Mr. Speaker, the Phoenix payroll system began as a Conservative scheme to cut costs and cut corners by replacing complex federal government payrolls with off-the-shelf software from IBM. The Conservatives decided to operate this new system from Miramichi, New Brunswick for political reasons. The goal was to replace jobs lost due to the removal of the firearms centre even though experts on federal payrolls were not in Miramichi.
The Liberal government went ahead with implementing this ill-conceived scheme despite many warnings of problems. The government rushed ahead with phase 2 of Phoenix even after problems were uncovered with phase 1. The Liberal government removed the old payroll system that was functional without having established that the Phoenix system was working properly.
This summer, the government had to acknowledge that some 80,000 federal public employees had been paid incorrectly or not at all as a result of problems with the Phoenix pay system. Some of us wondered why the government did not start writing cheques. Of course the Government of Canada has the ability to issue cheques. Indeed, every federal employee's first payment comes in the form of a paper cheque.
However, the Liberals assured us that Phoenix would be sorted out by the end of October.
When the Minister of Public Services appeared before the government operations committee on September 19, I asked whether the government was on track to meet that deadline of October 31. The minister assured our committee that the government was on track to meet that deadline. October 31 has come and gone.
On November 16, just last week, the government acknowledged that there were still 18,000 unresolved Phoenix cases from that original backlog. That is nearly one-quarter of the backlog that has still not been fixed.
The government has presented no timeline to deal with those remaining cases in the backlog and it has presented no plan to address the fact that employees will have incorrect figures on their T4 income tax forms if these cases are not resolved by the end of the calendar year, which is now just a few weeks away.
In addition to this backlog, new problems with Phoenix are cropping up every day. The government has decided to say that it is just not meeting its service standard as opposed to admitting that it is in addition to the backlog.
Also, on September 19, the minister said that she would appear again before the government operations committee around October 31 to update us on the government's progress with resolving the Phoenix pay system. Three weeks later and the minister has still not appeared before our committee.
I hope the parliamentary secretary will be able to provide us with some answers this evening.