Government Operations Committee on Sept. 19th, 2016

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

How many employees are there normally, or how many were there with the old system? There are now 200 additional employees. How many federal employees manage the pay system?

[Marie Lemay]

There were 2,000 pay system employees before Phoenix, and we now have 1,300, if I am not mistaken, because approximately 700 positions were abolished.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

So, 50—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Blaney, we're out of time.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

It would be interesting to see whether there will be additional costs later.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Mr. Grewal, you have five minutes, please.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Deputy Minister and your assistants, for coming today.

I've been sitting here listening, and I think the one thing we can all agree on is that it's unacceptable to have people working who are not getting paid. We had those sentiments from the beginning of this problem.

I've been looking at some of the numbers here, and I'm trying to come to a conclusion on this one example. If you weren't getting paid and then your issue got resolved, could you also have issues on your week-to-week pay, your supplementary pay, or if you took a leave of absence, let's say? If you weren't getting paid and then your pay issue got resolved, is it possible that if something in your status changed, you then could have another issue?

[Marie Lemay]

Well, I suppose it is possible. I will tell you, though, that when we look at employee cases, we look at all the cases we have. Most of the time, one employee will have more than one transaction we have to address, such as in the backlog, for example. There are several actions we have to take for one employee.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

So this 67,500 represents the number of cases, not necessarily the number of—

[Marie Lemay]

It's the employees who have cases in the backlog.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Employees who have cases; so would it be doubled up? Let's say one employee has two cases.

[Marie Lemay]

It's probably more than that. On average, it's more than that.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

So the 67,500 represents the number of employees with issues, not generally the number of cases open.

[Marie Lemay]

You're correct.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Okay. Interesting.

Next, in my opinion, the most important part of this is making people whole. For example, if a student or an employee had to take out a loan to pay for their daily groceries, mortgage payments, or stuff like that, you've set up a subsidy program. How can we ensure, once they claim that subsidy, there's not a delay in that—a double-edged sword, almost?

[Marie Lemay]

The system is set up by our colleagues at Treasury Board. I can tell you that they're very mindful of the very issue you raise, that of trying not to create more issues in trying to address this, and of the nimbleness, the timeliness, making it as easy as possible, and making it fair and equitable across government. One party that is working very hard with Treasury Board on this is actually the unions. There was a lot of discussion. They actually brought this, I believe, so there's a very good collaboration there. The intent is to make it fast and streamlined, and to get the money out.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

When Phoenix is fully implemented, what will be the average cost savings per year for the government?

[Marie Lemay]

If we're able to reach a steady state with the number of compensation advisers as planned originally, it would be $7 million a year...or, sorry, $70 million a year.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

So we've basically forgone a year's worth of savings trying to fix the program. Am I correct?

[Marie Lemay]

For PSPC it's $50 million.

Just to be clear, it's $70 million a year.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Your estimate to fix it is about $50 million, and you estimate a savings of about $70 million.

[Marie Lemay]

Yes.

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

I mean, not even the most conservative of accountants would say that there's no plus or minus 5% to 10% on both those numbers.

My last question is this. For me, it just seems like a simple solution—I'm not an IT guy—that if somebody works, they get paid. Has there been discussion of cutting manual cheques to ensure that people have money in their pockets every two weeks? Once upon a time we did it. A lot of businesses across the country do it. I'm sure there's a way to get that done.

Was there any discussion alluding to that, to say that this thing will take a lot longer than we anticipated to fix, so is there a possible way to solve the bottleneck in this process, start getting people their money, and then we will figure out how to fix this system?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Quickly, Ms. Lemay.

[Marie Lemay]

You may know that there is a process in place right now where within departments, within 24 hours, they can actually get a cheque or, if they want, direct deposit.