Government Operations Committee on Nov. 29th, 2016

[Marie Lemay]

I can tell you that at the time, one of the things that was very clear was that there was a lot of stress on the system. It wasn't decided the day before that these compensation advisers were going to leave. As I said, notices were issued back in 2014, so people had started leaving.

My assumption, then—and I don't want to put words in the mouths of my colleagues—was that you balance the risk. The system was without compensation advisers for a long time. Departments were saying they were going to have a hard time retaining these people.

All of that, in terms of being able to push back, were also factors that were included in the decision.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm sure, Madam.

Very quickly, on the backlog, because this 40,000 was a surprise and hidden—whether a mistake, incompetence, or maliciously hidden—is there another 20,000 or 40,000 perhaps hidden from the department?

[Marie Lemay]

I don't think anybody tried maliciously to do anything in this, right?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

But if it says “aware it happened”, it did happen. Are there another 20,000 that we're not aware of and we weren't aware of originally?

[Marie Lemay]

This is why we're engaging with the departments—and our employees, but definitely the departments—to talk about our plan, our way forward, our capacity to make sure that we have everything at Miramichi and that our estimate of the 80,000 to 85,000 transactions is the right one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I'll attempt to give Mr. Weir about two minutes.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thanks very much.

There have been major problems with efforts to centralize payroll and IT systems across the federal government, yet the government wants to plow ahead with some similar initiatives. I wonder whether the difficulties with Phoenix and Shared Services should be giving the government more pause about these transformation projects.

[Marie Lemay]

I'll do two seconds on that one.

As I said earlier, the key thing is to learn from the experiences that we have. I can assure you that we are learning collectively in the community of deputy ministers. This is something we're looking at to make sure that we learn from these projects going forward.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Is one of the lessons to slow down on these things and be much more diligent and careful?

[Marie Lemay]

One of the big lessons is to think of change management when you start and to think of the impact on the people and to set it up so that you have accountability and the right governance.

[Ron Parker]

I would only add that it's important to get all the feedback you can, and this is the opportunity we're having with the reset of Shared Services' transformation plan. We've taken the time to consult broadly, talk to client departments, talk to Canadians, and talk to our employees and to the bargaining agents. We're benefiting from other expert, outside consultancy advice. These all factor in, and in ways that our predecessors did not have the chance to take advantage of.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, as you know, it's 6 p.m. We're cutting things short by about half an hour.

Madam Lemay, Mr. Parker, and all of you as our witnesses, thank you for coming.

I would ask, however, that if our committee members have additional questions that they didn't have enough time to ask you because of the truncated version, you will, I assume, allow them to give written questions directly to you and will respond in kind to our clerk.

Specifically, Mr. Whalen asked a series of questions about who made a decision on the three pay period test. I would ask that even though your answer was that you're not sure or you don't know, you undertake to find out exactly who did that and then respond as if it were a written question to accommodate Mr. Whalen's concerns.

Thank you all for your attendance here.

The meeting is adjourned.