Thank you for the question.
First, let me correct something you said at the outset. At no point did I say that come October 31 everything will be solved. That is not what we said. We said that the backlog of cases, the 82,000, is what the department is telling me will be solved.
That doesn't mean we won't continue to have challenges. We are talking here about a payroll system of 300,000 employees. There is no payroll system in the country, I would expect, where you don't have challenges if you have a payroll of even half that magnitude.
What we are telling you is that when we get to what is referred to as a steady state, where you know you're going to have some challenges but nothing of the magnitude we have now.... The reality is that we will always have challenges. Will we have thousands of people going without pay? I hope not. That's certainly not where my head is.
I have said repeatedly that it is totally unacceptable for any public service employee to go without pay for work performed. To suggest that it would be acceptable to anyone...it's certainly not. I too have seen the stories that you have referenced. My heart aches for those individuals who are impacted. I too have constituents who are finding themselves in the same situation.
Of course it's not acceptable and we are doing everything we can to deal with that. When you talk about hitting a green light, what is really interesting is if you look at the decision made by the previous government.... I know that you have referenced partisanship. I try to steer away from that, because my issue is to solve the problem. My issue is to not continue to point fingers, but the reality is that what we inherited meant that 700 compensation advisers had been let go by the previous government.
Employees who had been doing that very work—you're now asking why the work is not getting done—were let go by the previous government. It's kind of hard when I ask, “Are you sure this is going to work? Are you sure I'm not going to face issues here? Are you sure that employees are not going to go without pay? Are you sure we're ready to go with Phoenix?”, and I'm told every time, after every briefing note, “Ready to go”, “Ready to go”, “Ready to go”. That is based on the information that would have come from the previous government's decision to implement Phoenix.
You're asking me questions here. The reality is that if those employees had not been let go, if the vision had been allowed to proceed without trying to realize $70 million in savings, I'm expecting that we would not be finding ourselves in the same situation we're in today.