Government Operations committee  We have just started talks with the Treasury Board regarding a reintegration into the workplace. We have not seen the plan, but Treasury Board has committed that we will see it in the coming days. We look forward to consulting with Treasury Board on the reintegration into the wor

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, and I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to participate today. I would like to start by commending the federal government for its rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our 140,000 members in the federal public service are

Government Operations committee  If it's truly a meritorious process, that's exactly what would happen.

Government Operations committee  The council is basically to be an adviser to the commission. Its main purpose is to provide advice, to provide our feedback from what we're hearing from our members to the council. Then what happens to that after.... As I said, I don't know when the inception of the council was,

Government Operations committee  I sat on the Public Service Commission joint advisory council from 2012 until May of this year. The council meets roughly twice a year. What we do is we bring these situations, the very situations that we're talking about today, that we're hearing from our membership, to that cou

Government Operations committee  There is a lot of temporary agency work being done as well within the federal public service. That does nothing for morale, either. When that job was there, and I've had my eye on that job for maybe the past 16, 18 or 24 months, and now all of a sudden I see it being filled by so

Government Operations committee  Absolutely. I think you have to go back to a centralized authority and that would be, of course, the Public Service Commission.

Government Operations committee  That is definitely a problem. Not only is it a human resources capacity, but it's a capacity to do what has been now downloaded to that particular manager. They just don't have the capacity to be able to do hiring processes in a fair and equitable manner. It comes down to, basica

Government Operations committee  As I've said, you can see in the Public Service Commission's annual reports on staffing that this number, unfortunately, incrementally increases every year. What does that do? That puts somebody into a precarious job. They can't really plan, because they have a job for eight mo

Government Operations committee  I spoke about favouritism, and it's the old-fashioned favouritism, as both of us said in our remarks. It comes down to who you know. It's not necessarily the best qualified people getting those jobs, and our members see that. They see that in just about every staffing process. Th

Government Operations committee  Exactly.

Government Operations committee  Some of the barriers start with the actual process itself, as far as accommodating goes. A lot of the staffing processes involves tests, and if there's a disability involved in doing that test, oftentimes you're simply—

Government Operations committee  No, I think it's a bit of both, to be quite honest with you. When we say that the governments, the administrations, present or past, have done a good job, yes, but we're meeting the minimum. Here's where we're supposed to be and we are there or just above it. What's wrong with go

Government Operations committee  Barely.

Government Operations committee  Unfortunately, if you look at Public Service Commission annual reports, and this is very easily seen over the last several years, the majority of new hires are precarious workers. They're terms. They're casuals. Therefore, once they're in, then, as we talked about, it becomes who