---

Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Finance

Issue 11 - Evidence

---

OTTAWA, Tuesday, May 29, 2001

The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance met this day at 9:30 a.m. to examine the Main Estimates laid before Parliament for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2002 (Annual Report of the Public Service Commission for the year 1999-2000).

Senator Lowell Murray (Chairman) in the Chair.

[English]

The Chairman: Honourable senators, we are pleased to welcome this morning the President of the Public Service Commission, Mr. Scott Serson, who is accompanied by two of the commissioners, Ms Michelle Chartrand and Ms Mawani. Also at the table is Mr. Douglas Rimmer, Vice-President of Policy Research and Communications for the commission.

You will know that the Public Service Commission last appeared before the committee in June of 1998, when the committee carried on a special study on retention and compensation issues in the public service. In January of 1993, the committee presented a report, Public Service 2000, The Renewal of the Public Service of Canada. A copy of the Public Service Commission's annual report has been distributed to all of you.

Mr. Serson has been president of the commission since 1999. As your briefing notes will tell you, prior to that he held various responsible positions in central agencies and line departments such as Finance, Health, HRDC, and most recently, from 1994 to 1999, as Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs.

Without further ado, I will call on Mr. Serson to make a brief opening statement and then open the meeting to questions.

Mr. Scott Serson, President, Public Service Commission of Canada: I will share the opportunity to make a few brief opening remarks with my colleagues. We are very pleased to have this opportunity to dialogue with you today about our work.

[Translation]

As you are aware, the PSC is an independent agency which ensures that staffing and recruitment for the Public Service are conducted according to the principle of merit.

[English]

Canadians expect a public service that is both effective and ethical. Our role is to safeguard the fundamental principle of merit, which assures Canadians that they can depend on a public service that is non-partisan, competent and representative.

As you know, the government is now actively involved in an overhaul of the current legislative regime for human resources. We are pleased to see a continuing commitment to merit stated in the Prime Minister's announcement of this initiative and the appointment of a task force to pursue it.

Throughout the reform process, we feel it will be important for the Public Service Commission to comment on issues that may affect the principle of merit. I want to indicate as well that the commission supports this need for fundamental reform, including legislative reform, to help renew the human resource management system.

In the two years that I have been president of the commission, we have made it a goal to try to improve public service staffing within the current legislative framework. We remain convinced that much can be done now in advance of legislative change. I will highlight some of the areas that we have been working on just to illustrate what I mean.

[Translation]

For example, the PSC has worked closely with departments and partners in the human resources system to nurture a values-based approach to staffing. A values-based approach seeks to reacquaint hiring managers with the values at the core of many rules and regulations. If people understand the values, they have a powerful tool to make the right decisions.

[English]

We have also made a major effort in the area of accountability over the last 18 months. We have modernized and refined our delegation and accountability agreements with deputy ministers to the point where we can now report that we have modern agreements that cover most major federal government departments.

Another key area in which we have been working is to increase the investment in human resource planning throughout the public service. As Lawrence Strong acknowledged in his most recent report on senior level compensation, HR planning will be critical over the next decade. We have been reinforcing this message by providing to departments modelling and demographic analysis and encouraging the use of the current flexibilities within the staffing system to move towards better HR planning. We are very pleased with the results so far.

Another area that this committee has been concerned about in the past is recruitment. As you indicated in your report in 1999, as increasing numbers of public servants retire, programs such as post-secondary recruitment and other recruitment initiatives will become crucial. Our recruitment action plan, produced in collaboration with the Treasury Board Secretariat, will ensure that we are prepared for this recruitment challenge. We have already begun to implement some changes that will enhance our ability to recruit effectively. This includes a significant investment in technology, which we believe is the key to effective recruitment in a knowledge economy. Our jobs Internet site, for example, averages 800,000 visits each month, compared to an average of 220,000 visits per month in 1998.

[Translation]

As we use the Internet, one of our policy areas that has drawn some criticism in the past few months is our Area of Selection policy. This policy allows some job opportunities to be available only to people living in specified geographic areas.

[English]

I know that some senators have expressed concern about this policy. I want to indicate here that although we have received advice that this policy complies with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, our area of selection policy is now under review. We want to move away from the use of geographically based areas of selection to the extent possible. Our review is examining the operational and service issues that need to be addressed to accomplish that goal. This is an example of the challenge of balancing competing values, access to the public service for Canadians, with the principle of efficiency to ensure that Canadians get the service they need.

I will turn to Commissioner Chartrand to make a few additional comments.

[Translation]

Ms Michelle Chartrand, Commissioner, Public Service Commission: I will be focussing on two areas, namely official languages and employment equity. An important part of the PSC's mandate is to ensure that the Public Service is representative of the public it serves. Our role consists primarily of identifying and eliminating employment barriers against minority groups and of instituting policies and practices that promote the hiring and training of members of these designated groups.

Another aspect of our role consists in training managers and educating them as to their obligations with respect to employment equity. Lastly, we help candidates and employees in these groups with their career path.

There are a number of concrete examples that illustrate the PSC's role within the Public Service in the field of employment equity. We are actively developing an inventory of qualified visible minority groups to help managers increase the representation of such groups. Managers are given information, training and awareness courses to help them break down barriers to staffing and recruitment. Candidates belonging to visible minority groups are given support, assistance and information.

For example, last February, the PSC held a job fair for members of under-represented groups which attracted 6,000 participants. Finally, promoting the merit principle and public service values is always a golden opportunity to broaden people's understanding of employment equity. This approach enables members of these groups to serve their country from within the ranks of the Public Service.

The PSC also has responsibilities in the area of official languages. To begin with, Treasury Board has assigned to us responsibility for public service language training. In addition, as part of the staffing process, we have responsibilities for establishing linguistic standards for positions in the Public Service.

The PSC is responsible as well for developing and administering language tests to assess proficiency in both official languages.

Progress has been noted in terms of the participation of Francophones in the federal Public Service. Francophones now make up 30 per cent of the Public Service and account for 27 per cent of incumbents in the Executive group, including federal public servants in Quebec.

[English]

Before passing the floor to Commissioner Mawani, I would like to reiterate our commitment to the employment equity and the official languages.

Ms Nurjehan Mawani, Commissioner, Public Service Commission of Canada:Honourable senators, I too would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I am the newest member of the commission, having been appointed and having started my responsibilities about two weeks ago. I would first like to say that I regard it a privilege to have been asked to serve Canadians as a commissioner of the Public Service Commission and to join a great team of professionals at the commission.

[Translation]

As the former Auditor General has noted on numerous occasions, the Public Service of Canada is one of the most respected and professional organizations in the world. Its standing is not a matter of luck, but rather the result of upholding values which have served Canadians so well over the years.

[English]

The Public Service Commission, the modern version of the institution created in 1918 to safeguard merit, has played no small role in this achievement. We are committed to seeing that these values continue to be applied. In these exciting times, part of the challenge of renewal is to ensure that Canadians, particularly young and new Canadians, know the value of a public service career. As we set about to revitalize the public service, we have an important occasion to enhance our image as an employer of choice.

A public service career is, after all, an opportunity to make a contribution to our country. It is an opportunity to use one's working life to make a real difference in the lives of Canadians. It means working for the public good and allowing values that resonate with all Canadians to guide one. The fact that we can also offer an unmatched variety of jobs means that the public service should be a very attractive employer.

[Translation]

We have sent this message to the committed, energetic and skilled people. The Public Service Commission needs these people to continue to provide an effective service to Canadians in the years to come. This is both a challenge and an opportunity for us.

[English]

Mr. Serson: Mr. Chairman, you have heard us all say that as an agency that reports to Parliament, we are interested in your views and we appreciate your active interest in our work. We would be happy now to hear your comments and to answer any questions.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Serson, and commissioners.

Senator Bolduc: As a former career civil servant, and chairman of the Province of Quebec Public Service Commission, I feel a bit as though I had lost my virginity by sitting in the Senate. Nevertheless, I still value the merit principle. When I was in the public service 20 years ago, in Quebec, as well as in Ottawa, we had one guiding principle - the merit principle. Now I see that we have five or six guiding principles.

How do you reconcile what seems, at first glance, somewhat contradictory values between those two principles at least: merit, that is to say competence on the one hand, and representativeness on the other?

Mr. Serson: In beginning to dialogue with managers and human resource professionals in the Public Service of Canada, we have tried to make it clear to them that, in thinking about merit in the Public Service of Canada, they must be thinking beyond the notion of simply competence. This predates my work, but when the commission actively began to consider reform, they challenged a group of public service managers to look at the staffing system. The senior managers came back to the commission and recommended that one way to at least address this issue of the complexity of the staffing system was to begin to educate managers on the values that lay behind the rules and regulations.

The commission then hired some experts in the field to study our legislation and to see what values lay behind the legislation. They identified that if we are to define merit, then we should be thinking about three results that we are looking for. One of those results is competence. The other two are non-partisanship and being representative of the Canadian public. In part, they argued that this is because the Employment Equity Act that was adopted in 1995 or 1996 modifies the Public Service Employment Act and gives certain responsibilities to the Public Service Commission and, through us, to deputy ministers.

Of course, they told us that those were the results we should be looking for when we think about merit, but to accomplish them we need to be thinking about the processes that are used to achieve employment in the public service and achieve promotions, and there they indicated that we should be concerned about three values: the value of transparency in everything we do, so that it is clear how people attain employment and promotions in the public service, and that our processes be fair and that they be equitable to all involved.

Those are the things that we have used as a guide, always conscious that different departments have different needs, so we must try to be flexible in our interpretation of the rules, and we must consider value for money for Canadians. Therefore, we must try to ensure that our processes for staffing and recruitment are as efficient as possible.

Senator Bolduc: Your main activity, of course, is recruitment, selection, advancement and promotion. Outside of that you also have training for people, for management particularly, and some other types of training, such as technical training.

Mr. Serson: Mostly professional and technical, and the Canadian Centre for Management Development does the management training, yes.

Senator Bolduc: I see in your annual report that you have a system of delegating authority to all the agencies and departments. Is it a standard type of agreement that you have with them or is it more appropriate, let us say, for Foreign Affairs? There must be some standards in the agreement.

Mr. Serson: When I referred to the work that we have done over the last year, part of that work has been to ensure that with every department we have a standardized agreement, so that the terms of accountability will be clear and consistent between departments.

We do say to departments, as they consider their delegation and accountability agreements with us, that they can negotiate particular authorities that they feel are necessary for them to do their work. For instance, within the Department of Justice, we have delegated the responsibility for recruiting lawyers, because they are the main users of lawyers in the public service. Within Health Canada, with the difficulty we have with the availability of nurses in Canada, we have given them delegated authority for the hiring of nurses so that they can develop flexible kinds of measures to counteract those shortages. We do delegate unique responsibilities for departments where they can make an argument to us that those are necessary for their business plans.

Senator Bolduc: For the specialized occupations that are in the majority in a department, you tend to agree to delegation. For the general positions that we find in many departments, I suspect the commission maintains the organizational activities of these recruitment processes.

Mr. Serson: That is correct. We have maintained the general post-secondary recruitment program and we do general recruitment as well, including the placing of advertising, the screening of applicants and the referral to the department in areas of general recruitment.

Senator Bolduc: In the same vein, what is the percentage of promotions that go through an interdepartmental competition? I see in your report that you have many geographical systems, so that many people in a department are promoted within the department.

Mr. Serson: Yes, absolutely.

Senator Bolduc: I suspect that across a department there are also processes at least at the management level; is that correct?

Mr. Serson: That is correct.

Senator Bolduc: If you have some statistics about that, I would be interested to hear them.

I would like to talk a bit about the francophone representation at the top levels of the public service. I know that many of them do not come within the purview of the Public Service Commission. For example, members of administrative agencies, governmental corporations, deputy ministers and many others are not under your jurisdiction. However, you do have assistant deputy ministers, associate deputy ministers and directors general. At that level, what is the proportion of francophones?

The Chairman: When you talk about the executive group, does that include deputy ministers?

Mr. Serson: No, that includes ADMs, down to what we call executive level 1.

Ms Chartrand: The information I will give you will be partial. If you require more detail, we will provide you with the complete image.

[Translation]

If you have no objections, I will express myself in my mother tongue.

The Executive group, where 27 per cent of incumbents are Francophones, includes assistant deputy ministers and directors general, but not deputy ministers or associate deputy ministers. Obviously, this includes all senior managers working in Quebec. If we exclude Quebec, the francophone participation rate falls to about 20 per cent.

Senator Bolduc: The level of francophone representation in Ottawa is generally acceptable.

Ms Chartrand: Yes. The same phenomenon is noted in the management category.

[English]

Senator Bolduc: Would you be kind enough to table an example of an agreement that you have with Foreign Affairs or with any other department?

Mr. Serson: Certainly, we could circulate that to the committee.

Senator Bolduc: The other day we heard from officials from the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. I was somewhat alarmed that the merit system was not included in their statutory regime. The argument that Mr. Lefebvre gave was that they use the merit principle even though it is not in the law. In my opinion, this principle should be included in the law. If there is one principle in terms of personnel management that should be in the law, it is this one.

Mr. Serson: I tend to agree with you in principle. However, we have an opportunity with human resource reform to simplify the process. What our colleagues at the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency were worried about was that in using the term "merit" in the legislation, they were bringing in the overburden of jurisprudence over the last while.

Senator Bolduc: I do not mean they would be bound by all the processes, but at least to have that as a frame of reference.

The Chairman: What do you mean the "overburden of jurisprudence?"

Mr. Serson: Mr. Chairman, some would argue that where much of the complexity has arisen over the last two decades has been judicial interpretation of the various clauses in the legislation as decisions have gone for appeal to the courts. There is no denying that this has served to complicate the system because each of these new decisions must then be communicated to managers and understood by human resources professionals if they are to avoid falling into those mistakes in the future.

The Chairman: I do not wish to go too far down the road, because I debated this, as did Senator Bolduc, when those bills were before the Senate, both for the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency and Parks Canada. However, the phenomenon that you mention, the judicial interpretation of the merit principle and what not, over the years, has obviously been a powerful motivating factor in agencies trying to get out from under. I said at the time, and continue to believe, that that is the wrong way to go. If there are things to be changed, we should change them.

Mr. Serson: My only other comment would be to make the point that, as part of the CCRA legislation, my predecessor worked with the deputy minister to include a couple of clauses. One was to ensure that CCRA employees could be deployed into the rest of the public service on an equal basis. The Public Service Commission's view was that the staffing system was operating in a way that was consistent with the Public Service Employment Act. The commission is authorized under that legislation to review whether CCRA's staffing principles are consistent with those of the public service.

Senator Bolduc: That is for your own recruitment, not for auditing their personnel processes?

Mr. Serson: It allows us to go in and determine that their processes still have a degree of consistency with the Public Service Employment Act.

Senator Bolduc: Will you report on that?

Mr. Serson: We will, at a certain point. We have had one discussion with CCRA. About four or five months ago, we wrote to them to say that we were satisfied with the progress that they were making in terms of meeting that principle. We will continue to monitor the situation. Mr. Rimmer has been working on that matter and may wish to comment.

Mr. Douglas Rimmer, Vice-President, Public Service Commission: Mr. Chairman, the first step we took was to examine the principles which they state underlie their staffing program and to determine whether they are consistent with the principles that underlie the merit principle. Those are the values that you discussed and that Mr. Serson explained earlier. We have indicated to CRRA that, indeed, the commission believes that the principles of the Public Service Act and the principles enunciated by CCRA are consistent.

Our next step is to determine that what they actually do in their staffing program is consistent with their principles and, through that, consistent with the principles of the Public Service Employment Act. We are working with them on exactly how to do that. The agency is still new and needs a certain amount of experience and activity under their belt so that we can assess their actual practices as opposed to their proposed practices. We want to be sure that what we look at is what they are actually doing. Therefore, a certain amount of time has to go by for them to build up a body of activity that we will then be looking at with them. We are discussing this on an ongoing basis with CRRA.

Senator Bolduc: Do you intend to do that with other agencies, such as Parks Canada?

Mr. Serson: In those other pieces of legislation, senator, we do not have the same kind of authority that was negotiated into the CCRA legislation.

Senator Bolduc: In your distribution of hiring activities to the public service by tenure, I notice that 33 per cent is for specified periods of appointment, 32 per cent is for casuals, and 26 per cent is for students. This means that most of the people you recruit, you do so on a temporary basis. I suspect that is a kind of probation they have to undergo before gaining tenure; is that so?

Mr. Serson: I think, in the minds of managers, that is exactly what is happening. We had a much higher number of specified periods of appointment during the mid-1990s when the federal government was going through program review. It is declining, senator. We continue to want to look at the issue. Some of those decisions could be business decisions in that there is only a specified amount of work to be done in a given period. Some of them could be this kind of managerial testing of the employee, which in some cases may be legitimate.

Our concern is that we have now got the message out to young people across the country that the federal government is hiring. They expect to be hired for full-time employment. In any place where we are competing with the private sector, we believe that we are better off competing in terms of full-time, permanent jobs rather than term employment. We continue to challenge managers to think about the balance and what works best.

Senator Bolduc: Sometimes, when you recruit for a specific period, there is still the danger of patronage. Because you tend to delegate part of the selection process, they say, for example, "It is only for six months. We will take someone we know." So many civil servants know so many people that it becomes a kind of closed circuit. I am not talking only about political patronage; I am talking about civil service patronage also.

Mr. Serson: We have the ability to police that. They must come to us for a referral regarding a permanent, full-time job. This, then, becomes quite a debate between the Public Service Commission and line departments who would like what they call a named referral working on a term basis. We have to go through a dialogue with them to see if it is justified in the business situation or whether we should argue for a competitive process to allow others to apply.

Senator Banks: My first question is supplementary to that of Senator Bolduc's. Unlike him, and as my question will instantly reveal, I do not have any knowledge of the niceties of personnel management in the civil service. However, I understand from what you have just said that your jurisdiction does not extend to Parks Canada, which surprises me. To what extent does the absence of a reference to the merit principle in the legislation governing certain government agencies obviate the application of that principle when it comes to questions of recourse? I guess I have to ask the question: if a court has decided, for example, that an example of recourse having to do with, let us say, a promotion in agency A is a legitimate one, would that not apply to agency B, notwithstanding the absence of the word "merit" in the legislation that governs it? I ask the question in ignorance and just for information. How important is it that the word "merit" does not appear in the CCRA legislation?

Mr. Rimmer: In looking at a particular case before them, the courts will look at the legislation that governs that particular instance. For example, they will look at the legislative regime that governs Parks Canada. Or if they were looking elsewhere in the public sector at a Crown corporation, which is part of the public sector but not governed by the PSCA, they would look at legislation that governs there.

The fact that other parts of the public service might have a different legislative regime, which the courts would have reviewed and interpreted at various times, would not necessarily carry over to other parts of the public sector, writ large, that were governed by a different legislative regime.

Senator Banks: In a very general way, and to exaggerate for purposes of illustration, it is possible that, to the extent that the Government of Canada outsources its provision of services to agencies like the CCRA, et cetera, the people who work there may not receive or be entitled to the same level or kind of protection, if that is the right word, as persons who work for a minister's department; is that correct?

Mr. Rimmer: They would be subject to a different regime. In the case of the recent examples which we have talked about, Parks Canada and the CCRA, there was a deliberate attempt to put them into a different regime.

Senator Banks: I would ask for a comment from whoever has specific interest in or responsibility for the recourse section of what you do. This does not have to do directly with your report. However, I am sure you have seen or been made aware of a bill which has arisen in the Senate having to do with whistle-blowers. I would be grateful for your comments in respect of that proposed legislation.

Mr. Serson: I do not think that any of us are prepared to comment in any detail, senator. The one thing that we did notice and have considered in a general way is that it calls for one of the commissioners to play the role of a public interest commissioner. We looked at that as an interesting opportunity. As commissioners, as you can see from my remarks, we are all interested in the values that are the foundation of the public service, and in particular, merit.

We do find it an interesting role, but beyond that we have not studied the bill in detail because the government still has it under active consideration.

[Translation]

Senator Ferretti Barth: My first question concerns the surprising percentage you quoted, namely 10 per cent which includes Canada and Quebec. Do Francophones account for 10 per cent of this total only in Quebec? In my opinion, this is a rather low francophone representation rate.

My second question relates the 27 per cent figure that you mentioned. Am I to understand that francophone representation is 7 per cent for Quebec and 20 per cent for the rest of Canada? Are you planning any specific measures to increase francophone participation in the Executive group or is the situation destined to remain much the same forever?

My third question pertains to La Relève. We continue to talk about this program today, despite the fact that I recommended a similar program in 1998. We cannot move forward without La Relève. We need to advertise, to go into universities and offer targeted training programs. Is La Relève still in effect?

Finally, what do you mean by mobility? The Privy Council Office talks about a Public Service in which increased mobility is desirable and even encouraged. However, the PSC seems to have a very limited view of this kind of mobility. Do you foresee obstacles to this increased mobility?

Mr. Serson: I will try to answer your question about La Relève. In my view, this was an important initiative. Deputy ministers continue even today to work on La Relève. The new Clerk of the Privy Council talked about recruitment and retention, but these are still the same important issues. La Relève has resulted in some major initiatives, including programs geared to public service managers.

[English]

We have seen an increase in the number of managers going through our career assignment program. We have introduced an accelerated executive development program and we have created pre-qualified pools for assistant deputy ministers. Each of these offers a series of assignments and educational components, which have been some of the key kinds of initiatives that came out of the la Relève program that the previous Clerk initiated in the mid-1990s.

[Translation]

The challenge we now face is obtaining some assurance that we will continue to give the same focus to higher levels as we do to other public service positions.

Ms Chartrand: Earlier, I attempted to explain francophone representation in the federal public service across Canada. I will repeat the pertinent percentages and provide some clarification. At present, francophones make up 30 per cent of the Public Service as a whole. If we look at the Executive group, we note that 27 per cent of the members of the Executive group are francophones. If we exclude Quebec, or basically all federal public servants working in Quebec, francophone representation falls to 20 per cent in the Executive group, and to 23 per cent in the Public Service as a whole. The figure of 20 per cent does not necessarily mean that all of these francophone public servants work in Ottawa. New Brunswick is a bilingual province, as is Ontario and parts of Manitoba.

Senator Ferretti Barth: Excluding Francophones at Montfort hospital.

Ms Chartrand: Right. These were the figures cited earlier.

Mr. Serson: Your last question had to do with mobility.

Mr. Rimmer: Our last annual report made mention of an increase in the number of lateral transfers, that is transfers to other positions at the same level across the Public Service as a whole. The number of such lateral transfers rose from 8,7000 to 10,200, a rather significant jump. A increase was also noted in the number of promotions. Therefore, mobility has increased within the Public Service and we are currently wrapping up several studies and will be submitting our findings to the department with a view to promoting mobility between government departments.

A number of departments are very mindful of the need to plan La Relève within the department, while assuming a corporate role in bringing about La Relève throughout the Public Service as a whole. The figures show that we are moving in the right direction.

Senator Ferretti Barth: You spoke about the area of selection policy. Do other employers apply this policy either here in Canada or abroad? What exactly is the meaning of area of selection? Could a young man from British Columbia be prevented from applying for a position because he resides outside the area of selection? I am trying to get my head around this policy.

Mr. Serson: When a job opening is advertised, we endeavor to select the best possible candidate within a specified area, or area of selection. If the job opening happens to be in a specialized field such as sciences or in an area experiencing a shortage of resources, the area of selection will be extended to all of Canada and everyone will be able to apply. However, if the job to be staffed is a clerical position, even if we limit the area of selection to local residents, we may still receive a large number of applications. We encountered one such situation in Charlottetown, where we received 800 applications for one single position.

[English]

We are using this question of zones of selection to try to ensure that we have a manageable number of applications that we can deal with. In the public service, we are required to assess all applications. If we receive 1,000, we must review all 1,000 applications. We must assess and rank them to ensure that we select the best.

Where opening the competition too wide will produce too many applications for us to cope with, we try to narrow the selection while still ensuring that qualified people apply.

Senator Stratton: I should like to turn to the Auditor General's report. In that report, it was stated that we have been through la Relève in 2000, and now the minister is announcing another review that will supposedly take two years, or whatever. I will not ask you to say whether this will be successful, because I am sure you will say that. However, what can you tell us to give us confidence? We have sat around this table through la Relève and other renewals of the civil service, only to see the Auditor General come out again and slam the entire thing. Could you provide some assurance so that we might feel confident that this review will be successful this time?

Mr. Serson: I can assure you that the Public Service Commission will be playing a role and trying to ensure that the review is successful. As a former deputy minister, I find the Auditor General's views on human resource reform somewhat too harsh at times.

Lawrence F. Strong, the former president and chief executive officer of Unilever Canada Limited, along with a committee of outside individuals, studied the issue of executive remuneration. He has submitted two or three reports. His final report went further than executive remuneration. He addressed the importance of reforming the human resource management system.

Mr. Strong underscored something I have tried to reinforce in my two years as President of the commission: that we must get back to good human resource planning related to business planning. Without that, we will not recruit and identify the kinds of knowledge workers that we will need for the next decade. He said that it is not unreasonable that deputy ministers and senior managers were not paying attention to this while they were downsizing the government over the course of program review. Mr. Strong said that that is over now, and we must ensure that we are shifting attention to this new challenge. That is a part of what we have seen in the last decade.

The Public Service Commission and the Treasury Board participated in a reform exercise in the early 1990s. The Public Service Employment Act was amended in 1993. However, it was just as those amendments came on line that we started into program review, and our focus was downsizing, not staffing.

Part of what we have been trying to do in the last couple of years is to lay the basis for human resource reform by reminding managers of the responsibility in the staffing and recruitment area. While that does not guarantee success, the work that the Clerk has been doing in the same vein has increased managerial awareness of the priority that needs to be attached to this aspect.

Senator Stratton: You talk about the process taking a decade. This renewal, of course, does not happen instantly. It never does. It is a fairly large task. How long do you expect this renewal to take? To a degree, it will be ongoing. Are you satisfied that, for the most part, the goals have been achieved? Is this a three-year window or a five-year window? It is realistic to ask that because then, at least around this table, when we read the media reports we can say, "Wait a second, let us give this a little time to mature."

Mr. Serson: First, I want to be absolutely clear: I am not talking about the reform taking 10 years. I am saying that we have a challenge over the next decade to replace the baby boomers through the public service. That challenge even six months ago was much more extreme than it is today. With the economic slowdown, our competition with the private sector in certain specialty areas seems to be relenting somewhat. That demographic challenge will be with us over the next decade.

With respect to human resource management reform, the President of the Treasury Board says that her time frame for new legislation - I do not know whether that includes the time to go through Parliament - is 18 months.

We would all acknowledge that combined with legislative change is the requirement for cultural change. That process is under way, but there is no doubt that the managerial workload is still a concern in the Public Service of Canada. The kind of principles that the Prime Minister, the President of the Treasury Board and the Clerk have enunciated for human resource reform really puts an emphasis on making managers more responsible and accountable, which implies more time spent on this aspect. That will be a challenge.

Notwithstanding the Auditor General's concerns about human resource reform, a significant amount of work has descended on the human resource management community. We have had pay equity, the classification system and the work that we have been doing on staffing. All of this has raised concerns about the capabilities and the resiliency of the human resource community. Whether these issues are resolved in the same time frame as human resource legislative reform must be addressed as well.

Senator Stratton: As you said, the minister wants this report done within 18 months. There is a deadline. The Auditor General was rather doubtful.

I would like to go through the process as you see it. If we have the overall outline of the process completed in 18 months, are you saying that beyond that 18 months there will still be a seven- or eight-year workout period? That is the message I continue to hear.

Mr. Serson: I do not think it will be that long. We expect that this might be a significant change. There will be a requirement for training and information that will follow. It will need to be part of the rollout of this review. However, I do not see it taking seven years. I see it taking another solid year or two years.

Senator Stratton: You are saying, let us give it two years. I do not think it is possible in a year. I thank you. That is the direct answer I was seeking.

The Chairman: Mr. Serson, I have a number of questions for the record that might be helpful. You have been extremely thorough and informative in your testimony.

I have the press release that was put out by the Prime Minister's Office on April 3 announcing the task force, and announcing also that Ranald Quail will head the task force and will report to Mr. Mel Cappe, Clerk of the Privy Council, Secretary to the Cabinet, and head of the public service.

I have heard Clerks of the Privy Council referred to by that title before. What is the origin of that title? Is there a statutory basis for the term "head of the public service" when applied to the Clerk?

Mr. Serson: I will ensure that Mr. Rimmer corrects me if I am wrong but I believe, Senator Murray, that that clause was added to the Public Service Employment Act to refer to the head of the public service in the 1993 reforms.

The Chairman: Is that the case, Mr. Rimmer?

Mr. Rimmer: Yes.

The Chairman: Does the act go on to define his duties in that role?

Mr. Serson: I do not think there is any definition in that clause other than the obligation to report to the Prime Minister on an annual basis on the state of the public service.

Mr. Rimmer: Yes, that is correct.

The Chairman: I should know, but why would the Clerk report to the Prime Minister on the state of the public service? What is the difference, in qualitative terms or in terms of content, between the report he would issue to the Prime Minister on that matter and the annual report that you would issue as president of the commission?

Mr. Serson: Our report would deal with staffing and recruitment and our other responsibilities, such as training, whereas I believe the report that the Clerk makes to the Prime Minister is broader. It deals with the state of morale and the challenges the public service is facing, more broadly than just the demographic challenges.

The Chairman: Are these not properly your and the commission's concerns?

Mr. Serson: Yes.

The Chairman: I am not trying to drive a wedge between you and the Clerk. I just wonder how these things come together.

Mr. Serson: The Clerk might comment to the Prime Minister on a wide variety of issues such as, for instance, the importance of government on-line and the importance of a representative and diverse public service, as a general proposition. We would approach it from the point of view of, for instance, the expertise necessary to succeed at government on-line, whether we have the staff, the talent, et cetera. Our responsibility would be more specific with respect to diversity and representativeness and how we translate that into meaningful results in our staffing and recruitment system, whereas he might be talking at the level of broad culture in the public service or respect for diversity.

The Chairman: The only responsibility that the act places upon him or her is to deliver an annual report to the Prime Minister, which is a public document, as I recall.

Mr. Serson: Yes.

The Chairman: Further, in this press release, reference is made to a number of reports that have been brought in over the years, which, as the announcement says, have common themes with respect to improving human resources management in the public service. These themes are, first, that there is a need for clarity in roles of the players on human resources management. What does that say to you?

Mr. Serson: I am not sure that that relates to issues around the big questions of our role in terms of staffing versus the Treasury Board as employer, but there are some areas where we now have a Centre for Management Development while the Public Service Commission operates Training and Development Canada. One will hear it asked from time to time, why do we need two training institutions. I think it is getting at those kinds of issues.

The Chairman: Obviously, even if the reports in the past have identified the need for clarity, it has not helped.

Mr. Serson: Frankly, even the previous commission had begun to talk informally with parliamentarians about the nature of the role of the Public Service Commission, whether it should remain involved in the provision of services or should become more of an oversight and audit organization. The challenge around roles and responsibility there was the suggestion of whether it was appropriate for an organization that was actively involved in the staffing system to be overseeing that system.

There are arguments on both sides. Some may argue that we are a better overseer because we are actively involved in the system and understand the challenges that the system faces. Those are the kinds of issues that have been raised, at least where the Public Service Commission is concerned.

The Chairman: To take the illustration that you use, that is the Canadian Centre for Management Development, and your organization, which is Training and Development Canada, CCMD is a relatively recent creation, is it not? It was brought in in addition to your organization to fill a need that I suppose someone felt your organization was not filling.

Mr. Serson: It was to fill the need for direct attention to senior management and common learning, corporate learning and culture for senior managers.

The Chairman: You expect this task force will look at this area of duplication and overlap?

Mr. Serson: Yes, I think it will. I do not want to imply that there is duplication and overlap. I just say that there are several organizations. The only reason I say that, senator, is that Jocelyn Bourgon and I have signed an administrative agreement to ensure that there will be no duplication and overlap between our organizations, so the discussion will be of a higher order than that. It will be about whether we can get better economies, efficiencies, focuses and clarity by having one learning organization.

The Chairman: The second theme that is mentioned here is that managers must have a greater responsibility for human resources management. That is compared to whom?

Mr. Serson: I think it is more compared to the current situation. I will not include Ms Mawani in this because she is too recent to the commission to be implicated, but it is a concern that Commissioner Chartrand and I do have. Part of the difficulty is that, given what managers have been through over the past seven or eight years in terms of downsizing and the pressures they have faced, there is a tendency to see the staffing system as the Public Service Commission's staffing system, to the point where we sometimes feel that we do not get sufficient involvement in finding solutions to the problems that exist. That is our challenge. One of the opportunities in human resources management reform is to give managers a greater sense of ownership of the staffing system so that they will become more involved in discharging their responsibilities and finding solutions that fit with business needs.

The Chairman: The constraints that some people believe are on managers today arise, I presume, partly from regulations and legislative provisions and partly from the existence of other authorities in the system, other agencies that have an interest. Is that the case? Is it fair to make a distinction between those two sets of constraints?

Mr. Serson: No, I think the constraints that are on managers these days are of both a legal nature, being the legislation, regulations and jurisprudence which we talked about earlier, and a cultural nature. The fact that as we emerge from program review and place workload pressures, there is a tension about the time it takes in the Public Service of Canada to do basic staffing and recruitment. The balance that we will need to strike as we look at human resources reform is what are the requirements in a staffing and recruitment system of a public service organization? Presumably we have a higher standard to meet when it comes to transparency, fairness and equity.

I believe most employers are interested in competence. If they are attuned at all to the business climate, they are interested in a diverse workforce, representative of the people that they serve, but then we have particular needs when it comes to the question of non-partisanship. Those are the kinds of issues that will arise vis-à-vis the legislative and regulatory framework.

The Chairman: Give me a ballpark number as to the size of the family. What is the size of the public service?

Mr. Serson: We are now, with CCRA, at about 150,000.

The Chairman: Do you not include CCRA or Parks Canada?

Mr. Serson: The Food Inspection Agency and some smaller ones.

The Chairman: The big ones outside now are Parks Canada and CCRA. Your number does not include the RCMP, except for the civilians?

Mr. Serson: It might include the civilian portion of the RCMP.

Mr. Rimmer: Yes, it does.

The Chairman: What is your relationship with Parks Canada? Is there any?

Mr. Serson: They could ask to use our job site. As I say, it is a good Internet job site. It is well used. They could turn to us for official languages training. They could access the services of Training and Development Canada.

The Chairman: Do you have authority over them?

Mr. Serson: No.

Senator Mahovlich: Who gives you any authority and when does it come?

Mr. Serson: Our authority comes from the legislation, the Public Service Employment Act.

Senator Mahovlich: Must we wave flags if we want you in there to report on Parks Canada?

The Chairman: He would need to change the law. I presume someone is monitoring Parks Canada in terms of their staffing and their respect for the norms that one would consider important. Do you know that?

Mr. Serson: I assume they have their own internal processes, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: What does it mean to say, as you do, regarding official languages, that you have statutory powers, et cetera, which include "establishing and updating linguistic selection standards for positions"? You do not designate bilingual positions, do you? I thought it was Treasury Board or the departments which did that.

Mr. Rimmer: You are quite right, we do not decide that a position needs to be bilingual. The qualifications for a position are set by the departments. However, we do set the selection standards for evaluating whether an individual meets the appropriate linguistic requirements for the position. We establish certain levels of linguistic capacity that people must meet, and we develop the testing to assure that they do so.

The Chairman: Refresh my memory about the positions. There are positions that are "bilingual essential." What are the others? Would it be "bilingualism desirable"?

Mr. Rimmer: There are essentially four groupings. There is a bilingual position, English essential, French essential, either/or, meaning it is either French or English essential.

The Chairman: When you say that the Treasury Board secretariat reports that francophones make up just over 30 per cent of the public service as a whole, that number does not include CCRA or Parks Canada, right?

Mr. Serson: Right.

The Chairman: Your written statement says that the PSC is currently implementing a key recommendation of the report by setting the benchmark of hiring one in five visible minority members by the year 2003. Do you have a progress report to offer us on that?

Mr. Serson: You know that this is the report "Embracing Change" that the government endorsed just over a year ago now. We share a responsibility on employment equity issues with Treasury Board and we have been working quite closely with them on this. We have been through a process of dialogue and information training with departments on the report. We have been taking steps in the developmental programs that we operate.

We have started to do a visible minority component of the career assignment program to ensure that we are getting the numbers that we need. We are looking at a visible minority component of our accelerated executive development program, and we have been working with managers who are just below the senior management level throughout the Public Service of Canada on the option of becoming a senior manager; what does it take, what are the kinds of competencies for which we look. We have been doing those generally.

Recently we have started to focus a little more on visible minorities, making sure that they understand the opportunities that exist and how best to prepare in order to avail themselves of those opportunities. We have also been doing a large amount of work at the recruitment level. We had a highly successful job fair for visible minorities in Ottawa back in the late winter with approximately 6,000 participants.

We have also established employment equity inventories - inventories of qualified individuals in nine of our district offices. Where we have yet to do that because of the cost and expense, we have certainly, in all of our regions, strengthened our relationships with the community representatives of visible minority communities so that we may help them identify opportunities for employment in the public service and get the necessary candidates.

We have a wide variety of activities under way and we are at the point now, after the first year, where we are working with the board on how best to report progress. We should be doing that soon.

[Translation]

Senator Ferretti Barth: You have not said anything about persons with disabilities and women. What kind of career opportunities exist for members of these two groups in the Public Service? Are more and more women and persons with disabilities being hired?

The federal government has identified four target groups: aboriginals, persons with disabilities, visible minorities and women. Women were included because it was felt members of this group were not widely accepted in the Public Service. It is critically important that women enjoy equal career opportunities today.

Ms Chartrand: Allow me to quote some figures. Mention was made of the Public Service as a whole, excluding those agencies referred to earlier. Approximately 150,000 people are employed in the Public Service, and 51.7 per cent of public servants are women. However, some caution is in order. As everyone knows, numbers can lie. We need to look a little more closely to see how these figures break down in terms of the number of senior managers, scientists and so forth.

I can also give you some overall figures. There are about 77,000 female public servants. Earlier, I quoted some figures on francophone representation. At present, there are approximately 4,600 aboriginal public servants. This represents 3.2 per cent of the workforce. Finally, the 7,900 persons belonging to a visible minority group account for approximately 5.4 per cent of the workforce in the Public Service.

These figures are incomplete because I do not have labour market availability indexes and these are essential to the process of determining figures. I am certain that we could get these to you. Nevertheless, this gives you some idea of how far we have come thus far.

Senator Ferretti Barth: When you talk about aboriginals, persons with disabilities and visible minorities, you also include women in this group. The percentage of women is, of course, higher.

Ms Chartrand: Of course.

[English]

Senator Banks: I must confess to my colleagues that I have some homework to do. While I can understand that employees of Crown corporations are quite different animals, and are not public servants, I cannot get my head around the fact that the people who collect our taxes are not public servants. I will try to understand that better.

Do you think, Mr. President, that this is the thin edge of the wedge? Will we see more positions which were traditionally regarded as being part of the public service made, by legislation, into a hybrid animal that is not included in the public service? Will this happen more often? The buzzword this week is "outsource." In other words, will you lose more people?

You said 150,000 people are now within your purview. I gather that figure would have been 200,000 a little while ago. Is this an ongoing process? Do you have any knowledge of anything further coming down the pipe like this?

Mr. Serson: It is not within my purview, senator, to comment on this in detail. In the two years that I have been president, there have been some small agencies that have come to the commission to talk about the issue of whether they should still be covered by the Public Service Employment Act. My approach has been to challenge them to think about the flexibilities, work with us on the flexibilities within the act. I am convinced that, until we see legislative reform, there is flexibility in the act to accommodate most every need of any employer in the public service. I do believe that merit is an important principle and should continue to cover public servants.

Senator Banks: I understand that you are talking about your jurisdictional bailiwick now. I am asking more of a semantic question. I would ask you for your impression of the answer to the question. Are people who run our parks and are people who collect our taxes and guard our borders members of the Public Service of Canada?

Mr. Rimmer: The short answer is yes, they are.

Senator Banks: Oh, good.

Mr. Rimmer: There remains the Minister of National Revenue who is responsible for that organization. The people within Revenue Canada, if you would talk to them, I have not met any one of them who no longer feels that they are a public servant. It has been true historically that we have always had a variety of different organizational models within the public service. We have had parts of the public service that have been under our direct authority and parts that have not. That has been true for a long time.

Senator Banks: The question of your jurisdictional authority is not one which determines whether a person is a public servant; is that correct?

Mr. Rimmer: That is correct.

Mr. Serson: Correct me if I am wrong, Mr. Rimmer, but the language now is that we do talk about public servants who are covered by the Public Service Employment Act and those who are not.

The Chairman: Do you agree with the statement that the reason these separate agencies were created was to get out from under the legislative and regulatory framework that applies elsewhere in the public service? They made that pretty clear at the time of the debate.

Mr. Serson: There were a variety of business reasons, and that was perhaps one of those reasons. They felt that they could, in that context, tailor a human resource regime that better met their business needs, yes.

Senator Banks: Does it in any way lessen the rights, privileges, protections, et cetera, of those persons who work in the public service but do not fall under your jurisdiction? They are different, but are they less? Are we trying to be separate but equal?

Mr. Serson: I can talk to you more about the practical implications, or at least one practical implication that we hear of the most. It is not with CCRA, because CCRA was the last of these organizations. They were thoughtful enough to work out a deal where their members could still fully compete for Public Service Employment Act jobs.

With respect to Parks Canada, we do have real concerns at times. Since we do executive staffing, we are likely to hear of it a little more there, but from time to time we do hear concerns. When jobs are offered in the Public Service of Canada, managers will naturally assume that with 150,000 public servants they can probably get good, qualified candidates within that universe, so they restrict the job to employees covered by the Public Service Employment Act, and the Parks Canada people are left out of that equation. From time to time I hear about frustration with that situation. It can be overcome, but it has created a bit of a barrier that needs to be addressed.

The Chairman: Conversely, if someone were working for Treasury Board and decided that they preferred the outdoor life and wanted to get into Parks Canada, how easily is that done compared to when Parks Canada was within the act?

Mr. Rimmer: That would depend on how Parks Canada has decided to structure its recruitment and staffing processes. Part of the rationale, as Mr. Serson explained, for creating these new organizations was to give them the flexibility to try some different things. They would be able to do that as they saw fit, according to their business needs.

Senator Banks: Is it correct that some public servants in Canada operate under a different regulatory and protection regime - if that is the right word - with regard to their jobs and recourse than other public servants?

Mr. Rimmer: Yes, that is quite true.

Senator Cools: I hope the witnesses will bear with my profound ignorance. What is the distinction between a civil servant and a public servant? When I was a young girl, a long time ago, the language used was "civil servants".

Mr. Serson: Yes, and we used to be the "civil service commission". I do not know what caused that change.

The Chairman: Perhaps "public service" translates more easily.

Mr. Rimmer: My history does not go back far enough to shed much light on that, but at present there is no effective distinction between federal government people who are public servants and those who are civil servants. There are two categories of people who work for the federal government. We use the terminology "public servants" and "public service" to describe the federal government regime.

Senator Cools: We are now reaping the results of all the name changes of a decade or two ago. When I was younger, "public service" included everyone, including members of Parliament, as distinct from ministers of the Crown and civil servants. I gather that there is now a fair amount of confusion about the term "public servant." I understand clearly the differences in the statutory arrangements of the different clusters of people who are attached to different agencies and organizations.

Mr. Chairman, some of the questions that these witnesses have raised beg deeper study. Perhaps at some time we can take a deeper, longer and larger look at the state of the federal public service in Canada.

The Chairman: I will be here for another ten years, senator, and you can carry on after that.

Senator Cools: It will take at least that.

The Chairman: There being no further questions or comments, it remains only for me to thank our witnesses for being here today. Your presentation was very thorough and informative, and we greatly appreciate it.

The committee adjourned.

---