Government Operations Committee on Sept. 19th, 2016

[Gavin Liddy]

I'll make it short, Chair.

IBM did indeed tell us to slow down after we looked at a lot of defects in the spring of 2015, and that's exactly what we did. We delayed the rollout from October and December to January and February. Brigitte and I met with IBM on a weekly basis and monitored the number of defects that were being cleared. In January, IBM said we were ready to go. We also had the third party come in, not because we thought we needed one, but because that is the process for managing large, complex IT projects in accordance with the Treasury Board policies, that was the gate 6 review that we had brought in. We thought we were ready to go.

We were not without concerns. We thought that there would be problems. We anticipated them. We added extra staff. We developed a war room. It just wasn't enough, obviously, when we hit February. It's clear now that it wasn't enough, but at the time it was all systems go from our independent third party. We also checked with departments to see if they were ready and we got nods from them as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much, Mr. Liddy.

Mr. Weir, you have seven minutes, please.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thank you.

I'd like to delve into the question of compensating employees who have not been paid through the Phoenix system. The government has announced a new process that involves the Treasury Board Secretariat. I'm wondering how we can have confidence that employees will be compensated in a timely way and will not get caught up in another administrative mess.

[Marie Lemay]

I should really let my colleagues at the Treasury Board answer that question, but we had a lot of discussions and they have looked at this very carefully. I know they are very conscious of that and absolutely want to make sure that this process is a streamlined process, so that people can have access to money quickly. That's what they are actually putting in place involving all departments. There will be different levels of, I'll say “claims”, so that there are some easy processes and the more extreme and more complicated cases will be looked at by the Treasury Board directly.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

My constituency office has been dealing with a case of a contract employee who had her contract extended and is getting paid, but the Phoenix system classified her as having been terminated so she's not receiving drug coverage. She's having to pay out of pocket for medications. I'm wondering if that's something for which the government is prepared to compensate employees.

[Marie Lemay]

I'm going to look at what I see on the website here, and Gavin says yes.

[Gavin Liddy]

Yes.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay, there has been a lot of talk about financial penalties for missing mortgage payments or tuition payments, but there will also be compensation for people who have missed out on health care benefits—

[Gavin Liddy]

—for premiums being paid is my understanding.

[Brigitte Fortin, Assistant Deputy Minister, Accounting Banking and Compensation, Department of Public Works and Government Services]

If you will allow me, for the health care plan, if employees are missing out on wages to pay their deductions, they are asking for claims and are being refused by the insurer, there is a process in place, if there is a high financial penalty that the insurer will honour their medical claim. Then when they are back on payroll, the deductions will be taken and they will be covered retroactively.

[Marie Lemay]

I don't know that it's part of the TBS process though. That's a separate thing, just to be clear.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay, could you give us an estimate of how much these compensation payments are likely to amount to?

[Marie Lemay]

We don't have that. We are in discussions with TBS on this and we don't have that amount. Until they come forward, it will be difficult.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Just to clarify, those compensation payments would be in addition to the estimate of $50 million for addressing Phoenix.

[Marie Lemay]

You're correct.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay, thank you for clarifying that.

Mr. Chair, I'm inclined to make a motion. I believe the clerk has copies of it that she's able to circulate.

I would move that the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates reopen its study of Shared Services Canada and invite former chief statistician Wayne Smith to appear as a witness.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

I'm going to suspend for about 30 seconds and consult with the clerk, if I may.

We're back, televised.

Mr. Weir, apparently that is not in order only because we're not in committee business. We will be going to committee business at about 5:30, and certainly you can make your motion then and we can deal with it at that time. It has been duly noted.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Chair, I think in previous meetings, including our last one, it's been possible to make motions at any time during the proceedings. Is that not correct?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I'll let our clerk go over the procedures of this committee. Clearly we can do anything in the committee if there's unanimity; we're the master of our own agenda.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I don't want to use up a lot of time on process, so if it's not clear that it's allowed, we can deal with it later, but my understanding was that we were able to make motions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Sure.

Is there concurrence within the committee to allow Mr. Weir to make the motion now or would you care whether it was made in committee business?

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

I would prefer it to be during committee business.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We have no unanimity, Mr. Weir. Unfortunately, you have only a couple of minutes left in your intervention.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thank you.

It seems there were real gaps in the testing of the Phoenix pay system. It appears that out of a very large number of possible pay scenarios, only a fraction were actually tested. I wonder if you could explain why that occurred.

[Marie Lemay]

Are you referring to 16,000 different pay scenarios that were tested?