Evidence of meeting #62 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was employees.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:55 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
We thought we had addressed all of the concerns in the Gartner report when we went live, and we thought we had a more systematic third party review which provided us assurances that we were making the right decision to move forward.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
We also heard from the union leadership that they kept telling you guys that there were problems. Given that, yes, you may have had a third party report and you were assured, there were still some concerns raised by other parties—
4:55 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Not in January there weren't, and when we went forward.... Again, most of the Gartner report was based on interviews with departments. When we went forward to the public service management committee, the Secretary of the Treasury Board canvassed the room of all of the departments, including those that were interviewed, and asked, given what they had just been told where we were with testing, where we were with readiness, did they feel we were ready to go. Brigitte can comment better on the union engagement, but in January and December, when the last union engagements occurred, we also felt that they were ready to go with us, and we were ready to move forward in partnership.
Then, as I said, we ran three pay cycles where we felt that the cutover had gone well, and it was only when we started to see that the transactions.... The first signs from the union, if I remember correctly, were after we had actually had the blackout period for the second cutover. Again, we felt we had sort of crossed the point of no return at that point.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I have to ask a question on behalf of my colleagues Mr. Fergus, Mr. MacKinnon and Mr. Amos. They're really concerned about the T4 issue. As you know, in Quebec you don't do one income statement. You do two tax filings, and that's going to have a huge impact on their constituents, including public servants who are being impacted by Phoenix. What's the strategy to deal with that? Are we going to give them enough headway to deal with this? How are we going to deal with this?
4:55 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
You've heard the minister talk about the priorities. The transactions that have the most tax implications are terminations, leave without pay, disability, and new hires, so we're really concentrating on those to minimize any implications on the taxation period.
Having said that, one of the things we have seen is there are overpayments, obviously. You've heard about that. What we've put in place is a method.... We have a call centre and if employees want to repay the overpayment, they can call the call centre. What that does with the overpayment is if the overpayment is recorded before the end of the year, not repaid but recorded, the overpayment will not be reflected in the T4. We've actually—through TBS with our folks, Brigitte's team and the unions—worked with Revenue Canada and actually Revenu Québec to be able to come to an agreement where those T4s, if the overpayment is recorded, the employees don't have to have paid it back, but the T4 will not reflect the overpayment. In terms of the emergency payments—you may have heard about those—they don't appear as an earning on the T4.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Welcome back, everyone.
Mr. Parker, first of all, congratulations on getting the service scores up. It's a remarkably big jump, when you look at it. I have quite a few constituents in my riding who work downtown at the government office for Shared Services, and they have commented that they are getting similar feedback on the scores. So that's very good.
The weather services, it's $400,000 for an upgrade of weather services. Where and what exactly is that for?
5 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, I'm going to ask our CFO to respond to that.
5 p.m.
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Shared Services Canada
Thank you for that question. This is a top-up on the weather renewal project that's taking place. There's already funding in the system, but there was a recognition, at the time of the development of the Treasury Board submission, from a timing perspective, that there would have to be a small top-up that would go through supplementary estimates in latter years.
5 p.m.
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Shared Services Canada
That's what we're seeing now.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Perfect.
Mr. Parker, we've seen a media report about the big red 10, 10 projects that are code red. Now this is going to come as a shock to a lot of the people in this room and probably to people watching TV. Do you have enough money to address the red 10 so that we don't end up with bigger issues down the road? Is it a resource issue, where you have the money but not the bodies?
5 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
Mr. Chair, for the most part, the issues are not related to money. Just as a bit of context for the overall portfolio projects we have, about 75% of the projects are green, 13% are yellow, about 7% are red, and approximately 6% remain to be classified.
5 p.m.
Conservative
5 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
There is progress on moving a number of them to yellows. Some are red, and likely will remain red for a period of time yet.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Good.
Ms. Lemay, Mr. Liddy, I want to read an email I got while we were chatting before. This is from a public servant watching on TV right now: “I'm retiring after a 36-year career on December 29. I've been overpaid, underpaid by $7,000. I called the pay centre, weekly, daily, about the issue, and now I've been told to stop calling. I cannot get any answers or anyone to call me back, even when promised. I'm trying to repay the overpayment, not have my T4 affected, and be able to receive my well-earned pension...”.
I want to come back to this, and I'm glad Mr. Drouin brought it up, the whole T4 thing. There are still problems out there. I'd like to get some sense of reassurance from both of you that it's not just a matter of telling them, as this lady was told, to just call the call centre. Now the call centre is telling her to stop bugging them and to call someone else.
Are we going to have an actual plan in place, a contingency plan, something concrete to help these folks so that, come January 2, they're not getting T4s reflecting money they didn't receive?
5 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
The issue of T4s has been on our radar for a while, and it's already been—
5 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
We spoke about that in September, but these problems are still happening.
5 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
The discussions have already taken place with the unions, Treasury Board, our folks, CRA, and Revenu Québec to make sure that we have everything in place to support the employees. The first thing is to get through those transactions as quickly as we can. The terminations are transactions that are on our priority list with the other transactions.
In supporting the employees, there are a number of things we are doing. CRA has a line up already. We will have one in a little while specifically for explaining the T4 as soon as it's close to the T4 season. It will be a seamless work arrangement so that employees are supported and understand how to read their T4s.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I'm sorry if I sound cynical, but we sat here in July and were told that October 31 was a hard deadline. We heard the minister, I think in September, say that she had no reason to believe it was not going to be October 31.
We're hearing the same assurances now about the T4s. Why should we believe you? What assurances, besides saying you're talking about it, are we going to have in place to look after these people? These are real concerns. They don't all have access to an account or this and that, and they're getting turned away from call centres. It's become an issue of a real lack of confidence.
5 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I absolutely hear you that these are real people, and this really is something that matters to a lot to us. We're at a very different point from where we were in the spring, when we implemented. We now have the capacity and we know that we process more cases that come in. That's a critical, critical stage. We know how long it takes to process cases. We have real data that we can actually model and plan with. We are working with our partners, with the departments, with the unions. We're engaging our employees, and everybody is totally engaged in this. We're at a totally different place from where we were earlier.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Great.
The satellite offices.... We've heard a lot about the steady state, and that's a whole new buzzword I can use in the future. Assuming that we eventually have Phoenix running and we get to a steady state, the satellite offices, the added bodies, the extra money, how much of that is permanent program spending, and how much of it is going to get wrapped up and closed down when we hit a steady state?
