Public Accounts Committee on Jan. 28th, 2021

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Okay. It does appear that I have about 30 seconds left, so I'll reserve the remainder of my questions and comments in a more succinct way to our friends from Corrections at the appropriate time, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you so much, Mr. Green.

I will move to our second round of questioning. It's a five-minute round, starting with Mr. Lawrence.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you very much.

I thank my colleagues for their learned questions so far. I've certainly benefited from that.

I would also like to thank our witnesses for the progress they have made and also recognizing that through the pandemic I'm sure they've both had some difficult times, especially Mr. Ossowski working through the borders. I'm sure you're working hard to keep all Canadians safe, so I appreciate that.

That being said, I want to walk through one of the key things, the vetting process, that I think is successful in making sure that we have a workplace that is relatively....

To both the CBSA and also to Corrections, what is your process in making sure that bad actors or bad apples, the people who are perhaps prone to these types of behaviours, do not get into the CBSA or Corrections?

[Anne Kelly]

I can start.

Again, it's very stressful work for us in Corrections, and certainly we've had our challenges during COVID, as well, to keep everyone safe.

In our recruitment, for example, there is a screening process for our correctional officers. Tests are administered, for example, the situational judgment tests and others to make sure we hire the right people. Then they go through a rigorous training program.

Certainly as the commissioner, when we have what we call our correctional officer graduation programs, as much as possible I attend them and I speak with them about the fact that they're peace officers, about respect and ethics and how important they are, and that they serve as role models to the offenders. We definitely want to ensure we hire the best officers we can because we have to do important work with a challenging population, and they absolutely have to be role models to them.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I'll move over to you, Mr. Ossowski.

[John Ossowski]

Very similarly, we spent a lot of time up front screening applicants, certainly for the front-line positions, but for managers as well. We're very big on something called character-based leadership, which comes out of the Ivey Business School at Western University, which is really about the exercise of judgment. We actually assess people. We recruit people. There's a whole interview process around it to make sure at the very beginning that we're getting the people who have the right comportment, if you will, for the work.

Secondly, once they are here it's about the training program. There's a very robust training program for front-line officers that takes close to 20 weeks to complete. Much of it is on campus in our own training facility.

For other training, in terms of creating a respectful workplace, values and ethics, disclosures of wrongdoing, mental health awareness, diversity and race relationships, we've put all of these programs in place and we have very high completion rates. All of them are around 90% or more completion rates so far.

We keep promoting these courses and offering that support to people, so that they understand this is the workplace environment we are in now and we're not dwelling on the past. We are moving forward with deliberate action.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you.

One of the things you have touched upon and Mr. Green also touched upon, is that it's so critical that people speak up.

One of the things I would challenge you on, Mr. Ossowski, with all due respect, is you said that one of the positive signs was that the number of reports of harassment actually declined by 3%. How do you know that actually means there are fewer cases of complaints as opposed to, as it shows in the report, people being fearful of reprisals?

We have really high numbers in both departments of 20% or 30%. How are you validating that the actual numbers of complaints or the actual violations to your policies are declining, as opposed to just the complaints?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Give a very short answer, Mr. Ossowski.

[John Ossowski]

You have to look at the whole picture in terms of the informal activities that are happening, as well as the formal. That gives you sort of the spectrum, for example, of what's going on. The sessions that were happening with my dedicated culture team are continuous engagement, so we've having a fairly good sense—even with our pulse surveys we are doing—of what the tone of the conversation and what the culture of the organization is.

You have to look at the entire spectrum of not just data, but subjective information that we're hearing from staff. People write me emails—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

We will now move on to Mr. Sorbara, for five minutes.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Good morning, everyone.

Obviously, as was stated earlier on Bell Let's Talk today, it's not lost upon me the discussion we're having on the environment that one finds oneself in at the workplace. That environment extends not only to the public sector, but to the private sector across our country. Every Canadian needs to know they can go to work every day—when they leave their families—and that they are free of harassment, free of discrimination and free of any nonsense, if I can use that term.

My first question is for the wonderful folks at the Auditor General's office. I'm looking at page 14 of the report. As a data person and a finance guy, I like to look at numbers, which tend to tell a story. They are sometimes different stories for different people, but nonetheless they tend to tell a story.

In terms of robustness, when I took econometrics in graduate school some 25 years ago, we always talked about the robustness of the data sample. I see that nearly 16,000 employees of the CBSA were asked to participate in the survey and the response rate was 38%. On the Correctional Service of Canada side with the survey of 19,000 employees, the response rate was 28%.

How do we feel about that response rate in terms of the robustness of what comes out afterwards?

[Martin Dompierre]

As you indicated, as we conducted the audit we followed a sort of sound methodology to conduct a survey. We have consulted our experts within the OAG in terms of the sampling approach and methodology around that. We also ensured that these percentages that you referred to were appropriate and we could use them to make the survey results.

We were satisfied with these percentages that we have come to.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

When I think of the CBSA and CSC, these are organizations that have a lot of front-facing individuals who deal with the Canadian public and also people coming into this country, Canadians and non-Canadians. Obviously, I would think that many of these positions that these individuals occupy are very stressful positions. We always want to create an environment that is supportive to these individuals. These are my thoughts when reading over the report and the actions thereof.

Now I'd like to turn first to CBSA, then CSC. How do we improve these response rates, so people feel comfortable filling out these applications or answering these questions that are posed to the employees?

[John Ossowski]

I would just say that we're currently doing another round. The public service employee survey is happening right now and is almost complete. We're already seeing a higher participation rate than we have in the past, which I take as a good sign. We'll probably break 50%, which for us, historically, is a very good number.

I would just say, anecdotally, that any of the negative responses, whatever the participation rate, are something we have to pay attention to. The deliberate actions I have talked about, regardless of the statistical significance of it, are something we will continue to pursue.

[Anne Kelly]

For us, it's all about engagement. On our public service employee survey for 2019, I believe we were the only federal department that increased its participation. We ended up at 48%, which for CSC was a step in the right direction.

For the 2020 public service employee survey, we've set our objective very high. A bit of competition is going on. We're hoping, like my colleague, to exceed a 50% response rate.

I've sent countless messages to the staff. My deputy commissioners in each region are also doing the same thing. This week, all the staff in the regions are invited by each of the regional deputy commissioners. Half an hour is scheduled in their calender. They are going to be asked to complete the survey if they haven't already done so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you.

We will move to our next round of questioning, starting with Mr. Blanchette-Joncas.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have a question for Mr. Dompierre.

As you put it so well in your opening remarks, the first step in getting a complaint dealt with is to make the complaint. You also mentioned that problems with the initial assessment could lead to inconsistency in the decision-making process of dealing with complaints. I want to mention the numbers again, because they are rather alarming: at both the Canada Border Services Agency and Correctional Service Canada, two out of four employees had problems with respect to decisions made in processing complaints about harassment.

The figures for workplace violence complaints are also alarming. More than three out of four employees filed complaints. There's a real problem with the decision-making and complaint handling processes. You also mentioned that this could "...result in employee perception of bias and a loss of confidence in the process."

I am really wondering how employees can feel sufficiently confident to make a complaint when the decision-making process is undermined from the outset.

[Martin Dompierre]

I'm not sure I understand your question, Mr. Blanchette-Joncas.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

What needs to be changed to give people more confidence in the decision-making process for complaints? As you say in your report, at point 1.36:

It may also result in employee perception of bias and a loss of confidence in the process...

But then in your remarks you said that issues that are not reported cannot be resolved.

[Martin Dompierre]

Thank you for that.

If a complaint is to be considered and dealt with appropriately, an initial assessment is required. People need to know that if they file a complaint for investigation, it will be processed properly, given due consideration and correctly assessed.

In the example you gave, the investigators would be required to examine the complaint and determine whether it is consistent with the definition of harassment, for example. After that, the investigators need to document these factors to demonstrate that they have made the right decisions. When we examined the files as part of our work, they did not contain this information.

To return to what you were saying, the complaints have to be processed and given proper consideration if people are to trust the system and file complaints without fear of reprisal. There complaints have to be processed properly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much.

We will now move to Mr. Green.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

In the opening remarks of my friend Mr. Webber, he zeroed in on these departments that were picked but other departments weren't. I think this is an important step forward for us to perhaps look at where else we might want to look, including of course Parliament Hill.

Mr. Dompierre, as a part of your audit you asked CBSA and CSC employees to respond to a survey on three themes: lack of civility and respect, the organizational culture, and reporting harassment without fear of reprisal. You noted that employees in both organizations had serous concerns about these points. Did you note any significant differences in responses among men and women and racialized employees? If yes, what were they?

[Martin Dompierre]

We did not specifically disaggregate the data to demonstrate the comparison you just made. We got the information only as it was presented in the report. We did not specifically analyze that information—male-female, for example, or in other ways.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Is it possible given the data, or is it possible as a follow-up?

[Martin Dompierre]

It could be possible for the future in terms of how we would conduct maybe future audit work—