Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Finance
Issue 8 - Evidence - Meeting of May 12, 2009
OTTAWA, Tuesday, May 12, 2009
The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance met this day at 9:32 a.m. to examine the Estimates laid before Parliament for the fiscal year ending March31, 2010.
Senator Joseph A. Day (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I call this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance to order. This morning we turn our attention to the Public Service Commission of Canada.
[Translation]
I would like to introduce and thank Maria Barrados, President of the Public Service Commission of Canada. She will be with us for the duration of our meeting this morning.
[English]
Our meeting will have two parts. In the first hour, Ms.Barrados will be joined by Larry Murray, who has served as Chair of the Independent Review Committee that conducted a review of the Public Service Commission oversight function. We will discuss his work and report for the first part of this meeting. We thank you for being here, Admiral Murray. I know you had rather short notice, but we have had the chance to look at your report. We look forward to your comments and discussion will follow.
Honourable senators, for the second hour of our meeting this morning, Ms.Barrados will be joined by some of her senior officials. They will come forward once we finish with the review of the Public Service Commission oversight report.
As always, I would ask honourable senators to keep their questions and responses as concise and precise as possible to allow all committee members an opportunity to participate. With those few introductory words, we look forward to hearing from Ms.Barrados and Mr.Murray in relation to the first part of our meeting.
[Translation]
Maria Barrados, President, Public Service Commission of Canada: Mr.Chair, I would like to thank the members of this committee for the opportunity to meet this morning to discuss our latest report and the activities at the Public Service Commission of Canada.
I am pleased to be joined by Larry Murray. He is a distinguished public servant with great experience and insight into all aspects of public policy and governance.
[English]
In 2008, the government launched a strategic Horizontal Review of Human Resources. The PSC was one of six organizations that participated in the review. Some questions arose about the appropriateness of the PSC's oversight activities. This led the PSC to appoint an Independent Review Committee, led by Larry Murray, to determine the appropriateness of our approach to oversight and to identify areas for improvement. The other two members of the committee were Jon Singleton, former Auditor General of Manitoba, and Marie Fortier, former Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Government of Canada.
The focus was on PSC monitoring and audit activities. The committee completed its work in January. The report has been distributed to parliamentarians, including members of this committee. This morning, Mr.Murray is here to provide you with a briefing on the review.
Mr.Chair, the Public Service Commission has accepted the committee's three conclusions and 18 recommendations. We have developed an action plan to address them. A copy of this plan is included with my remarks as handout number one.
We have also shared the report, its findings and our action plan with senior executive committees. I am confident we will make significant progress implementing the recommendations this year.
[Translation]
Before he begins his presentation, I would like to thank Larry Murray and his task force members for taking on this task and Mr.Murray for his leadership in this important exercise.
[English]
Larry Murray, Chair, Independent Review Committee, Review of Public Service Commission Oversight, Public Service Commission of Canada: Mr.Chair, in the course of approximately 10 minutes, I will provide a brief overview of the report using a deck. I will go through it fairly quickly.
As Ms.Barrados said, the terms of reference were to determine the appropriateness of the approach, the level of effort of the Public Service Commission and to identify areas for improvement.
Slide four illustrates project support and timing. I want to highlight the wonderful support we received from Maria Barrados and the Public Service Commission. Two senior employees at the PSC, Mary Clennett and Blair Haddock, were invaluable to us. It was a great experience for the committee.
We were an independent committee, but given the time constraints and the need to finish within a relatively short period of time, we drew on some outside experts. Members of the committee would know the former Chief Statistician of Canada, Dr.Ivan Fellegi. He looked at monitoring and data for the commission and the review committee. Deloitte Consulting looked at capacity building. One of the committee's mandates was how much oversight is enough. Therefore, we had Ernst & Young look at the auditing approach and the methodology to help us with this question.
Slide five shows consultation. Mr.Chair, we appreciated your input and the input of parliamentarians from both houses and all parties. Although we cover it in the report, it was clear that both Houses of Parliament strongly support the role of PSE and the need for effective oversight. Every parliamentarian we spoke to focused on key issues such as national area of selection, the concern for all Canadians to have access and the high percentage of terms and casuals turning into permanent employs. We heard those concerns consistently from parliamentarians.
Deputy heads of departments and central agencies essentially indicated there is too much oversight or duplication of oversight. This was not necessarily focused on the PSC. It was in regard to all the oversight issues coming at them or the web of rules that I am sure this committee has heard about, of which the PSC was part. There was also confusion about the role of the PSC and how accountability will work with the new act. I will come back to that issue later.
There is a sense by some that the PSC should focus on non-partisanship. We tried to deal with that issue in our conclusion. We heard similar things from the human resource council executive, which is a range of senior public servants responsible for human resource management in various departments. The union leaders felt that more oversight was required. They remain quite concerned about the new definition of ``merit'' and so on. The bargaining agents want tougher oversight. The conversation with officials from the offices of the Comptroller General and the Auditor General was about the duplication issue, which I will come back to. The internal audit committee of the PSC and senior representatives provided technical input on where the PSC is.
I believe that you are aware of the objectives of the PSC oversight, so I will not spend much time on slide 6 other than to highlight the last point. One issue that I mentioned is confusion, which might be too strong a word. The Secretary of the Treasury Board, Wayne Wouters, said that we have to try to explain the accountability framework clearly in our report. We have to explain that it exists in the sense that the Public Service Commission is accountable to Parliament for staffing and has been encouraged, under the new legislation, to do maximum delegation. That means if there is a problem in one department, it becomes a problem for Ms.Barrados and the Public Service Commission. It is an interesting accountability framework and it will work only with good understanding and collaboration between all the players. That is why we focus on it and why the first conclusion is worded in that way.
Slide 7 is about oversight activity. It was an effort to respond to some of the questions we received on monitoring, oversight, etcetera. We tried to explain that in the report in a fairly simple way.
Slide 8 shows the remarks of the OAG in recent reports of the Auditor General. I point out the sense that an increase in audit at the PSC, or a resuming of audit, began with the new legislation in 2005. Actually, it starts with the report of the AG in 2003 based on the investigation of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in 2002. I will touch on that in the expenditure, but that is where audit starts. With the new legislation, it carries on from there.
Slide 9 speaks to some of the results of recent PSC oversight. I will not spend your time on that. I am happy to come back to it in questions or Ms.Barrados will speak to it.
Slide 10 concerns resources. The bottom line that you see is 2002-2003 and to the right of 2003-2004, you will note that it begins to increase. That is the result of the AG's report and the investigations of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. To the right of 2006-2007, you will see the increase again as the result of the new legislation — the increased delegation to departments and the need for increased oversight by the PSC. The line at the far right shows an area of monitoring, an area where there has to be greater expenditure. I will come back to that in the conclusions and recommendations.
The mandate was to determine the appropriateness of the approach and level of effort of PSC oversight. The first conclusion deals with the issue of the appropriateness of the approach. The first two paragraphs try to capture the mandate of the PSC. In examining the Public Service Employment Act, the delegation instrument and the activities of the PSC, it is our perspective that the scope of the oversight of the PSC must be as broad as is the range of delegated authorities. That is to say, the oversight must encompass the effectiveness of the staffing system and cannot be limited to non-partisanship or any other single component. We had to be clear on that.
The second part of the first conclusion centres on the appropriateness of the actual activities. It is our view, and that of the people to whom we spoke, that the oversight activities of the PSC — monitoring, auditing and investigation— are the right ones. We determined that some calibration is needed in the quality and amount of monitoring and that there is a need for the development of capacity across its monitoring and audit activities. Capacity is code for human resources; talented people who are in great demand and limited supply in this area for the PSC and other agencies.
The second conclusion speaks to the level of effort. In that context, it is our view that the level of effort planned for oversight was appropriate. There was a strong case to be made for increasing the level of resources for monitoring. We left it to the PSC to determine how best to achieve that, whether through slowing the building of audit or reallocating from other resources. How much is enough? That is a tough question. We determined that we had to approach it in a couple of different ways.
Our view and that of the experts is that the five-year to seven-year audit cycle was reasonable. That means, for example, if I am in my previous role as Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, I can expect the PSC to come through my office door to have a full entity audit to determine how I run human resources in my department at least every five to seven years. That seems entirely reasonable, if I may say.
We also tried to look at overall resources. At page 37 of the report, we attempted to compare all the resources in the 82departments and agencies, what they expend, what the audit expenditure is for human resources, which is what the PSC does, and the remaining expenditures. It was quite reasonable and the Treasury Board was struck by that too.
In addition to the PSC's view, we had Ernst & Young confirm that it is about right. Mr.Jon Singleton, former Auditor General of Manitoba, was a member of the committee and he agreed. On that basis, we concluded that the level of effort was fine. A greater concern than the resources is being able to ramp it up, bring the expertise through the door and team build.
The third conclusion was a bit broader and a bit off our mandate at some level. One thing we found in all the interviews was a consensus that full implementation of the Public Service Employment Act, which came into force in December 2005, has not happened. There were various views about the progress, but it had not yet been fully implemented. We concluded that much good is happening around HR renewal, which is essential from our perspective. Full implementation of PSEA is a fundamental building block of public service renewal. Enhancing and doing whatever with PSC oversight in isolation will not be enough to achieve full implementation. There needs to be a concerted team effort by everyone involved to move this forward. I will come back to that in a minute.
There were eighteen recommendations in all, with four on communications and collaboration; two on avoiding duplication with the other two major audit organizations; and two on policy and Staffing Management Accountability Framework, which is about getting expectations right; four each on monitoring and audit; and two on performance monitoring and reporting.
Slide 16 speaks to stakeholder communication. The first recommendation in this group of four relates to the report to Parliament, which most parliamentarians received positively. It speaks to communication within the context of increasing the number of entity audits from about 3 per year to 13 per year when this is up and running, including some additional horizontal audits across government as well as some follow-up audits.
It seemed to us that the report could summarize the results of these various departmental audits, put the reports on the Web and there would still be transparency. We felt it would be a more useful document for parliamentarians taking into account the increasing number of these audits. The report would be more useful to Parliament.
The second recommendation is critical, and that is the need to establish within government a regular forum for dialogue between the president and the commission and deputy heads of departments on staffing to ensure there is real dialogue on a regular basis.
The third recommendation is to regularize the meetings with the leaders of the bargaining agents. The fourth recommendation speaks to some extent to the conclusion number three. As you would know, there is fairly significant demographic change going on in the senior and middle leadership throughout the public service. There is a need to ensure that at every opportunity, managers and employees are equipped with the knowledge they need to understand the staffing system so that it becomes second nature, based on the values and so on, so everyone becomes confident and comfortable doing it. However, that will only happen with continued education and training.
Slide 17 focuses on the fifth and sixth recommendations dealing with collaboration. It is about trying to eliminate or avoid, to the extent possible, duplication between the various audit agencies. The Comptroller General and the president of the PSC met and will be developing an MOU to streamline their activities in planning staffing audits, training and so on. The PSC has also offered to visit internal audit committees, which are also being ramped up concurrent with all of this, to ensure that they understand where the PSC is, what they are doing and how they do their business.
In the case of the OAG, Ms.Barrados and Ms.Fraser and Jon Singleton met and have agreed to a more formal approach to fostering a collaborative working relationship, in other words, a formal means of exchanging plans to reduce duplication to the extent possible.
Slide 18 is on the policy and the staffing management accountability framework, and includes two recommendations. One is that when the new legislation came in, it did result in a lot of work for the PSC, among others, on the policy side. It is now in train, and a major policy review is under way. That is moving ahead with some urgency and needs, from our perspective, to ensure that everyone has the policy understanding and stakeholders are engaged in that exercise so everyone understands the policy on which the audits are based. The non-advertised versus advertised is something we bumped into frequently, so we highlighted that as being an area that needed early attention in terms of policy definition.
On the monitoring side, the DSAR, the Departmental Staffing Accountability Report, is generated by departments to the PSC. Much work has been done on it already. In fact, the PSC has reduced by 60percent the paper burden or administrative burden to departments, but work is still required there in terms of what is measured and what that tells you. It does require consultation with departments, and that is under way. The data is really not just to do with the PSC. It is across government. There does need to be work done so that people can get human resources information that is usable and that they can transfer back and forth. It would save a lot of time and energy and ensure much more accurate results. That is around upgrading the IT infrastructure and coming up with a formal data strategy.
Number 11 concerns improving the completeness and accuracy of data with respect to advertised and non- advertised data. Dr.Fellegi was not certain whether the data that was coming back in that area was necessarily entirely accurate.
The next recommendation, number 12, has to do with the issue of building the human resources capacity within the PSC to do this work. Let me be clear. One thing that shone through was the dedication and hard work of everyone involved in the PSC. There are a number of recommendations. This is a professional organization. People care a lot, and that shone through. When Dr.Fellegi was looking at it, he said that people were ``going under'' trying to do this work to the best of their ability. As a result of that and other conversations, we landed on the recommendation that there needs to be more horsepower and more work done in some of these areas to make it easier.
On side 20 and the four recommendations dealing with the audit, there is the need to invest in team building and a learning strategy. There is a need to tailor the audit methodology for staffing audits, which are unique, and on the resource side, trying to ensure that the right people are recruited, trained and available to do this work.
There is also a need to do a continual review to ensure that the resources are adequate. In other words, if the monitoring is adjusted, what is the model? On this, there is a need to survey departments after an audit, because everyone is learning in this process, to get that feedback. This was the PSC. It was not us. This external quality assurance review is every one to two years. I wondered if that was not too much, but the team really wanted to do it. It can be done, and it will ensure, as this process gets ramped up and moves forward, that it will be a continual learning and will remain effective throughout the piece and will not be overkill.
The final two recommendations concern performance monitoring and reporting to ensure through annual reviews, strategic plans and performance the results of where the monitoring and audit activity are and where they are going.
The final recommendation is to ensure that you and your colleagues in the House of Commons continue to receive the reports you need in terms of the progress that is going on in this area and the progress on capacity building.
I apologize if I went fairly quickly, but I thought you would prefer to have time for questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much for that overview and the slide presentation.
Senators, during Ms.Barrados' introductory words, she made reference to an action plan, and this plan has been circulated. It is the legal-length document, a separate document as opposed to being attached to her presentation in our package.
Mr.Murray: The way the recommendations are captured in the action plan is better than the way they are captured in my deck. If you want a sense of the recommendations, read Ms.Barrados' action plan rather than the deck I have provided.
The Chair: Yet another review of your work, a positive one in this instance — in fact, in both instances.
Could you clarify the issue that the Secretary of the Treasury Board, soon to be going to the Privy Council Office, mentioned to you with respect to accounting?
Since the Public Service Employment Act came into force in 2005, we have had the Federal Accountability Act, which brought deputy heads or deputy ministers into the system as using the term ``accounting officer.''
Would you, with respect to staffing and human resources, consider the deputy minister to be accountable to Parliament in relation to those items or continue to be accountable to the Public Service Commission, who is then accountable to Parliament?
Mr.Murray: I would consider the deputy minister to be accountable to the Public Service Commission, who is then accountable to Parliament. Mr.Wouters' point was to try to ensure in this report that we captured that reality so that people understood that the Public Service Commission was responsible and accountable to Parliament for the overall staffing system and had been encouraged in the new legislation to provide maximum delegation to departments. Mr.Wouters' point was that the deputies need to understand that if there is a problem in their department, they have a problem, obviously, but the President of the Public Service Commission has a problem as well, because she is accountable to Parliament for the overall system, and to try to capture that so people could understand this accountability relationship in a constructive manner. That is why we tried to frame it in the report to make that clear in a couple of spots.
The Chair: There may be some who feel that with this new requirement to be accounting officers, deputy ministers may have direct accountability to Parliament.
Mr.Murray: I mentioned the concerns about the amount and varieties of oversight. The government's tackling of the web of rules indicates a concern that they are trying to take it on. This new legislation came into effect in December2005. The machinery of human resources was changed dramatically and has been recently simplified again, which is good. The Federal Accountability Act came into effect shortly after that and although it did not change this relationship, all of these items happening concurrently probably led to lack of clarity, if not confusion, in the minds of some people. We have tried to clarify this issue.
Ms.Barrados: Our accountability relationships are unique. It means that we provide oversight on behalf of Parliament and we also have to put corrective measures in place. That is what makes our relationship different. That is the part I feel we are particularly accountable for. When we have identified a problem, what have we done to correct it? There is nothing that should stop a deputy minister from explaining to Parliament what he or she is doing on the staffing front.
The Chair: That is helpful.
Senator Ringuette: Please correct me if I am wrong. What I conclude from the recommendations is that the strategic horizontal review is strictly for departments. There was no audit review of vertical issues such as the graduate recruitment program you audited a few years ago where you found poor results in use of the program.
Does this review include the vertical part of human resources recruiting or staffing?
Ms.Barrados: The strategic Horizontal Review of Human Resources Functions included six organizations. It was the human resource portions of the Treasury Board, Public Service Human Resource Management Agency, Canada School of Public Service, the Public Service Commission and the two tribunals — Public Service Labour Relations Board and Public Service Staffing Tribunal.
All of the bodies were included. The exercise was one in which all programs were examined and challenged on whether they were cost effective. A large exercise occurred describing each program activity, its objectives, its expenditures and what had been achieved. Part of that challenge was determining whether those programs should continue, whether they should be changed or whether there should be reinvestment.
The objective was to be as cost effective as possible and put potential savings on the table. Each potential saving was then discussed as to whether it would be returned — a cut — or whether there would be reinvestment. That was the exercise, which included all programs of the commission.
The conclusion for the commission was that we would make our contribution to the reduction of central government effort by taking a 5percent cut so that there could be some reallocation. Part of that exercise looked at the post-secondary recruitment program. You will be happy to know that the program has been taken up significantly more than in the past. Therefore, it is a program that we kept.
Senator Ringuette: That is because of your audit; let us be honest. You created awareness in the department and in Parliament. We have highlighted that issue for a few years and it is a question of awareness, but it all started with your audit.
I looked at all the different recommendations and they seem to be addressed by your department audits. Therefore, what about all these different recruitment programs; where are they in the recommendations?
Ms.Barrados: The strategic review was a government-led exercise led by the Treasury Board. It had a committee of deputy ministers challenging and reviewing all of the program reviews. One question arose from the exercise when looking at expenditures. One area in the commission saw a sharp increase. I was challenged by the nature of that sharp increase. That led me to go to the Independent Review Committee to ask if it is appropriate.
As Mr.Murray said, you are never sure whether you actually have the right amount. You think you do, but you want to use taxpayer money wisely.
That is why we initiated that. It is a small portion of our activity, but it is a portion that is probably the most visible and the basis for most of our discussions with Parliament.
To add a comment on post-secondary recruitment, some of the credit here has to go to the clerk as well. The clerk's renewal initiative has established aggressive targets for new hiring. His aggressiveness in renewal has helped our program very much. I also agree our audits have made it better.
Senator Ringuette: Recommendation 8 on slide 18 notes that the non-advertised appointment process needs to be clarified and communicated, etcetera. How many appointments per year are not advertised? How does that address the geographic barrier issue I have been working on for the last five years? There has been progress, but the issue looked at advertised positions. This recommendation highlights the non-advertised appointment process. Where are we in regard to advertised positions and geographic barriers?
Slide 19, number 12 discusses increased resources and investment in succession planning capacity building. There has been a lack of attention for many decades in recruiting and training human resources for different departments.
I cannot understand why one of the major recommendations is to increase resources while your operating costs have been cut by 5percent. I have seen those figures in the estimates. The increase in public service staffing will require an increase in your operating budget to ensure that everything is kosher. How do you reconcile all this?
Mr.Murray: Going back to monitoring, it is about trying to get a handle on the general state of the staffing system and determine whether there are indicators of non-partisanship and so on across the system in the context of the build- up of the audit capacity. It will take a while to get to the point where the five-year to seven-year issue is addressed. There needs to be an ability within the PSC to decide which departments to look at based on risks. We felt that they are struggling with the monitoring.
The resource issue has to do entirely with resources for monitoring — the recruiting, retaining and developing the talent to do this kind of data work. The resources would come from within the PSC. It would be the judgment call of Ms.Barrados with her staff as to how far and how fast. The resource issue is entirely in the area of monitoring.
On the advertised-non-advertised issue, the point was to clarify understanding without getting into numbers, and Ms.Barrados may wish to address that aspect. For example, one staffing option that departments are using is called a pool approach. They run pools for various levels to maximize effectiveness and then draw from the pools. There is confusion in the system, although Ms.Barrados has clarified it as to whether a pool is advertised. The reality is that if the pool were advertised, then it qualifies as advertised as opposed to non-advertised. The point is that the definition of advertised and non-advertised is not well understood across the system. That is what we were considering in terms of our recommendation. We did not look at how many advertised non-advertised and the geographic aspects.
Senator Callbeck: Mr.Murray, you mentioned that an audit is done every seven years. Will you take me through the follow-up? You perform the audit and make recommendations. Do you follow through to see whether those recommendations are carried out?
Mr.Murray: When the PSC reaches the target level of resources that it puts into that part of the PSC audit oversight, it would provide them with the capacity to perform an entity audit of every department on a five-to-seven- year cycle. That does not mean that those are the only indicators of staffing in that department. I mentioned the departmental staffing accounting report prepared annually. There are many other sources of information coming to the PSC so if there were a problem in a particular department, I suspect they would sense it and change their plan to audit that particular department.
I will ask the professional auditor to give you a better understanding of the follow up. A couple of agencies have had entity audits and have had their staffing authority removed or reduced. There is activity under way to bring them up to standard. Perhaps Ms.Barrados wishes to speak to that item.
Ms.Barrados: Mr.Murray, you have captured that well. The objective of the audit is to determine the health of the staffing system. If we determine there has to be a form of remedial action, it can range from more active monitoring, to placing someone to work with people, to conditioning authorities to taking away authority. We continue to monitor and perform a follow-up audit, usually after two years. We time the audit to coincide with when we think people are ready with a view to deciding what we do about those conditions on the delegation. We have done that in the case of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, which was a highly critical audit. We came back last fall and we returned the delegations we had removed and the conditions.
Senator Callbeck: Do you follow up on these recommendations to ensure that they are followed?
Ms.Barrados: Absolutely.
Senator Callbeck: The staffing services and assessment activities have been reduced about 20percent, which is a significant cut to the audit functions. How will you deal with that?
Ms.Barrados: I can answer that quickly but we can talk more about it in the next hour. At the same time that we reduced that, we received a cost-recovery authority. We are receiving money from departments so that our expenditure levels have been sustained.
Senator Callbeck: I will ask more about that in the next hour.
Senator Wallin: Thank you for allowing a replacement senator to ask a question. I am trying to get at the issue of balancing the demands and pressure for audit and consistency, not necessarily fairness, and whether we are finding the best assessment options.
My only experience with this was in New York when I was with the Department of Foreign Affairs and the question of merit pay. I will give three examples. Essentially, I was told that everyone received merit pay because it was built into their base pay. There are assumptions through their bargaining units so I could not reward good employees or punish bad ones. It was difficult to apply the human side to the computer-based assessments. Someone might have technically met the requirements that they made 14 visits a week to people but the question remained as to whether they were doing the right job. The other one, which was most troubling in the larger objective, is the complication of dealing with a problem or nonperforming employee. It was easier to move them than to deal with them. How do you balance the objective measures with the ability to ensure that the right person is in the right job?
Mr.Murray: That is at the heart of the concern of the bargaining agents around the new definition of merit, which is why it is extremely important that the system takes all the staffing values into account and that there be a regular check across the system to ensure that is happening in departments. The stresses and the strains on the system are such that the most efficient solution might be someone who has been there and is a term or a casual. That is kind of what happens, and it not because of bad people.
The challenge is to ensure that the system is functioning the way it is meant to, with access, fairness, accessibility, representation and all those other things in play, which means there does have to be a balance between efficiency and what we would call fairness in the broadest sense. That is always a challenge.
There is another issue that the PSC has had to wrestle with, which is why this policy review that is underway is so important. Having been involved in some of the DM's committees when the new system came in, we were striving to make it values based. From your time in New York, you would remember the rulebooks that would go from here to the ceiling. We were striving to strike that balance. There was a hesitancy to come in with many policies, because you can recreate that rulebook. For people in the system, it is actually easier to have all those rules. For managers trying to make the system work and be fair to everyone, it is less easy.
Therefore, a number of these things are critical to enable the PSC to do audits or to do monitoring in a manner that is fair but explicit and with enough policy framework so that people can deal with it and be ready for it and auditors can audit it.
This policy review that is in train now and is meant to finish in Decemberof this year is critical in trying to provide some of that guidance and to striking some of those balances without recreating a ton of rules. I do not know whether that answers the question.
Senator Wallin: Yes. Thank you.
Senator Mitchell: It is good to have you here. I would like to pursue two areas. One is women in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the other is pay equity as it has been redefined or theprocesses of pay equity appeal as it has been redefined in BillC-10.
First, with respect to the RCMP, it is apparent that there are six women in the three most senior levels in the RCMP, within which there would be 81 people, so about 7.5percent of the people in the three senior most levels in the RCMP are women. Over all, there are about 19percent or 20percent uniformed women in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Have you, Ms.Barrados, looked at that? Do you have an explanation for why women are so inadequately represented in the senior-most levels in the RCMP?
Ms.Barrados: The remit of the Public Service Commission is all those organizations that fall under the Public Service Employment Act, and the civilian part of the RCMP falls under the Public Service Employment Act. The uniformed part of the RCMP does not. I am really not in a position to make a comment about the uniformed portion of the RCMP.
On the civilian portion of the RCMP, we did do an audit on their staffing, and we found many problems with their staffing systems that resulted in us taking some rather extraordinary measures. For the past year, we have had one of our employees working with the RCMP. We have been very pleased by the response of the RCMP and their willingness to take corrective measures and to improve how they are doing their civilian staffing. We are watching that closely. This is an example of the approach we take where we really want to help the organization get better because, as Mr.Murray says, the RCMP's problem on the civilian side is my problem too. We are working with them to try to improve their staffing systems, which were not respecting the values we have in the PSCA and that have all the consequence of them having employees who feel systems are not fair and having concerns about representation. I am not in a position to comment on the uniform side.
I am about to give you an answer you will probably not be so happy with. This is an area for the employer. On the pay equity side, we as an organization will be implementing those employer policies and directions in terms of how they staff, but it is not an area in which we have a role. My only role is that under the Employment Equity Act, we have an obligation to report on whether there are specific barriers, what they are and to remove them, but it would not put me in a position to comment on that legislation.
Senator Mitchell: Clearly, if there are problems for non-uniformed people, as you have indicated, the reasons for those problems might apply to both sides. Would one reason be a sense of culture or not fully appreciating the importance of women's equality in that force? They are perhaps not making adjustments for a woman who happens to have children, and women tend to take more responsibility for raising children in our society. If just a little more flexibility were given to a particular woman in a particular position, she would be able to do that, as opposed to if you cannot be there at five o'clock every night, you cannot have the job.
Senior Deputy Commissioner Sweeney spoke to the Defence Committee yesterday. He said he really does feel that the RCMP has not made that jump in many cases. Did you find it to be the case that adjustments could be made so it could work for women and they just were not being made? Was there a culture of not understanding these issues?
Ms.Barrados: I cannot really comment specifically on women, because that was not the focus of our work. The overall staffing system includes this element of ``representivity.'' I cannot go quite as far as you are asking me, but I can say this in terms of our work at the RCMP: The difficulty we had was that there were different staffing regimes in place. We had uniform members taking responsibility for civilian staffing and not respecting those processes that we feel are very important — fairness and equity and representivity being among them. When we had discussions with the RCMP leadership, mostly uniformed, they agreed that those were important values, and they agreed that work had to be done on the civilian side as well on the uniform side. To everything we have seen to this point, they made that commitment and are following through.
They also have an incredible complexity, because they have RCMP members, civilian members under the RCMP Act and public service employee members, and they are in thousands, so there are large numbers. They know that it is not sustainable to manage this well, and they are looking at ways to streamline some of their staffing and to make that cultural change and to move it in a values-based direction, because we do not want to go, as Mr.Murray said, into more rules.
Senator Mitchell: I do not quite follow why you would not have some sort of jurisdiction in this, but given that you have a focus on fairness in the public sector, what is your assessment of these changes to the pay equity appeals process where now women, largely, will not be able to go to the Human Rights Commission? What is your comment where the bar under which a gender-weighted group will be defined is raised, whereby now the union membership will be pitted against one another because there is a cap on the total of the raise? If equity defines that one group must get more, then the other group will get less. How is it that that will ``create greater fairness''?
Finally, to the extent that you deal with the employer, the employer has to make the assessment whether there is a pay equity issue on behalf of the aggrieved employee where non-union workers are involved, who may have been employed by that employer for a long time. How will all that work and at what level? Could you comment on whether it is fair?
The Chair: Mr.Murray, did you do any work on this particular area of questioning?
Mr.Murray: No.
The Chair: Ms.Barrados, please hold your answer to this question. I have two other senators who would like to ask questions that may relate to the independent review. I will put you on the second round to come back to that, Senator Mitchell.
[Translation]
Senator Rivard: In recommendation 8 of your report, you talk about the non-advertised appointment process. Does that include positions appointed by the Governor in Council, such as the head of Canada Post, VIA Rail or the Bank of Canada?
Ms.Barrados: No.
[English]
Senator DiNino: Maybe we can go into detail in the next session.
This has been a good and useful exercise from what we heard this morning. You have been before our committee several times and we have discussed a number of issues. I would like to acknowledge once again that you continue to move in the right direction.
Will this report continue to help you to deal with issues like gender equity, visible minorities, regional disparity in applications and all of those other issues we have discussed?
Maybe when we resume in the second session, we can look at some individual issues. Will this be one of those tools that you will need to correct some of those injustices — I think it is an appropriate term — or will it be a pile of rules that goes up to the ceiling that hardly anyone will ever see?
Ms.Barrados: This report is helpful to the Public Service Commission. It does not deal specifically with the issues that you raise.
However, it gives me a good assessment of the means that I need to have in place in my organization to be able to provide information that is sound and reliable, that identify problems and issues and that moves to corrective actions. It is a means to get to the results. It has a management orientation, but it is extremely helpful to me. I am glad the committee has prepared the report. We certainly intend to implement the recommendations because our results should be better and timelier as a result.
The Chair: Honourable senators, this concludes the first part of our session. Mr.Murray, you have heard Ms.Barrados indicate how valuable your independent review of Public Service Commission Oversight has been to the Public Service Commission. It is also valuable to us.
This committee has reviewed the Public Service Employment Act changes that resulted in much of the work the Public Service Commission used to do in staffing to be delegated to various deputy ministers. Oversight to ensure that staffing continues at the same high level is extremely important. This is the first chance we had to hear how that new policy is being implemented.
We thank you and ask you also to pass our thanks to your two other committee members, Mr.Singleton and Ms.Fortier.
Mr.Murray: Thank you.
The Chair: In the second portion of our meeting today, we have Ms.Barrados and other members of the Public Service Commission. I will ask her to introduce her colleagues. We have further remarks from Ms.Barrados before we go to the question and answer period. You have the floor.
[Translation]
Ms.Barrados: For the second part of our meeting, I am joined by Donald Lemaire, Senior Vice-President, Policy Branch, Gerry Thom, Vice-President, Staffing and Assessment Services Branch, and Richard Charlebois, Vice- President, Corporate Management Branch.
I would like to discuss the 2007-2008 Annual Report of the Public Service Commission of Canada, as well as our Report on Plans and Priorities.
The Public Service Commission of Canada is an independent agency that reports to Parliament. Our authority comes from the Public Service Employment Act (PSEA), which mandates us to safeguard the integrity of the public service staffing system and the political neutrality of the public service.
Overall, the performance of the staffing system was assessed during this reporting period of 2007-2008 as acceptable, with few examples of management excellence and some areas that require greater attention. Generally speaking, the core values of merit and non-partisanship are being respected, but ongoing vigilance is required. There is room for improvement in making the system fairer, and more accessible, transparent and representative.
[English]
Some of the issues we raised in our report are of particular concern. We found a high rate of mobility in the public service, an overall increase from 30percent in 2004-05 to 42percent in 2007-08. We noted very high levels of movement in the HR community as well as a significant decline in the number of years spent at one level before promotion to the next. HR specialists belong to the personnel administration, the PE group, where the level of mobility reached 74percent in 2007-08. This was the highest rate of movement observed over the 11-year study period. The executive group, the EXs — including directors, directors general and assistant deputy minister's — also had one of the higher rates of mobility in 2007-08, at 55percent.
High mobility can have a negative impact on operational efficiency and effectiveness. It reinforces the need for HR planning to take into account the nature and scope of employee movement. It also underlines the importance of developing recruitment, retention and succession strategies for certain occupational groups and functional communities.
We also reported on the implementation of the national area of selection policy. In December2008, the Public Service Commission extended the national area of selection to almost all externally advertised non-officer-level jobs, including clerical and secretarial jobs. There is a high interest in public service jobs. Applications for advertised jobs from outside a region vary from 90percent in the North to 25percent in Quebec, and 38percent of applications for the National Capital Region jobs came from other regions. Based on available data, we found that 12percent of the appointments in the National Capital Region over the past two years were from residents outside the region.
This brings me to the issue of representativeness. The 2007-2008 report did not include statistics on the appointment of visible minorities because we were concerned about the validity of the available data. Based on new information, we have concluded that the recruitment rate for advertised processes for visible minorities was significantly higher than previously reported. Those numbers, which are found in our second hand-out, show that the recruitment rate was 15.6percent in 2006-2007 and 17.3percent in 2007-2008. We have much greater confidence in these statistics, which represent very significant increases over earlier calculations.
Our analysis and data are for only the advertised hiring processes, which account for 72percent of all appointments to the public service. These data were provided by the Public Service Resourcing System, PSRS, which is a web-based recruitment and screening tool used for externally advertised hiring processes. In 2005, the system was expanded across Canada. We have continued to enhance the system. PSRS plays a vital role in supporting staffing modernization and the implementation of the national area of selection. It is fully operational and accessible by all departments for hiring into the public service. Since its launch in 2001 to date, we estimate that the system represents a total expenditure of $52 million.
[Translation]
Treasury Board funding for the current project will run out in two years. The current system has limitations, and investment is required to support continued staffing modernization. Without improvement, we face brown-out and rust-out of current tools, and limited advancement in improved reporting.
An enhanced system would also be more user-friendly for job seekers, provide better screening and assessment tools, and provide greater flexibility.
In our Report on Plans and Priorities, we describe the challenge of funding this important project. We are preparing a submission to Treasury Board to obtain funding for the investment required for a long-term solution and the ongoing operation of the system beyond 2011.
[English]
We also addressed the reductions arising from the strategic Horizontal Review of Human Resources. Our annual budget has been reduced by $3.1 million in 2009-2010. It will be reduced by a further $1.5 million in 2011-2012, for a total permanent reduction of $4.6 million. We feel that this 5percent cut is manageable through increased efficiencies in our operations. These changes will not affect our capacity to implement our strategic priorities.
We also have greater authority for cost recovery. We have grown our cost-recovery operations significantly over the past three years, from $6 million to about $11 million. Operating on a cost-recovery basis for more and more of our counselling and assessment services is not without risks. Currently, we are in discussions with Treasury Board Secretariat to obtain the financial flexibilities that we require to operate more effectively within a cost-recovery environment, such as additional carry-forward authority and front-end financing for investments in developing services and products.
I would like to inform the committee that we will be tabling two special reports in Parliament shortly on the Federal Student Work Experience Program and the integrity of some of our language tests.
[Translation]
In my concluding remarks, I would remind the committee that the PSEA requires a five-year review. We have developed a review plan, and we are in the process of implementing it. We would be pleased to share this plan with you.
I am reminded that we are still in the early years of putting in place the most comprehensive human resources reforms in the federal public service in the past three-and-a-half decades. The modernization of the federal public service staffing system and the ongoing implementation of the PSEA are our responsibilities. I am encouraged by the progress that has been achieved. But, more work needs to be done.
We need to sustain this momentum as we maintain a highly competent, professional and non-partisan public service, dedicated to excellence in serving Canadians and ready to meet the challenges that lie ahead.
I will be pleased to answer your questions.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you, Ms.Barrados. Many of us are familiar with your comment on cost-recovery. However, for senators who recently have joined our committee, could you expand on that so we all understand the cost-recovery aspect? You indicated that it has grown from $6 million to $11 million in your operating budget.
Ms.Barrados: Thank you for that question. When the new act was passed, we had a delegated system. With that came a responsibility for deputies to manage the system, given our delegations. It also meant that the PSC removed requirements that had been in place, which meant that deputies had to come to the PSC for all external recruitment and executive appointments. We have an infrastructure in place to do those things, so we decided to make these services optional. They are available if people need them but if not, they do not have to come to us. There are few things they must come to the PSC for, such as posting jobs on the website.
With that change, we have had to change how we operate whereby we have people coming because they want to come, as opposed to coming because they must come. We have a range of services, including staffing services, post- secondary recruitment, support for functional communities, as well as testing of language levels, executive competence and occupational skills. For required services, such as language testing, we do not charge a fee. However, we charge for all optional services.
Perhaps Mr.Charlebois would like to expand on the issue I raised in my opening statement in respect of operating difficulties in a cost-recovery environment with an annual appropriation.
Richard Charlebois, Vice-President, Corporate Management Branch, Public Service Commission of Canada: One example is the carry-forward authority. Every department has a limit of 5percent of their operating budget. With the PSC moving to a cost-recovery environment and going from $6 million to our goal of $14 million per year, we need the authority to carry more of that revenue forward. We might have an expense in year one but the revenue for the products might not be realized until year two, three or four so we need the ability to carry that revenue forward.
The Chair: Have you that authority?
Mr.Charlebois: No, we do not have it.
Ms.Barrados: We operate in an environment where we have to make investments as well, and we do not know when the payoff will be realized. The expenditures are made in one year and the revenues are realized in another year. We also need the capacity to make some of the investments. The annual appropriation structure does not provide the needed flexibilities. We are working with Treasury Board, which is sympathetic to the issue, to try to put some of those mechanisms in place.
The Chair: For clarification, you state that as a result of the strategic Horizontal Review of Human Resources, your annual budget has been reduced by $3.1 million in this fiscal year. Is that the same strategic Horizontal Review of Human Resources that was conducted by Admiral Murray that we have just discussed?
Ms.Barrados: There were two exercises. There was an exercise led by the Treasury Board that resulted in large reallocations and reductions in budgets for some of the organizations. This is being done for all government departments in the cycle, incidentally, so we are not unique. Out of that exercise that resulted in the reduction were questions about the growth and my oversight expenditures. Because of that, we at the commission initiated the exercise led by Mr.Murray because we felt questions were being asked and I did not seem to satisfy people when I was giving them the answers. I wanted something more definitive.
The Chair: One of the strong points made in that independent review by Admiral Murray and the rest of the team was capacity building. You will obviously need more funds for capacity building, but this independent report should be able to help you talk to Treasury Board.
Ms.Barrados: They were a little more nuanced than that. It is unfortunate that Mr.Murray has left. They were basically saying the funding is about right. You have about the right amount of money, but you have a lot to do with the money that you have been given. The area they flagged, saying that they do not think we have it right, is on the monitoring side. My approach to that is to try to find it inside the organization through efficiencies we can put in some systems, if I get my systems support. Otherwise, I will have to go to Treasury Board, and I would reflect that in my budget document.
Senator Ringuette: I want to return to the non-advertised pool of employees. I want to know which departments have these pools, which groups of employees would be in non-advertised pools and how many employees got work from these pools. When I say ``work,'' I mean a contract, an indeterminate term etcetera.
I suspect that all the time and energy we put into removing geographic barriers in advertised positions, our bureaucracy has moved to non-advertised positions and created these pools so that they still comply with the current policy but have a new way of hiring only people from the National Capital Region. Can you provide us with this information in regard to the staffing pools that are not advertised?
Ms.Barrados: I will try to respond quickly. The comment made by Mr.Murray with respect to the pools and advertised was in the context of people have difficulty determining what is advertised and non-advertised. If you have a pool, you are saying, for example, ``I will be staffing 10 assistant administrative positions, so I am running a big process, qualifying 50candidates and taking 10 out of them.'' If, at the beginning when you set this whole thing up, you advertise the pool and say that anyone taken out of it will be considered advertised, then it is advertised. If you have not done that, it will be non-advertised. It is a technical issue. If you do not say on the poster anyone coming out of it will be considered advertised, it would be by definition non-advertised. It is a technical issue in terms of being very transparent to everyone how it works. We have been concerned that it has not been transparent and there has been confusion.
The issue takes it to the next level. You asked how many non-advertised we have. I have trouble getting the number because it is a manual process in most departments. They actually have to go through a manual exercise of estimating how many there are. It is a huge burden on people. I would say about 30percent are non-advertised for the external processes, and I would say about 43percent are non-advertised for internal. We have to do better on the numbers and how we collect the numbers.
Senator Ringuette: I definitely need to reintroduce my legislation, because the policy leaves some manoeuvring space for certain departments. At the same time, just to make sure, perhaps I should also include non-advertised staffing so that there would be a better understanding that all Canadians are eligible to apply for any of these positions, whether the federal government jobs are advertised or and wherever they are in the country. That was my worry, Ms.Barrados. I did not reintroduce the bill this session because I wanted to see what was going on in the system.However, there has been, as you indicate, an increase in non-advertised staffing.
In your statement, on page2, you say ``In Decemberof 2008, the PSC extended national area of selection to almost all externally advertised, non-officer level jobs. . .'' There is still a lot of discrimination out there in regard to Canadians who are looking for work, who are qualified and who would make extremely good public servants, but who do not necessarily come from the National Capital Region.
Ms.Barrados: The policy stance we have taken is consistent with the interventions I have made to this committee previously. I have felt that making very short-term jobs open to national area of selection does not really help the system to operate, because if you do these things, they take some time, particularly if you are going through a larger process. It takes time for people to move. If you need something short term, you are working against the objective of trying to get your public service working well. Those are the only ones we have accepted. Everything else is covered by national area of selection.
I still believe that we need some flexibility in there, because, for example, two organizations that really want to move quickly with getting some people, and for short terms of time, are Public Health Agency and Service Canada. We need to have the capacity to do that, with an oversight of the commission to make sure it is all done properly.
I share your concern, Senator Ringuette, about the use of non-advertised. I have stated that we at the commission favour advertised processes. There are circumstances under which non-advertised makes sense. The requirement we have is that every department has a policy under what circumstances they will use non-advertised processes, and they must follow that policy. That is not working very well. Consistently, when we look at it, it is not working as well as it should be.
Senator Ringuette: Ms.Barrados, that brings me to a definite conclusion. Come early fall, I will reintroduce a bill with additional measures attached to it to ensure that there is fairness in the public service employment system. Thank you. You have been very helpful.
Senator Callbeck: Thank you for coming this morning. On page4 of your remarks, you talk about the annual budget being reduced by $3.1 million, and then you talk about cost recovery going up $1 million. Is that $3.1 million assuming that you are getting $11 million in cost recovery?
Ms.Barrados: We went through the exercise along the lines you are suggesting, senator. We took the cut, largely on the services side. We are assuming a growth in the cost recovery if the services are really needed and if they are meeting people's needs. If they are not, obviously we would not continue to deliver those services.
Senator Callbeck: If your cost recovery, rather than $11million, is only $5 million, then that means that your budget will really be reduced to $8 million; right?
Ms.Barrados: That is right. It is a risk that we run by having gone to a service that is optional for departments, not unlike any other kind of enterprise outside of the government, which means that we must to do our planning right and ensure we are providing services that people want and need. If the demand is not there for the services, it means that I have to find other ways to finance it or stop doing it. I think the option is really to stop doing it. Mr.Thom is responsible for the service area.
Gerry Thom, Vice-President, Staffing and Assessment Service Branch, Public Service Commission of Canada: That is right. To go back a little, we had $6 million of cost-recovery authority, which was brought from $9.5 million to $14 million. We can do cost recovery for up to $14 million now, and this year we finished with $11 million. It is really like running a business, but it is fenced in because there is little flexibility.
As an example, the Personnel Psychology Centre has been on cost recovery for quite a few years. We have a history as far as how much business it brings in. For that part of the $11 million, it brought in roughly $8 million. The rest is the new services that we are providing, which are optional.
Every time we are lower than our forecast revenue, I put funding pressure on the Public Service Commission. We are trying to make my organization as efficient as possible as far as the infrastructure and overhead, and to have a contingency workforce so that if we do have a problem, if there are people on terms or whatever, we can at least let them go without affecting indeterminate people.
Ms.Barrados: On the commission's part, it means that when we start the year, we have to carry reserves to ensure that we can cover those expenditures until we get the whole cost-recovery side of the operation stabilized.
Senator Callbeck: You have gone from $8 million last year and now you are putting in $11 million.
Mr.Thom: We had $6 million of actual revenues and it went up to $11 million. That is what we show as revenues for this year.
Senator Callbeck: The bottom line is that you will have less money. Do you have a clear idea where you will find these efficiencies?
Ms.Barrados: We have less in appropriations, but we have the authority to get money from other departments. Therefore, our expenditures are staying fairly constant, with the big variant being the IT project, the public service recruitment system.
We are clear in terms of where we are getting the efficiencies and how we are going about doing our planning and making the adjustments on the kinds of services we provide. We are doing more work with departments in terms of what they need.
We have also put in place an advisory committee of deputy ministers, who will give us advice on the services they need and help us to make this shift we have all agreed to, which is to do more cost recovery and rely less on appropriations for the service side. This does not apply to any of the other operations in the commission, which we definitely are not doing that for those portions of the commission.
The Chair: On a point of clarification, Ms.Barrados, you indicated you had authority to borrow from other departments. Do you also have authority to borrow money to help you through this period while you are waiting to get money back on a cost-recovery basis?
Ms.Barrados: I do not have authority to borrow from other departments; I have the authority to charge other departments for services that are rendered by the Public Service Commission. I do not have any authority to borrow anywhere else, and that is the nature of the discussion I have to have with the Treasury Board, because as you are making changes, you need investment, and I have no capacity to do that.
The Chair: I understand now. Thank you.
Senator Mitchell: I want to follow up on pay equity and women's representation in the public service.
With respect to the RCMP points that you made, I know you did an audit of the Public Complaints Commission. Is it from that audit that you drew these conclusions about women's representation in the RCMP, or is there some other audit and report you presented?
Ms.Barrados: We did an audit of the civilian side of the RCMP about a year ago. There were also some comments in the report about the HR different regimes. We did that report a year ago, as a special report in the spring, because we thought it was important. At the time, there were discussions about the review of the RCMP that was going on. We thought it important that we put forward that report so that members of Parliament had information on the work we were doing there as well.
Senator Mitchell: If you are not responsible for auditing the uniform side, who is?
Ms.Barrados: The Auditor General.
Senator Mitchell: So they would do the equivalent of what you do on the Public Service Commission side? They do that kind of audit for the RCMP?
Ms.Barrados: Yes, they do. In fact, that is an example of where we, as two separate organizations, have worked very well together. There was quite a bit of collaboration and discussion with the Auditor General when they were doing their audit work in the RCMP so that we would not be duplicating coverage of the issues.
Senator Mitchell: Could you give me two or three of the points that you concluded about the problem in the RCMP civilian side?
Ms.Barrados: We were looking at how processes were being run. If you are going to have a non-advertised process, we clearly expect you to use that consistently with the policy, so that you have a good reason for going non-advertised. You do not have an expediency reason or because it is someone you know, or prefer to have in the position. We found very high rates of noncompliance, so they were just not doing those properly.
We also found a lot of difficulties in any of the other processes that were being advertised. Those were not well done either. We had high numbers of difficulties with the processes, and when you see very high numbers, it leads you to systems.
We looked at the systems and we found that the RCMP as an organization had a good plan. They had put in place the policies as required under the Public Service Employment Act, but they had never really implemented them. At first glance, it looked fine, because all the material that you would expect was there, but they had not gone through the process of the training, putting policies in place, and the follow-up and monitoring to ensure the system was operating. There was a big gap between the theory and the practice, and that was the main thrust of our concern.
Senator Mitchell: Would your conclusion be that was overwork, not enough resources, or is there a cultural element that impedes the process?
Ms.Barrados: Some of the other senators may have heard this. I am a sociologist, so what is culture? Culture is the values, the systems and practices, the formal and the informal ones.
Senator Mitchell: The biases.
Ms.Barrados: However you do it. I had a problem with our staffing values not being respected. I did not have a problem with the written policies and practices, but I had a big problem with how those policies and practices, which were pretty good, were being implemented, and they were not being implemented. With that definition of culture, I would say that, yes, we found a problem.
Senator Mitchell: On BillC-10 and the pay equity appeals process, you said that somehow that does not fall under your purview, and yet you are responsible for the employer through part of that pay equity process for non-unionized workers. The employer has to make the assessment, as incomprehensible as that is, given the direct conflict of interest, of whether there is a pay equity issue amongst his or her employees. Have you looked at that? Does that fall within your purview? How could it possibly be fair if the organization perpetrated the pay equity issue in the first place?
Ms.Barrados: I will give a one-minute comment on the history the Public Service Commission. The organization is over 100years old. Last year, we celebrated our centenary, and I came to this committee and made a fuss about it.
When the Public Service Commission was set up 100 years ago, it was responsible for all human resource management in the government of the day. It was responsible for what we now call the machinery of government, the occupational structure, classification; all entry to the public service; and for all staffing and assessment. Over time, there have been many reviews of the system and how it should work. The conclusion, and where we are today, is that the Public Service Commission is still unique in that it has an executive authority with no direction from a minister. The PSC holds a Crown prerogative without ministerial direction. That has persisted, but applies only to the authority to make appointments and the staffing and assessment of individuals, which includes the hiring of people to the public service and the movement of people to other jobs within the public service.
We no longer have responsibility for the occupational structure or classification of departments, which fall under Treasury Board as the employer. In my comment about employer policies, I will give an example: The employer determines the language requirements the language requirements of a job, and the PSC enforces it to ensure that staffing remains in compliance with such a determination.
I have not seen enough on the current pay equity legislation to be able to offer any comment about how the Public Service Commission would implement aspects of it. I think that implementation will not happen for two years.
Senator Eggleton: I have a question on visible minority representation in the public service and the other on the high mobility rate. On visible minorities, last year we expressed a concern to you about the falling proportion of visible minorities in the public service. This year you have returned with different information that suggests that the situation is far better than what it was represented to be last year. It is not because we have made changes or progress; rather, the difference appears to be the result of database changes and the calculation of statistics.
Can you tell us what problem was identified in the statistical base and what you are doing to correct it?
Ms.Barrados: It is always embarrassing to come before the committee and say that the figures cited at the previous appearance are not quite accurate. I will make one clarification and explain the numbers problem. We are making a comment on the numbers of new hires to the public service. I do not know where we stand overall on the overall service because the new information I have on the rate of hiring is for the last two years. For that time period, the public service has been doing well in terms of hiring visible minorities. What that means for the whole public service, I am not sure because I have only two years of data. I will add the third year to that.
What is the difference? With the new information system in place that I talked about, people who are interested in the public service will use the site for all advertised jobs. They are able to follow the prompts on the screen and answer each question. People are asked if they belong to an employment equity group and if the answer is, yes, they are led to the links to the different groups. People have to answer those questions before they can go to the next screen. There is incentive to complete the application form, although they can still say, no. The numbers I am talking about come from those application forms and the information people enter when they apply for jobs in the government.
The other source of numbers has been a questionnaire given to employees in the public service. I am working on these to determine what is happening. There are different ways of collecting this information. Some departments are automated; some departments simply ask people to fill it in; and some departments send it to people but do not follow up.
I have done an analysis of the information supplied by new entrants on their application forms and of this other method of collecting data. In some departments, the numbers of the two methods are very close with a difference of less than 1percent. In other departments, the difference is great. We have set about looking at the data collection methods because my objective and preference is to have both sets of numbers close, but we are not there yet.
Senator Eggleton: It is through your analyses that you have been able to find this mistake but you have not changed the system for collecting the data. You have described again the same system that was at fault.
Ms.Barrados: We have two systems for collecting data: One is new and the other is old.
Senator Eggleton: The new method is giving you better data.
In your supplementary document, you note the visible minority percentage in the workforce. In the federal workforce it is 15.3percent versus 12.5percent in the general workforce. Is that correct? In other words, there is a higher percentage of representation in the public service than there is amongst the general workforce?
Ms.Barrados: The table gives you a change in date: One is 2001 and the other is 2006.
Senator Eggleton: I am looking at 2006.
Ms.Barrados: It is 12.5percent for visible minorities.
Senator Eggleton: Yes, the PSC is doing better than the general population.
Ms.Barrados: Yes, for hiring into the public service.
Senator Eggleton: Yes.
Ms.Barrados: It is the hiring rate —
Senator Eggleton: — as opposed to an absolute total number.
Ms.Barrados: Yes.
Senator Eggleton: Why do you consider only Canadian citizens and not landed immigrants?
Ms.Barrados: The number is from Statistics Canada. The Public Service Employment Act puts preference on hiring to Canadian citizens. We have to go to Canadian citizens first and if we fail, then we turn to landed immigrants. I deal with high volumes. Last year we had 1 million applications for about 5,000posters. Many Canadians are interested in jobs in the federal public service. We do have some specialized occupations for which we might not find a Canadian applicant.
Senator Eggleton: I mention that because if we are talking about workforce availability, we should look at landed immigrants as well in that category. They are part of the face of Canada and part of a reflection of the face of Canada.
The figures you have on high mobility are staggering. You note that high mobility can have a negative impact on operational efficiency and effectiveness, which is true. Since we are striving for excellence in the public service, anything that is a negative impact on those factors is a concern.
Why is the mobility rate as high as it is? What are you doing to try to counter these negative impacts on efficiency and effectiveness?
Ms.Barrados: A number of factors are explained in the report about why we think it is so high. First, the public service has been growing. With growth, you have new people coming in. Second, we have hit the period of the baby boomers retiring. People are coming to the end of their career and retiring. That explains much of movement in the executive category. People tend to come in at the bottom, stay for their careers, and retire from the public service.
There are other things going on apart from those demographics, with which the clerk has been very preoccupied. One that we and others raise is the classification system. Do we have people simply moving up and we do not have controls on the classification system? We call that ``classification creep.''
Another phenomenon we have is areas where there is shortage and pressure. You see that with the PEs and on the information side. We now have this dynamic where it becomes self-fulfilling. People do not stay very long; they move up rapidly; and they are not in their jobs sufficiently long.
We are trying to improve the whole system. We see a high level of staffing transactions with a great deal of frustration about people in the system. Why is it not working well? You need to have the HR capacity with people who know the business and can help the managers. We need systems in place to support it.
It is very important that there be much more rigorous planning in the system. Steps must be taken to plan in areas that are not really my responsibility. Our responsibility is recruitment. We also need to worry about retention, which does not mean people leave government. People stay in the government; they simply do not stay in their job. They are moving within the government. Succession planning and development must also be considered so people are interested in staying in their jobs.
Quite a bit has been done on the government side including staff surveys and the push on the part of the clerk. There has been an effort to address these.
I will ask my colleague to comment on potential solutions.
Donald Lemaire, Senior Vice-President, Policy Branch, Public Service Commission of Canada: The planning element arises because when someone leaves, managers quickly try to fill that position. If they did not plan, they will try to attract another person by offer promotions that have a cascading effect. You never stabilize the employee population if everyone behaves the same way.
That is why we have insisted on having good staffing strategies in place to anticipate mobility. By anticipating it, we expect that we will actually reduce it. That is the paradox in the approach.
Ms.Barrados: The more detailed analysis shows that this is much lower in the regions and much higher in Ottawa.
Senator Eggleton: That raises more questions, but my time is up. Thank you.
Senator Wallin: You noted a figure of 74percent mobility among HR specialists. It makes you wonder whether it is best access to knowledge of the jobs. What accounts for that high mobility?
My second item is more a comment than a question. It relates to my New York experience and the cost of rotating employees every four years. They spend their first year getting up to speed, two years working and the last year getting ready for their move or on language training. Simply extending the rotation to five or six years would address that issue. Have you looked at that issue?
Ms.Barrados: Rotation is something we would leave to the department to determine how to fill their needs and requirements. However, it speaks to the issue of high movement. If you have high movement and someone going from one department to the next, if they are not there very long before the next promotion, they will not really learn the business. It is a great difficulty.
On the PE side, a large group has already retired or is in the process of retiring. There is enormous pressure on the system. As a result, PEs are in demand. As Mr.Lemaire said, there tends to be a ``bidding up'' of positions, which is not very healthy.
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Senator Chaput: Ms.Barrados, in your presentation, you said that the Public Service Resourcing System was launched in 2001 and that it was operational in 2005, that is, the system was expanded across Canada. So, if I understand correctly, it is accessible by all departments for hiring into the public service.
Are all departments obligated to use this new system for hiring, or can they keep using the same approach they were using before?
Second, you also mentioned that the system has limitations and needs to be modernized. Can you give us examples of the system's limitations and of the ways you plan to modernize it?
Ms.Barrados: Thank you for your questions. Mr.Thom will certainly be able to help me answer.
First, our system is linked to the job site, and all departments are obligated to use the site to post all advertised positions.
Departments do not have a choice in using the job system, and that system is directly linked to our human resources system. They have to log in to the system, but they do not have to use all of its features. It can be used to do an assessment or to reduce the number of job applications. Departments can use whichever features they want, but they must log in to the system.
The current system dates back to 2001, and we have to renew its platform because it is now outdated. Our system was designed for external positions, and we have to increase integration and include all internal positions in the system. That gives an idea of the system overall. Perhaps Mr.Thom can elaborate.
Mr.Thom: The system has been around for approximately eight years. It may take several more years before the new system is developed. That means we are talking about a system that will probably be 12 or 13 years old by then. As Ms.Barrados mentioned, all systems have a life span. So, at some point, the platform of the current system will not be able to meet capacity and growth needs.
We mentioned that we receive one million job applications a year, and that number is always on the rise. We have made improvements to the system, and every year, we try to make improvements that we can afford. For instance, every summer, a lot of students apply for jobs through the system. That gave us some good information and has made reporting easier. The system has limitations, however, and it is imperative that we change, improve or rebuild it.
The new system has to accommodate external and internal recruiting, meaning, all recruiting that is done within the public service. This will be achieved with one system, instead of two. By default, improvements will be necessary because there will be only one system to manage.
Senator Chaput: Do you intend to more clearly define an ``advertised'' position as opposed to a ``non-advertised'' position? If I am not mistaken, in his presentation, Mr.Murray mentioned that the definition of advertised and non- advertised was not well understood. Is that something that you want to clarify?
Ms.Barrados: Yes. We are in the process of doing that. Mr.Murray also mentioned a review of all of our existing policies. That is something very important. In addition, we have to improve how we measure the number of advertised and non-advertised positions. I do not want to have another numbers problem. When I have better figures, I will have to come back and say: ``Too bad we had those problems with the numbers.'' Currently, the process is almost completely manual.
Perhaps Mr.Lemaire has something to add with respect to the policy review.
Mr.Lemaire: Our goal is to complete the review for December2009. We decided to undertake a policy review because it is a new act. After three years, we felt that we were in a position to better define our policies. The non- advertised code is an example of how the act allows managers looking to hire to assess just one person for a job. Of course, the preamble to the act mentions all of the values and refers to the discretion of the person doing the hiring. Therefore, there is an expectation that those values will be taken into account. There is a technical definition of non- advertised that clarifies things somewhat, but it is only a technical definition.
Now, that discretion must be exercised in the broader context of the act, which means that accessibility, transparency, equity and fairness must enter into the equation. We often hear managers say: ``Yes, but the act authorizes me to do it.'' Yes, but it is more than just a matter of being technical. So we have the definition and circumstances that respect the spirit of the act. The purpose of the policy review is to bring the focus back to that discussion in order to come to an understanding of how the flexibility of the act should be applied, so that flexibility does not necessarily equal simplicity.
Senator Chaput: When you say that the act makes it possible to consider only one person for a job, that means there can be one job that becomes available and that people want to apply for it. Is the process open, or is one person interested and that person is hired?
Mr.Lemaire: Under the act, the job does not have to be advertised and one person can be considered. The act authorizes that, but the commission has developed a policy framework that sets out an expectation. It has to be justified. It cannot be done without any consideration. A predetermined situation has to exist in order to decide which process will be used.
Ms.Barrados: The department has to have its own policy and apply it specifically in accordance with the statutes. That means two things. It is possible to have a non-advertised job and to consider just one person. It is in the act.
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The Chair: We have exceeded our allotted time, and I know senators have other obligations. We have caucus meetings coming up soon.
Mr.Lemaire, Ms.Barrados, Mr.Charlebois and Mr.Thom, I would like to thank you for being here today. Your presentation was very helpful. We did not get into planning and priorities to a great extent, but we did get some ideas about where you would like to go.
We work very well together and we look forward to continuing that relationship. I would like to have had some discussion on your outreach, and perhaps we will have a session on that one day. Ms.Barrados and the Public Service Commission are doing a lot outside of Canada to help developing countries, which I find very interesting. In any event, we cannot do that today.
We thank you very much for being here and for the good work that you are doing.
(The committee adjourned .)