Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue 21 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Monday, November 21, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, authorized to invite from time to time the President of Treasury Board and the President of the Public Service Commission, for the purpose of examining cases of alleged discrimination in the hiring and promotion practices of the Federal Public Service, met this day at 4:10 p.m.
Senator A. Raynell Andreychuk (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, before we turn to an in camera meeting for future business, we have the duty to elect a new deputy chair, given Senator Pearson's retirement.
I am open to receive nominations.
Senator Losier-Cool: I nominate Senator Carstairs.
Senator LeBreton: I second the nomination.
The Chairman: Since there are no other names being put forward, can we adopt unanimously a resolution appointing Senator Carstairs as deputy chair of the committee?
Is it agreed, honourable senators?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chairman: While this is not entirely unexpected, Senator Carstairs and the powers that be, shall I say, have had consultations. Therefore, I propose that Senator Baker be added to the steering committee.
Is it agreed, honourable senators?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chairman: We will now move in camera.
The committee continued in camera.
The committee continued in public.
The Chairman: Honourable senators, we are convened this afternoon to receive an update and report from the Public Service Commission. We have an order of reference whereby, from time to time, we invite the President of the Treasury Board, the President of the Public Service Commission, their officials, as well as other witnesses to appear before the committee for the purpose of examining cases of alleged discrimination in the hiring and promotion practices of the federal public service and to study the extent to which targets to achieve employment equity for minority groups are being met.
We are pleased to have with us at the table Maria Barrados, President of the Public Service Commission. As I have indicated, your annual report has come out and we are interested in an update from the time of your report to now, and any other issues that you should bring to our attention as we study the public service and its development.
Please proceed.
Maria Barrados, President, Public Service Commission: Honourable senators, thank you for inviting me back this year to update you on our work.
[Translation]
The PSC is an independent agency reporting to Parliament, responsible for safeguarding the integrity of the staffing system in the federal public service and the political impartiality of public servants, as well as for recruiting talented Canadians drawn from across the country.
Under the Employment Equity Act, the PSC is responsible for identifying and eliminating barriers against persons in designated groups that result from its systems, policies and practices in recruitment and staffing. The Act also requires the PSC to institute “positive measures” that go beyond removing barriers to actively promote a more representative public service and hasten progress in closing the representation gaps for the identified groups.
We have a dedicated employment equity directorate that develops policy and performs our oversight function to achieve a representative federal public service.
[English]
We are also providing $300,000 in financial support to the National Council on Visible Minorities over a three-year period, and we no longer receive external funding via the Embracing Change Support Fund.
In our recent annual report, we found that the composition of the public service reflects the labour market availability for three of the four employment equity designated groups — that is, women, persons with disabilities and Aboriginal peoples. However, the gap between the representation of visible minorities in the public service and their workforce availability continues to persist. Recruitment is not keeping up with the growing proportion of visible minorities.
We are also concerned with the lack of progress in appointing visible minorities into the executive group. Last year, we had asked 18 departments and agencies to prepare and submit to us their executive staffing plans. Eleven of the 18 organizations submitted plans. These plans included over 280 potential vacancies, of which eight were targeted to members of visible minorities. The 18 departments made a total of 254 appointments during the fiscal year. Six of these were appointments of members of visible minorities. We found these results disappointing.
Following our analysis of the plans, we informed the deputy heads of the seven organizations that did not submit a plan, and the deputy head of the organization whose plan did not include positions targeted to members of visible minorities, that we will challenge all their executive staffing requests.
As a result of our efforts in this area, 10 of these 18 organizations are now collaborating with the PSC on a generic executive-level selection process targeted to members of visible minorities. Interviews of 201 candidates to staff about 18 positions began on September 19.
We have found that over the past few years, about 25 per cent of the applications to competitions, across all levels, open to the public, came from members of visible minority groups. However, only 10 per cent of the competitions resulted in an appointment from this group. We launched a study to examine this issue in detail. This will enable us to develop a more focused approach to addressing the issue. We expect the study to be completed next year.
[Translation]
The new Public Service Employment Act, which is expected to come into force by the end of this year, encourages delegation of appointment authorities for external recruitment and executive resourcing to deputy heads and provides them with new flexibilities to meet the government's employment equity targets.
For example, the legislation not only retains the ability to expand the area of selection for members of designated groups, it also makes it easier to restrict the area of selection to only members of these groups. Deputy heads may also establish employment equity objectives as an organizational need, one of the merit criteria that can be used to make an appointment.
[English]
I would like to table with the committee the policy on employment equity in the appointment process. It was designed to help departments and agencies integrate employment equity into the design of their appointment systems and business plans so that they can take full advantage of the new flexibilities available to them.
With these new flexibilities comes strengthened accountability. Through our oversight activities, we will hold deputy heads accountable for respecting the values that underlie staffing in the public service. Representativeness is a key value and an integral part of our appointment framework and our accountability agreements with deputy heads.
Honourable senators, your committee may be interested in inquiring further into some of our initiatives and the impact of changes in the Public Service Employment Act — PSEA — on diversity recruitment. We would be happy to answer any questions the committee may have.
Senator Carstairs: First, let me give you the opportunity to explain a little bit of the controversy that has surrounded your department in the last few days with respect to hiring practices.
Ms. Barrados: Senator, are you referring to the article in the newspaper with respect to Public Works and Government Services?
Senator Carstairs: I am, indeed.
Ms. Barrados: I was surprised when I saw that article in the newspaper. I have spoken to the deputy minister. As I told him, we at the commission are very supportive of efforts to increase representation of employment equity groups. We continue to be supportive of such initiatives. However, I had some technical questions about what he was trying to do. I was not sure whether the appropriate balance was addressed in the report I saw in the newspaper.
The deputy minister told me they had very good intentions in terms of what they were trying to do. They were not trying to exclude people. In fact, he has rescinded the policy and will be working with other players in the system to do it right, as he said.
Senator Carstairs: Thank you for that clarification. It means that many questions may have been answered.
In your opening statement, you indicated that 11 out of 18 organizations submitted plans. What were the explanations given as to why the other organizations did not submit plans?
Ms. Barrados: I will ask Mr. Boulet if we ever got good explanations.
I was never satisfied with the explanations. In one organization when the head realized there was no response, they certainly righted their ways once they realized that it had not been taken seriously.
Mr. Boulet, do you have any better explanation?
Gerry Boulet, Director General, Executive Resourcing, Public Service Commission: Honourable senators, they were rather vague in what they put forward. In many departments, one of the biggest problems is the lack of human resources planning, something which the commission has mentioned in previous reports. Some of them were not even able to tell us the likely vacancies they would staff and where they might be able to target on some of them. Frankly, the information was lacking.
The fact that our president wrote back to them and said that she would be making mention of this in a report may have caused more action. Initially, we did not get what we expected.
Senator Carstairs: While you were reading your presentation, you mentioned that following your analysis you informed the deputy heads, et cetera. I wrote next to those words, “Good for you.” The only way some of these departments will respond is if their feet are held to the fire. The only way to do that is to embarrass them publicly, if that is what it takes.
You have expressed your deep disappointment with the lack of hiring in the area of visible minorities. You indicated that the number of appointments came up — that 25 per cent were from visible minority members, yet only 10 per cent actually resulted in employment. What are the systemic barriers here? What is the problem? Have you been able to get to that bottom line?
Ms. Barrados: First, senator, I wish to add something to reinforce your commentary. In addition to making the annual report and writing letters, I also wrote the clerk and made it part of the evaluation process that the clerk has of deputy ministers. I did that because the clerk is very committed to increasing representation in the public service.
Concerning what we call the drop off, that is, the larger pool and the smaller number of people, some work was done at the commission a couple of years ago regarding this problem. Right off the top, there are parts that can easily be explained — that is to say, that people do not realize that we give preference to Canadian citizens, for example. A number of people who do not have citizenship apply, and there is preference for citizenship. That takes out some people.
Some applicants do not understand what is required in applying for a job. The process is actually fairly technical. There is a list of things you look for. You expect answers under each item in that list. If an applicant does not answer properly, he or she will be screened out.
We feel we need to have more information about what really is going on. What I worry about, of course, is that people hire people like themselves. In looking at how people are staffed, we are very concerned about what I am calling indirect hiring. There is a tendency in the public service to use the casual and part-time route to staff people permanently. However, if you go casual, there are not nearly the requirements that there are for staffing positions because they fall outside our normal processes. When part-time hiring is considered, you are not doing the same kind of search, you are not looking for the breadth and range of people. You start right there by putting at risk your issues of representation. That is part of this story.
It is an area in which we remain concerned. We want broader-based selection processes that are open to all Canadians.
The Chairman: Those who are on casual status get to know the system better. Even on a fair basis, they will have the advantage because they will get to work with the service and get to know how to go about applications. If that is the case, is there any way we can use this casual basis to target the minority or visible groups? It is what we do when we consider youth employment.
Are foreign credentials a difficulty in this area? In other words, an applicant's credentials are not familiar. You talked about people hiring people who look like themselves. If you are graduating out of the University of Toronto, we know what that is. However, if you have a degree from somewhere else, it might not be the same. Is it a credential problem also?
Ms. Barrados: The intention of hiring casuals is to have someone to meet short-term needs. You are right, senator, there is an advantage for someone who gets the experience of working in the government. We have been reluctant to put too many requirements on that process because the idea behind having that instrument available is for people to have their short-term needs met so that they can get things moving.
When it comes to part-time or a term, we expect greater representation as well, although the process tends to be not as demanding as for the permanent jobs.
In regard to foreign credentials, that is an issue. It takes form in a number of different ways. Obviously, there is an issue around whether specific professional groups will allow designation of an equivalent. We in the public service are working on a consultation document on what we are calling the standard for executives, or the EX standard. We have included in that a requirement for some form of post-secondary education but with an equivalence. Thus, there would be an exercise to try to determine equivalence.
Senator Poy: Ms. Barrados, you mentioned that only 11 out of 18 departments gave you a report. Are they not required to do so? I do not understand why there are some departments that can get away with it. Can you explain that?
Ms. Barrados: That is an interesting question. The Public Service Commission is a unique organization. We have more powers than some of the others who must report directly to Parliament, like my previous place of employment, the Auditor General's office.
The authority to make appointments rests with the Public Service Commission. We can impose conditions on that authority and we can remove those authorities. We can also order specific corrective actions. We have a significant amount of power.
The best way to go, though, is to use the softer route and to increase the pressure. We do not start using those heavier powers until we have really given it an effort. What we seen a good response on the part of departments to participate in this process that we are running, where we are actually trying to fill some of the executive positions with visible minorities. Our view is that, if you get enough numbers, the problems will take care of themselves. If you have a representative public service, you would not have to be so preoccupied.
Senator Poy: In light of the Prime Minister's recent emphasis on trade with Asia, particularly in regard to expanding economies like India and China, how does the public service tend to take advantage of the existing language and cultural knowledge of Canada's Chinese and South Asian population? Are there specific recruitment programs planned for the Departments of Foreign Affairs and International Trade? I know from my own experience that there are bureaucrats who tell me that if they are on the language desk they lack the language. There are many immigrants, second or third generation, who know these foreign languages. Are they being recruited for the Departments of Foreign Affairs and International Trade?
Ms. Barrados: I am not sure I can give you too much information about the specifics. I wish to add two things for your consideration. First, overall, we remain committed to a representative public service, but one that is bilingual, English and French, with the requirement in the Official Languages Act to be able to provide service to the public bilingually and to be able to provide supervision bilingually. That is an issue that is frequently raised with me with some of the immigrant groups, namely, this requirement to learn another language. We have found that, for those who enter the public service, they have taken on that challenge, and we do not have difficulties getting people who have learned both languages.
In terms of your question about specific language requirements, those are determined by the people in the departments and they are a function of their work. Obviously, you have foreign affairs, but you also have the security and intelligence areas where they also look for specific foreign languages. It tends to be job specific.
Senator LeBreton: My first question follows from those of Senator Carstairs and then I have a question of my own. You discussed indirect hiring and people hiring people like themselves. You also talked about casual employment and the part-time route to staff positions that are permanent. How many people are we talking about here across the government?
Ms. Barrados: We are talking about a fairly large number of people. However, I will not pull the numbers off the top of my head because I tend to make mistakes when I do that. For example, we carry in our annual report some of the charts that talk about what kind of hiring we had. In 2004-05, we brought 34,844 people into the public service. Of that number, about 10 per cent move into permanent jobs; 24 per cent are there for a specified period — that is, for a year or for less than three years; 38 per cent are casual; and 28 per cent are students. There is have a significant amount of hiring activity but only a small proportion of them is permanent.
When we looked at the number of permanent hires, few of them come from the general public. Roughly, 26 per cent come from the general public. The rest are drawn either from that term or limited term time, some students, some casual and some from other federal agencies.
Senator LeBreton: In other words, you are saying that the people who are brought in through the indirect hiring procedure actually do have an advantage and that they end up with the largest number of jobs that are actually permanently hired.
Ms. Barrados: That is correct.
Senator LeBreton: That is probably something you will have to try to address.
Ms. Barrados: That is correct. The new legislation puts a large emphasis on planning, as Mr. Boulet said. The idea is to clearly state your requirements and then put your initiatives in place to address those requirements. We are hoping that we get people with a different approach to how they are staffing jobs — in other words, not using that process where you get someone in a job because you really need somebody and then you try to move them, say, from part-time or term to permanent, but rather having a more inclusive process, one that fills permanent jobs, and running processes that are larger processes so you have a pool of people available to fill the positions.
Senator LeBreton: My next question is very topical. What is the policy of the Public Service Commission in the hiring of political and exempt staff of ministers? What is the procedure where exempted ministerial staff above a certain level have access to the Public Service Commission? Exactly what is the process followed to ensure that all proper procedures are followed and that people coming from the general public or people within the public service right now are not in any way discriminated against when these people are brought in?
Ms. Barrados: That is a timely question. Exempt staff are those staff who are outside of the public service. They are people who have the same rights and entitlements, with a major exception, as people in the general public. The major exception is what we call a “priority entitlement” that is available to ministerial staff. As the senior ministerial staff, they must have worked in the minister's office for three years, or potentially at some time in the past they were a public servant. They are entitled to what we call a priority status — which means they have to apply to the Public Service Commission, which will then determine whether in fact they do have this entitlement. If an individual has the entitlement, he or she will have the right to take any job they are qualified for ahead of most other people — internal competitions as well as external competitions.
Senator LeBreton: We are looking at a non-partisan public service. In this case, of course, we are talking about a political party that has been in power a long time. If something should occur such that the current political party is no longer in power, we are then in a position of having a significant amount of people in the public service conducting themselves hopefully in a non-partisan way — that, by the very nature of where they came from, makes their job very difficult — in the interests of all Canadians, but no matter what their political stripe. That is the way the rules are set up now, is that correct?
Ms. Barrados: For us, we are concerned. We have two large charges in our act. The first is to protect merit; the second is to protect non-partisanship in the public service. Clearly, we have the concern to ensure that people are qualified and that they agree to function as public servants.
The numbers have not been large. Last year, we had 35 of these appointments. Two of those 35 were in the executive category. We are not looking at big numbers, when you consider that we are talking about thousands that we employ on a regular basis. The entitlements numbers tend to run around 30 for 2003-04 and 68 for 2004-05. Not all people in the minister's office want to come into the public service.
There has been a lot of criticism of this provision. It was debated the last time our legislation came up for review, was passed in November 2003, and it was retained.
Our approach has been that, in all delegations under the new Public Service Employment Act — and we are delegating almost all recruitment activities and staffing activities, with the exception of appointment of ministerial exempt staff to executive positions, which is where the risks are the greatest, because the contact with ministerial staff would tend to be with people in an organization.
The Chairman: How long has this entitlement rule existed in our public service? Is there a similar entitlement principle in countries that we often compare ourselves with?
Ms. Barrados: My understanding — and I may be corrected on this — is that our entitlement principle is unique. We are the only ones that have anything like it. I asked my legal group to research how long it had been around, and they found something similar in the legislation dating back to 1920.
The Chairman: Ms. Gobeil, do you have more information to add to this?
Linda Gobeil, Senior Vice-President, Policy Branch, Public Service Commission: Not really, except to say that we are now completing research on this. It looks like a priority such as this has been put into legislation even back to the Civil Service Act. There seems to be history there.
The Chairman: I do not understand how it works. If someone within the Public Service Commission apply for a job and an individual from a minister's staff applies for the same job, if it is proven that they have the proper capacities, will the minister's staff take priority? Is that how it works? Where has the union been?
Ms. Barrados: The numbers are not great; that is one consideration. This has been going on for quite a long time. It hinges on the determination that they are eligible.
If an individual is qualified, that person is second to anyone on leave of absence. There are other priorities in the system. An individual who is on a leave of absence is ahead of the minister's priority. If there is nobody on leave of absence that qualifies for that job, you would place that person before you ran a competition.
The Chairman: I am aware of the reverse of what you just described.
If you are in the public service, can you go on leave from a minister's office and return to the Public Service Commission?
Mr. Boulet: I think the act provides the ability for someone to take a leave of absence. That leave would have to be approved by someone in a department, to allow the person to be appointed in a minister's office. At the time the individual ceases to be an employee, he or she could go back and be placed on a priority basis on return from a leave of absence. As Ms. Barrados pointed out, that is the highest priority that exists. Potentially, the individual could also have been there long enough to benefit from a ministerial entitlement as well.
The Chairman: You have anticipated my second question. Is that the way to get ahead? You could receive unique experience from a minister's office that your job description within would not provide you.
Ms. Barrados: There is no doubt that you can get very unique experience working in different places, but there is another burden that comes with it. We work hard at maintaining a non-partisan public service. Some of us have been around long enough to see significant changes in government, and it is not necessarily an asset to be associated with a particular minister.
The Chairman: I believe that is true. The problem is the perception and not the reality.
Ms. Barrados: We are very concerned about perceptions as well as reality. We have to work on both elements.
The Chairman: Do you keep track of how many people are on leave of absence from a minister's office? You have other statistics. I am wondering if you have statistics on that.
Ms. Barrados: I am not sure; I will check. We track the number of people on leave of absence. I do not know how many there are from ministers' offices. I think it is a very small number, but I will check.
[Translation]
Senator Losier-Cool: I would like to start with a comment and then perhaps you can tell me if I have reason to be concerned. Under the Public Servant Employment Act, women are a designated group and I am uncomfortable with that concept. Can you explain to me why women are a designated group? They may be Aboriginal women, disabled women, and so forth. I understand the historical context for this decision. The objective was to increase the number of women in the public service. Now then, how do you measure progress on this front? By the number of Aboriginal or visible minority women who are public servants?
My second question concerns multiculturalism or cultural diversity training. When they receive job applications, how far must managers go in terms of taking into account culture or diversity when selecting from several candidates? One or two months ago, in a speech delivered at the Museum of Civilization, the Prime Minister observed that by the year 2015, our Public Service would certainly boast a new face because of the aging population and the drive to meet the aims of the Employment Equity Act. Would you care to comment on that statement?
Ms. Barrados: These are very good questions. I too have wondered why women are considered to be members of a designated group. I was told that according to the statistics, women are reasonably represented, with the exception of a few regions. I know that there is a shortage of women in the science and research fields. Perhaps my colleague can elaborate further on this point.
As for your second question, I will turn to my colleague, who is an expert on the subject. He can give you more information about the staffing process.
Ms. Gobeil: Historically, women were not represented in the public service or in the general labour force in Canada. Current statistics show that this imbalance is slowly disappearing. The proportion of women being recruited in the public service is slighter higher than the proportion recorded for the general population.
The fact remains that women are not represented as they should be in certain occupational groups. For example, the number of women in the sciences and trades is much lower that what we would expect to see. We are focusing more on these sectors to alleviate this problem and achieve a better gender balance.
Mr. Boulet: Regarding diversity training, my team, my resourcing consultants are required to take this course. Given the constant turnover of staff, we have a duty to educate employees on a regular basis about diversity issues. We are constantly on the lookout for a board member who can look at issues from the perspective of another community. When we hold a competition for an executive position, we check to see if any candidates are identified as belonging to a visible minority. We may not always be in a position to do that, however. When staffing positions at a higher level, the problem is that there are very few candidates who apply. People have better things to do than to sit on selection boards.
For the vast majority of departments, educating managers and employees about diversity is part of the resourcing process.
Senator Losier-Cool: Do you mean to say that even new employees could attend these resourcing sessions in order to facilitate integration programs?
Mr. Boulet: Yes.
[English]
Senator Poy: You mentioned the under-representation of visible minorities in the public service. Do you have statistics on the retention rate of those who are hired, as well as the statistics on their advancement?
Ms. Barrados: Senator, I do not have those figures with me. I am not sure to what extent we have those numbers centrally. We will take a look. If we have them, we will provide them to the committee.
Senator Poy: I ask the question because I receive emails from visible minority groups saying that they have the jobs and then they get into whatever problem and either they cannot move up or else it becomes so unpleasant they have to leave. That was the reason for my question.
Ms. Barrados: This is a real concern. We must look at the relationship with other groups in the public service. I receive many emails, some from visible minorities but some from other groups as well. This issue must be put in perspective.
The Chairman: As I understand it, more and more jobs will be located in Ottawa. I believe we covered this subject the last time, that our visible minorities and others do not necessarily live in the Ottawa area but are found in some of our largest urban centres. Have you reflected on what that will do to this category of employee that we are trying to increase, when you are going farther away from their home base? Are you still on the same line?
Ms. Barrados: It is not the job of the Public Service Commission to determine where a department locates or where government locates its activities. However, currently, about two thirds of the jobs are outside of Ottawa. One third is located in Ottawa. Where Ottawa is over-represented, if compared to the other regions, is in the more senior jobs, which are more in Ottawa than in the regions. However, we still have this two-third, one-third balance.
One of the things I believe you are alluding to is that the Public Service Commission has an element in its act that allows for restricting an area of competition. Thus, you can decide that you will be recruiting for someone and that you will look for people in the national capital area, for example. There have been many concerns raised about that, because you very much limit the pool to the type of people you have in that area. That has traditionally been done as a way to manage the volumes. The public service is still viewed as a very attractive place for people to work. How do you handle large volumes of applications?
We have announced a change in policy. I have certainly heard people's concerns, and particularly Senator Ringuette in the Senate has raised many times with me the issue of limiting competition to these geographic areas. We are taking an incremental approach to broadening this out. Starting April 1, 2006, we will require that all of the officer-level jobs in the national capital area use a national area selection. Currently, national area of selection is only used for the executive jobs and the two levels underneath the executive category. As of April 1, it will be for all officer-level jobs, with a view to expanding that the next year, April 2007, to all officer-level jobs throughout the country. In that way, anyone could apply to all officer-level jobs throughout the country.
By December 2007, we will open all jobs in the public service to national area of selection.
We are phasing this in because we want to ensure that we do not make it more difficult for people to staff jobs and do not make it more cumbersome and more burdensome. The idea is not to use the work-arounds but to use the main line processes to get people. It has to work well.
We have two reasons why we feel we can do this now. First, with the new legislation and its emphasis on planning, flexibility and running larger pools and anticipating what your needs are, you should be able to put in that initial investment — and you are not staffing just one position but you are identifying a pool of people to draw on to fill the positions as you need — and after that first investment, it will be much faster.
Second, we have an informatics tool that we will be making available to all departments that is already working in the regional offices of the Public Service Commission. This is a tool that will allow managers to help build the posters and it will electronically screen using the criteria that the managers put in for the type of people they are looking for. The tests we have done have shown a great deal of efficiency in screening down the number of candidates. With the flexibility in the act and with this new electronic tool, we feel we can move forward and broaden this national area of selection.
We will be monitoring this closely. As I say, we want it to achieve what we are trying to achieve, that is, a broader engagement of people across the country, and use this tool and the flexibilities in the act to get that greater representation and participation in public service jobs.
The Chairman: Canada as well as other countries was found wanting around September 11 when we discovered we needed more intelligence because of terrorist activity. The common complaint, in another committee, was that we do not have the skills within our intelligence component to understand the communities well enough, which sometimes leads to stigmatization within the community. As well, we are not equipped to understand the data we get from those communities. On the one hand, are we as secure? On the other hand, are we marginalizing or profiling a community unnecessarily?
Have you at the Public Service Commission looked at this subject? Do you have any special policies or programs to ensure that we have that cultural sensitivity, that language requirement to do the intelligence job that we need to do?
Ms. Barrados: CSIS is specifically exempted from the provisions of the Public Service Employment Act. The security intelligence establishment, if I have that name right, is designated as exempt by the choice of Public Service Commission from the provisions of the Public Service Employment Act to bring it into line with how CSIS is treated.
The Chairman: Those are two. How many others are there? We have added layers of legislation and have put them under Minister McLellan. They also have to take intelligence, work with it and move it to the minister to make recommendations. There is a layer of interpretation necessary because the minister has a significant amount of discretion. The minister will obviously be relying on those opinions. It is also in the area of getting it from the traditional intelligence community and moving it into all the departments. Has any thought been given as to what we are doing in that area?
Ms. Barrados: I believe that falls outside our responsibility. We work with departments in terms of defining what their needs are. It is for them to define their needs. We may prompt them in areas of our expertise, but we do not have the expertise around these issues.
The Chairman: Has this subject come up in any of your discussions?
Ms. Barrados: The only thing that has come up in discussions I have had is that the current deputy minister wants to staff as quickly as possible as a result of feeling that she had too many vacancies.
Senator LeBreton: This is something Senator Poy was trying to get at a while ago when she was talking about trade in the Asia-Pacific region and the need for Foreign Affairs and International Trade workers being skilled in Asian languages. The chairman just talked about the intelligence and security area. Ms. Barrados, you responded with the need for following the policies of bilingualism. However, you also said that some of these positions could be job specific — I think you used those words.
Given the diversity of the world, the global economy and the reality of our changing trading potential, is there anything being done, especially in the Pacific region, where obviously the second language of most people is one of the Asian languages, not French or Italian, for example? Is there any specific project or any study you are doing to try to identify a certain number of positions that are job specific in order to fill the needs and still not infringe upon the bilingualism policies of the government?
Ms. Barrados: The new legislation has changed the definition of “merit.” In so doing, it actually provides for the kinds of issues that both you and Senator Poy have raised in terms of what an organization can build into its requirements and staffing. The distinction made in the legislation in terms of how you identify qualifications is in two parts. There are the essential qualifications that you need to do the job, and those tend to be quite job specific. The second set of qualifications can be what are generally termed asset qualifications. Those are qualifications that the management of an organization has determined are needed. They have determined that they need those kinds of people or those kinds of skills to do the kind of work that they want in their organization to move into the future.
That could then make real the kinds of concerns that the chairman has raised in terms of the kind of training and background on intelligence and analysis of intelligence information, or visible minorities or the diversity that can be put into that. It can then become screening criteria for hiring. What it requires, however, is what we mentioned earlier — a really serious effort at planning on the HR side that determines not only what you need, such as how many bodies, but the kinds of skill sets that you see yourself really needing as an organization. If that is not done, you will not get there. You will not be in a position to address the kinds of issues you raise. We will be looking closely at how those provisions of the act will be used.
Senator LeBreton: My question was going to be what you plan to do about it. Thank you very much.
Ms. Barrados: The new act comes into force on December 31. We are really in a transition kind of world. We have to give departments a chance to get going on the new regulations. We will be monitoring this as closely as we can without being a nuisance, to try to encourage them to make use of those flexibilities they now have been provided with.
The Chairman: Ms. Barrados, I wish to thank you and your team for attending here and for being so open and cooperative in answering our questions. The information you have provided is very helpful.
The committee adjourned.