We have taken responsibility, Mr. Speaker. We have apologized to public servants for what they are going through. We have taken responsibility for fixing this terrible mess. What we have not heard and what leaves public servants unfortunately very incredulous is that the party across, the party that initiated the system, if we look at the chronology, which started in 2008, of planning this system, has not chosen to stand and take any responsibility for this problem.
Let me talk a bit about that. Early planning and analysis was faulty. Corners were cut and the outcome has been predictably devastating.
The independent assessment conducted by Goss Gilroy, which I encourage my colleagues to consult, concluded that very few people apart from compensation advisers understood the degree of complexity associated with the day-to-day requirements to ensure accurate pay. It is important to remember that the system must comply with more than 27 collective agreements and apply some 80,000 pay rules.
The Goss Gilroy report goes even further. Given that pay-related transactions were executed by compensation advisers who are junior employees, the decision-makers might have underestimated the role of those advisors and their expertise. The report also found that underestimating the required skills, knowledge, and expertise to administer pay led to a commensurate underestimation of the value and importance of the change management processes necessary to support the change.
Implementing the Phoenix pay system was much more involved than simply implementing new software. It fundamentally changed how the human resources and pay systems operate within the federal government. A lot more should have been done to plan and prepare for this huge change.
The decision to eliminate over 700 pay advisor positions, basically firing them, as of October 2014 had serious consequences on the transition to the Phoenix pay system.
Payroll is not something that can be turned on or off with the push of a button. It is a continuum involving thousands of people and business processes that have to be developed and defined. It takes years of training to master this technology. Pay experts sometimes have decades of experience in their respective field of expertise, be it the Coast Guard, National Defence, Correctional Services, or others. These are people who have gained experience over decades of working in the government. The previous government decided to get rid of 700 of some of the most skilled and experienced people, tossing aside the experience that was gained by its employees.
This is not experience that can be acquired overnight. If anyone thinks otherwise, I invite my colleagues across the way to talk to public servants and truly listen to what they have to say for once. They will say that it takes years to train compensation advisors.
All these processes were abandoned, this technology eliminated, and these people laid off by none other than the person I just named, the hon. member for Parry Sound—Muskoka and his ministerial colleagues at Public Works, now known as Public Services and Procurement Canada.
It was not just a matter of pressing a button. This lengthy process was developed ideologically over many years and driven by motivations we find dubious. This certainly did not help to put put the public service at the heart of the pay system. We are determined to fix that.
That is why we took immediate steps when it became apparent that the department's capacity was no longer sufficient to solve the pay problems. From the outset, as parliamentary secretary, I personally went to Miramichi to meet with the pay centre employees and thank them for their hard work and dedication in the face of an excessive workload. Of course, it was a pleasure to be accompanied by my colleague from Miramichi—Grand Lake, who strongly supports the Miramichi employees. I also want to thank all the employees across Canada, in every department, who are putting their hearts and souls into fixing this problem.
Our government acted swiftly and hired pay advisers and other additional staff. We opened another satellite office in Gatineau, among other cities, followed by more offices all over Canada. The public service unions supported our decision to hire workers to staff these offices, and they hailed our efforts to rehire former pay advisers.
From day one, we focused on building capacity to restore jobs the previous government cut. In other words, we hired more compensation advisors to help their fellow public servants. We also took steps to fix pay-related problems and better support employees. The department created a triage system to prioritize the most urgent cases, those where the employees were not being paid at all.
The Treasury Board Secretariat launched a claims process to reimburse employees for all costs they incurred as a result of Phoenix-related problems, such as penalties for missed or late payments. At the same time, Public Services and Procurement Canada continued to work closely with unions on several fronts and even signed an agreement to bring government IT specialists on board to help improve Phoenix. These measures helped reduce the incidence of the most serious problems, those where the employees were not being paid. They also helped reduce the time it took to make payroll changes related to parental and disability leave.
The unions asked us to prioritize those changes.
While we were dealing with pay problems, other significant priorities arose that also required immediate attention.
We have heard about overpayments and the extra effort needed to ensure employees have accurate slips for their tax returns. The question of repaying the overpayments is frustrating affected employees. I am pleased to note that we are working closely with the union to ease this burden, as we work closely with our public sector labour partners across the board.
The effort to deal with overpayments pales in comparison to the work required to implement 21 collective agreements. When our government came to office, and again ask a public servant, virtually every collective agreement we had was expired, some for as long as four years.
Our President of the Treasury Board, the member for Kings—Hants, was able to negotiate new collective agreements with public service unions, which meant that 21 collective agreements, representing 95% of the core public service, had to be implemented within a very short time frame. This has been a massive undertaking.
Imagine, we have to go back into the old pay system to calculate retroactive payments that have been negotiated fairly and are due to those hard-working public servants. We have to go back into the pay system, which the Conservatives buried with the people who were no longer there, and we have to recalculate the sums of money due to them all because, in some cases, four years have passed since a collective agreement expired.
Our compensation advisers were able to make important progress on most of the collective agreements, but given the complexity of the transactions, the numbers of years of retroactivity, and the sheer volume of work, a number of agreements were not fully implemented according to legal deadlines. We continue to process these payments on a priority basis.
The public service is often described as a resilient organization. To me, that means that its employees are able to adapt to new priorities, focus on the tasks that need to be accomplished, and work together for the common good. This reflects the character of our public servants and their willingness to go the extra mile to meet their objectives.
It is important to emphasize that the pay centre receives nearly 80,000 new pay requests a month. As a result, while we are focusing on dealing with the most urgent pay problems, overpayments, and the provisions of collective agreements, the backlog of transactions at the pay centre continues to grow.
At the same time, information technology specialists have improved the system. When it was launched, some functions of the Phoenix pay system, such as the retroactive processing of acting pay, were not automated, because the Conservative government cut them from the project to save time and money. As a result, we have had to make significant technological improvements to the system that should have been tested and incorporated into Phoenix before it was launched. We have also learned that human resources processes are inextricably linked to payroll. That is why we must adopt a comprehensive approach that covers all aspects of the human resources and pay spectrum and that takes into account all departments and agencies.
In November, our government announced a series of measures as part of this approach. They are completely in line with the recommendations set out in the Auditor General's fall report and based on the lessons identified in the Goss Gilroy report.
We all want to be elected here to the House to do what is right for Canadians. I certainly did not expect to spend so much time and energy on solving problems that should not exist. We apologize to our public service workers. We apologize for how long this is taking. It is a huge challenge. Yes, it is going to cost some money and it is going to take some dedication. That is what we are going to do. Our government is committed to overcoming this challenge and making sure that all public servants get every penny they are owed, so that we can once again get on with the task of rebuilding Canada with a public service that is the envy of the world.