Government Operations committee  Our Supplementary Estimates (A) identify $99,196, which was provided for in Budget 2018. These funds were allocated to us for only one year in order to help us address the backlog related to the Phoenix pay system, as well as to strengthen our internal capacity to resolve the human resources and pay administration issues.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Hello, and good afternoon. I am happy to appear before you today, accompanied by Eva Jacobs, our general director for finances and administration, to discuss the Supplementary Estimates (A) of the Public Service Commission of Canada. The Public Service Commission of Canada promotes and safeguards merit-based appointments.

Government Operations committee  Yes, that's the accessibility act.

Government Operations committee  Yes. Again, we're working with Yazmine Laroche, the deputy minister who has been appointed to lead the implementation of accessibility requirements within the public service. We're working with her on looking at various ways that the Public Service Commission can be supportive.

Government Operations committee  We're not.

Government Operations committee  Let me explain. The reason we're doing well in the public service is that disabilities are acquired. We have an aging workforce, so most of the progress we've made is a result of that natural phenomenon. When it comes to hiring new recruits—we can talk about it at another time, when I release the numbers in our annual report—

Government Operations committee  —we get much less than the normal labour availability in terms of applicants. It's either because people don't want to be part of our organization and don't see themselves as being welcomed or they are refusing to self-identify. It's a combination of those two, but our numbers are not good.

Government Operations committee  Exactly. If people fear they won't be getting a fair screening, we have work to do there. We shouldn't be complacent. The other thing is that those numbers on the labour force availability don't reflect the people who want to work but who are not looking for work because they don't think they belong.

Government Operations committee  Thank you.

Government Operations committee  Yes, absolutely.

Government Operations committee  Maybe I can start, and Carl can jump in as well. In all of the employment equity groups, we're actually above labour force availability in terms of the current representation in the public service. For visible minorities, for example, from our latest data, about 14.5% of our labour force self-identifies as a visible minority.

Government Operations committee  Yes, and I agree with you. Our vision is to ensure that the technology that we provide will be there to facilitate human decisions, not to replace human decisions. I absolutely agree with you. That's part of our design criteria.

Government Operations committee  There's no technology that I know of that exists in the public service that does that. All applications that come externally or internally are reviewed by individuals, by people who actually sift through and sort and read the very lengthy application and determine whether that person meets that first screening.

Government Operations committee  Yes, and we've tried. We've had some pilots to look at using plain language. I don't know if I talked about it at this committee, but we compared job ads that we had to standards in top-performing organizations and determined that we rated something like a point zero or a 0.5 compared to 70 or 80 or whatever on this tool that we used.

Government Operations committee  Again, imagine we're thinking about what the users have told us they would want. Imagine that the manager has just gone and cut all kinds of steps because he or she was able to create and post the job through the common construct language in the system. That manager would actually be guided towards the assessment tools that are available online.