Government Operations committee  That's why I was saying that it's not because we hear very few noises compared to the magnitude of the organization we're managing that we shouldn't pay attention to it. I agree with you on that wholeheartedly. There are people behind that.

Government Operations committee  I actually appreciate the construct of mind of the honourable MP. You're right. If we can, very simply, properly define the problem, we certainly can work on the elements of a solution. One of the things we're facing is that there are multi-faceted elements that may not be as opt

Government Operations committee  I must admit that at the aggregate level we don't. As I said, we know anecdotally from the interaction we have with departments when we hear about problems, but we don't have a central place that would actually collate all the information on all the pay transactions that happen a

Government Operations committee  There are regular contacts between officials at the Treasury Board Secretariat and people responsible for pay administration.

Government Operations committee  We were told we should provide information on the role of central agencies in this area.

Government Operations committee  I read the transcript of Mr. Fortier's testimony. I believe he was talking about Public Work and Government Services employees. Unfortunately, I do not have any more details on this department than what minister Fortier gave you himself.

Government Operations committee  Treasury Board isn't; Public Works is, based on information that is transmitted to them by—

Government Operations committee  By every department.

Government Operations committee  That's correct. It's basically what is encoded in the system that will produce the cheque at the end. That's why the effort needs to be all around the wheel—streamlining at the front end, making sure that the people who actually do the coding understand, and that at the tail end

Government Operations committee  If I may, I will make an attempt to be a little more specific in addressing your concern. In terms of having global figures from every department as to whether there are pockets of problems, we don't have those figures centrally. However, we do know from interacting with these pe

Government Operations committee  As far as I know, and once again I want to be very prudent, there were pockets, primarily due to the fact that we've been having issues of capacity with respect to the number of people who could actually work on these things. That's what Mr. Burton spoke to, making extra effort t

Government Operations committee  No, in every department.

Government Operations committee  That's why we talk about a community that is spread in all the departments but is doing jobs that are very similar, based on the same sets of rules that are set centrally.

Government Operations committee  There are a couple of measures I can point out to answer those questions. As I mentioned earlier, we are making a lot of efforts to try to streamline at the front end, as much as possible, compensation decisions. I can point to the way we have handled the retroactivity for the C

Government Operations committee  The second part of the presentation, which will be provided by my colleague, Mr. Burton, covers in more detail what has been done to try to address some of the issues that pertain to this specific community. If I could, I'd suggest that maybe he could go through his presentation