Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to quickly return to the Phoenix pay system and the pay administration in the public service.
I mentioned last week that the financial commentaries provided by the Auditor General state that 310,000 outstanding pay action requests existed as of March 31, 2022, which is an increase compared with 254,000 in the prior year ending March 31.
While some of these requests involved straightforward actions, as mentioned by the Auditor General when I asked about this last week, and while some examples are the many kinds of bank changes or general inquiries that Mr. Huppé provided us with last week, the AG also noted that “many others involve employees not being paid accurately or on time” and that “the level of outstanding requests has started to rise”.
I share the Auditor General's concern here, and I think probably most of the public service is also concerned.
My question is for Mr. Huppé and the Treasury Board directly. What would be an acceptable number of outstanding pay requests? That is the question I ended with last week.
I was hoping you could provide us with better clarity as to the appropriate levels of these kinds of pay requests, taking into account what the Auditor General mentioned before, which is that some are regular. I am talking about the ones that should be regularly processed, but how many of those are irregular? Of those irregularities, are many of them underpayments or overpayments, or is it both?