Government Operations Committee on Sept. 19th, 2016

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Don't forget, 40,000 of the backlogged cases we're talking about predated Phoenix as well. So there are issues there, under the old system, that would need to have been dealt with. We're hoping Phoenix will deal with those so that we never again find ourselves in the situation where students come in to work for the federal public service and don't get paid.

With new hires, information was being entered manually in some cases. If the information didn't get entered quickly or if it sat on a desk for a week or for whatever reason didn't get entered, then that would delay that individual getting paid. The other case we have is overtime. I know Mr. Blaney mentioned the Coast Guard, the people who go to sea, the people who are at sea for a period of time and their overtime is not entered into the system. That delays them getting their overtime. These are just some examples of what we're dealing with.

Having said that, when I ask these questions, it's not tied to Phoenix, per se. These are students, overtime, new hires, and people who are changing jobs or going on to other jobs, for instance. If it's not entered in, it takes a while for them to get on the payroll system. Any number of situations come into play here. That doesn't make it right. Our job now, our challenge, is to get to a steady state that we believe is where it should be in terms of ensuring that public service employees get paid for the work performed.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Interesting; so indeed the introduction of Phoenix was intended to address these long-standing problems and to overall make a system that was much more responsive and self-serve, which I'm sure we're going to hear a little bit more about in the second hour. That didn't happen. It was off to an incredibly chaotic start. Actually, I wouldn't worry about paying out bonuses to anybody, because these people have to get paid first before anybody else gets bonuses.

So this is not a problem at the moment.

Can you tell us, Minister, about your request to the Auditor General to investigate the root causes of what went wrong here? I think at a future point we do need to have some lessons learned and to ensure that this does not happen again.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

As we talk about modernizing IT systems throughout government, modernizing payroll, and looking at enterprise-wide initiatives, the issue for me is what went wrong. How do we make sure this never happens again?

Knowing that we have 80,000 backlogged cases.... I hate calling them “cases”, because these are people. These are people who are impacted here. Every time I hear the word “case” I kind of shudder, because I know that for every payroll that we talk about where someone is not getting paid, that's impacting someone's life. That's an individual. That's a person. So we need to make sure we do that.

From my perspective, calling in the Auditor General was as a result of asking what happened here. When the previous government decided to go down this path....

Now, don't get me wrong; it was a 40-year-old system.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

If I could, Minister, I'll have to ask you to wrap up.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Okay.

It was 40-year-old system that had failed completely on occasion and had to be changed. My question is this: in changing it, what steps were taken to ensure that we were ready, that all the training necessary was done, and that we were ready with Phoenix, so that we would not ever again find ourselves in the situation we're in today?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you, Minister.

Would you be available for three additional minutes?

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We'll go to Mr. Weir for a three-minute round, and that will complete this round. We'll then suspend for a couple of minutes while you take your leave, Minister. Thank you.

Mr. Weir.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thank you.

Minister, in the previous round, you said a couple of times that there was no going back to the previous system, but of course for several months, from February to April, the two systems did function concurrently. I'm wondering why it wasn't possible to just continue that for a few more weeks or months until these glitches in Phoenix were sorted out.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

I was told that there was no going back, because we had moved on to different systems and we were gradually moving into Phoenix 100%. As well, there was the fact that in terms of moving to a new system, you had fewer compensation advisers. They'd been let go, and people had been put into other jobs, so you couldn't bring them back to do it.

I was given any number of reasons why we had to move full steam ahead, but again, that was with the understanding that we were ready to do so.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

We've focused a lot on the backlog of priority-three cases. Since that 80,000 figure was reported in July, how many new priority-three cases have emerged?

[Marie Lemay]

Priority three is, as you say, the backlog of 82,000 people—I'm going to use that word now—so as I said earlier, we do have incoming transactions that are dealt with by Miramichi. They are dealt with not at the pace that we hope they will be dealt with when we are fully operational and have reached our steady state, so we are not meeting our service standards in every case. We are for some of the cases being processed. There's no backlog as such; it's just that we are not meeting our service standards. The minute we're done with the backlog, the 82,000 cases, the satellite unit compensation advisers will help Miramichi to get us to that steady state.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay, but could you quantify that failure to meet service standards? How many more people are getting paid incorrectly than the original 80,000 number that's been whittled down?

[Marie Lemay]

They're not being paid incorrectly; they're not being paid at the right time. There's a time service standard. In some cases we're not meeting the time, but we will as soon as we get to our steady state.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

That's it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We will suspend now for about two minutes while the minister takes her leave, and then we'll be back with government officials. I believe we have one more official joining us.

Thank you, Minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Colleagues, if we could reconvene, I would appreciate that.

As you know, we'll have about 50 minutes for the examination of the Phoenix pay schedule.

Madam Lemay, do you have any opening statement or would you like to just continue on with the questions?

[Marie Lemay]

The only thing I would note, Mr. Chair, is that we have a new witness, Brigitte Fortin, who is the ADM responsible for accounting, banking and compensation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Then may we proceed immediately to questions?

[Marie Lemay]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much. That will save some time.

The first seven-minute round will go to Mr. Drouin.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you Madam Fortin, Madam Lemay and Mr. Liddy, for being here with us today. We appreciate it very much.

Since my riding is very close to Ottawa, a lot of public servants work in that town. Unfortunately, these people have been impacted by the implementation of the Phoenix System.

I would like to know whether a notice is sent to employees who are to be dismissed. Does the law prescribe a certain notice period?

[Marie Lemay]

There is indeed a process, that is to say workforce adjustment, and the employees whose positions are affected have to be advised and given proper notice.

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

And does that vary from one employee to another?

[Marie Lemay]

In this case, notice had been given in October 2014.