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 Director General, Functional Communities, Authority Delegation and Orientation, Canada School of Public Service
We design our courses typically for up to 24 participants, and then we calculate that we'll go ahead and offer it when we are around two-thirds full. But as my colleague said, when we're working directly with departments, there is some more flexibility.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
Again, you've been able to offer this to 3,000 out of the 250,000 who work for the public service. Not everybody, and not every department, is necessarily taking advantage of the opportunity to attend the school and take various programs.
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
I can't comment on the departments' decisions. Our job is to make sure that the offerings are in the window and that they're available for them to take. That's sort of our role as a school, to make sure it's there for the taking, but we can't enforce the demand or force a department to absolutely use this course. It's up to them to decide.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
How many other schools, let's say in the Ottawa area, offer programs similar to yours?
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
In terms of schools per se, I don't know of any private schools, but there may be private suppliers that can tailor their learning skills and package information to departments. We don't track what departments hire a particular private sector company to deliver their learning. It's impossible for me to pinpoint exactly how many schools or institutions there are. But the private sector does and can adapt learning strategies to do this.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
How much of the work you do in your offerings refers to the culture or attitude of the respectful workplace?
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
I don't have an exact percentage, but I would say as a ballpark that at the core of their mandate, most of our leadership and professional development courses have the craft of government. That includes creating a respectful workplace as well as promoting the code of values and ethics.
NDP
The Chair NDP Marie-Claude Morin
We are now going to go to the other side of the table to start our second round of questions.
Ms. Young, you have five minutes.
December 6th, 2012 / 10:20 a.m.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Thank you.
I'm sharing my minutes with my colleague, Roxanne. She'll go first.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
I'm not sure whether I heard this correctly. Did you say that your school or your organization operates somewhat like a regular school, whereby you don't offer courses or whatever during the summer? Did I hear something to that effect? I just want to clarify that.
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
No, the offerings are there year-round.
Conservative
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
The bulk of school use is between late August and the end of fiscal year. The school operates 12 months and does have offerings year-round.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
Why does it tend to be late August to the end of the fiscal year? I'm just curious—and then I'll pass the time remaining to my colleague.
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
We don't control the patterns and the departments' spending, but often it more or less follows the flow of having learning plans in place in departments and having their budget allocations to deal with their learning strategies. As well, the summer months are affected by vacations and what not. The pattern in the past has been that the bulk of the volume is during that period.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
Do you feel there would be any cost savings if you offered courses during only part of the year? It seems to be more bulked into one particular part of the fiscal period. Do you feel there would be some cost savings if the school operated within a certain timeframe and perhaps didn't operate for the rest...? Things are being offered on demand and so forth. I'm just wondering if there are some cost savings to be had here.
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
There is demand during the summer, and the way we operate is that most of the instructors are paid per use, so that we don't have the full capacity at the school year-round. We actually get more instructors and more resources available at the school during the busy time, so we adapt to that.
Conservative
Roxanne James Conservative Scarborough Centre, ON
Okay. Thank you very much. I'll just pass the remaining time back to my colleague.
Thank you, Wai.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
I'm just checking. Since we have votes, how much time do we have left, Madam Chair?
NDP
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
That's good. Thank you.
I'm very curious. We've had many different witnesses in front of us for this study. Some of them have been from smaller departments, as you know, and some of them from larger departments. There seems to be a sense from the people representing some of the smaller departments that they're kind of all alone, and that they only have these very small one-person or seven-person units looking after sexual harassment. There is a lack of awareness of the courses or training or supports that the federal government has for them as a department.
Can you tell me about your marketing or your outreach strategies, and how you market yourself to other departments, particularly the smaller ones, to let them know that you are there to support them?
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
The school is definitely there to support departments, small or big. Our marketing approaches are often tailored to the needs that we hear from the community. I don't think we marginalize the smaller departments. They're definitely welcome to use the school.
The marketing approach does not differentiate its efforts based on size. There are bigger departments that have a mass of employees, and naturally—we don't measure if it's a byproduct of marketing or not—the bigger departments are marginally bigger users of the school just because of the numbers.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Obviously that makes common sense. I guess what I'm trying to say is if we were to do an analysis, for example, on where sexual harassment complaints are, and compare that with the size of the department and the various courses they have or have not requested their people to attend, might we find a correlation between whether attendance is encouraged and/or even mandatory for those smaller departments and/or incidence of harassment complaints?
Acting Vice-President, Learning Programs, Canada School of Public Service
Well, I can't talk to what a department.... From the school's perspective, our job would be to make sure to be there to complement and to respond to the demand, following the analysis of a department. If a particular department felt there was a particular need within the department, we would then sit with them to see, organization to organization, how the school could best support their learning needs.