Debates of Feb. 26th, 2018

Opposition Motion—Phoenix Pay System

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, make no mistake. The choice that our government faced was not between going to a new system and keeping the old system; it was a new system or no system. At that point, we forged ahead and very quickly realized what we were dealing with.

With respect to the question, I cannot overemphasize how much we sympathize with public servants, how committed we are to resolving these issues for them, how apologetic we are that we, as a government, partisanship aside, have put them and their families in an untenable situation. I encourage public servants to speak with their managers. We have provided compensation for out-of-pocket expenses and there are emergency pay services. We are working with unions on discussing compensation because of all of these other factors.

However, let me assure everyone that we have literally left no stoned unturned. If anybody has a suggestion, I am completely open to hearing it.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is very clear that the minister has not read her government's released ATIPs and OPQs, so I will point out a few items.

She blames the previous government for Phoenix and she mentions the backlog. Her government received on December 23, as part of the transition activities checklist, a note saying to clear the backlog before going live. About a year ago, the minister's deputy minister sent a letter to her, stating that one of the main problems with the Phoenix disaster was the backlog not being cleared.

The minister talked about capacity issues and layoffs. Here is an OPQ from her parliamentary secretary saying that there were internal project assessments and independent third-party assessments done and both assessments came to the conclusion there was sufficient capacity. The minister blames the layoffs of staff, but her own department says that is not the issue.

A further OPQ shows that between the Liberals pulling the trigger on Phoenix in January and July of 2016, when they were finally forced to agree to an emergency committee meeting, guess how many job postings they had for pay advisers? They had one, and they had it for 10 days only. I do not place any merit in what the minister has been saying.

When the minister appeared at the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates in November, the Conservatives asked, in a non-partisan way, along with the NDP, for help for MPs and their constituency offices so they could help their constituents with Phoenix. At that meeting, she promised that by December 15 she would get back to us on this issue. December 15 came and went. We have written letters and sent emails to her, and there has been nothing.

When is the minister going to get back to us in providing the constituency support she promised us in November?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I can assure everyone that when Phoenix was implemented, the 40,000-case backlog existed because there was no other choice but to move forward with that pay system at the time. There was simply nothing to go back to and we did not have people to run it, even if there was. There were 700 people who had retired, been laid off, or moved on to other positions.

With respect to the offer to provide help for MP offices, I can assure the member we are working on this. We are trying desperately not to divert resources from the backlog of transactions. We are intentionally trying not to interfere with existing processes, whether they be union grievances or existing relationships employees have with managers. We recognize we have to support MPs and give them the most up-to-date information. In the very near future, I look forward to advising MPs of what we have come up with.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, since taking over the reins of government, we have had to build upon a faulty system, as well as deal with a number of non-union agreements. In fact, there were no union agreements under the Harper government. We had to deal with that, and that had to be factored into the Phoenix system. At the end of the day, as the minister has pointed out, we are very concerned about ensuring civil servants are treated in the best way possible with regard to pay and benefits.

If a civil servant is frustrated by the system, what would the minister recommend that individual do?

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to collective agreement implementation, it was a very exciting time for our government in making good on our promise to work with public servants, to renew our relationship with unions, and to negotiate long outstanding collective agreements. We negotiated in good faith. We attempted to implement these collective agreements in good faith, but as I said, it added hundreds of transactions to an already laboured and clunky pay system we had inherited.

If public servants are experiencing pay system problems, I encourage them, first of all, to speak with their managers. I encourage them to access emergency pay, to access payment for out-of-pocket expenses, to speak with their pay advisers in Miramichi, and to take any step they think necessary. They should talk to their unions. There are a number of avenues of recourse for our public servants. Once again, I apologize that they even have to take them.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this whole disaster reminds me so much of Cortés in 1519, who took a fleet of Spaniards to the coast of Mexico and on arriving, before they found the golden treasures, burned all the boats. There was no going back.

The Phoenix pay disaster was set up like that, so partisanship should be set aside. This was a bomb left to us by the previous government. The Liberals have not defused it.

Why are we not talking about suing IBM? We had a system that worked. Federal civil servants were paid on time all the time, and no one thought it was a big success when it happened. How did we privatize paying our civil servants in such a way that we keep paying the people who have ripped us off because the contract says every time we go back for more, we pay through the nose. Sue IBM and get our own civil servants to fix this mess.

[Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member that this was an unequivocal disaster and a bomb that was left to us by the former government.

We have to understand the scope. It is imperative to understand that the contract with the provider was extremely narrow in scope, and we have been holding the provider to task on everything it was supposed to deliver. I can assure the member that Phoenix will be fixed by public servants. It will be fixed by the hard-working experts in our midst who are working tirelessly to resolve this issue.

We have an ongoing relationship with the vendor. The sole purpose is to ensure that we hold it to the terms of the contract, and it is very willing to help us as much as it possibly can. It is partnership, whether it be with unions, public servants, vendors, or other parties, that will get this resolved.

I encourage, once again, that we all work together, because we are all impacted by this issue.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Edmonton West.

I want to thank my NDP colleague from Jonquière for bringing this motion forward. It is important that we recognize that public servants across the country are still suffering as a result of the Liberal government's inability to address the mess it caused by prematurely hitting the start button on the Phoenix pay system. Like many of my colleagues in this House, my office has heard those terrible stories of families and retirees, hard-working citizens of our nation, who have had their lives severely damaged by the government's implementation of the Phoenix system before it was ready for rollout.

This is a basic issue. As the member for Jonquière herself said, surely one of the basic tenets of the administration of government, which the Liberal Party claims to be good at, is that it pays its people on time for the work they do. Surely that is one of the basic things one can expect from a government, yet for year one of the government, for year two of the government, and now for year three of the government, this has been an abject failure of the party and the government. The failures of the government have played havoc with people's lives and their finances. We know now that this problem will be compounded for years to come as employees' retirement situations are left in the lurch, thanks to the mistakes being made and not rectified today.

As my colleague's motion addresses, the government was completely oblivious to the warnings sent out by departmental staff and the unions to not move forward with Phoenix. In fact, the previous Conservative government, as I mentioned in my questions and comments, held off on hitting the start button more than once because of similar warnings. After starting the system prematurely, the Liberal government continued on its clueless path, and that has now created this runaway train.

There is plenty of evidence to bear this out, much of it in the Auditor General's report released before Christmas. The Auditor General reported that it took the Liberals four months to recognize that there were serious pay problems, and it took about a year to have a better understanding of the situation. By the time the Liberals woke up to the mess they had made, the number of public servants in departments and agencies using the Miramichi pay centre who had outstanding pay requests quadrupled to more than 150,000.

Until about a year after Phoenix was launched, the government was still responding to pay problems willy-nilly as they arose. The Auditor General reported that by last summer, which was almost two years into the Liberals' mandate, the Liberals still had no road map to deal with the problems they themselves had created. The problems grew to the point that as of June 2017, unresolved errors in pay amounted to over half a billion dollars. That is half a billion dollars of unresolved pay amounts.

The evidence does not stop there. Let us look at the Liberals' ineptitude in reviewing the system-related issues with Phoenix. The system has about 200 custom programs to handle some of the 80,000 federal government pay rules and to work with departmental human resources systems to process pay. The government determined that it needed to analyze all 200 of these programs to identify the system-related sources of pay errors. However, the government started its analysis only in March 2017, more than a year after the pay problems started to be reported, and by last fall, it had analyzed only six of the 200 custom programs. That is not good enough. It is not good enough at all.

To make the situation abundantly clear, I will cite from the Auditor General's report:

Public Services and Procurement Canada and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat did not recognize early enough that they needed a comprehensive governance structure to resolve pay problems and develop a sustainable solution. Public Services and Procurement Canada initially responded to pay problems on its own and did not fully involve departments and agencies in developing a plan to resolve pay problems.

The Auditor General found that 16 months after the pay problems first arose, there was still no comprehensive governance structure to resolve the underlying causes of the problems. In contrast, as my hon. colleagues in the NDP have indicated, Queensland Health, a government department in the Australian state of Queensland, which had similar problems with a pay system, put in place a comprehensive governance structure within four months of the pay problems arising. There were 16 months of non-response from the current Liberal government versus a four-month response in Queensland, Australia.

The Liberals' lack of awareness and the complete lack of willingness to address this mess is not only astounding but is a complete and utter failure of competency that is hurting many thousands of public servants and their families.

Today's motion is a reminder that the Liberals are still, unfortunately for this country, floundering on this file, while public servants' lives and the lives of their families continue to be irreparably damaged. So many of them have reached out to their members of Parliament for assistance, really as a last resort. However, I must report in this place that our offices have received little by way of support from the government. In November, as my hon. colleague for Edmonton West has already indicated, the minister said that she was willing to help MPs' offices by providing specific resources for the Phoenix cases pouring in every week. However, after months of no response, we learned that the additional resources amount to Liberal staffers taking down details in the minister's office. That is not good enough by a long shot.

We still have these outstanding cases, and I am sure that if we were to add the cases of our NDP and Liberal colleagues on top of what my Conservative colleagues know, that number would rise significantly. There are 300 cases among the Conservative caucus alone. I daresay that it is the tip of the iceberg. It is another example of how the Liberals promised more support but failed to deliver.

Therefore, today, in the spirit of holding the government to account on this file and not letting the voices of Phoenix victims go silent in the House, I and my colleagues will be supporting this motion, and I sincerely hope that members on the government side do the same.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

I will not be asking him or his party for any personal recommendations for software or anything else, but I will admit that he made an excellent point in his speech that the Liberals are the ones who hit the start button.

Does the member sincerely believe that we can get this blue-blooded government to admit that it is responsible for this problem?

When the government agrees to pay financial compensation, can this be considered to be a fine and that the government is acknowledging its mistake?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is correct. The current government is the one that hit the start button on the system. The government decided to implement this system, even though it was not ready.

It is very clear that all the warning signs were there, the warning signs that meant the previous government, which did initiate this process and that is something I want to be clear on, declined to start the implementation because it knew better based on the warnings of experts and public servants, yet the current government does not show a scintilla, not a speck, of responsibility taking or apologizing for its mistakes. It apologizes for what it says are other people's mistakes, but not for its own mistakes. This is classic Liberal government subterfuge.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Mr. Speaker, as parliamentary secretary, I am proud that the Prime Minister has given me the opportunity to work on solutions to this problem. I have a question for my colleague from my perspective as a resident of the national capital, as the member of Parliament for Gatineau, and as a citizen of this city.

Does my colleague across not understand that he sounds like the arsonist who complains when the fire department shows up? Does he think residents of the national capital region do not remember his dreary DRAP program, his steadfast refusal to negotiate with public sector unions for three years? It was three years without a collective agreement.

Does he not remember the order from his office that $70 million in savings must be realized from the pay system? I sat here and listened to this member moralize and lecture the House for 10 straight minutes. Does he not realize that the citizens of Gatineau and the national capital region, as well public servants all over this country, expect, want, and demand that this person take responsibility for the problem and time bomb he left them?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that was vaguely not Churchillian.

I am proud of my record in government. I am proud that I led the program that put the budget in balance, which the Liberals squandered in five seconds flat as soon as they had the reins of power.

I ask the hon. member to consider his words carefully. The hon. member is on the side of the chamber that means he is in government and responsible for activities. The Liberals are in their third year of being in government and they are still saying that things are other people's fault or happened before their term. When are they going to take responsibility, show leadership, and pay employees on time?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, normally I start by saying it is a pleasure to rise to talk about a bill, a subject, or a motion, but I cannot say that this time. As we have heard repeatedly, it is well into two years of the Phoenix fiasco. It is a disgrace that we are still chatting about it.

Earlier, in a question, I brought up a commitment made by the minister, which she promptly blew off, to provide resources to the constituency offices to help people with the Phoenix disaster. She waxed on eloquently, saying that employees should talk to their managers, their supervisors, or this person or that.

I want to give a personal, human example of why we need the assistance and how the government continues to let down Canadians and public servants.

There is a lady in my riding, whose name is Sebastienne Critchley. I will read part of her letter. She says that on April 2016, she took leave without pay for medical reasons. She says that her pay should have been stopped and was not, and she received an overpayment. She notified her manager, as was requested, to try to resolve the issue. She returned to work in June, reduced her hours, and continued to be paid full time. She took additional leave without pay in July 2016, and continued to be paid.

She took the right steps. She told her manager and supervisor. Nothing happened.

In October, she did not receive a paycheque. There was no notice, just no pay one day. It had been clawed back for the overpayment.

In November 2016, she went on maternity leave and had her son, Logan, who she brought in to my office. I realize Logan is probably only about a year old, but I would like to say hello. She said they had spent over three weeks in neonatal care. The time she should have spent with her son was instead spent in a hospital bed and later in the hallway of intensive care calling and trying to get a record of employment so she could receive an income during this stressful period.

She was told at the time that it would take six months. She went on and talked to a different pay adviser about the overpayment, and he suddenly stopped responding to her. She called back again, and she was told it was $7,500 that she was overpaid, and then $22,000, so approximately $30,000 in total. Then she was told she was just a category three, the lowest priority, and therefore, they would not even take a message to have someone call her back.

In February 2017, she received a T4, followed by an amended T4. Now those who have been following the Phoenix saga for so long will remember that in the emergency committee, which the Conservatives forced in July 2016 and the Liberals fought against, Conservative members brought up the T4 issue. We were told by the deputy minister to not worry because it was all in hand. Apparently, it was not all in hand.

Her letter continues, saying she began working with a compensation adviser who advised her that her overpayment was now $30,000 because Phoenix had generated additional payments of roughly $15,000, which were never actually paid to her. Because her T4 was so low, she had credits she was not able to use so she passed them over to her husband. Then her child tax credit was calculated incorrectly, because of the T4 issue.

She estimates she has spent over 200 hours attempting to resolve this, taking time away from caring for her children, having late nights, attempting to analyze the information. She has had depression and a lack of sleep. She decided to review her pay stubs. Imagine her surprise when the pay stubs she had printed off with each pay, compared to the new ones available to her, did not match.

The letter goes on and on. She says she lays awake at night fearing that she will end up repaying $30,000 when it should have been $21,000. She went on maternity leave and indicated that she wanted to pay her benefits coverage in advance with post-dated cheques. She tried, and so did her team leader and manager, to find out how much she needed to pay. She finally went on leave without that information. When she came back, she had a letter stating that if she did not pay in advance, her benefits coverage would not cover the period she was off and she needed to repay any benefits. It was several hundreds dollars she did not have, because she is currently being asked to pay back approximately $9,000 she never received.

She said she went back to work September 5, and on September 26 she received an email from the agent who was actually working on the file saying he would have information for her later that week. On October 3, she followed up and there was no answer. On October 5, she received an email asking if she had reviewed her pay stubs, as if it was somehow her responsibility. On October 12, she sent another message asking for this information. Then on October 16, she said that despite numerous requests, she had no response whatsoever.

Ms. Critchley came into my office. I saw this letter and she was called to my office so that we could meet face to face and try to help her. I realize this is a disaster and there are lots of other people trying to get their pay fixed, so I took it upon myself to say that we were going to have the deputy ministers in committee and I would personally ask them to take this on.

We actually had to filibuster at committee to get the minister to show up to talk to us about Phoenix and about what the plan was going to be to fix it. We got no information out of that, but we did get a commitment from her in November that, by December 15, they would have a plan on how MPs could help victims of Phoenix. Now we have seen the minister stand up and say that MPs should not do that as it would be interfering and that they should let the managers do it. However, we have seen very clearly that the managers are not capable.

I want to continue on with Ms. Critchley's case. I went to Deputy Minister Lemay and Deputy Minister Linklater who were in charge of the Phoenix disaster, for lack of a better word. I asked them to please help this one person. There are 150,000 people affected by Phoenix. I realize I cannot help them all, but I wanted to help this one lady in my riding because she was not getting help. I went to the very top and was promised that someone would get in touch with her.

This letter has four pages of issues. She spoke to someone and the email back from the government department said that she should speak to her manager to request the overtime that she was owed. It came back to me. That was enough for me, so I went back to the deputy minister. I asked Ms. Critchley to keep me copied on all correspondence. I have them here. It is about 58 emails back and forth. We are into another year and the T4s are still incorrect, and now I have more emails.

This just goes to show that we cannot fluff it off and tell people to go to their managers. The MPs are here for a reason. They are here to help those affected by Phoenix. It is not enough to make a promise and say that they will get back to us on how they will support the MPs and then just take off, ignore emails and letters sent to the minister, and have the minister stand in the House and say it is interfering if the MP is trying to help someone else. That is disgraceful. The minister made a promise. She should keep that promise and give the resources to the members of Parliament to help their constituencies.

I want to turn to the Phoenix pay system itself. The Liberals will blame the former Conservative government. They look over the fact that they were warned in advance by the unions. We have documentation from January 2016 of the unions warning them that the pay system was not ready. Going back a few months to summer 2015, when the PSPC wanted to start Phoenix, the Conservative government said that it was not ready. We have seen the documents that said the training had not been finished, and that there were lots of errors in the pay system. The Conservative government said, “No. Go back and get it working properly.” The unions said it was not working.

At committee, the current deputy minister told us that the government had never spoken to the union, and then backtracked when presented with the facts.

Of course the Liberals are going to blame the Conservatives, even though the Liberal government knew that it was not ready and went ahead. They are going to blame the bureaucrats. We heard it today that the Liberals were told to go ahead. However, the Gartner report that went to the Treasury Board very specifically said the pay system was not ready. If we wanted a smoking gun, that is the perfect example because it went to the Treasury Board. The Liberal government said it did not pass it on to PSPC, as it did not know. However, the government knew about it.

They are going to blame the vendors like IBM and PeopleSoft.

It is very clear that the blame for the Phoenix fiasco sits with the Liberal government. The Liberals talk about the backlog, but we have documents showing that the government was told in advance, on December 15, as part of the pay process to clear the backlog. A year later, Deputy Minister Lemay writes a letter to the minister saying that the problems of Phoenix were caused by not clearing the backlog.

Also, we have documents to the government stating very clearly all the issues, such as problems with pay changes and problems where the Coast Guard said it was having a 50% failure rate in December. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans stated the same thing, very clearly, right to the government. The Liberal government knew it was there.

When the Phoenix problem started rolling out in January, which was the first wave, in February at committee we warned the government. The minister at the time said there were only 77 cases. We knew it was a lot bigger and the problem still continues.

The biggest problem is that the government will not take it seriously. The current government will not make a plan to help Canadians and to help MPs help their constituents. The government is doing nothing and that is the problem.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to asking my colleague from Gatineau this same question. After all, he asked for proof that the government was aware of the problems with the Phoenix pay system.

I have a memo provided by the Treasury Board, dated January 13, 2016, a little more than a month before the Liberals pressed the metaphorical big red button. It is a readiness assessment of Phoenix, and it has such gems as “System readiness is questionable out of our 25 outstanding defects 10 are still critical and not fixed”; “Increase in overpayment at the moment without the Phoenix implementation, what will be the impact later”; “On the fix there will not be any testing before go live”; “What is the contingency plan, not serious of not having this.” Here is another gem, from Public Safety Canada, which says, “Testing results issue: 30% errors not satisfactory. Issues with conversion.”

Members get the picture. I am sure this access to information request is a great long read in The Ottawa Citizen for the member for Gatineau.

At the risk of posing a rhetorical question, I am wondering if the member who just spoke can explain why the government refuses to do what governments should do, which is take responsibility and fix the problem.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that truly is the question of the day. I remember posing the question about a year ago to the previous minister and making the statement that if she had spent half the effort on fixing Phoenix as she did on blaming others, we would have had the Liberal Phoenix fiasco fixed by now. We have seen it from day one, when we brought this up. Previous Minister Foote stated that there were only 77 issues and there was not a big worry, even though we knew it was much higher. We have documents showing there were 40,000 outstanding backlogs.

At committee, we saw the Treasury Board president, with his deputy ministers, say that it was a great success, and that the Liberals would not go with the February 26 rollout unless it was 99% ready. They ignored the warnings. Then, when Phoenix blew up, they denied there was an issue. It took an emergency committee meeting in July for them to actually act. It looks like that meeting was the emphasis for them to start hiring some staff. It boggles the mind why the government ignored the problem and still, to this day, is more intent on blaming others than taking responsibility and fixing the problem.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my friend opposite from the Conservative Party of Canada. The pay transformation initiative began in 2008. It moved through many steps until 2015, when it was recommended that we implement it. That much is clear and I want my NDP colleague to know that.

For two years we have been working on the mess they left us. For two years we have accepted the very serious responsibility of fixing the problems we inherited with the Phoenix pay system. We have never shirked our responsibility to fix the Phoenix pay system. We have accepted it.

The question I would like to ask my colleague is the following: what share of responsibility is he willing to accept? Since he is speaking on behalf of his party, is he prepared to accept any responsibility for developing the Phoenix pay system? Is he prepared to accept some responsibility and, if yes, to apologize?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this goes to the crux of the issue. We are looking for a plan to help our constituents. We are looking for a plan to help the thousands affected by the Liberal Phoenix fiasco, and all we get from the government is, “Will you accept the blame?” It again goes to the question that if the Liberals put half the effort into fixing the problem as they do into blaming others, we could have solved this issue a year ago.

The evidence is clear. The Liberals went ahead when it was not ready. They knew it was not ready. They have a problem, and instead of fixing it, it appears they are intent on blaming.

This is no different than the issue with inviting a convicted attempted assassin to meet with the Prime Minister. It is someone else's fault. Maybe they should make that person the head of Phoenix. Maybe that person would get a bit more work done.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Before resuming debate, I want to remind the hon. members not to talk too loudly because it makes it difficult to hear the question or the answer, regardless of which side it is coming from.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for North Island—Powell River.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.

I hope that the House will have the patience to indulge me for one short moment. This past week in my riding, I was honoured to spend a few moments at two stops of the Wounded Warrior Run in B.C. These folks ran all the way from Port Hardy to Victoria to talk about the challenges that so many veterans and first responders face. They are fundraising to make sure that they can provide immediate support. I deeply appreciate their dedication, their vigorousness in the run, and their commitment to the people who rush in when others are rushing out. I just want to take a moment to express my appreciation for them.

Today, we are talking about something that is really a fundamental issue. It is about paying employees on time. It is about making sure that employees get the pay they deserve for the work they do. The most important thing we must do in this debate today is recognize that our public service workers are still doing their work every day, and this is a tremendous testament to their dedication to this country. They are still showing up, often not knowing whether they are going to get paid, and whether they are going to be paid less or overpaid. I just cannot say enough about all those people. I thank them for continuing their amazing work even in this very precarious environment.

I am hearing a lot of partisanship in this place today, and we need to let go of that. We need to let go of blame. We need to get moving on action.

The reality is that people in this country are refusing position changes, promotions, or parental leave because they are afraid they will not get paid. Think about that, Mr. Speaker. There are people in this country who are making decisions on whether or not to have children. People are afraid they will not get paid if there is any change to their employment.

This system was put in place because it was meant to save $70 million a year. Now we are over $400 million in trying to fix it, and 73% of federal employees are struggling under this issue. That is close to 200,000 workers in this country. At the end of the 2017 audit period, 49,000 employees were still waiting to have pay requests processed, after having waited more than a year.

The reality on the ground is that often there is no compensation for shift work. Overtime is being recorded or paid improperly. Income tax is being calculated incorrectly. Delays are happening in pension payments. Employees are getting overpaid, underpaid, or not paid at all.

I remember one constituent telling me about working in the same position for over 20 years and suddenly that full-time job is being paid as a part-time job. This person keeps showing up and hoping that this will get fixed.

The result is incredible stress for workers and their families. We cannot leave that out of this conversation. Families are in incredibly precarious positions because they are not getting their compensation.

I am thankful that we are having this important discussion today. I want to talk about some people in my riding. This is so important, because it is a human issue. People in this country are struggling.

I want to talk about my constituent Graham. He worked with DFO for over 32 years and retired in 2016. He was expecting to be paid his severance pay, and he has been asking for it since 2016. He was told it was being processed. He called again in early 2017 and was told that he was supposed to fill out a form that he had never heard of before, and he had to fill it out online. Graham is not really comfortable working online and was very distressed that nobody had even spoken to him about this form. He finally figured it out and on May 4, 2017, with the help of a local financial adviser, he submitted the form. It is now February 2018, and Graham is told that it is still being processed. This is somebody who dedicated 32 years of his life to this job and to this country, and he is now being told that he still has to wait.

Then there is David, who worked for DFO from 2001 to 2016. David received a pay increase in 2014, but it never appeared on his pay. Now he is owed for the two-year period and still has not received that. He has called numerous times since leaving in 2016, and he has always been told that his file is being processed. He just called again last week and was advised that no one has been assigned to his file yet, nor has anyone looked at it. He is to call back in the next few weeks for yet another update.

The reality is that this is causing him and his family significant emotional and mental stress. It is important to recognize that people who are trying to do their job are being forced to not only do their job, but try to fight for their pay. I am pretty sure that this is not what they are supposed to be doing and they should not be asked to do that. David just wants to see this resolved and move on. There is over two years of money owed to him for that pay increase.

Then we have Scott, who worked for DFO for 36 years. When I started here, we knew that the Coast Guard station in Comox was going to be shut down. We fought hard not to have that happen, but unfortunately it did. After all those years of service, Scott was asked to go to Victoria and help change it over. He did all that work, and then he went back to Comox. He is now working for the Department of National Defence.

It is important to know that Scott is still being paid as an employee of DFO. That has not been fixed yet. He also earned a small pay increase, and that is still not being given to him. Recently, Scott went online to track his case and noted 26 outstanding items needing to be processed under his employee number. This is two years of dealing with this pay system. He gets zero earnings sometimes, and other times he gets huge lump payments. His child tax benefit has been hugely impacted by this, because he was overpaid and then underpaid. This is incredibly stressful for his family.

Then there is Stacey, who has a mortgage. She is a single mom supporting her family and doing the best she can. She is now two annual increment payments behind. That was a large part of how she was going to pay the mortgage, and she still has not received it. Again, she is going back and forth between the HR team and the pay centre, and being told to go back again. She is trying to find time in her busy work schedule, where she is dedicated to working for the people of this country, and she does not have time for calling, fighting this fight, and filling out numerous forms. She lives off debt, as she does not have the money to support her family because the government has not fixed this.

These are the realities on the ground. I want to make sure that people in my riding of North Island—Powell River know what our party is asking for today, which is this:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government committed a gross error in judgement when it operationalized the previous Conservative government’s Phoenix pay system over the clear objections of both the affected unions and departmental staff, and that the House call on the government to: (a) pay all employees correctly and on time, every time, for the work they do; (b) exempt those who have been overpaid by Phoenix from having to pay back the ‘gross’ amount, despite actually receiving a substantially lower ‘net’ amount; (c) compensate those in the public service who have experienced damages from Phoenix, both financial and otherwise; and (d) publicly apologize to all of those who have endured hardship as a result of the government's error.

This is a reasonable request. This is a request that honours the realities on the ground of families that have lost so much. I have had constituents tell me stories about having to borrow a tremendous amount of money just to meet their basic needs. Constituents have had to eat at friends' houses, and communities are coming together to support these people, but it is completely unacceptable that they are being asked to do this.

Many business owners have said that if they ever did this, they would be charged and held accountable. How is it that there are two sets of rules for small businesses and for the government?

We ask the government to do the right thing, honour the people who work for us every day, make sure they are paid, and fix this fiasco.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Mr. Speaker, where this motion succeeds is in identifying what we need to do to solve the problems created by the system the previous government left us.

However, what we find so troubling and absurd about the wording in the motion moved by my colleague from Jonquière is the presumption that there is any evidence whatsoever that the government acted against the recommendation of those responsible for the Conservatives' system.

I will ask the NDP member the same question I asked my colleagues from Jonquière and New Westminster—Burnaby: can she produce any evidence whatsoever that the government acted against the advice it got from the public service? Her colleagues could not.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, just so the member knows, my riding is called North Island—Powell River. It is a beautiful riding with amazing people who work for the Department of National Defence, who work for DFO, and are not getting paid. If that is not evidence enough for this House to step up and do the right thing, then I am really shocked.

The member referred to the motion as absurd. This is not an absurd motion. This is a motion based on the realities that workers are facing in this country. People are losing their homes. That is not absurd. That is outrageous. This House and the government are not standing up and getting this fixed. One constituent said to me, “Where are the people who just write the cheques? I understand that the system is broken, but we just need to be paid.”

When children are not getting fed, when houses are being lost, there is something significantly wrong. The government can say as much as it likes that it is putting systems in place, but I have people who have not been paid for months. That is totally unacceptable.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have been to Powell River several times. It is a beautiful area.

I spoke previously about the work done in committee by me and her colleague the member for Regina—Lewvan. We had a commitment from the government in November to have resources by December 15 for members of Parliament so they could help those affected by the Phoenix issue. The government said that is not a priority and people should just call their managers. I wonder if my colleague believes that these people affected by Phoenix should simply call their manager, or the government should fulfill its commitment stated in November to have resources by December 15 for members of Parliament to help those affected by Phoenix.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely agree that we need to do something fundamental. In my office alone since this started we have had over 50 cases. That may not seem like a lot but I know of offices that have had well over 200 cases. The reality is that we need to be providing the resources so that people can get the help.

When I talk about the stories in my riding, this is the challenge. We have workers who are being told to go to this office, that office, this other office. They are trying to work the offices off each other so that they can get their issues put forward a lot faster. That is a lot of time for workers to have to engage those different places and try to get them to leverage one another so that they can get action on their file.

We have to take a moment here to recognize that we need to serve the people who are facing this challenge, not serve the people who are incredibly responsible for it.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for that spot-on speech based on facts and the real-life experiences of the men and women who work for our country but get no respect from this Liberal government.

I would like to begin by saying we can all agree that the government's and the state's primary purpose is to ensure public safety. As the people responsible for the common good and communal harmony, the most important thing we can do is ensure that our fellow citizens live in safe communities, can send their children to school, can go to work, and can be safe, at work and on the street. I think we can all agree on that.

A government's second responsibility is delivering public services. What do people in our cities, towns, and villages need? They need doctors and nurses, schools, universities, and professional training. They also need people to ensure public safety, including police officers, military personnel, public servants who inspect food to make sure we do not get sick, and scientists who conduct research to make sure our medications are safe. All such people who provide these public services are part of the civil service.

Public service employees are of course at the core of our actions and our mission as a government. Once the objectives of that mission are set and we have determined how we want to live as a society, what kind of justice system and equality we want, and how we can tackle poverty, we adjust our taxes accordingly to figure out how much we need to meet those objectives. I would say that this is one of the fundamental differences between the left and the right. On the left, we set social goals and then we make sure we have sufficient tax revenues to meet those needs, not the other way around, as people on the right tend to do.

Once the objectives have been set and public services have been put in place, the government needs to treat those who are working for society as a whole, its public servants, properly. Right now, those workers are not getting the respect they deserve. The rights of those that the government put on the front lines to make sure that it is taking positive action and moving society forward are currently being violated. These people are dealing with horrible situations. They have been under stress for years because of the incompetence of government officials, the incompetence of successive governments, and today because of the incompetence of the Liberal government. It is important to recognize the scope of the problem caused by the Phoenix pay system.

I thank my colleague from Jonquière for putting this issue on the agenda in an NDP opposition motion in order to remind the government of the urgent need to act. This situation has been going on for far too long. A total of 193,000 people across the country are affected. Nearly 200,000 people are not being paid properly for the work that they do. In some cases they are not being paid enough, while in others they are being paid too much. It may seem strange to say that it is a problem that people are being paid too much, but I will come back to that. The fact that this issue has not been resolved is a real problem, and it is getting worse as time goes on. It is extremely problematic, particularly at tax time, which is coming up soon. This can lead to a lot of extremely problematic situations.

Nearly 75% of members of the federal public service are victims of the Phoenix pay system. I say “victims” because these people are actual victims. They serve us all. They are following the orders of this government to carry out work that is important to us and we are incapable of paying them correctly. Canada is a G7 nation, but we are coming across as a banana republic. There are people who have to remortgage their home because they are not getting paid. There are people who have to max out their credit cards because they do not know when their next paycheque will come or whether they will get paid enough or paid properly for the number of hours worked. Collective agreements are being breached even though the federal government has a legal obligation to pay its employees on time and for the hours and work that were completed.

What will happen to all those people who have taken out bank loans to pay their rent and buy food and who must repay them and pay interest on their loans and credit cards? Why should they have to pay for the government's mismanagement and incompetence? Why are we asking the men and women who serve us to continue dealing with these absolutely appalling situations? This has been going on for two years. The government continues to tell us that things are coming along.

Last June, $520 million in remuneration was not paid out because of Phoenix pay system errors. Last June, we owed public servants $520 million, and this amount keeps growing. The problem is not being fixed. The ministers have changed, but there is still no solution. This is a monumental farce. We were supposed to save $70 million a year with the Phoenix pay system, but we have wasted $1 billion trying to solve the problem. Everyone agrees that it will take years to fix. The Auditor General himself said so.

How much will this cost Canadian taxpayers? How much will this cost Quebec taxpayers? Some people are saying $4 billion to $5 billion.

How can we calculate that figure? We can calculate it because there is a precedent. Surprisingly, this precedent comes from another Commonwealth country. In 2010, the health department of the state of Queensland in Australia decided to use a pay system invented and run by IBM to pay its 80,000 health workers. It was an instant catastrophe. They ran into the same problems we are seeing here with the Phoenix pay system, including pay errors, missing pay, incorrect amounts, underpayments, and overpayments.

It is mind-boggling that before implementing and launching the Phoenix pay system, the Canadian government never contacted Queensland state officials in Australia to find out what happened and what problems they encountered. This was reported by CBC/Radio-Canada this week. The people of Queensland are utterly stunned and bewildered to hear that the Canadian government forged ahead blindly, without performing any checks or calling the Australian government or the Queensland government. The head of the Queensland nurses' union said she could not believe that a Google search was not done on “IBM” and “payroll”. She is shocked to see virtually the same fiasco playing out a few years later in Canada.

In Australia, there was a public inquiry into this disaster, which threw the lives of public servants and their families into turmoil. The public inquiry was led by Richard Chesterman, who made a similar observation. He said, “[I did a] quick Google search before you came this afternoon and [in] 30 seconds the search turned up a reference to my inquiry.” This means that the Canadian government did not even think to see whether this had been done elsewhere and whether it had affected public servants before it decided to launch the Phoenix pay system. I would call this gross incompetence.

I would call this gross incompetence because the Phoenix pay system was launched in February 2016, which is four months after the Liberal government was elected. The Liberals are the ones who hit the start button. The Liberals are the ones who launched the system, so they are responsible for ensuring that public servants are properly paid.

The NDP is calling for action and compensation. I hope that the Liberal government is familiar with the words “responsibility”, “respect”, and “accountability”.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Mr. Speaker, if there is one party that took this situation seriously from the very beginning, it is the Liberal Party of Canada. I would ask my New Democrat colleague—