Government Operations Committee on Nov. 28th, 2022

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Good morning and welcome to meeting number 42 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, also known as OGGO.

For one hour we'll have a study on the outsourcing of contracts, and then we will suspend and go in camera to discuss committee business.

We have one witness with us today, Crystal Warner, the national executive vice-president of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union.

Welcome, Mr. Iacono, to OGGO.

Ms. Warner, I understand you have an opening statement for us. Please go ahead for five minutes.

[Crystal Warner, National Executive Vice-President, Canada Employment and Immigration Union]

Thank you very much for inviting me.

As mentioned, I serve as the national executive vice-president of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union. We're a component of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, and it's a role I've held since 2017.

I represent over 34,000 workers in the federal public sector. We're the largest component at the largest bargaining table on the continent, falling under the program and administrative services collective agreement. We represent the majority of the unionized workforce at the Immigration and Refugee Board; Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada; and, of course, Service Canada.

I was asked to speak today regarding the outsourcing of contracts in public services. I understand that this committee is working in part to identify opportunities where the government can achieve best value for money by using in-house unionized workers instead of contracted outsourced hires.

I want to begin by saying that I can't express my gratitude for the privilege of this opportunity. To be frank, I never imagined that I would be given a platform like this to advocate against the contracting out of 1-800-O-Canada.

When I was a student at Carleton University in the mid-2000s, I worked for the Library of Parliament for several years. We had an office near here on Sparks Street that's now a bank. Part of my job was to speak with members of the public, both in person and on the phone, and answer some basic inquiries they might have about their federal government.

On my first day, I was instructed to send most inquiries to 1-800-O-Canada. My colleagues, however, quietly discouraged me from this practice, telling me that this was a no-answer hotline and that our clients would only come back to us more frustrated because they would not get helpful information from that hotline. While that struck me as odd, I just accepted it as fact and did my best to help our clients. I soon learned there was much truth in this guidance, as I began to experience first-hand the frustration of clients who were unable to get the information they needed by calling 1-800-O-Canada.

When I began my current role in 2017, my first shock at learning that the 1-800-O-Canada line call centre was a contracted out service didn't come as a labour activist. It came as a Canadian. How is it that as a citizen here, I could call a number that's literally called 1-800-O-Canada and reach a private call centre that's contracted out? How is it that I could speak to these individuals, who were not public sector employees and who had no access to Service Canada systems, to potentially share my personal information, even though they would be unable to answer many basic questions about critical public services like employment insurance? I couldn't believe it.

Consider what the average Canadian would be contacting this service for, and the significance of the programs that are managed by ESDC, such as parental leave, EI and pensions. Maybe they would share personal and financial information that should be protected through these calls. Giving private corporations access to any of this information is a worrisome trend that many Canadians are not aware of, and the ones who are becoming aware are very concerned. We know that many MPs received letters from constituents about this topic, and some parties appear to have created form letters as a response, as many of our active advocates and supporters received virtually the same letter back from their MP's office.

Service Canada arguably employs the most call centre workers in the federal public sector. I don't understand why this service is being contracted out. It's the very first point of contact for most Canadian citizens with their government. It's a service that handles more than two million calls a year. As a Canadian I'm offended, but as a labour activist I'm appalled.

The 1-800 service has been contracted out since its inception in 1982. We did ask ESDC management for its rationale, and we were told that it meets organizational needs and its commitment to the highest quality of service to clients. How a department that employs over 5,000 call centre workers can state that it must contract out the very same type of call centre work in order to provide quality service to clients does not make sense to me. It's contradictory. To me, this is the worst example of lazy oversight, and a “but we've always done it this way” mentality that leaves Canadians behind and plagues inefficient bureaucracy in the federal public sector.

The CEIU, along with the PSAC and the labour movement, will continue to stand for Canadians and do the right thing by raising public awareness and applying pressure at every opportunity to end the contracting out of 1-800-O-Canada. This is a public service that should be provided by public sector workers in a safe and secure manner, with access to Service Canada systems and internal training and resources that would enable workers to appropriately assist the public. It would make these workers directly accountable to the federal government. It would also give these workers a pension, benefits and, yes, the privilege of union membership.

The work performed by these employees should be performed by PSAC members as part of the public service.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm sorry, but that's your five minutes, Ms. Warner. Could you just wrap up very quickly?

[Crystal Warner]

That was it.

We hope the government will do the right thing and end the contracting out of this significant public service.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That's wonderful. Thanks very much.

Mrs. Kusie, go ahead for six minutes, please.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Ms. Warner, thank you very much for being here today.

My colleagues and I are not convinced that the work is being done in the best way possible in terms of value for money and service delivery for Canadians. You mentioned that as a Canadian you're very troubled by that, and we are as well.

I think my questions here today build on your opening statement.

According to a March 2022 briefing binder for the President of the Treasury Board, outsourcing costs increased from $6.2 billion in fiscal year 2005-06 to $11.8 billion—so almost double—in fiscal year 2020-21, and the federal government added 19,151 jobs in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2021, and another 16,356 positions in fiscal year 2021-22. The government also employs the greatest number of public servants in Canadian history.

In addition to the shadow services that you're referring to, it seems as though the current public service is struggling to meet the demands of value for money and, more importantly, service delivery for Canadians. I just want to build on your opening statement. Despite the massive increase we're seeing not only in outsourcing but also in employees for the federal service, we're not seeing the desired outcome, so I have a few questions about that for you.

In your opinion, what types of projects is the federal government outsourcing that could be done by the public service in-house? You used the example that is closest to you, 1-800-O-Canada. Could you expand on that, please?

[Crystal Warner]

I represent workers at the immigration departments and Service Canada, so I can only speak to anything that would happen in those three departments. As far as we are aware, aside from 1-800-O-Canada, there was other call centre work that Service Canada—for example, during CERB—outsourced as well.

We were able to successfully end the contracting out of that by doing some significant advocacy with the employer when we became aware of the contracts. I cannot speak to departments other than those because I don't represent those other workers.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay.

In your opinion, what kinds of investments do you think the federal government needs to make to do more project work in-house? Why do you believe it's going to outsourcing?

[Crystal Warner]

In this particular situation I think it's laziness. In this situation, from what I've seen, they have every reason to have the capacity internally to hire these workers. It's an easy thing to contract out that work.

They might argue that they have trouble with retention in call centres. I would suggest that they struggle for a few reasons.

One is that the staffing processes the federal government uses are archaic. They're staffing in the way they did in the eighties and it's not the eighties. The workers they're trying to appeal to are from a different era of employees. What I mean by that is the types of questions that get asked and the type of scrutineering that occurs just to get people in the door are inefficient.

There are also not enough resources within human resources internally in the departments. I'll speak for the departments where I represent workers.

Human resources have been slashed for 15 years. There are not even enough people to do the staffing processes internally, so managers who don't have these skill sets are being asked to do staffing competitions and oversee them. They don't have that skill set, the capacity or the resources to do that successfully.

With call centres specifically, we get into the training. Call centres at ESDC probably have some of the worst retention we've seen, and they have the capacity to do better. A lot of that has to do with the type of training and onboarding they do, which, over the last number of years, they've made completely virtual. This was before the pandemic.

Before, people would come in and there would be smaller classes. They'd get more hands-on training and direct and immediate support when they had questions. With the way things are done now, they get feedback maybe six weeks after. If they've been on a call with an EI client, for example, and they've made an error, six weeks later somebody comes to them and asks them if they remember the call six weeks earlier when they made a mistake. Yes, there are problems with that.

I would like to see some reforms in the staffing processes. I'd love to see increased resources given to human resources departments so they can do their roles successfully and take pressure off frontline management. I'd like to see an overhaul of the onboarding and training packages that employees are receiving. Instead of doing the work needed to reform these long-standing practices that are problematic, I think they're choosing the easy response, sometimes by contracting out.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That's six minutes literally on the dot. Well done, Ms. Warner. You've done this before.

We have Mr. Kusmierczyk for six minutes, please.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much, Ms. Warner, for being here with us today.

I very much appreciate the brief you submitted ahead of time. As a Carleton University graduate myself, I really appreciated your comments.

I had an opportunity this summer to visit a number of Service Canada offices and meet with a number of Service Canada staff. I have to tell you that they are outstanding people, and we are very fortunate to have them here. They are incredibly dedicated. They're professional, and they're incredibly knowledgeable as well. They definitely have a mission mindset in wanting to help out Canadians in their communities from coast to coast to coast.

I just wanted to put that on record before we get into some of the questions.

First and foremost, what benefits or advantages are there to bringing services such as 1-800-O-Canada in-house, as you see it?

[Crystal Warner]

Thank you for the question and the comments about my members and their work.

Employees at Service Canada centres are among some of the hardest working in the federal public sector. As you can appreciate, the clients who come in are too often hostile and emotional. They're looking for money to put food on the table for their families. My members have been spat at and have had computers thrown at them in the last few years, so there has been increased security in these offices. We always welcome the appreciation of these workers because of the type of work they do in serving Canadians.

I have a few things to say.

I had the privilege of working for the federal government for 10 years before I got into this position, and I remember—I'm from Vancouver—I was flown to Ottawa and had to sign a pledge to the Queen. I'm Catholic, so I had the fear of God in me and was scared over the possibility of risking information, private information and so on. When I went home, I remember going to my parents' place. They had a big supper for me because everyone was so proud that I was a Government of Canada employee. My family came to this country as asylum seekers from Chile, so the privilege of working for the government that welcomed us here was huge.

When you contract out public services, the workers are not going to have the same level of values, ethics and dedication built into them that a federal government employee would have when they are given benefits and pensions, and have the pride of being an employee of the Government of Canada.

We see that already. I've spoken to former 1-800-O-Canada employees who were, at the time, among those contracted out and who are now Government of Canada employees because they've been brought into the public service. I'll maybe get into that later. They tell me about their job satisfaction. They're happier at work and feel more respected at work. They're treated better. Naturally, because they're happier, the quality of the work they're doing is better.

We also know—and countless studies have shown us this—that in the short term, it might save the employer some money to contract out initially, but long term it costs them money. If you look at 1-800-O-Canada, they recently sold the contract from Quantum to Gatestone, and they had to hire 240 new employees to start again.

My members who deliver employment insurance, for example, working at Service Canada.... A lot of the clients who eventually get to speak to an EI agent started their journey by calling 1-800-O-Canada. More often than not, they were given misinformation or they weren't provided with enough initial help for a simple question. It wouldn't have taken them a week of trying to get through a call centre or queuing up at a Service Canada centre if that first point of contact at 1-800-O-Canada had had some access to the system to look up a simple answer.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I think you did a really nice job of putting some important arguments forward.

Motivation is really important. I'll give a shout-out to the folks I met at Service Canada in the office in Windsor. Again, they were absolutely outstanding, and you could tell that they're rooted in the community and they're working to help the community out. It's a powerful motivator when you live in the community where you're providing services. I want to thank you for that.

I want to ask you how we can improve and make the public service more representative. I'm thinking of, for example, equity groups, but I'm specifically thinking of what we can do to recruit more Canadians and more persons with disabilities into the public service and into places like Service Canada. What's your opinion on that?

[Crystal Warner]

I have the privilege of co-chairing our newly established joint employment equity committee with ESDC. I also co-chair with the IRB and IRCC.

Some of the things we talk about, particularly when it comes to persons with disabilities.... I will say that time and again, when we get the reports, we see that there's under-representation of persons with disabilities at most levels in the federal public sector, and in our departments at least.

Part of this is about ensuring accessibility to candidates as part of the interview and application process. There's not enough being done at the early stages to ensure that accommodations are being offered to folks who are applying and asking candidates clear questions about accommodation as they're going through the application process.

This is also about where these positions are being advertised. The joint employment equity tables have been newly established in the last year, but one of the topics we will be discussing is outreach to disability organizations to try to gather information about better places where we could be advertising jobs.

A lot of folks, when they're applying.... My sister is now a student at Carleton and she's looking to get into the federal government. She's going to the jobs website. The employer is not doing enough outreach in some of those communities—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid that's our time, Ms. Warner. Perhaps in the next round you can finish that.

We now have Ms. Vignola for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Warner, thank you for being here; we're grateful to you and thankful for your insight. The services provided by Service Canada are greatly appreciated, despite the difficulties encountered over the past two years.

The Canada Employment and Immigration Union contributes to the uncoverthecost.ca website, where the following is posted: “When governments contract public sector work to private companies, profits take priority over services, and everyone, except the corporate shareholders, ends up paying the price.”

In your opinion, why are the services listed on this website outsourced? Also, how can the quality of outsourced services be gauged?

[Crystal Warner]

Thank you for your question.

I'll answer in English.

A lot of the apparent lack in quality of service that we see comes up when it's been contracted out. I can give the example of when the hotline for CERB was contracted out at its inception. Somebody who would get through to an actual employment insurance call centre would tell us that they had been given bad information, that they were misinformed and that a very basic question couldn't get answered, as I mentioned earlier. All of that was because, unfortunately, those individuals don't have the security clearance and don't have access to the internal systems. Sometimes people are sharing personal and private information, and when they find out that they're not sharing it with a Government of Canada employee, they get upset and the calls derail.

A lot of the time, a quality public service needs to be provided by a trained public sector worker who is actually accountable to the Government of Canada and who has access to those systems and can answer simple and basic questions. In a typical call in the early days of CERB delivery, someone would call the number and ask if they were entitled to CERB and the person answering would say, “Well, I can't help you with that.” They'd ask, “Can you look at my file and just tell me if my address is correct?” and they would be told, “I can't tell you that.” Finally, they'd ask, “Well, what can you tell me?”

I'm sorry. Go ahead.

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

It's completely absurd, especially since 1‑800‑O‑Canada is celebrating its 40th anniversary, yet it delivers no services. How have we not assessed the services delivered by 1‑800‑O‑Canada, which can't provide any answers to Quebeckers and Canadians? How do we ensure that these services provided with taxpayers' money are adequate? From what I've heard here, no one has assessed the quality of its services for 40 years. It seems the measures have done nothing. Am I right?

I'm going to keep talking about the website uncoverthecost.ca. As was just mentioned, the government outsourced the 1‑800‑O‑Canada call centre jobs to the United States. You said you were concerned about security clearances and the highly personal information that's given to employees at the call centre.

Except for those living in certain areas, Americans are not known to have an adequate level of French. What kind of service are francophones getting, then? I'm not just talking about francophones in Quebec, there are also others in Ontario, New Brunswick, Alberta and, increasingly, Vancouver, among other places. Over the past four years, have the services provided to francophones been of a lesser quality than what anglophones receive?

[Crystal Warner]

I asked some of those efficiency questions during labour management meetings with the deputy minister, and we didn't get any kind of satisfactory answers.

The two companies that have, to my knowledge, held the contracts for 1-800-O-Canada are Quantum and Gatestone. Quantum's call centre was located in Ottawa. Those workers were offered contracts during the sale of the contract. Some of them now work for the Government of Canada, so we've been able to speak to them.

We understand that the new company, Gatestone, is a corporation with bases in Phoenix, Arizona, and Canada. We also understand that the current workers at Gatestone who are providing services to 1-800-O-Canada are located in Toronto, and some workers may be in Montreal.

We've asked ourselves the same questions. We have no guarantee, with the way their contracts work, that somebody might be answering the phone. While they may have some workers working there, we don't know where all of them are.

We also know that they have had problems providing services in both languages. This was with Quantum. Gatestone is still a relatively new contract. Again, we don't have answers to those questions because we're not in a position to ask our employer those questions to get transparency. We've been reduced to having to file access to information requests to try to get some answers.

Access to official language services by a Government of Canada office in our call centres is much better. We know those clients are getting better service. It's a comment that we've had from the workers who were contracted out and are now internal. They can't believe the testing to ensure that somebody is really bilingual and able to provide the service. Those things didn't exist with the contracted-out companies. Again, that type of care is better established in-house in the Government of Canada.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid that's our time.

Mr. Johns, you have six minutes, please.

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

Ms. Warner, I want to thank you, your team and obviously all of the members you represent for the important work you do, especially for the incredible, heroic sacrifice during COVID. I can't say enough about it.

I'm going to stay on the thread about call centres.

Can you share your thoughts on contracting out call centre operations and the impact of that on the quality of service that Canadians receive? How does that impact the service to Canadians?

[Crystal Warner]

I've talked already about loyalty with federal public sector workers. We also know that working conditions and wages are heavily correlated to increased production, accuracy and retention. My understanding is that instead of making a good government salary, some of these workers were making $18 or $19 an hour.

We know that over the years, Treasury Board and the PSAC have negotiated a number of rights specific to call centre workers, not to mention higher wages, benefits and job security. We know that working conditions for the workers themselves would be much better there.

ESDC also offers some robust resources, support and training for these workers, although there are some problems. Again, it puts them in a position where they're equipped to provide a high level of quality public services to a client.

These contracts don't enrich Canada. They're enriching what's ultimately, right now, an American-based company that specializes in debt collection and has a long history of poor working conditions. I think if we were to poll Canadians and ask what they thought about 1-800-O-Canada and about not reaching their government but a contracted out service, they would say they should be in touch with a public sector worker.

For all of these reasons, we feel pretty strongly that we should end the contracting out of this service.

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

We've seen disastrous outsourcing. With the Phoenix pay system, as an example, we've seen expensive consultants replacing public service employees. We end up hiring expensive consultants, and there are disastrous results from this.

We recently saw an ATIP consultant contract go out. It turned out that the wages would have been upwards of over $469,000 a year per worker. We know it's not flowing to the workers who are getting hired by these outsourcing companies; it's flowing to the top.

Can you speak about the impact that this is having on Canadians and Canadian workers and about the multiplier effect of money staying within the Canadian economy instead of ending up at the top? How does this impact and create more inequality in Canada? Maybe you can also speak a bit more about working conditions for employees who are working for these outsourcing companies.

[Crystal Warner]

I'm happy to. There are a few different things.

Gatestone, as I mentioned, is a family of companies in the United States and Canada that is focused primarily on debt collection lines. They also have offices in the Philippines, Mexico and Belize. They've held many previous contracts for the Government of Canada that were, to my knowledge, all collection contracts. For years, PSAC has been constantly trying to express its concerns and have these workers unionized. On three separate attempts, the contracted companies fired union organizers when we were attempting to unionize them.

We spoke with a number of former employees of the company. Even the reviews of Gatestone on Yelp and the things they talk about are sad. There are no benefits, they're being underpaid and they're making $19 an hour. One thread of comments about Gatestone in particular was repeated in our interviews with people as well as online. One employee wrote, “you get paid so little for the stress that this company brings to you. They always look to cut corners and save as much money as possible even if it will make the life of their employees miserable. Again, they just don't care about your well being. Agents know that Gatestone is just a temporary job until you find something better.... I've never seen so many people leave a company after a short period of time.” We have several similar examples from employees.

It's costing the employer money. When they turned this call centre over through the contract, they had to hire, I believe, another 240 call centre agents and start from scratch. Some people had 10 years of knowledge and a lot of them left, and the folks who stayed around lost all the in-house knowledge. There are a lot of additional costs, and I think it's short-sighted on the part of the government.