Human Resources Committee on March 22nd, 2011

[Éric Giguère]

It's arguably at the same time, because they're mailed so--

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Right. They're all mailed at the same time, and any difference will be just in the delivery times.

Mr. Lessard, you have five minutes.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

I would like to continue speaking about the Board of Referees. We know that everyone who sits on such a board is important. There is an arbitrator for employers and one for the unions or the worker. If there is a difference of opinion between the two, the chairperson will adjudicate.

So it is very important that the chairperson's qualifications be a known quantity. However when it can take a half hour if not an hour to summarize the situation for the chair, as we have heard here, for instance, there is a problem. Is there some way of proceeding, aside from action on the part of the two arbitrators, so that this can get to you and you could intervene? If the arbitrators intervene, that can also go against them, because they also have to be ratified.

[Paul Thompson]

I would have several things to say. First of all, most of the decisions of the Boards of Referees are unanimous. Differences of opinion among the panel members have not arisen very often.

As I said, it is not up to me to talk about the appointment process. We have a role to play in the training procedures. From time to time, if there is a serious issue involving the work of a board, when the time comes to renew the mandate of an arbitrator, then we have an opportunity to raise the matter.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

I understand your position well. This is not your responsibility. If the person was appointed for three years, as is the custom, we are stuck with that person for three years whatever their level of competence might be.

[Paul Thompson]

Yes, our duty is to deal with the training.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Komarnicki raised something I would like to bring up again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Monsieur Lessard, I'm sorry, but I'm having a little translation problem. I want to reiterate for the translators as well that when we're referring to the “referees”, as much as possible we'll call them “referees”, and the translators could call them “referees”, and when we're talking about the “umpires”, we'll refer to them as “umpires”, and the translators could call them “umpires”.

In the translation I'm hearing you intermix the terms “referees” and “umpires”, so I'm not clear as to which we're talking about. I'm not sure if the word is the same en français.

[Paul Thompson]

In French, this is the Conseil arbitral and the juges-arbitres, the Board of Referees and Umpires.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

And we are talking about the Board of Referees.

[Paul Thompson]

We are talking about the panel members of the Board of Referees, and not about referees.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thank you. I'll be clear on whether we're talking about referees or umpires, and we all will.

Thank you so much for that.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Komarnicki drew a distinction regarding the procedure that I would like to get back to. There are two things to be differentiated: there is the moment when one is advised of the hearing, and the moment when one receives the documentation for the hearing.

The person who defends the claimant will often receive the documents necessary to prepare the defence on the eve of the hearing or two days before it. If you don't have an answer to this right now, I would like to receive one before we draft our report.

And I would like to get back to another aspect of the proceedings that was raised earlier, that is the location. We know that often, a person is associated with a political party. The chairperson of one board of referees even ran for the Conservatives in the last election. I would like you to provide us with an answer on that.

As to the location of the hearings, they take place in the commission's premises, as a Conservative colleague pointed out earlier. Would it not be possible to come to an agreement with the municipalities concerned to hold the hearings in the municipal council offices? The members of city councils are often happy to put those offices at our disposal.

That is a suggestion you could examine. The point is to make everyone comfortable.

[Paul Thompson]

I mentioned the factors that are taken into consideration when the decision is made to hold hearings in the Service Canada centres. The cost of renting a room is often very high, for one thing. Confidentiality and the protection of the information we have at the commission are also among the factors we consider.

[Éric Giguère]

I would add that in Service Canada centres, we can have administrative and technical support that we would not necessarily have elsewhere.

[Paul Thompson]

That is an important point. There are administrative links between Service Canada and the boards of referees. These connections are necessary.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

I'm sorry, there isn't time, but we will have time for another round and we will come back to you.

We'll go to Mr. Vellacott now.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

I wanted to clarify in respect to mailing the material 10 days in advance. Is it mailed out 10 days in advance? Is that what we're talking about? In that case, obviously they would not necessarily receive the docket of material 10 days in advance, then.

[Éric Giguère]

It's mailed out 10 days in advance.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Maybe there is a bit of a problem, then, because as you implied, Éric, everybody's not going to get it at quite the same time. Sometimes it might be five days prior that the person receives it; they get it on a Friday and they have Saturday and Sunday. If they were connecting with some worker or agency that was going to assist them in representation and there was a long weekend or whatever, they'd maybe have two or three days in advance. I don't know if that's something that needs to be looked at a bit, but 10 days in advance may not be enough time, especially if we've got longer mail delivery times. Do you have any way of tracking this? I'm assuming it just goes by regular mail. Are people getting it within a couple days, or it could be up to four or five days by mail?

[Éric Giguère]

I don't know. I'm not sure.

[Paul Thompson]

That's something we would monitor. I would mention, though, that I did speak to the modernization measures that we're pursuing, which we hope will facilitate all aspects of administration of this process, including the distribution of documents. We rely very heavily on paper files right now, and in the future we hope that won't always be the case as we move towards imaged documents and secure technology.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Okay. That might help for sure.

The other thing that’s come up in the past is rural areas. I’m in a city, Saskatoon. It's not huge, but it is of significant enough size that we don’t tend to hear about the types of so-called conflicts of interest that I think a number of colleagues in certain rural areas of the country may have. Are there higher conflicts of interest in parts of the country where you might have some large employer, and that employer is on the board of referees, or maybe everybody just knows everybody or is related to everybody? Is that a more rural issue in terms of conflict of interest, as opposed to an urban or semi-urban situation?

[Paul Thompson]

We don't track statements of conflict of interest. We're just aware of the practice. When it happens, that member withdraws from the public hearing.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Would that information, which is not held by the department, be held by the commission? Would the commission have that information? Who has that?