Government Operations Committee on Nov. 29th, 2016

[Marty Muldoon]

That's a good question.

That $54 million, although it shows up in these supplementary estimates, is actually an item that goes all the way back to supplementary estimates (A). This was a horizontal investment program that was annualized, as you know, for the federal infrastructure investment of federal assets. It's showing here as a tabled item, but we've had that money since the beginning of the year when the supplementary estimates were tabled, and we've been investing those in the horizontal projects that go behind that particular expenditure. They're made up of something in the order of half a billion dollars that was disbursed over several federal departments in those horizontal initiatives.

To your direct question, I can't speak to where we are on that precise amount. This is part of a multi-year investment strategy for the restoration and rehabilitation of many federal assets.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Lemay, I'm going to come back briefly to the unfortunately now-infamous Phoenix payroll situation.

I have heard about some ongoing cases that are highly complex from a data entry standpoint, cases where the employees have to punch in and punch out. I won't dwell on a specific case, but it does nevertheless illustrate the scope of the problem. These people are in a unique situation that the system can't resolve, requiring the employer to process their pay information manually.

How are you going to resolve those cases? Do you have a way to categorize them? I know that, in July, you had identified a category system for ranking problems. Have you prioritized those categories? What steps must be taken to resolve the problems in that category so they don't drag on?

[Marie Lemay]

There are many ways of identifying problems, of finding their source and correcting them.

Among the measures we've taken since last summer, an integrated team held more than 30 briefings with members of departmental human resources teams so as to discuss the three problems that occur most often. That seems to have worked well. These meetings help the departments and the human resources managers to support their employees.

That is one way of getting at the cause of the problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We will go to Monsieur Clarke. You're back on again.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Fantastic, thank you.

Getting back to my question, I wanted to know, Ms. Lemay, if your department had put in place special bonuses for those who worked on getting the Phoenix pay system operational by a certain date.

[Marie Lemay]

I don't know if you are familiar with how our performance agreements work.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

No, but I would like to know.

[Marie Lemay]

Normally, our performance agreements contain several objectives, but there was no objective concerning this specific date.

We conclude performance agreements with various objectives, and employees are assessed according to the successful completion of these objectives.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Do the performance objectives include specific criteria?

[Marie Lemay]

Yes, there can be all kinds of criteria.

However, if you are alluding to the question that was put to me earlier, as to whether incentives had been offered in order to accelerate the implementation of Phoenix, my answer is that there were none.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Well, that's quite a clear answer.

[Marie Lemay]

There would have been incentives had the implementation been a success.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I understand. That's another paradigm.

The Gartner report states that it would have been wiser to keep the old system while implementing the new one. Was that done? Was the old pay system still being used when the new Phoenix system was launched?

[Marie Lemay]

It was used during the preliminary phase. Since then it has been accessible to consult historical information, if you will. However, it is not up to date regarding current information.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I see.

Had you planned to make it accessible in real time, and not only to have access to historical data?

[Marie Lemay]

I don't think so, but I'm going to ask my colleagues to confirm whether that had been planned or not.

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

No, we had not planned on maintaining it after the second implementation, in April.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Fine.

Ms. Lemay, I also think that during one of your last public statements, you spoke of hiring more public servants. Is their salary included in the supplementary estimates?

[Marie Lemay]

You may be referring to the agreement we concluded with the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada?

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Yes.

[Marie Lemay]

That will be included in the supplementary estimates or in our operations budget. For the moment, we have not yet gone forward. We received a few expressions of interest. We will see if this works.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Their salaries will be among the additional expenditures required though, won't they?

[Marie Lemay]

We had a contingency plan, so they will no doubt be included in that.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. McCauley, would you like to add something?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'll go back to the backlog. In September we asked if we were in danger of growing the secondary backlog while we were tackling the main backlog. I don't know if we got a 100% clear answer. I'm just trying to figure out what the secondary backlog is.

We've also heard reports that the non-Miramichi pay centres' backlogs, which are 30%, I believe, of the public service, aren't being counted toward this 82,000 originally announced in July, and that any new numbers after, added to the 82,000, are also not part of the backlog. I know it's backlog, backlog, backlog, but what is the non-82,000 backlog?