Government Operations committee  Far fewer are being requested.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to participate today. My name is Chris Aylward. I'm the national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, representing over 140,000 federal public sector workers. I would like to begin by commend

Finance committee  Mr. Gerretsen, I can't answer that in a very honest way. All I can tell you is that I've checked with our members at ESDC to see if anybody there was consulted and, to my knowledge, nobody there was spoken to about a new program and do we have the capacity, can we do this, how e

Finance committee  I believe so, just as it should have been asked during the introduction of the Phoenix pay system, where the union and the workers should have been—

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Gerretsen. I know you have met with many members of the PSAC, and I thank you for that.

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. Thank you, and the north is my favourite part of this country, Mr. McLeod. Let me make it very clear. We represent over 15,000 workers in the north, including, of course, the governments of Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut. I've visited the north many t

Finance committee  Nobody has convinced me otherwise, Mr. McLeod.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. McLeod. I mean, yes, absolutely, I would agree with you, as I have with other speakers, that workers are under a tremendous amount of pressure during this time, for various reasons, of course. On the statement that there's a backlog of programs that can't be de

Finance committee  It's demoralizing to the members. It's demoralizing to the employees when they see that sort of thing happening. Would it have caused job loss? No, I wouldn't go so far as to say that. But still, to see work that is currently being done, very similar work, being contracted out is

Finance committee  There is certainly capacity within the public service to have done that, to have reached out to organizations on the ground.

Finance committee  I'm not going to speak to the capacity of WE Charity. I can't speak—

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Contrary to what you just said, there is capacity within the federal public service, absolutely. Unless somebody can demonstrate to me why the Prime Minister made that statement, that WE Charity was the only organization able to carry this out, then I'm so

Finance committee  Yes, for sure—or simply turn this program over to ESDC.

Finance committee  There are a number of programs for students that are currently being administered by the federal public service that do that type of work. I would defer to my technical expert who is with me, my technical resource, Mr. West. If he is on the line, he could provide a better answer

Finance committee  Okay, maybe Mr. West is not with us. That's okay. Mr. Poilievre, I can't give you specific programs that would do that, but as I said, I do know there are several programs administered within the federal public service that address student issues.