Government Operations committee  We have a tangible example because of the situation we've found ourselves in over the last couple of years. When we saw the government was moving to outsource CERB, for example, we could not for the life of us understand why they were doing that. People who come to work for ESD

Government Operations committee  Do you mean companies that are contracted out?

Government Operations committee  We have seen it at ESDC in particular, and maybe less so in the immigration departments. Some really interesting strategies have been used at ESDC to employ racialized workers and Black workers in particular. As to initiatives they did, last year, for the first time, they spoke w

Government Operations committee  I'm sorry, but I don't have a good answer for you. I think that falls outside of my scope of expertise. It's an interesting question, though.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much.

Government Operations committee  Again, I don't represent those workers, so I'd be remiss to speak too much about those issues. That would be for their union to address. What I can talk about, though, is the impact that has on the members working in the federal public sector who are relying on in-house IT servi

Government Operations committee  Absolutely. That's very worrisome considering that our members get security checks that include things like a credit check, credit audit, backgrounder and criminal record check—all of those things. In addition to that, there are the hours and hours of values and ethics training t

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  I haven't given that much consideration, but that sounds pretty great. I think we'd have a lot to consider there in a positive way. My job is to represent and advocate for my members, support collective bargaining and rally. I was never a contracts expert, but in working on some

Government Operations committee  As your colleague mentioned, we've had a website up for a few years in our attempt to raise awareness. We had letter-writing campaigns to members of Parliament urging them to end the contracting out. We were surprised, actually, by the numbers. I think we got a few thousand resp

Government Operations committee  Yes, we absolutely do. ESDC was audited a number of years ago regarding the integrity of the workers doing employment insurance and regarding privacy and these kinds of things. A certain level of scrutiny of values and ethics is instilled in every second of every day that an emp

Government Operations committee  Give more accountability to them. A lot of the time it's about the language used, like “consulting”. I had a senior manager in a department say to me, “Well, Crystal, we told you about it, so we figure that's consultation.” Even the language that exists in the current staffing p

Government Operations committee  I'd be remiss to answer that question, because I don't represent those workers.

Government Operations committee  I would argue that experience with any union would give excellent skills and training to any government employee, or any worker for that matter. Of course, what we try to talk to our members about are the principles of natural justice, which are fairness and transparency. We alw

Government Operations committee  In our preparation for today's meeting, we noticed that when we originally became aware of the contract with Gatestone for 1-800-O-Canada, it was at $79 million. That was when we started. We noticed just this weekend that the size of the contract has now gone to $158 million, and