Government Operations committee  Yes, the $142 million represents expenditures that we have already made to increase staffing and capacity. The $431 million will allow us to maintain this capacity and increase it over the next five years.

Government Operations committee  As I mentioned, the departments were allowed to keep designated savings of about $210 million over three years to help them rebuild their capacity in terms of human resources.

Government Operations committee  As you know, we have established service standards that we are not really meeting at the moment, except for a few key transactions, such as parental leave and sick leave. Other than that, we are still determining the needs in human resources to take care of arrears and improve se

Government Operations committee  We have put a lot of effort in determining whether retirees or those who had left the public service wanted to come back. Some, but only a few, are back in the public service, but we have increased capacity through external competitions to recruit new employees.

Government Operations committee  Yes, absolutely.

Government Operations committee  Essentially, the lion's share would go to the HR capacity. The technological aspect is also considerable. From the $142 million, we spent about $30 million on the technology aspect. We have some assumptions around the $431 million, but that's money to be spent. I'm more comfortab

Government Operations committee  I'm happy to do so. I'll start with the contact centre, which the minister did mention in her comments. To date we have been operating under a model where our client contact centre has been a contract service, in both Toronto and Ottawa, with individuals who are essentially tic

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. In January, we hired 325 new employees. This month, we hired 60 more, and we plan to hire 90 more next week. There are also international students who work at the Université de Moncton. We are still in hiring mode. We will continue to hire until we ha

Government Operations committee  It depends. If the employee has pay experience, the training takes less time and we can focus more on how the system works. However, those who are new to the public service need to be given good payroll training and training on the system. Generally speaking, we are hiring peopl

Government Operations committee  Approximately 20 to 40 people out of 300,000 are not receiving their basic pay each pay period. That being said, we have a mechanism to inform the departments and agencies so that they can make arrangements with their employees to ensure that they have money to live on. That reso

Government Operations committee  That's correct. For the three departments in the pod pilot, we are keeping on top of the incoming transactions 90% of the time, and that has allowed the resources in the pod to focus on the backlog, as the minister said. We've seen that reduction. Going forward, we want to ramp

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  One of the benefits of the pod concept is the dedicated resources in Miramichi that can then be focused exclusively with the HR and financial units within the departments they serve. They can deal with issues much more quickly as they arise. The relationships are being built, and

Government Operations committee  Regarding the funding for Phoenix, we have been building capacity on the HR front and also working with the vendor on systems. We are using—

Government Operations committee  These funds will allow us to continue to maintain that capacity and to augment it so that we can keep the compensation staff we've hired on strength, and to hire further.