QUESTION PERIOD — Public Services and Procurement
Phoenix Pay System
November 6, 2024
Senator Gold, the Phoenix pay system was launched in early 2016. We all know about the problems that arose from the system and the devastating impact they had on thousands of our hard-working public servants.
Since its launch, how much additional funding has been required to stabilize the system and address the backlog of pay requests? Further, what is the latest dollar amount in overpayments the government is seeking to recover, and what amount is still outstanding that is owed to public servants?
The pay system was meant to generate annual savings of $70 million by centralizing pay operations. Instead, mitigating the pay system fiasco has unfortunately resulted in billions of dollars of unplanned expenditures.
Thank you for your question.
Here is the information about which I have been informed: To date, $3.65 billion has been invested in Phoenix. I have also been advised that since the launch of Phoenix, approximately 457,000 employees have been identified as having received either administrative overpayment or true overpayment, totalling $3.42 billion.
As of August 2024, overpayments were repaid by approximately 337,900 of those employees, representing a total of approximately $2.89 billion in recovered funds. As of August 2024, approximately 109,100 employees have an outstanding overpayment, representing approximately $530 million.
Thank you for that answer.
Can you provide us with an update on the minister’s commitment to Canadians with respect to individuals who erroneously received overpayments? The former Minister of Public Services and Procurement said before our Standing Senate Committee on National Finance that in the longer term, our government is moving forward with legislation that would, under certain conditions, allow employees to repay to any public or private sector employer only the net amount of an overpayment rather than the gross amount. Is this correct?
Thank you for the question. I do not have a particular update at this time, but I will certainly bring your question to the attention of the minister.
