover for all of our civil servants in that $15 million to $20 million range, or are they on top of that?

[Marie Lemay]

Just to be precise, the $15 million to $20 million is for the one-off costs, like the satellite centre, the call centre—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay, so would this be on top of those?