Government Operations Committee on Oct. 24th, 2022

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. McCarthy.

[Liam McCarthy]

Of course, as a union we're very much in support of a greater role for indigenous communities and working through how services are delivered for indigenous communities. We've been very active in terms of some of the transfers that have happened in the past around education and health care, and there are a lot of important questions to work through in that regard. Obviously, in terms of contracting, there would be “devil in the details” kinds of issues there, but absolutely, we're always interested in furthering the interests of indigenous communities.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

On the same theme, this is for Ms. Carr first, and then Mr. McCarthy.

What sort of special expertise does outsourcing let the government access that it doesn't have in-house?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm going to interrupt here. There are only 14 seconds remaining, so perhaps you can put that in writing to the committee.

[Jennifer Carr]

We definitely could.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

Mrs. Vignola, you have six minutes, please.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. McCarthy, Ms. Carr, I really got the impression that you rushed through your opening statements. Could you please forward your prepared statements to us?

What you had to say was extremely interesting. I would like to give you each an extra minute to provide the information that you weren't able to earlier.

Let's start with Mr. McCarthy.

[Liam McCarthy]

Thank you.

I will do so in English, because my notes are in English.

I was close to the end, but I'll just say that one of the main things is to make sure there are staffing envelopes for new programs so that they have the proper capacity to deliver the services effectively when they are launched without having to resort to contracting out. Also, access to information legislation should be revised to require transparency in all of our contracts, including disclosure of wages and benefits for workers, profits, equipment, supply costs and so on.

In short, what we are looking for is a change in approach, as I've discussed, around culture, enhanced transparency and accountability on government contracts. Doing so reduces the significant risks that the public faces associated with contracting out.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Carr, over to you.

[Jennifer Carr]

Thank you very much.

I will also speak in English.

What we need are modern hiring policies that create efficient timelines for hiring so that it's not easier for managers to hire contractors. We also need to break the continued dependence on contractors, because it creates a vicious cycle where the knowledge and skills are never transferred to the public service. This creates a reliance on keeping those contracts alive, such as with Phoenix. We need to modernize the IT procurement process by investing in IT expertise in-house and have a stronger control on IT spending. It's also time for a major shift in the outsourcing policy of the federal public service. Your committee can help us improve our public services while saving billions of dollars in runaway costs for outsourcing.

If you permit me, with Indigenous Services, at least if we did the hiring inside, we could make sure that those jobs were actually going to first nations people, using the public service criteria for equity employment hiring.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you both.

According to a report published in March 2021 by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, the federal public procurement process for services is making gender inequality worse by giving private contracts to a predominantly male industry, like the information technology sector, whereas contracts for temporary help services, for work that is less well paid and precarious, are more often given to females.

Mr. McCarthy, have you carried out an intersectional or a gender-based analysis of workers hired through these types of contracts for temporary help services? If so, what were your conclusions?

[Liam McCarthy]

I'm going to ask Ms. Girash to answer your question.

[Michele Girash, National Political Action Officer, Public Service Alliance of Canada]

Thank you for the question.

I assume you're referring to our report, “In the interest of safety and security”, which is our analysis of contracting out at DND. In that report, we did not look specifically at a gender difference in those contracts.

I can tell you that most of the contracts we looked at are contracts for cleaning services, facility maintenance services or kitchen services. In fact, those contracts pay workers significantly less, even though they cost the government, on average, 35% more. We know that the government, by contracting out, is incentivizing precarious work for workers who are already marginalized. Bringing that work in-house will ensure that those workers have the protections of things like the Employment Equity Act, which they don't always have when they're contracted out.

The federal contractors program under the Employment Equity Act only applies to those contracts over $1 million. We could have scores and scores of $500,000 contracts out there that don't apply to the Employment Equity Act.

We think it's imperative, in order to further gender equity issues, to bring that work back in-house, so that the federal government can provide a fair and decent workplace for all workers on its work sites.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

We often hear that it is hard to recruit staff for the federal government or any other level of government, because the salaries on offer are not as high as those found in the private sector. There seems to be a ring of truth to this, given the figures we have been given. For a one-year contract, for example, even if you take benefits into account, there is still a gap.

Salary aside, and assuming there is no labour shortage in Canada, what explains the difficulties encountered in recruitment?

How is it that a government job isn't attractive, whatever the level of government?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid I have to interrupt, because that's the end of the time again. I will ask again if you can respond in writing.

[Jennifer Carr]

I will put that in writing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Mr. Johns, you have six minutes.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Ms. Girash, you touched on something about the gap in what people are getting paid for the outsourcing. It's costing the taxpayer even more money than it would to hire a public servant.

In 2018, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights discussed privatization as a cause of poverty, while still costing governments more.

Do you believe the government is aware of global research on privatization and has made efforts to incorporate the findings into its decisions on outsourcing?

[Michele Girash]

That's a two-point question.

Given that the human resources committee of this House studied precarious work, and one of the recommendations in the report on precarious work was that the government work to bring temporary help agency work back into the public service and that it incentivize permanent and indeterminate hiring, I absolutely think there's an awareness. That was a unanimous committee report, without dissent, so I think it's aware.

To the second part of your question as to whether it uses that awareness in its hiring, I don't think the evidence shows us that it does or it wouldn't be contracting out at the rate that it is. We have to be clear that a lot of this work is lower paid, especially for something like cleaning.

I can give you an example. At CFB Greenwood in 2018, they were trying to contract out the cleaners. We saw job postings for the new jobs that were at minimum wage, and our members told us, “You know what? I don't get rich cleaning base Greenwood, but I can put my kids through hockey. I'm going to have to leave Greenwood and move to Halifax, because I won't be able to afford to stay here.”

I think any manager knows what's happening when they contract out and that, even if the same workers are hired back in a situation like Greenwood or something like that, they're going to make less money.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Ms. Carr, staffing shortages in certain areas of the public service have been pointed to as a rationale for outsourcing. Do you have any information on how these shortages came to be and what can be done to build more internal capacity in the public service?

[Jennifer Carr]

Thank you for your question.

I must say that we are in a different situation, because we represent the professional groups.

I want to talk about some of the things in staffing and recruiting, especially for northern nurses. The fact is, they watch agency nurses who come in and have flexibility in their workload, in where they work and how they go to work. They're paid almost three times as much as our public servants, and they get a sense of work-life balance.

They don't have to deal with Phoenix issues. They are paid every two weeks and they're not waiting six months for their overtime cheque to arrive. They're not fighting with their employer in terms of getting the respect they need.

Agencies are allowed to give huge bonuses for working on days such as Christmas or during the pandemic. Our workers on the front line received zero pandemic pay.

That's why we're having some issues in terms of retention and recruitment. Our nurses are burning out and walking over to agencies, getting paid better and having a work-life balance.

In terms of why we're at the point we are, again, it's because staffing budgets have not increased. That makes it harder to hire people. We're doing more with less, and we're being told that we can't hire because the salary envelopes haven't been increased.

Again, when we talk about IT professionals, we are not keeping on pace with our agencies, especially in the core public service, so a disparity in pay would make somebody leave one department to go to another that is paying more.

These are just some of the highlights that we need to fix at the bargaining table, but we also have to realize that the impact of the government's inability to pay people properly and on time is making a huge recruitment and retention issue for the federal public service.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

You're leading me to my next question.

Recently, the Department of Natural Resources was seeking bids for two senior ATIP consultants—you probably read about this—with an estimated cost of about $469,000 a year. I imagine that this is quite a bit higher than what ATIP specialists are paid within the public service.

Do you have any information on the cost differences between hiring public service workers and contracting out to the private sector?

[Jennifer Carr]

Again, I'm just telling you from our examples, one resource for one resource.

An IT architect at the Department of National Defence was contracted out for $360,000 a year and is repeated again for eight years. The equivalent public servant, with benefits, was at $148,000. Again, the difference on this one hiring alone was $1.5 million over eight years.

You could hire so many IT professionals or invest in other areas for public servants if you would just look at hiring internally instead of relying on outsourcing.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

We just had the CBSA union here. They talked about how they could have hired 500 employees for what ArriveCAN cost.

Ms. Girash or Mr. McCarthy, maybe you want to speak about ATIP consultants and this $469,000, where this is going and how out of control it is.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We need a very brief answer.