Evidence of meeting #54 for Status of Women in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was workplace.
A video is available from Parliament.
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
From that perspective, we get back to the foundational learning and the authority delegation training. Departments have the role to identify those people—
Conservative
Joyce Bateman Conservative Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Okay, so there's nothing incremental, other than the authority delegation training?
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
It starts there, and it has a pretty important people management component.
Conservative
Acting Director General, Functional Communities, Authority Delegation and Orientation, Canada School of Public Service
Yes. People management and code of values and ethics would amount to that.
Conservative
Joyce Bateman Conservative Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Okay, so you target it.
I would suggest that your statistics probably...well, you had said before there were—
Conservative
Joyce Bateman Conservative Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Oh, what a shame, Madam Chair.
Thank you. It was very interesting.
NDP
The Chair NDP Marie-Claude Morin
I am sorry. Seven minutes go by fast.
Ms. Sgro, it is your turn for seven minutes.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
Thank you very much.
Thank you for coming back.
Do your offerings go to other than the public service?
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
We include some provincial public servants into regional offerings, and this enables us to meet the required target. We try to reach as many public servants as possible, but generally speaking, the focus of the school is the public service.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
Okay. So you don't go out there and enter into the private marketplace. Your focus is pretty much provincial and federal.
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
It's mostly federal. I was using the provincial example as an area where people outside the federal public service take our courses.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
Okay. What would the overall budget be of your school, if I can ask that question?
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
The school's overall budget is roughly—and I don't have my CFO with me—$100 million, of which 55% is based on revenue.
Liberal
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
Exactly.
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
It's centrally funded, A-base. It's money to do the orientation program, the foundational learning, the authority delegation training, as well as other topics. I don't have that total breakdown, but those are the rough numbers.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
Has there been an increase in requests for courses—that is, the harassment side, specifically the issues of sexual harassment in the workplace? Has there been any interest placed in the last couple of months? I'm gathering the fact that we were doing this study.... Has there been a renewed interest from any of our departments federally?
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
We have had some conversation. It is definitely creating an impact. We can't measure that impact yet. We haven't seen the fluctuation in the statistics or the number of offerings we need to create. The reason I'm saying that is that I'd say about 65% of our business volume—we're a school, and we sort of operate like a school—has always been between September and October. We have a lot of fluctuation happening right now, because that's when most of the training at the school is delivered. To try to pinpoint a particular impact would be difficult to do at this time.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
If a manager is found to be harassing an employee, and part of the retribution is having to go to a three- or four-day program specific to these issues of sexual harassment, how long, generally, would it take before the individual—the manager or supervisor or whoever—would be able to get into a program? Would it be a year, six months, three months, or is there a fairly quick turnaround?
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
Our calendar offerings are open enrollment, which means that if particular managers have been identified by a department to take a particular course, they would register to the next available offering. These offerings, as I mentioned earlier, are based on demand. But in particular—for Creating a Respectful Workplace, for example—the bulk of the offerings are given between September and April just because of the learning patterns in government.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
How many people, by and large, do you need in order to be able to put a course on?
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
Generally speaking, as a golden rule, it's around 15 to 20 learners. These numbers differ when we have an organization-to-organization conversation, because often it's packaged in a way that we have more flexibility because it's an organizationally led demand.