Government Operations committee  Thank you. As noted, my name is Jennifer Carr. I am the president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. I am accompanied by vice-president Eva Henshaw. The institute represents over 65,000 public service professionals. Most of our members work for the fe

Government Operations committee  Of course, those are the hiring areas where we have seen a lack of stability in the public service. I'd like to counter that. This is because of years of under-resourcing and cuts that happened way before this time. With the passport situation, it's my understanding that public

Government Operations committee  Thank you for that comment. For sure, that is one of those things. I'm going to pass it over to my VP, Eva Henshaw, to talk about her work with the chief information officer, and why we are so short-staffed and what is happening. Eva.

Government Operations committee  That goes into the 2,500 grievances we have on the table right now. These are not areas where we don't have the expertise in-house. These are not projects that our public servants are not prepared to deliver or perform. On the ground and in the capacity, our members are seeing co

Government Operations committee  Certainly, when it comes to diversity and inclusion, and making sure that there's a benefit to all populations in Canada, I do support that. I do think though that it is not going to stop contracting out. In fact, you might have what I call “tokenism”. You'll have big firms hirin

Government Operations committee  We definitely could.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much. I will also speak in English. What we need are modern hiring policies that create efficient timelines for hiring so that it's not easier for managers to hire contractors. We also need to break the continued dependence on contractors, because it creates a vi

Government Operations committee  I will put that in writing.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for your question. I must say that we are in a different situation, because we represent the professional groups. I want to talk about some of the things in staffing and recruiting, especially for northern nurses. The fact is, they watch agency nurses who come in and

Government Operations committee  Again, I'm just telling you from our examples, one resource for one resource. An IT architect at the Department of National Defence was contracted out for $360,000 a year and is repeated again for eight years. The equivalent public servant, with benefits, was at $148,000. Again

Government Operations committee  If you'll allow me to interject—

Government Operations committee  Basically, it's a power dynamic shift. Temporary agencies were that. They were hiring for three- to six-month contracts. They weren't hiring for long-term duration contracts. What has happened now is that we are using them for multi-years, so they are not subject to the same equ

Government Operations committee  I'm going to hand that off to my VP, Eva Henshaw. She's been working with the chief information officer. Go ahead, Eva.

Government Operations committee  From my workers, I just [Inaudible—Editor] health care workers—

Government Operations committee  I will hold you to that. Good afternoon, everybody. As mentioned, my name is Jennifer Carr, and I am the president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. Today with me is Jordan McAuley, who is our expert on government outsourcing, to assist me in answeri