Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I mentioned Australia earlier. According to several documents, Australia unfortunately had the same problem and warned Canada to not go ahead with the system, because it does not work. A number of steps were taken.
My advice to the government would be to listen to the unions. The unions are ready. We also have public servants who specialize in computer science who could work on this and help. We need to listen to the solutions they are proposing. Maybe we need to scrap the Phoenix pay system and build a new one with specialists on the ground, people who are in the best position to make changes, improvements, and even introduce programs that are more suitable. Based on what we are seeing now, this system is a complete failure. We need to listen to those people.
I urge the government to follow the example of Australia, where a similar problem was fixed in four months. In Australia, people pitched in and worked hard to resolve the situation. That is what we are asking the government to do. This is not about passing the buck. We want the situation to be resolved and ask that workers be paid for the hours that they work each week. If public servants want to volunteer, they will find a charity that needs their help. Here, we are asking that they be paid properly.