Public Accounts committee  As you said, I was not there when the project was being planned, but I was there when the project was put into operation. However, it became very clear that we were in catch-up mode from the outset. As you said, we lost a part of the capacity and the learning curve…Clearly the training was inadequate and the change management…A host of factors came into play, but because we did not have the capacity, we could not address the issues and we were in catch-up mode.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you.

Public Accounts committee  Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm joined by our Associate Deputy Minister, Les Linklater. We appreciate the opportunity to appear before the committee to discuss the Auditor General's latest study of the Phoenix pay system. Public Services and Procurement Canada accepts the Auditor General's recommendation.

Government Operations committee  I just want to reassure you, though—and I'm sorry if that is the impression I gave—that we did talk to the people who were in the department at the time. Again, though, delving into all of the eight years of what decision was made when didn't feel at that point like the best use of our time at the moment.

Government Operations committee  I want to thank you for the question, because it's a really good one. In this specific case, the performance of the senior executives who were responsible and were reporting directly to the DM was assessed. We have tools in place within the federal government and those were used.

Government Operations committee  I apologize. I wasn't there in February 2016, but when we came in May, it was that small number. Then we said by June that we realized this is bigger. It's not the normal.... That's when we started setting up the offices. We started a proceeding. You'll remember that we received a number of transactions from the departments that were pre-Phoenix.

Government Operations committee  Can I just—?

Government Operations committee  That's what I'm trying to get at. Remember, the “go live” was in February. The first meeting I recall is May 2016, at which we talked about numbers, and in June we built the capacity. The one thing we realized in the fall was that this was a much more complex problem in terms of having to make sure of the HR-to-pay link, and that we needed to make sure that the integration and the data....

Government Operations committee  First, I would say that I can tell you how we would plan it, if we had to, so that we could go there, but we've been so focused on getting the issue solved.... I don't mean to sound like...but we have really focused on the future and getting a pay issue addressed. We're now starting to be able to turn our eye to....

Government Operations committee  Mr. McCauley, I have been speaking to this committee since the July 2016 special committee meeting—

Government Operations committee  —and I've been as open as I can be with you every time in terms of where we are with this. The capacity building has been an issue. There's no compensation out there. We have to train them. That's part of it. We've tried many things. We've tried with the unions, we've tried posting—I can have Les speak more to it—and now we have to train them.

Government Operations committee  You'll remember that at the beginning, when the launch happened, many people expected to see some issues. You'll remember that the first.... I think it was in May that we were thinking there were just a few issues. Then in June—

Government Operations committee  I believe it was the same. You have to realize that many people filled the different roles over the eight-year time frame. When we say that we have to be careful because over the eight years—and I haven't counted the number of different assistant deputy ministers, associate DMs, and DMs—a number of people were involved.

Government Operations committee  At this point it's hard for me to know what's in the past, whether they were linked, because the consolidation had an impact—

Government Operations committee  It would have been how the two projects were conceived and the timing of those two. They did finish at the same time, which I'm not going to say was planned that way originally, but that's how they finished.