Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Windsor West.
I am pleased to rise to discuss, in greater detail than we have before in this place, the issue of the Phoenix pay system, because there are a lot of important lessons to learn from what happened. There are lessons with respect to governance and accountability and how important decisions are made and operationalized within government. There are also quite a few important lessons to learn about the very real human consequences of government decisions and what happens when those decisions are poorly made.
On the side of governance and accountability, to listen to the current government tell the story of Phoenix, one would think that when the Liberals came into government, all of this was, if members will forgive the IT analogy, a preset program. Everything was already locked in place, and there was really no way to stop this slow train wreck from unfolding. However, that stands against the evidence. It stands against what the Auditor General said, which was that there were a lot of early warning signs the Liberal government ignored and that it need not have pressed ahead in the way it did with the implementation of Phoenix across government. It also goes against some of the documents that show those early warning signs.
On December 21, 2015, there was a conference call to consult departments on Phoenix readiness. I offer some of the comments that came out of that call:
There are still outstanding technical issues such as connectivity, 50% fail....
departments lack evidence to support readiness and must trust results from other departments....
No real end to end testing, departments want a demonstration....
The Pay Centre capacity and morale is a concern....
Readiness of Miramichi—as the Pay Centre is currently experiencing workload issues, how will they cope with the implementations in February and April....
We agree that Phoenix should definitely be piloted and then a staggered roll out once the system is completely automated.
That, of course, was not what happened. That was from December. Those were civil servants in charge, within their respective departments, of providing an evaluation of Phoenix and whether they believed it should go ahead.
On January 13, 2016, there was a readiness assessment of Phoenix. Some of the comments include:
Shift worker issue test with less than 50% success rate where shift worker represents 40% of our work force.
That sounds to me like a pretty major red flag. It is not the kind of thing one reads and then thinks it is obviously ready to go.
Test less than 50% success....
System readiness is questionable out of our 25 outstanding defects 10 are still critical and not fixed.
That is just a sample of some of the advice and concerns that existed within the world of government that was being fed back up to the minister. In light of warnings like that, one has to wonder.
The system is a product of two governments in a row, the Conservative government initially and then the Liberal government, which decided to press ahead in the face of evidence that showed that the system clearly was not ready. These are the parties that constantly want to talk about their business acumen and how smart they are and how they look to the private sector for examples. In what private company would a manager read reports like that about the implementation of the payroll system and think it should move ahead? How, in a private company, could that happen without the heads of that manager and those around him rolling? That is what we are witnessing. There is no real accountability for a terrible decision that was made to roll this out across government when the system obviously was not ready.
What is frustrating about this is the lack of real accountability we are seeing. We are seeing it from politicians from parties that would be the first to say, “That stuff would never pass in the private sector, and that is exactly the standard we are going to bring into government.”
There is a fair lack of shame when it comes to talking about accountability and what it means when we hear comments like that and see it obviously not take place. Maybe they got into politics because their businesses were not very successful. One might judge that from the work that has been done on the Phoenix file.
That is part of the frustration. Calling for the apology is just a small part of the accountability piece. It is important in terms of respect for civil servants.
However, an apology is not enough. That is the consistent message we have been offering. When the Prime Minister broke the law, he apologized, and we said that it was not enough. There need to be some tangible consequences. Canadians can keep that in mind during the next election.
There should be tangible consequences for the people who made the error, but there also has to be tangible redress for the people who are the victims of that error. I am thinking of some people we have heard from who work as federal civil servants and live in Elmwood--Transcona. My office has worked on a number of cases involving people who are facing serious injustice. They have faithfully gone to work and done their jobs and simply expect to be paid properly.
One person in my riding, and I will not name names, had to go on medical leave and came back and was not being paid properly so had to apply for a number of emergency salary advances to make ends meet and pay the bills. Before the government rectified the problem and paid the person for the time that was missed, for which the advance was needed, the government came back to collect the advance. The money is not there. The person cannot repay the advance until the government pays for the time the person was not paid for. This person has taken on debt, which otherwise would not have been taken on, and is concerned about mortgage payments and possibly losing the house.
We can say what we want about how we got here, who started Phoenix, and who made the decision to push forward. One thing that obviously falls squarely on the shoulders of the Liberal government is putting federal employees in the position of being asked to pay back money they were advanced, to make up for a lack of pay, before they have even been paid. It is an obvious injustice. There is absolutely no reason people should be made to pay back money they never really received in the first place.
I can think of another person living in Elmwood--Transcona who works for the federal government who, over the course of a year, was systematically underpaid, by the person's calculations, somewhere in the neighbourhood of $15,000. Although we cannot really get answers or find a paper trail as to how, Phoenix has determined that there was an overpayment of about $3,000. The person is in a position of being owed $15,000 and potentially owing $3,000. However, before the government figures out what it owes that employee, it is insisting that the $3,000, which it is not willing to substantiate, be paid back before the person gets the $15,000 the system owes. My office cannot get any answers.
There is a fundamental injustice there. It is incumbent on the Liberal government to make sure that when it goes after people to repay what it claims are overpayments, it shows evidence of the overpayment and ensures that it is holding up its end of the bargain and paying its employees what they are owed.
For many people, this is making the difference in whether or not they are able to make their payments at the bank for their houses. They are not going to get a second try. When that payment owed by the government comes back a year later, the employee cannot go back to the bank and say, “My employer screwed up after all, so can I have my mortgage back?” That is not going to work.
There is a serious issue when it comes to the timing of these payments. It is wrong for the government to insist that employees pay back money they never got in the first place.