Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to explain what this government has done to stabilize the Phoenix pay system.
I am holding more meetings with the representatives of public service unions, our partners, at all levels. As the member for Gatineau, I obviously represent many public servants, including some who have had very serious problems because of the Phoenix pay system.
I believe that I have risen to the challenge, not only in terms of the action we have taken, but also with respect to my understanding of the issue. Unfortunately, we inherited this problem. Mr. Harper and his government took a big gamble. They bet that they could save money by overhauling the government's entire pay system and opting for this new technology.
What I am pleased to tell my colleagues is that we are making progress. We are being very cautious; we are not claiming victory and we will not let up until every public servant receives every dollar and cent they are entitled to.
That said, there has been some very encouraging news. We opened the new pay centre in Miramichi two weeks ago, and we hired even more public servants than planned. The pay centre now has almost as many Government of Canada employees as it did before Mr. Harper let experienced pay advisors go. We have a whole new pay centre.
Furthermore, on Friday, I opened a new call centre in Gatineau, and now, for the first time, public servants will be able to call and get updates on their pay file. This is a huge step forward for our customers—in other words, our employees. I even listened in on some calls.
I am also very happy to tell my colleagues about the pay pods that are trained and have experience in specific departments. Four departments participated and huge progress was made on their wait lists. This month, another 12 departments will have access to pay pods. We hope to see the same result as we did in the four departments that participated in the pilot project. Nine pays later, the wait list has gone down, although not as much as we would like.
We are overcoming the challenges left to us by Mr. Harper and his colleagues, but we are up to the task. We will invest in the necessary technology and human resources. We will fix and stabilize the Phoenix pay system.