Mr. Speaker, I thank my honourable colleague. As the member from the National Capital Region representing the riding of Gatineau, I do not have much to add to what my colleague just said. I can only say that we have experienced the same type of situation and the same frustrations over the past year as a result of the implementation of the Phoenix pay system.
I thank my friend for the constructive tone of his questions and his statement tonight. I want to assure him that resolving the ongoing public service pay issue is not only a priority of the government, but a personal priority. I take these issues very seriously.
I know he would want to stand with me and my government in supporting the hundreds of public servants who are working across the country to resolve pay issues.
With tax season upon us, our focus has been to address potential tax implications, particularly as they relate to overpayments. Employees are being reminded to call the Phoenix call centre to ensure that any overpayments are handled as a priority. Employees have been provided access to detailed information online about all payments they received in 2016. This will help them verify whether the taxable earnings stated on their tax slip are correct.
Public Services and Procurement Canada is continuing to make prompt processing of pay requests a key priority. The goal is to process pay requests within established service standards, which for most transactions is 20 days from the time they enter the public service pay centre.
Here is what is being done. As we get to the end of the backlog, and we are thankfully getting to this situation, compensation advisers at the pay centre are being reassigned to deal with new incoming requests. With this realignment of resources, pay requests will be handled more quickly, wait times will get shorter, and late payments will be cleared out. A particular focus is being put on parental and disability leave requests, which I stress our partners in public sector unions have worked with us and have asked that those categories in particular be prioritized.
Technical enhancements to Phoenix also will allow for faster processing of pay transactions. Calculation of acting payments will soon be automated, which we hope will reduce the workload to a great extent. With more resources and increased efficiency at the pay centre, pay transactions are being handled faster.
We will be more transparent in order to keep employees apprised of progress being made. A new public service pay dashboard will let employees see whether we are meeting service standards and the estimated maximum wait times for different operations.
As always, we continue to work closely with all our partners at the Canada Revenue Agency and the Treasury Board Secretariat. Our government recognizes the serious repercussions that the Phoenix pay problems have had on the lives of public service employees and workers.
As I mentioned, we are making progress toward solving current problems and avoiding future ones.