Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 19th, 2010

[Michelle d'Auray]

If I may, Mr. Chair, I'll start off, and then I'll ask Ms. Cartwright to fill in, because she has been talking to folks about those very issues.

Just on the labour relations side, I would say that we have noted the challenges in populating--if I can put it that way--both sides of the table, for labour and management. Most organizations...and I know in the various departments I was working in, we did make accommodations. We did find the time. We did establish the flexibility so that we could in fact have good discussions on the issues and within a timeframe that made sense for the bargaining agents to be able to participate.

With regard to how managers and employees are finding the implementation of the various pieces of legislation, the changes, I think we are now coming to the point.... It comes a bit to the question the chair asked. We're coming into a maturity of the understanding of the possibilities of the flexibilities, the elements of the various pieces of legislation that were changed.

I would say that, for example, deputy heads are a lot more engaged in the issue of human resource management. They look at integrated planning. They are engaged in making sure their employees have the right tools in the workplace in a way that was not the case before. Not that they were not interested, but it is becoming an integral part and a fairly considerable part of the time that we spend on management issues and on people management issues.

Managers are also now finding the same thing. So it is having an impact throughout our organizations.

Perhaps Susan would want to be a bit more specific.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Madame Cartwright.

[Susan Cartwright]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The engagement sessions that we conducted were in fact with managers, HR professionals, and employees, including several sessions that we held with new public servants. It was clear from the energy at the engagement sessions that people at the working level are in fact very much engaged in what changes PSMA brought about, particularly the Public Service Employment Act.

The involvement of people at the working level tends to be a bit less on the labour relations side, but even there they are very much engaged, seeing real dividends that they describe to us in terms of the advantages of informal discussion and informal conflict management systems. That was one of the fundamental objectives of the PSMA, to bring increasing opportunities to resolve issues informally as close to the workplace as possible.

So yes, at the working level, they're definitely engaged.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Thank you, Madame Cartwright.

I'm going to go to Mr. Saxton.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first questions are for the Auditor General. First, I'm pleased to note you found that the key legislative requirements have been implemented and that generally the entities have met the reporting requirements, as you noted in your opening statements.

In the report you mentioned that some entities have implemented guidance and direction tailored to meet their unique organizational needs. Can you share some of these with us, and also the results achieved?

[Sheila Fraser]

Mr. Chair, I will ask Ms. Bergeron to respond to that question.

[Marie Bergeron, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The way the legislation is organized is to give flexibilities for a department to conduct HR management. Within those flexibilities--for example, asset qualifications--depending on the job they're going to staff, a department might decide on one set of asset qualifications as opposed to another set for a different type of job in another department. That gives you an example of how the legislation will enable individual departments to tailor the requirements to their own environment.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Have there been results achieved to date?

[Marie Bergeron]

Our audit goes down to September 2009. What we saw when we audited was that, yes, departments were starting to use those flexibilities to adapt to their own environment.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

This question is also for the Auditor General. Since the Public Service Modernization Act has been implemented, can you discuss some of the impacts it has made? You mention some of these on page 7 of the report.

[Sheila Fraser]

Thank you, Chair.

Obviously the whole process to modernize the act had a number of objectives, one of which was to give departments more flexibilities and to better equip departments to manage the human resources they needed, rather to use the more lockstep approach that was there before, which was a very rules-based approach. Staffing was found to take a long time. I think there was a lot of frustration in the system with the process. One of the major objectives was to give the management of human resources back to deputy ministers and to get them engaged in it.

As the secretary mentioned, the legislative changes are all in place. Changing the way human resources are managed in the federal government is really a huge cultural change, and it will take time to bring those changes about. We do see indications, as we note in the report, that deputy ministers are more engaged in this area, which is an excellent thing. We do see indications that departments are beginning to use the flexibilities. As well, the labour-management committees have been established.

We did this over a year ago. It was still very early days in this process, but we do see indications that the objectives of the legislation are beginning to take hold. What we would have liked to have seen were more quantitative measures to set out what the objectives were and to track that aspect over time to make sure this initiative is successful.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you very much.

My next questions are for the secretary.

In the Auditor General's opening remarks, she says that the new concept of merit is being applied and that managers are using the new staffing flexibilities. Could you share with us some of the benefits of the shift to a more merit-based promotion system?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Ms. d'Auray.

[Michelle d'Auray]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

A couple of elements. For example, when pools used to be established—and a pool is essentially a group of people who qualify for a set of positions or a generic position—the requirements under the previous legislation and policies were that people were ranked. If you had 10 people in the pool, people were ranked 1 to 10.

To be able to hire someone from the pool or make them an offer, you had to take people in order of rank, whether or not those people were the best fit for the job, which then made for some very difficult situations, where the person was in the number three spot and a job you had to offer them didn't necessarily match. Even though the competencies might, the fit and the experience might not, but you had to hire that person.

Under the new policies, the pool is established, there are 10 people in the pool, and you can hire the person who is the best fit according to the competencies and requirements of the position. So those are greater flexibilities, and that allows the people in the pool to be able to accept different jobs. Because the people in the pool, the employees themselves, were also limited to the job that was put in front of them.

It's a small example, but not an unimportant one, because we do a lot more staffing by pools, by collective staffing, on the basis of generic positions in order to reduce the time to staff, because that has been one of the important flexibilities that have been brought into the legislation.

The other aspect is that you can use pools—I'll continue that example—to staff across the country. You will recall that the national area of selection was also introduced part way through the implementation of the legislation, which broadened—and rightly so—at the request of parliamentarians, access to people across the country to public service jobs. So we now have a broader base and a richer set of potential employees to choose from, but it also has given the manager the flexibility to be able to find the best person for the fit in a more timely fashion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

You've got about 20 seconds.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Can you explain how the training and the consolidation of training and development into the Canada School of Public Service has been beneficial?

[Michelle d'Auray]

Very quickly, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

In about 10.

[Michelle d'Auray]

Ten seconds.

The school now matches the requirements that deputy heads have; therefore, it is demand driven.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

That wasn't too bad.

[Michelle d'Auray]

I'm trying, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Thank you, Ms. d'Auray.

Maybe down the road you'll explain how that pool works. Once you've hired the first two or three people out of the pool, if you're ranked number one but you weren't one of the first three who were hired, what happens? Does the pool get filled by others who will displace you?

[Michelle d'Auray]

Mr. Chair, we do not rank people in the pools now. So if you have 10 people, they are ranked equally.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Thank you.

We're going into the second round, at five minutes a piece.

Monsieur D'Amours.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank you all for being here.

Ms. d'Auray, on the first page of your opening statement, you say that “modernization... is vital to ensuring a high-performing public service.” I was struck by the word “high-performing” because in her opening statement, Ms. Fraser said that “the secretariat had not fully developed a set of performance indicators that would allow it to report on the results of the implementation of changes.”

You want modernization to bring high performance, but it is difficult to determine whether it is performing or not if there are no indicators to justify the results. It is easy to say that things are going well, but how do we go about knowing this, apart from saying it to each other? Systems, evaluation criteria must be applied. We are talking about indicators.

How can you speak of a high-performing public service if you do not even have the means to set up an adequate and concrete performance evaluation method?