Thank you, Minister, for being here, and thank you for the update. It is commendable that you're trying to do your best to mitigate some of the challenges and problems left by the previous government. It's an interesting situation because people don't understand what really happened. A Globe and Mail article really paints a very bad picture. It says:
Canada isn't some tin-pot country that can't pay its workers.... It's a G7 country.... Stephen Harper's Conservative government was eager to demonstrate it could wring billions of dollars of savings out of a fat government bureaucracy it neither liked nor trusted.
And it brought in this Shared Services Canada and the Phoenix system. The article goes on to say that both have been “unmitigated disasters”.
How do you put in a system without training the workers and by firing 1,000 payroll advisers who have now taken on different jobs? I think it is important for people to realize that your department and the government have been working hard, but there is still more work to be done. As you mentioned, it is important that no employee goes without pay. I understand that you have opened up satellites in Winnipeg, in Shawinigan, in Montreal, and a temporary call centre in Toronto.
Could you tell me, in your current assessment, how long those centres will be left open?