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37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Standing Committee on Public Accounts

COMMITTEE EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, February 19, 2002

1530

The Chair (Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, CA))

Mr. Michael McLaughlin (Deputy Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada)

1535

The Chair

Mr. Ranald Quail (Deputy Minister and Head, Human Resources Modernization Task Force)

The Chair

Mr. Ranald Quail

The Chair

Mr. Ranald Quail

The Chair

Mr. Frank Claydon (Secretary of the Treasury Board and Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat)

1540

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson (President, Public Service Commission of Canada)

1545

The Chair

Mr. Epp

Mr. Frank Claydon

1550

Mr. Epp

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Epp

1555

Mr. Douglas Rimmer (Vice-President, Public Service Commission of Canada)

Mr. Epp

The Chair

Ms. Girard-Bujold

Mr. Ranald Quail

Ms. Girard-Bujold

Ranald Quail

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold

Ranald Quail

Ms. Girard-Bujold

1600

The Chair

Ms. Girard-Bujold

Michael McLaughlin

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold

Mr. Michael McLaughlin

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold

Mr. Frank Claydon

Ms. Girard-Bujold

1605

The Chair

Ms. Girard-Bujold

The Chair

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold

Mr. Frank Claydon

The Chair

Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain, Lib.)

The Chair

Mr. Ranald Quail

Ms. Beth Phinney

Mr. Scott Serson

1610

Ms. Beth Phinney

Mr. Michael McLaughlin

Ms. Beth Phinney

Mr. Scott Serson

Ms. Beth Phinney

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Frank Claydon

Ms. Beth Phinney

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, NDP)

1615

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Douglas Rimmer

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Frank Claydon

Mr. Pat Martin

1620

Mr. Frank Claydon

Mr. Pat Martin

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Szabo

1625

Mr. Ranald Quail

Mr. Szabo

The Chair

Mr. Frank Claydon

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Epp

1630

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Frank Claydon

Mr. Epp

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

1635

Ms. Girard-Bujold

Mr. Ranald Quail

Ms. Girard-Bujold

The Chair

Mr. Shawn Murphy (Hillsborough, Lib.)

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Shawn Murphy

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Shawn Murphy

The Chair

Mr. Frank Claydon

1640

The Chair

Mr. Shawn Murphy

The Chair

Mr. Michael McLaughlin

Mr. Shawn Murphy

The Chair

Mr. Shawn Murphy

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. John Bryden (Ancaster--Dundas--Flamborough--Aldershot, Lib.)

Mr. Douglas Rimmer

1645

Mr. John Bryden

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. John Bryden

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. John Bryden

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. John Bryden

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. John Bryden

The Chair

Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.)

1650

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Michael McLaughlin

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Michael McLaughlin

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Michael McLaughlin

Mr. Finlay

Mr. Michael McLaughlin

Mr. Finlay

The Chair

Mr. Finlay

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Michael McLaughlin

Ms. Maria Barrados (Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada)

The Chair

Mr. Pat Martin

Mr. Ranald Quail

1655

Mr. Pat Martin

Mr. Ranald Quail

Mr. Pat Martin

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Martin

The Chair

Mr. Alex Shepherd (Durham, Lib.)

Mr. Ranald Quail

Mr. Alex Shepherd

Mr. Ranald Quail

Mr. Alex Shepherd

Mr. Ranald Quail

1700

Mr. Alex Shepherd

Mr. Ranald Quail

Mr. Alex Shepherd

Mr. Ranald Quail

The Chair

Mr. John Bryden

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

1705

Mr. Frank Claydon

Mr. John Williams

Mr. John Bryden

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Michael McLaughlin

The Chair

1710

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Douglas Rimmer

The Chair

Mr. Michael McLaughlin

The Chair

Mr. Frank Claydon

The Chair

Mr. Frank Claydon

1715

The Chair

Mr. Frank Claydon

The Chair

Mr. Frank Claydon

The Chair

Mr. Frank Claydon

The Chair

Mr. John Bryden

The Chair

Mr. Ranald Quail

The Chair

Mr. Ranald Quail

The Chair

Mr. Michael McLaughlin

1720

The Chair

CANADA

Standing Committee on Public Accounts

NUMBER 040

1st SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

COMMITTEE EVIDENCE

Tuesday, February 19, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¹ (1530)

[English]

The Chair (Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, CA)): Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to a big meeting today, which seems to have generated a bit of interest in a large gallery.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(e), we are considering chapter 2 (Recruitment for Canada's Future Public Service: Changing the System) and chapter 3 (Recruitment for Canada's Future Public Service: Changing the Practices) of the December 2001 report of the Auditor General of Canada.

Our witnesses today are, from the Office of the Auditor General, Mr. Michael McLaughlin, Deputy Auditor General, Miss Maria Barrados, Assistant Auditor General, and Ms. Kathryn Elliott, the principal of the Office of the Auditor General. From the Human Resources Modernization Task Force we've got Mr. Ranald Quail, Deputy Minister and Head, and Ms. Monique Boudrias, Assistant Deputy Minister and Senior Advisor. From the Treasury Board Secretariat we have Mr. Frank Claydon, Secretary of the Treasury Board and Comptroller General Canada, and Ms. Glynnis French, Assistant Secretary, strategic planning and analysis, human resources branch. From the Public Service Commission of Canada we have Mr. Scott Serson, the president, Ms. Amelita Armit, vice-president, staffing and recruitment programs branch, and Mr. Douglas Rimmer, vice-president, policy, research, and communications branch. Welcome, everybody.

We'll start off with our opening statement from the Auditor General. Mr. McLaughlin, I presume you're going to present the opening statement.

Mr. Michael McLaughlin (Deputy Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity to discuss our December chapters on recruitment for Canada's future public service. The two chapters deal with changing both the systems of human resources management and the practices.

We read with interest your committee's 11th, 12th, and 13th reports on hearings in 2001. We are happy to note the committee's continued interest in human resources management.

The public service is facing significant challenges to fill existing and anticipated vacancies due to upcoming retirements and a shift in the nature of work. To meet these challenges, managers need a responsive recruitment system, but what they have is a process they see as inflexible, complicated, and slow. As a result, managers work around the system and focus on short-term hirings. This practice is not building a strong work force for the future.

Years of study have indicated that the existing legislation and subsequent appeal and legal decisions have led to the current situation. Despite many attempts at reform within the existing framework, the system remains a barrier.

[Translation]

The existing human resource legislation, and subsequent appeal and legal decisions, have led to the current situation. Despite many attempts at reform within the existing framework, the system remains a barrier.

Clear direction is needed in legislation responsibilities and accountabilities for human resource management, including the role of deputy ministers. The Committee's 12th report discussed the same issued.

We support the concept of a strong oversight agency to provide Parliament with information on human resource management issues, its programs and challenges.

We stress again the need for improved annual reporting to Parliament and within the government on human resource management.

Mr. Chairman, not only the legislative framework but also the management of recruiting to the public service has to change, in order to break the culture of short-term hiring.

Human resource planning must be improved and integrated with the operational plans of departments, leading to the development of recruitment strategies.

[English]

Managers need more and better tools, such as improved electronic recruitment. They also need more inventories of pre-qualified candidates, both in departments and across the public service. They need better support. Human resource professionals are seen as controllers of the process who put up roadblocks. We believe they need to be more strategic and oriented towards service. The government should also evaluate its broadening of the area of selection for recruiting to ensure that it is not having a negative impact on indeterminate hiring.

We are encouraged by the response of the Privy Council Office on behalf of the government and the departments we audited. They concurred that the legislative and management framework for recruitment requires substantial change.

The task force on modernizing human resources management in the public service will be recommending a modern, legislative and institutional framework for managing human resources. We look forward to its proposals, and we encourage the committee to ask for an update of the task force's progress, the challenges it faces, and the barriers to success; to explore options for ensuring that the new legislation will receive appropriate parliamentary scrutiny; and to consider how ongoing oversight by Parliament will be assured, since the government faces significant human resources challenges that will have an impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the Public Service.

The promised reform of legislation for human resources management is an opportunity that cannot be missed. After 40 years of studies and of raised expectations the failure to significantly streamline and modernize the legislation will leave the public service at risk as an institution and further increase cynicism and skepticism in its personnel.

Mr. Chairman, we would be happy to answer the committee's questions.

¹ (1535)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. McLaughlin.

Now I think we'll turn to Mr. Quail. You have a long report here, Mr. Quail, and we'd like to get everything in under five minutes. Do you want us to append this, do you want to summarize, or do you think you can do it in five minutes?

Mr. Ranald Quail (Deputy Minister and Head, Human Resources Modernization Task Force): I don't think I can do it in five minutes.

The Chair: Okay. Is it possible that you could summarize what you're saying?

Mr. Ranald Quail: Sure, and then you could incorporate it, that's fine.

The Chair: Your actual opening remarks would then be appended to the minutes of this committee meeting, and therefore be available to anybody who would like to ask the secretary for a copy.

Go ahead.

Mr. Ranald Quail: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the committee. It is a pleasure to be here. We are here, as we understand it, to discuss chapters 2 and 3 of the Auditor General's report and how they relate to our work.

[Translation]

We have been very busy since the last time I was here before you in May 2001. I would like to take a few minutes to outline the Task Force's work to date and some of the issues that we have been grappling with over the past few months.

The legislative framework that was created in 1967 for managing human resources in the Public Service was the best for its time. But times have changed and close to forty years of jurisprudence has made the system neither flexible nor responsive enough to attract and keep the employees that are needed.

[English]

Certainly, the Auditor General has outlined the problems and requirements that need to be put into place. We are looking at making changes in the way we do business, looking at the staffing, looking at labour relations, and looking at recourse. These would be the first changes of a significant nature in the last 40 years.

I would, however, make a couple of comments. We don't have any intention of not having protection of merit. That's the cornerstone of the operation as we go forward. Second, we do want to delegate, nonetheless, to managers the responsibility for the management of human resources down as far as we can. Third, we want to hold accountable all those who share in the responsibility for human resource management in the public service. Of course, we then think there should be an outside, independent look and a strong reporting system to parliamentarians.

Mr. Chairman, that's about my summary in five minutes. If you'd read the rest into the record, that would be fine with me. I look forward to answering your questions.

Merci.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Quail. As I said, your opening statement is deposited with the clerk and is available for anybody who wants the actual transcripts.

Now we will turn to the Treasury Board. Mr. Claydon, do you want to go over your opening statement?

Mr. Frank Claydon (Secretary of the Treasury Board and Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Chair and honourable members of the committee. It's a pleasure to be here this afternoon to discuss issues concerning recruitment in the public service of Canada. I have with me my colleague, the assistant secretary of strategic planning and analysis in our human resources branch, Mrs. Glynnis French.

[Translation]

I was very pleased to learn that many Canadians attached great importance to the Public Service of Canada, as well as to the necessity of renewing and maintaining it as we enter the 21st century.

¹ (1540)

[English]

I believe the Auditor General's recent report raises a number of important issues that must not be ignored if we are to meet the challenges ahead. I would like to compliment the Auditor General and her staff for the important contribution they have made to raising awareness and advancing the dialogue on human resource issues.

As the Auditor General has pointed out, the aging of the labour force creates a number of significant challenges for the renewal of the public service, including a more competitive market for new talent. While I do not want to underestimate what needs to be done, I would like to point out that in our fall 2001 recruitment campaign 22,000 individuals applied for fewer than 1,000 jobs. And jobs.gc.ca website has received a record number of hits, in excess of one million per month.

[Translation]

I am pleased to see that the Auditor General's report also addresses the important matter of temporary employment. Although it is normal for any large organization to have a certain number of casual workers, the percentage of term positions has increased over the past 10 years, and this certainly has a negative impact on Public Service recruiting activities.

One of the key objectives of the task force headed by Mr. Ranald Quail is to simplify the staffing process in order to attain what I see as a vital balance between determinate and indeterminate positions. I would like to add that Treasury Board Secretariat has undertaken a study of determinate positions, in conjunction with the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the union representing the majority of federal public servants.

[English]

I would also like to comment on the concerns expressed by the AG about the need for better human resource planning. This is an area most departments and agencies are now giving increased attention to. The Treasury Board Secretariat has just published an inventory of new HR initiatives undertaken in the last three years, and we would be pleased to provide a copy of that to the committee. As well, the Treasury Board Secretariat has just updated and reissued the human resource management framework the Auditor General referred to in chapter two of her report. This framework is now being used by departments that represent about 80% of the public service, and we are seeing its use reflected in the recent departmental assessment reports that are tabled in Parliament.

Before concluding my remarks, I would like to draw your attention to an important aspect of recruitment that is not specifically addressed in the Auditor General's report. This is the issue of representativeness in recruitment, or employment equity. A key priority has been to promote a diverse and inclusive public service. We recognize that such a workforce is better able to provide the highest quality services to Canadians. Throughout the “Embracing Change” initiative, for example, we have been able to double the recruitment of visible minority employees in the past two years. I know we still have a long way to go in this regard, but I am encouraged by our progress to date, and I'm even more pleased with the overall commitment to promoting employment equity in government. Other designated groups, women, aboriginal persons, and persons with disabilities are already represented in the public service at levels that surpass their labour market availability.

[Translation]

Finally, I would like to point out that we will succeed in improving the Public Service if we hold discussions with our employees and try to respond to their concerns. In 1999 we carried out a survey across the Public Service, which enabled us to contact 104,000 employees. No other government anywhere in the world has carried out such exhaustive research. Next spring we will be carrying out a second one in order to determine whether we have made progress in connection with our objective of strengthening the Public Service.

[English]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee. I look forward to questions.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Claydon.

Now we'll turn to the Public Service Commission and Mr. Scott Serson, the president. You've got a long statement too, Mr. Serson. You can summarize it, and we will again append your complete report to the committee minutes, so that if anybody requires it, they can ask the clerk for a copy.

Mr. Scott Serson (President, Public Service Commission of Canada): Good afternoon. I'll just go through this very briefly, Mr. Chairman.

We too commented on your committee's reports 11 and 12, and we indicated that we are taking steps to implement some of your recommendations, including an ongoing, year-round post-secondary recruitment campaign.

We also welcome the reports of the Auditor General, and in fact, we are very comfortable with the recommendations in chapter 3. We think the government's innovation strategy released last week underscores the urgency in many of the Auditor General's comments.

¹ (1545)

[Translation]

Last week, we provided you with a copy of the report which summarizes our conclusions, The Road Ahead, along with our recruitment action plan. One of our principal conclusions, also referred to in our annual report, is that strategic planning by the departments in the area of human resources is essential.

[English]

On area selection, which was a significant concern last year, Mr. Chairman, and I know continues to be a concern to members of Parliament, we can report some progress. Since January 28% of the jobs posted on our website now use national area selection, compared to 17% of postings that were open nationally in 2000 and 2001. As you know, we have pilot projects under way across the country to examine the operational and service issues related to using national area of selection with other types of jobs. We hope to be back at the end of the summer with the results of those decisions, consult parliamentarians, and present the results to the government.

We continue to work away at e-recruitment, and as part of those pilot testings, we will be testing e-recruitment in the central and southern Ontario regions of the PSC to get a sense of what large-scale e-recruitment, based on an outside service provider, would lead to.

Finally, we underlined some of our developments, our oversight activities in the area of staffing recruitment, including our clarified accountability agreements with departments and regular reporting from them, systematic performance reviews of departments, our reflection to them of what we learned, and our continued efforts to remind managers of the values that lie behind our legislation.

I think with that, Mr. Chairman, I'll close.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Serson.

Now we'll start off with the first round of questions. Mr. Epp, eight minutes.

Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, CA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all of you for being here and enlightening Parliament via the few members who are represented on this committee.

I'd like to ask a question right off the top with respect to your recruitment practices. I was amazed to find out that approximately 90% of your hiring is for term and casual people. It seems to me that would have a huge impact on the quality of people you attract, because very few people who have real competence in their job would be willing to leave that job for a temporary or term position in the government. As a result, you basically, with that policy, are limiting yourself away from a large pool of talent that could be working for the government. I'd like your comments on that, Mr. Claydon.

Mr. Frank Claydon: I have just a couple of comments. With term employment, as you say, the indeterminate part is only 10%, the term is about 40%, and casual employment on an annual basis is about 50%, half of the total. In a sense, casual employment is something we need to have on an annual basis, so it's hard to see that we could replace casual employment with full-time employment. But when we look at term employment, those people are employed for a specific number of years, whereas indeterminate employment involves those who are employed on an ongoing basis. There certainly is a question of whether we've got the balance right. I think most people would say we should be moving more toward indeterminate employment, particularly for attracting new people into the public service. This is something that is very important.

In fact, one of the issues here is the question of the systems we have to recruit and use indeterminate employees. That is one of the key issues that is being addressed by the task force that Ran Quail is heading up. How can we make the system for recruiting and attracting people on an indeterminate basis work better, smoother, faster, so that it's seen by the managers who are hiring as a good alternative to simply using a term position approach to bring people into the public service? In a sense, it's easier to do it using the term approach.

I should also mention that the Treasury Board Secretariat is undertaking a study of term employment with the Public Service Alliance of Canada. It's something we very much want to look at in concert with them, to determine some of the issues that we need to address as we try to move from a position of considerable dependence on term hirings to one where we have more balance with the ongoing needs for term employees, which we do have--there are, I think, legitimate needs for term hiring--moving toward more focus on the indeterminate side.

¹ (1550)

Mr. Ken Epp: Thank you.

I have another question, and that is with respect to the length of time taken to actually complete a recruitment. According to the survey, approximately 57% took longer than three months to complete, and another 32% more than six months. So 90% of the recruitments take more than three months; 10% would be less than three months. Why does it take so long?

Mr. Scott Serson: I think there is a wide variety of reasons, Mr. Epp.

I just wanted to make one factual response to your earlier question, to get that in. While the absolute numbers are not that large, indeterminate hiring last year was up by 34%,and the number of job postings this year for indeterminate hiring is up another 34%. So we're seeing some signs in the right direction.

On the question of time, when we talk about hiring into the public service, we are talking about all aspects of the process. We are talking about security clearances, we're talking about language testing for bilingual processes, we're talking about the amount of managerial and human resource time needed to develop a statement of qualifications, to post that on an Internet site, to screen applications, to do some interim kinds of assessments, often a paper and pencil test or something of that nature, to get down to a smaller number of candidates, who are usually interviewed, and then brought on board. It is an extensive process, and based on our experience of the early 1990s, we have been doing that on an ad hoc basis. We wait until the vacancy occurs, and then we start that process. One of the lessons, even with new human resource legislation, is that we have to do a better job of planning, we have to do a better job of anticipating the vacancies, doing the statement of qualifications in advance, moving to pools, greater use of inventories, all kinds of mechanisms like that.

Mr. Ken Epp: Okay, I have a follow-up question on this. Clearly, the premium on recruitment is due to the fact that you have a lot of people who don't stay. I have here a statement that 35% of new recruits leave the public service within a year. Is that true? Is that number accurate? Is that hearsay? What are we doing to actually retain these people, because clearly, if you retain them, it takes a huge pressure off the recruitment process?

¹ (1555)

Mr. Douglas Rimmer (Vice-President, Public Service Commission of Canada): The 35% reflects the percentage of new hirings we surveyed who said they had the intention to leave within the next five years. We found that 8% of them have actually left. A further 27% were expressing some interest in leaving over the next five years. This survey was done in the fall of 2000, when the job market was at its absolute highest. Those are not numbers we should ignore; there are some issues in there about the quality of work we have to offer people, which we reflected on in the report that was sent to members of the committee. But for perspective, some work done in the United States by the American Management Association identified a 20% turnover in the American private sector in the same period. Turnover in the United States government was a little bit lower, but for the four years preceding 2000, they indicated that over 20% of their hires had left within the two-year timeframe.

Our numbers are not numbers we take lightly, that we think don't raise some issues, but in context, and given the labour market over the last few years, we are not necessarily out of line with others' experience.

Mr. Ken Epp: Mr. Chairman, I have more questions to come back to on the next round.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Epp.

Madame Girard-Bujold, s'il vous plaît, huit minutes.

[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold (Jonquière, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you as well to all who are in attendance today.

I have a great many questions. I do not know when you set up the a Task Force on Modernizing Human Resources Management in the Public Service. I would like to know when that was. Could you tell me that now, please?

Mr. Ranald Quail: In 2001.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: In 2001.

In your brief, which I have read with interest, you say that these would be the very first fundamental changes in the Public Service in close to 40 years.

I also note that the Auditor General has made a great many findings. She says that there are already staff shortages, that there has been no integrated human resources planning, and that this has a negative impact on preparation of recruitment strategies. The choice of national selection areas by the PSC is questioned. A great many points are raised in chapter 3. She raises a similar number of chapter 2.

I would like to know whether, in the short or long term, you are going to put in place something that is going to allow...what needs to be done between now and 2010, which is not far away. There are already staff shortages today, so when are you going to come up with a plan that will finally, as you say in your text, bring the Public Service into the 21st century?. We are already in 2002. The century began two years ago.

So, when are you going to put your plan in place and when will we have a public service that will offer competent individuals some hope of joining it, and will hire the appropriate resources and assign them to the appropriate positions, so we can at last stop talking about the shortcomings of our public service?

Thank you.

Ranald Quail: According to our action plan, our Memorandum to Cabinet should be ready by June, after which we are to start working on a bill to be introduced in the House next fall.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: I am pleased to hear that because having heard so many flaws pointed out today, I saw nothing promising for the future.

Ranald Quail: Many other studies have been carried out by the Auditor General, not just those referred to in chapters 2 and 3. As well, over these 40 years others have authored reports. So what we are going to be tabling is not a report but a bill.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold (Jonquière, BQ): May I ask another question, Mr. Chairman?

º (1600)

The Chair: You have six minutes left.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have read chapters 2 and 3 of the AG report carefully. I find it a very good report, really. She points out the areas that have to be addressed. In spite of the studies you have carried out, she indicates what should be done immediately to allow our public service to act promptly, regardless of the bill you want to introduce.

The person representing the Auditor General says they have consulted people and asked those responsible for the public service about the national selection areas. We are told that information technology will allow people from all over to apply, The Auditor General warns against this and recommends an assessment of the repercussions.

I would like to know what her criteria for this are, and what questions she has about e-recruiting.

Michael McLaughlin: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to say that provision has been made for designating selection areas for positions using electronic tools as well as others. An efficient system is necessary for this, as otherwise public servants will use the most effective means of finding the people to fill positions. This is what has led to the present situation, with so many people hired as term employees rather than indeterminate. That is the situation at present.

Now, however, we do have the tools to be tested in order to make sure they work properly. If they do not, we will need to try some other approach. If the recruitment areas are expanded without the proper tools, the system will be inefficient and that will be a problem.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: Does the Auditor General say in her report why the government is still recruiting casual workers and has been for some time? As we know, 70% of the time, these are women.

I would like to know what the Auditor General found when she looked into this particular point.

Mr. Michael McLaughlin: The first reason is that the process is too long and complicated for managers to be able to find people as they are needed. Managers want to hire people right away to get the work done. It is a matter of efficiency. It is not that they insist on term employees; they would very much like to have indeterminate employees, but the process is too long and complicated.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: That means that there is not much hope for the people recruited to have a career in the public service. They do not have a feeling of being part of the public service; they are just there to put out fires. The managers do not want to establish a public service culture. They get the fire put out, and then the next day they hire somebody else. We are now in the year 2002 and people are leaving the public service. They do not want to be part of it any more. They say they have no recognition, are not valued. They have neither responsibilities nor hopes of career advancement.

I would also like to know whether there are many francophones at the deputy minister level. I would like to know what the proportion is compared to anglophones, please.

Mr. Frank Claydon: I am sorry, but I do not have figures on the number of francophones in senior positions, but I can supply them to the committee later on.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: As well, when the bilingualism bonus is given...

º (1605)

The Chair: Ms. Girard-Bujold, Mr. Claydon will be able to table certain information with the Clerk.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: May I ask a final question ?

The Chair: Yes.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: The bilingual bonus is $800. It has never been raised since the beginning. I think that, if you really want to have bilingual public servants, they have to be encouraged to learn a second language, even a third.

Why have you never given thought to raising the bilingual bonus so as to get people able to speak both of Canada's official languages?

Mr. Frank Claydon: It is true that the bilingualism bonus is still the same amount. It is possible to raise it, but no research has been done on this question at this time. It may be something to be looked into. I have no other information on this.

[English]

The Chair: But you may take it under advisement? Okay. Thank you.

Ms. Phinney, eight minutes.

Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain, Lib.): I have so many questions I don't know where to start.

I was just wondering--and this is just a management question or something--why the bill that is being prepared is being prepared under Human Resources. Why is the Minister of Human Resources preparing this bill, not the public service? Is the public service not under the Minister of Labour?

The Chair: It's the Treasury Board that Mr. Quail reports to, and he is here representing it, I presume. He is here representing a task force, I believe. Well, why don't you tell us, Mr. Quail?

Mr. Ranald Quail: The employer is the Treasury Board, and I presume the Treasury Board minister represents the employer. We're preparing a piece of legislation that deals with issues that are under the purview of the Public Service Employment Act, the Public Service Staff Relations Act, and parts of the Financial Administration Act. The President of the Treasury Board will be the person responsible for depositing it in the House.

Ms. Beth Phinney: It was just the first part of your title that sounds as if it comes under Human Resources Development, so I was just wondering if there was any connection there.

With 22,000 people applying for a job and 1,000 getting a position, it sounds as though there is not a problem with people coming to the government and wanting to have a job. The problem is with retention, obviously, and maybe with whoever is deciding who those 1000 should be. I'm sure that the banks and large companies like General Motors have a way of making better selection out of 22,000 people than you're using right now. Have you gone to banks and places like that and asked them how they do their recruitment?

Mr. Scott Serson: Yes, we do regularly check with the private sector, with what they are doing right, and where they are having challenges. I think the Auditor General's chapter 3 is a good example of some of the things where you find the private sector perhaps doing a better job than we are in the public service. They are using e-recruitment tools, not only for application processes, which we are doing, but to screen, to administer on-line testing, so they are getting a result more quickly than we are. They are probably doing a lot better because they are usually a focused industry. They are probably doing a lot better at human resource planning, at anticipating the needs. We have some areas of the public service whose need has become so desperate that they are actually going into the educational institutions and encouraging a change in course content to meet their needs. So there is a wide variety of things.

Typically, though, I have to say, the arguments about the public service recruitment process are not with respect to the quality, but the timeliness of it. I think we do have quality processes. We can develop the necessary tests etc., but the question's one of timing, and perhaps absence of adequate resources.

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Ms. Beth Phinney: Mr. McLaughlin.

Mr. Michael McLaughlin: Mr Chairman, if I could, while there are 22,000 candidates coming in and 1000 being selected, there are certain skills that are required, and you're not necessarily getting the match between the skills that are required in the public service and those people who are presenting themselves. There are urgent needs that need to be addressed in filling some of these very skilled positions. I wanted to get that on the record. It's not just the numbers, but the quality of the candidates.

Ms. Beth Phinney: But one has to wonder whether General Motors goes through this problem, or whether they can pinpoint the people they want. I'm just wondering if there's something missing in how we're going about this.

I know many young people who think, well, I'll do three, four, five years in government, and then I'll be better qualified, more marketable material to get into private business. We know that exists. Do you ever go overseas or to any other government to see how they cope with this? I know in Britain they have a plan. It's a deliberate plan for young people who want to come in for a year or two years, work there, and then go out into private business. Have you looked at their plan at all?

Mr. Scott Serson: We do monitor what other countries are doing, and we have those kinds of programs. Our management trainee program is exactly that kind of program. It's very popular, very successful. We recruit economists in a very selective way, make sure we're getting good quality. We've even, in the last year or two, begun to do outside recruitment for our career assignment program, which is a transition program between the senior officer level and the executive level. So yes, we're looking for the best ideas we can find around the world.

Ms. Beth Phinney: Okay. I wasn't quite meaning what you're meaning. These are students coming out of university who only want to do two or three years work, and you apparently hire a fair number of people on part-time jobs, term jobs, and that's what I was thinking of. Do you have so many thousand of these that are hired just with this idea in mind: they are going to leave, and you know they're going to leave?

Mr. Scott Serson: No, I don't think we have that kind of specific program.

Mr. Frank Claydon: To add one comment, we do have the youth internship program, which does bring in, as I understand it, 5000 individuals on an annual basis for a specified period of time to learn about the federal government and to test out whether it's something they would like to continue on an ongoing basis or they would like to look elsewhere. This is something we've run for a number of years, and a number of the interns say they've found that their experience has been very helpful; it has helped them make decisions about coming back for permanent jobs in the federal service.

Ms. Beth Phinney: Are you finding that within the departments themselves they're not doing a good enough job of figuring out exactly what they want? Are they doing a good enough job of saying, okay, I want somebody for this position who has to be able to do this, this, and this, so you can match this, this, and this with it?

Mr. Scott Serson: From the Public Service Commission's point of view, we have a strong feeling that over the last couple of years improvements have begun to be made, but there are further improvements that need to be made. We need to challenge departments further to consider, an issue some of the members and the Auditor General have raised, their use of term and casual hires. There are lots of legitimate reasons for doing that, but we continue to wonder whether much of it isn't just the habits that formed over the early 1990s, when we were in a downsizing mode. So we do believe there is more work to be done there, but there are some improvements.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Phinney.

Mr. Martin, eight minutes.

Mr. Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses. The size of the crowd is an indication of how seriously people are taking this issue. Today's newspaper headline, I think, generated a lot of attention as well.

There are serious numbers in this newspaper article, and I think the most startling to me is not the 35% headline that was used, but later on in the article, where it says of those surveyed 88% complained that their skills were not put to good use, 83% said they couldn't see the impact of their work--in other words, they weren't getting any gratification from their work--77% said they didn't find the work meaningful, and 75% said they wanted higher salaries--I'm surprised that figure wasn't 100%. Those numbers really do point to a serious morale problem in the public sector and a pervasive malaise, which I don't have any trouble understanding, given the decade of cutting and hacking and slashing we went through. The most recent exercise in damaging morale was taking the $30 billion out of the public service pension plan, rather than going to additional benefits. Those are some of the things we cite as reasons for bad morale.

I would like to float an idea and ask all of you if you've considered one possible way to retain more of our skilled work force now. This country has about the most centralized public service of any of the developed nations. Given that we're more likely to lose public servants when we're in areas of low unemployment, would it not help to decentralize more of the public service into areas where we're less likely to lose them to the private sector? Has that been talked about recently, and is that part of the master plan on how to keep the skilled work force we have?

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The Chair: Do you want everybody to respond? We'll start with Mr. Serson, and have a very short response from each of you.

Mr. Scott Serson: I do want to underscore that I don't think you can equate those figures with a morale problem. If you look back to the public service survey done two or three years ago, the degree of pride public servants had in their work was fairly significant. I think what this points to--and I'll ask Doug to comment a bit further--is that when we're bringing young people in, we've got to do a better job of orienting them and giving them challenging work. I wouldn't make it more than that.

Mr. Douglas Rimmer: The numbers you are referring to come from a report that we just produced, The Road Ahead, which was provided to members of this committee about a week ago. The particular subset of numbers refers to young employees who had been recently hired and indicated an intention to leave. We asked those people who were thinking of leaving why they were going to leave. So it's not everybody, it's just those who said they were going to leave. For example, 88% said they wanted to make better use of their skills and abilities. That isn't to say they make no use of their skills and abilities in the public service job, but that in the fall of 2000 they thought there might be further opportunities out there in the private sector or elsewhere in government. The labour market was very hot, and people, particularly knowledge workers, thought they might have better opportunities elsewhere. What this does point out is what Mr. Serson referred to: we need to be sure we're providing skilled knowledge workers with real opportunities to use their skills and really challenging work in the federal government, in order to keep them.

The Chair: Now we can back to Mr. Martin's first question, his real question: decentralization, are you doing it, Mr. Serson?

Mr. Scott Serson: Decentralization wouldn't be our issue. If you're talking about geographic decentralization of employment, that's an employer role.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Claydon.

Mr. Frank Claydon: I would just like to point out that at the current time 70% of the jobs in the public service are outside the National Capital Region, so it is reasonably decentralized. We have had some experience moving some elements of government outside the National Capital Region, for example, Veterans Affairs moving to Charlottetown. It isn't an easy thing to take headquarters operations and move them like that. I think it is important, though, to realize how decentralized we are in respect of the overall size right now.

Mr. Pat Martin: There's one more issue I'd like to raise. I think, Mr. Claydon, you mentioned in your report that you're quite happy with the progress made to date in employment equity measures. We just sat earlier today at the committee reviewing employment equity. I was startled to learn there that the Human Rights Commission conducts audits of every agency and federally regulated employer. In the first year they could do that, 1998, only two agencies or businesses were in compliance, I think, Status of Women Canada and AJ Bus Lines . That was it for the whole country. In the next year 4 out of 111 audits found compliance. Mr. Claydon, it seems to me that's not a very good level of cooperation with the Employment Equity Act within the public service or the federally regulated businesses. Can you expand on that at all?

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Mr. Frank Claydon: Certainly, Mr. Chair, employment equity, as the member said, is a very complicated issue, with a number of facets. What I was speaking about was the fact that we are making progress in bringing new recruits who are members of the employment equity groups into the public service. There are other issues that are covered in the compliance audits of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. My view is that on the broad range of issues related to employment equity, the public service is making progress. I think in the last couple of years we've made a reasonable amount of progress. That's not to say we're there. We've got an awful lot of work to do. But I think we're seeing public service managers who are ready to take that challenge and make a difference.

Mr. Pat Martin: One of the areas where we really fail to match the need and the demand is the aboriginal community. I represent the inner city riding of Winnipeg, where there are massive unemployment problems among aboriginal people aged 18 to 35. I'm hoping that special measures are going to be looked at to try to provide opportunities when the public service is out there actively looking for a pool of skilled labour. I really hope we can do better to incorporate them into those opportunities. Are there any special measures? Other than the requirements under the Employment Equity Act, are there mentoring programs or school-to-work transition programs specifically targeted at the aboriginal community?

Mr. Scott Serson: The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs is doing a lot of good work in this area, with the aboriginal masters program etc. We're making an effort corporately. I referred to the fact that we went outside to look for candidates for our career assignment program, and one of the special searches we did was in the aboriginal community. We got 1,000 applications, both inside and outside the government. We got 200 qualified people whose names were distributed across the public service. I think in the end we put about 27 of those individuals in the career assignment program. So they'd be working their way from senior officer to the executive level.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Martin.

Now we'll move onto the second round, which is four minutes each. Mr. Szabo, please.

Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.): In chapter 2 of the Auditor General's report, paragraph 70, it states:

The problems in the recruitment system...have contributed to the increased recruitment of casual and term employees. In the view of the hiring managers, it is faster and less complicated to hire term or casual employees. They do not feel, given the workload pressures they are under, that they can have positions vacant for extended periods.

I think the Auditor General has given you the direction you should look at very seriously. When you get, if the figures are correct, 22,000 people applying for 1,000 jobs, it is very likely that you are going to find yourself in a position where you will be hiring overqualified people who you won't be able to keep, if they're not a good fit for the job in the first place. There's a lot of human resources science going on right now, and one of the things that is clear is that if people don't have a career path and a tracking, it's very easy for them to move on. If you've been employed and trained in management training programs by the federal government, been educated and brought your French level up, you become more marketable.

Ross Perot, when he was the head of EDS in the States, actually introduced a system where new employees had to sign a promissory note for x thousands of dollars amortized over seven years, to make sure he got at least seven years out of them, because his competition was stealing them away as soon as he had finished training them, and it cost a lot of money. I suspect the same kind of dynamic occurs here.

So I would be very interested to know, Mr. Quail, since you're going to be tabling legislation, according to your statement here, whether or not you are prepared, as has been suggested, to stop tinkering around the edges of our human resources system and bring a real paradigm shift into some state-of-the-art human resources planning.

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Mr. Ranald Quail: I'd like to think that after our work we'll be doing more than tinkering around the edges, but I'm not so naive as to believe that we'll be able to satisfy all the various interests as we move to finalize our work. It'll be, to some degree, in the eye of the beholder when it sees what we finally make recommendations to the government on and what subsequently gets tabled in the House. Do I think we should have a system that would encourage getting away from the culture of short-term hiring? Absolutely. Do I think we should try to do that? We will try to do that, but it will take some time.

Mr. Paul Szabo: When the House has considered EI issues, we've often talked about industries like the automotive industry that lay off employees for changeovers, the education system for non-teaching staff or contract people, who could qualify for EI benefits, etc. One of the allegations was that the reason we don't tighten up is that the federal and other levels of government are the biggest abusers of the EI system. In fact, we have a taxi squad of employees who we put on contracts or we put on other kinds of employment arrangements, which allows them to be available, on call, as it were, at the expense of the EI system. Is this the case? Has this practice of relying more heavily on casual employees been simply a way of taking advantage of the leverage under the EI system?

The Chair: Mr. Claydon.

Mr. Frank Claydon: Mr. Chair, if it is happening, I'm not aware of it, and certainly, it's not seen as part of any kind of plan. I would be glad to look into that, but it's not something that's come to my attention.

The Chair: Do you have any comment, Mr. Serson?

Mr. Scott Serson: No, I don't think so. I would say, though, to underscore, that if you look at chapters 2 and 3, there are comments about the slowness of the current system, in chapter 3 about short-term funding of many programs, sunsetted programs, the lack of managerial training. We've got a wide variety of issues that contribute to this short-term hiring before we get to the issue of trying to take advantage of the unemployment insurance, which we'd have to look at, Mr. Szabo.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Szabo.

Mr. Epp, four minutes.

Mr. Ken Epp: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm glad you could get back to me.

The other question I have has to do with page 31 of your report, Mr. Serson, which is, by the way, a very good report. It's easy to read, easy to understand, even for us parliamentarians, so you did a good job there. You refer to the reasons executives and equivalents give as intending to leave to pursue a different career, and 74% of them said, to earn more money. I would like to know whether you have put forward a strong enough case to the powers that be to bring in the salaries that can allow our top executives and our top professionals to stay in the civil service, instead of being enticed away.

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Mr. Scott Serson: We're actually quoting here from a survey that senior managers do for themselves. They are our senior manager group, the APEX group, and we're bringing it to the attention of decision-makers.

Now I'll turn to my colleague, who can speak to the process we're using to examine executive compensation in the public service of Canada, which I think is an excellent process.

Mr. Frank Claydon: I should bring to your attention that for the last three years we have had a committee, the Strong committee, as many of you would know it, looking at the issue of executive compensation. In fact, there is a new system that has has been running now for a couple of years and has a number of important features. One very important feature in respect of our competitiveness with the private sector is that for the lowest level of executive salaries, which is the biggest group, over 1,000 individuals, the salary is benchmarked to the private sector. So the idea is that we do try to provide parity with the private sector for our beginning level of executives. The higher-level salaries are then benchmarked to that first level, and in fact, the higher-level executive salaries tend to be less adequate in comparison with the private sector. But for the biggest group, the group where we're bringing people into the executive, those salaries are benchmarked, and we try to maintain that level.

Mr. Ken Epp: If I may interrupt, obviously, it isn't working, if 74% of them are leaving because they can earn more money elsewhere.

I have another question--and my time is running out. It has also to do with employment equity. None of us, I'm sure, would in any way condone discrimination against a person because of personal characteristics, like disabilities, being in a visible minority, and so on. There are numerous occasions when the qualifications for the job, technically and professionally, differ from these other qualifications. We've had, in the last little while, some instances--this is anecdotal, of course--where a person is laid off from a high-tech job here in Ottawa, applies for a job, and is told that because they aren't in one of these groups, they're not going to be considered. It looks as if the civil service of Canada is deprived of very good talent by some of these rules that override the hiring decision. I'm very concerned about this. When the merit principle collides with these other principles, it seems that in the last number of years the civil service has trumped the merit principle. So they're empty words when you say “the merit principle”.

I would like to know whether you have any statistics that indicate how many times you have two, three, four, or more applicants who technically were more qualified for the job, but were pre-empted by those who fit into the categories for the Employment Equity Act and other things like that.

The Chair: Mr. Serson.

Mr. Scott Serson: I can say categorically, Mr. Epp, that employment equity never trumps the merit principle. Merit we define as a competent, non-partisan, representative public service. Every staffing action is a test of merit. Notwithstanding the comments that the staffing system hasn't changed significantly in 40 years, there was a significant change through 1993 legislative amendments that allowed us to test individuals either through relative merit, i.e., a competitive process, or against an individual standard of competence. So sometimes we will use that to achieve employment equity processes, sometimes we will use relative merit, but always the individual must meet the standard of competence the job requires.

The Chair: I'm not exactly sure that answered your question, Mr. Epp, but let's come back to that, because I'd like everybody to have a chance to speak, and you know how it goes. But I do understand, and I'm not sure you got the answer.

Madame Girard-Bujold, s'il vous plaît, quatre minutes.

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[Translation]

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: I believe the Auditor General has given some guidelines on the legislative amendments required. Mr. Quail, have you read the recommendations of the Auditor General carefully? She says:

Annual reporting to Parliament on human resource management in departments is needed. As well, some form of comprehensive, cyclical reporting on human resource management by departments to Parliament might be considered.

Some form of external oversight function should be in place to provide Parliament with assurance on human resource management. This function should be completely separate from any corporate operational unit needed

I would like to hear your comments, Mr. Quail, on these points raised by the Auditor General in her report.

Mr. Ranald Quail: I believe you are quoting from section 2.106. We are looking very carefully at all of the principles set out in this section, including the ones you have read. We do not know whether, when it comes down to it, we will be able to report exactly as recommended in the principles, but we are giving very serious thought to having an audit and presenting a report to Parliament in order to assure parliamentarians that we have a system in place and are following the policies.

Ms. Jocelyne Girard-Bujold: I think that would be one way of ensuring transparency and restoring the confidence of the media and the public in the public service.

Thank you. I must now go and make a speech in the House.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Madame Girard-Bujold.

Mr. Murphy, four minutes.

Mr. Shawn Murphy (Hillsborough, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

First, I would like to thank everyone for the excellent presentations.

My question is to Mr. Serson. This issue has come before this committee on at least two or three occasions before, and I see it as a big issue, as a parliamentarian; it's a real problem in the whole Government of Canada. Quite honestly, I see an accountability problem in the whole structure of government. The problem's identified very accurately by the Auditor General. I think everyone here in this room can see the problem, that it has to be brought into the 20th century. We have the Privy Council, we have the Treasury Board, we have the Public Service Commission, we have the Quail task force, and I'm struggling to see who is accountable for the delivery of the change that's needed. If there's no one accountable, there's no one responsible, and most likely it won't get done, most likely we'll be back here in two years time, and there will be a committee set up between the Privy Council, Treasury Board, and the Public Service Commission to study the recommendations made by Mr. Quail.

So my question to you, Mr. Serson, is, do you feel that you're the person in charge, that you're responsible, that you can identify the problem, that you can correct the problem, and that you can deliver the necessary changes within a reasonable period of time, 18 months to 2 years?

Mr. Scott Serson: No, that's not the Public Service Commission's role.

Mr. Shawn Murphy: Then who's responsible?

Mr. Scott Serson: The Public Service Commission's role is, to my mind, to be an arm of parliamentarians for ensuring that whatever system is put in place respects the merit system. To my mind, it is the clerk of the Privy Council, it is the secretary of the Treasury Board. The clerk has the leadership role in human resource management; in 1993 he was designated head of the Public Service. Mr. Claydon has a role, as employer, to coordinate this activity. Our role is to comment on it and to try to ensure that the principles of merit are respected.

Mr. Shawn Murphy: Perhaps, Mr. Chairman, I can address the same question to Mr. Claydon. We had the clerk of the Privy Council, I did ask the same question, and he didn't really accept responsibility.

The Chair: Well, let's ask Mr. Claydon.

Mr. Frank Claydon: To respond to your question, Mr. Murphy, I would like to differentiate two things. There's the question of this process we're going through of modernization, and the task force Mr. Quail is managing is a part of it, and as well, the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Public Service Commission are helping to contribute to that. That whole effort is meant to be a one-shot thing, where we'll get it done. In that context, the leadership very much belongs to the President of the Treasury Board. She is the political force that is pulling this together and bringing it forward. Certainly, I am responsible to the President of the Treasury Board, as is Mr. Quail with the task force. So we're bringing these things together, trying to provide an overall approach that fits under her leadership.

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The Chair: Is that clear now, Mr. Murphy?

Mr. Shawn Murphy: No, it's not, Mr. Chairman. Maybe it's my own fault that I can't understand, but I'd like someone to identify to me who is responsible.

The Chair: Why don't we ask an independent person, the Deputy Auditor General, what he thinks?

Mr. McLaughlin.

Mr. Michael McLaughlin: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We did raise the issue of roles and responsibilities for the management of human resources in chapter 9 of our 2000 report. In there we raised the very fundamental questions of who is in charge of what and who does what. I think your committee reviewed those recommendations. In essence, what we were looking for, which is what is happening right now, is legislative change that would address it. This is what Mr. Quail's task force is about, and I would hope it comes forward with some clarity as to who is accountable. The big question is, how does an organization like the Government of Canada change its recruitment practices and modernize its human resources management? That's the big question, and that's Mr. Quail's question.

Mr. Shawn Murphy: I have just one statement, Mr. Chairman--I know I'm over time.

The Chair: I know you're over time, but I'm not crystal clear on this issue either.

Mr. Shawn Murphy: My only statement, Mr. Chairman, is that because no one is responsible, it's highly unlikely that the change required will be done.

The Chair: I think they should all run for our job, because they talk lots, say much, and prove nothing.

Mr. Serson has a point.

Mr. Scott Serson: I just want to be clear. We can get hung up on this issue of complexity, but we have to look at the purpose for which that complexity was created. The point is this. In 1918 Parliament decided that it wanted to put recruitment and staffing into independent hands. That does create some distance from the executive, and it requires a cooperative relationship. The question is, does that relationship with Parliament continue to be necessary, and should those authorities continue to reside with that agency?

The Chair: Okay, Mr. Serson, that's fine. Thank you. The point is quite specific: who is in charge? And nobody ever said, I'm in charge, I carry the buck.

Now we're going to go to Mr. Bryden fo four minutes.

Mr. John Bryden (Ancaster--Dundas--Flamborough--Aldershot, Lib.): Among young people the private sector is generally perceived as being merit-based. We've heard you say you're committed to employment equity, but it's still a merit regime. However, have you done any studies to assess the positive or negative attitude young people may have to the public pervice as a result of your commitment to employment equity, particularly, if I may say so, among young males? Have you ever done such a study?

Mr. Douglas Rimmer: In the document we provided to you, The Road Ahead,, in addition to a survey we did of new hires, we did a survey of students as well. We did ask those individuals about the attractiveness of various elements of the public service, and they indicated that the public service's openness to diversity, which includes employment equity, was for them a positive.

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Mr. John Bryden: I did see that, but that's not the question I would like to see you pose, which is to establish whether there is a negative perception--it's really the negative perception I'm interested in--on the part of young males and people who are not visible minorities towards the public service because of your commitment to employment equity and the recruitment of visible minorities. If you haven't done such a study, I highly recommend it to you, because the anecdotal evidence I get is that young people do not feel that the public service is merit-based, because of practice and these other considerations. So I would recommend that to you.

A parallel question is, have you done a similar study to ask young people whether they are negatively affected by the thought that they would be moving to a public service that is dominated, in large degree, by a union? Because society has changed very dramatically. It seems to me a lot of young people would prefer to work in non-union shops, rather than a unionized workplace. Is that something that's been a target of your studies?

Mr. Scott Serson: We haven't done any research concerning the impact of a unionized environment on the attractiveness of the public service as an employer.

Mr. John Bryden: I urge you to do both things, because the social framework, the employment opportunities, and the attitudes of young people have changed dramatically in 10 years. In the eight years I've been an MP there's been a dramatic change, and I think you should at least consider these as possible reasons you may be having some difficulty.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, related to this, I notice in the materials the mention that visible minorities are likely to be planning to leave. Do we know why visible minorities, as opposed to invisible minorities, are planning to leave?

Mr. Scott Serson: It's basically the same reason as with non-visible minorities. We didn't find a discernible difference there.

Mr. John Bryden: But if I may point it out, you cited specifically visible minorities. I believe it's the young people and those who were knowledge-based. You took three categories--

Mr. Scott Serson: Yes, we took the three.

Mr. John Bryden: So why did you cite visible minorities and not everyone else? If you say it's all the same thing, why did you earmark the one particular group?

Mr. Scott Serson: For one thing, we have the “Embracing Change” measures we're pursuing as a government. So the fact that we are working on that issue in particular and getting this kind of finding is somewhat disturbing in that context, and we wanted to highlight that.

Mr. John Bryden: Okay, that's fair.

May I have one more question?

The Chair: No, your time is up, Mr. Bryden.

Mr. Finlay, four minutes.

Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I sense a general feeling of malaise about our public service. Having been here as long as anyone else in the room, as a member of Parliament who's served by the public service, I want to say that I find their service excellent. I know young people who have come here, as we said, experimentally; they work six months in this department, they're on leave from their university on a co-op program, and so on. Those people are very positive. Maybe they were never surveyed.

I want to turn to page 3, Mr. Chairman, of the Auditor General's opening statement. You see, I think part of our problem is that the whole thing has become too complex, so we get rigid, as we've said. Item 13 says:

Managers also need better support. Human resource professionals are seen as controllers of the process who put up roadblocks. We believe they need to be more strategic and oriented toward service.

Who are the “they”, human resource professionals or the managers? It sounds to me as if the human resource professionals, who I presume are hired by the managers, are controlling the process and causing a problem, putting up roadblocks. Somebody had better get control--“they” need to be more oriented towards service.

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Mr. Scott Serson: I think this is really for the Auditor General, but I would like to comment, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: We'll hear the Auditor General first, and then we'll let you comment.

Mr. Michael McLaughlin: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In the opening remark the “they” we were referring to are the human resources managers, the professionals in the human resources area.

Mr. John Finlay: Sorry, Mr. Chairman, the first sentence reads, “Managers need better support.” Then we have, “Human resource professionals are seen....” Are they the same managers as in the first sentence?

Mr. Michael McLaughlin: No, sir, it's--

Mr. John Finlay: No, I don't think so.

Mr. Michael McLaughlin: It's the human resources professionals who are working within the departments.

Mr. John Finlay: Who need to be more strategic and oriented toward service and more controlled by the managers, who, after all, are responsible for the service that is provided.

Mr. Michael McLaughlin: The deputy heads.

Mr. John Finlay: Yes. Okay, thank you.

The Chair: Do you want to hear from Mr. Serson?

Mr. John Finlay: Yes.

Mr. Scott Serson: I take a little exception to that statement. If we were talking about financial officers, I don't think the Auditor General would make that observation. She would expect the chief financial officers to indicate with the manager what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. We put so much emphasis on efficiency in the process that we are neglecting to say that there is fairness, equity, and transparency that we expect in our staffing system. I think human resource professionals--and I'm not saying this is always the case--have a responsibility for probity in the staffing system. I'm assuming that we continue to want processes that are fair, equitable, and transparent, and they have to speak for those sometimes. That will look to a manager like an obstacle, but it may be good advice about what is a fair way of proceeding.

The Chair: Very briefly, Mr. Finlay.

Mr. John Finlay: Who are “they”, then? Both managers and human resource professionals? Maybe that's what it is.

Mr. Scott Serson: Probably both.

Mr. Michael McLaughlin: May I ask Mrs. Barrados to speak to this point?

Ms. Maria Barrados (Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): One of the issues we have in the current system, of course, is that there isn't the responsibility on the part of managers for human resource management. That is one of the issues we keep raising in respect of roles and responsibility, one of the issues Mr. Quail and his task force are looking at.

Mr. Serson is right in respect of what you expect a professional to do. A professional has to be balancing, there has to be independent advice, but we also expect those professionals to be providing a service. We don't expect a system that has become so rigid that a good deal of the effort is concerned with getting around the system, because that doesn't serve any of the principles we're trying to protect.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

We're now going to move to Mr. Martin for four minutes.

Mr. Pat Martin: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I was interested in Mr. Quail's comments where he flagged labour management relations as a key issue and mentioned John Fryer personally. When Mr. Fryer was before this committee, he had many interesting and innovative remarks to make about, as I think you put it, changing the culture of the workplace, the relationship with the labour movement or the union partners. I'd be interested in hearing more about how you see the benefits and just how necessary it is to have the structure a union brings in a workforce of 150,000 people, Second, you could use the couple of minutes we have to share with us what you meant by changing the culture of the workplace in labour management relations.

Mr. Ranald Quail: I start from the position that in excess of 80% of the people in the public service are unionized. I note the earlier question from Mr. Bryden about views on continuing unionization. The work we are doing is to take the report from Fryer and look at how we can pick up the concept of working together. It's not co-management, it's more than consultation, you could call it co-development. These are more than words if we can make it happen, and it does mean working in an arrangement and a partnership between the management side, the union side, and the employee side. It's a triangle, in our view. We would be looking at having the employer talk to the people, the people talk to the union, the union talk to both, and then we have a big happy family. I understand that is naive as I say it. Nevertheless, it is the concept, we do want to work together, and I think, by and large, the unions want to as well, because it's in everybody's interest to have a professional public service. So we're looking at a foundation of improved cooperation as the starting point.

After that we would talk about more particular things, like labour management meetings on government facilities. We would talk about labour management committees being required. We could look at how we could improve, perhaps somewhat along the lines the Fryer group recommended, negotiation processes and how we could move them along. It's in that kind of context that we want to move it.

At the end of the day, we want to move the yardstick a fair amount. We've had discussions with the unions. We think we're conversing with them on some areas that are of interest to them. We'll see when we get to the final recommendations, but the basic principle is improved co-development, not co-management.

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Mr. Pat Martin: Is there any optimism, Mr. Quail, that we can break this cycle of bargaining to impasse, strike, back-to-work legislation? It seems to me the Canadian public is getting pretty sick of that game being played and replayed year after year. I don't think it really resembles free collective bargaining any more. Has that been raised? Are you at that stage of discussion?

Mr. Ranald Quail: It's certainly been raised, and we've certainly looked at it. We think we are perhaps getting close to some ideas that we'll put forward, and we'll see how those go.

Mr. Pat Martin: Thank you, Mr. Quail.

The last thing I'd like to raise very quickly is that I notice the average age of new hires is about 36 or 37. Do we see that as a real problem? Are we getting shortchanged for the number of productive years we get out of a new hire, and is it a real cost factor?

Mr. Scott Serson: I think that is a reflection, Mr. Martin, of the knowledge work the public service now does--

Mr. Pat Martin: Some people are staying in school.

Mr. Scott Serson: --and the kinds of skills and competences that we need typically require a post-graduate degree and some years of work. That's what we're seeing reflected in that number.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Martin.

Now we'll turn to our honorary opposition this afternoon. Mr. Shepherd, four minutes.

Mr. Alex Shepherd (Durham, Lib.): , Mr. Quail, the history of these initiatives has always been “let the manager manage”. Presumably, that's going to be part of your study. Mr. Serson touched on a very real issue: how do managers manage if they don't hire the staff?

Mr. Ranald Quail: Our view is that at the end of the day, you have to get the hiring into the manager's hands.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: So you believe some of the reforms will see managers having some control over the people they hire.

Mr. Ranald Quail: I'm of the view that they'll have some delegated authority to take on that responsibility.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: We heard some discussion about the report of the Public Service Commission, issues about people leaving and so forth. It seems to me that's a microcosm of what the problem is today. You mention in your introductory remarks what I would paraphrase as a silo-vertical mentality with some of the obstructions that exist within the civil service today. It is, in some ways, a culture that's developed over the years. How is legislation going to do away with the culture that exists?

Mr. Ranald Quail: I am not sure you can just do away with a culture overnight. We are looking at recommending the drafting of a piece of legislation that is values-based, not so rules-based. We would look at trying to set the framework in the legislation. We just had the chat about unions, and we would set a framework that talks about working together, co-development, things of that nature. We don't think we would prescribe it in the actual legislation. You could then have policies based on the legislative framework that would allow you, over time, to change the culture.

It will not happen the day we pass the bill that we have a completely different place. This is the new legislation. You'll have to have an implementation team, so that we can train the people, train the managers, train the employees as we move forward. We can start to move the ideas that are in the legislation. We could have joint training with the unions, and through that, over a period of time, we would have changed the culture.

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Mr. Alex Shepherd: You talk about the merit principle. Are we going to use things like bonuses? In other words, are we going to do away with the idea of salary classifications, so that people can move up and down based on their merits?

Mr. Ranald Quail: On salaries, I would argue that is a compensation issue and not a merit issue. I would look at merit in terms of the new legislation, where we would be talking about the non-partisan appointment of a competent person. That is the kind of idea we would be looking at. Whenever we get into the question of how we reward, how we compensate, or how we pay people, that would be a responsibility of the employer, the Treasury Board. Or it could be what they might negotiate with the unions, what kind of package would come out of the negotiations as to whether you would have performance bonuses or not. But it would not be in the law itself, as I see it, that we would get into compensation as part of merit.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: Clearly, that is part of the problem right now, that we keep doing classifications and it is very hard to move out of them. You don't move out of them just because you did a good job, quite frankly. Sometimes it is how long you have been there, for instance. Are we going to do away with those kinds of problems, even if not through legislation?

Mr. Ranald Quail: Are we working on a new classification system? Yes, we are, and we are looking forward to coming to a conclusion on that and announcing it, I think, before too long. But we will always end up with a classification scheme.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Shepherd.

Mr. Bryden.

Mr. John Bryden: Following Mr. Shepherd 's line of thought, I don't see how we can leave some sort of bonus system, for example, or some sort of compensation system based on merit out of the legislation. First, it is proper for Parliament to consider compensation, because it is the spending of taxpayers' money. Second, I would be worried that unless Parliament is involved and takes a stand on compensation and merit, the public service leadership, at some point or another, might decide that money is short and not implement a compensation package. I agree with Mr. Shepherd. I think compensation for merit is essential to this. I point out to Mr. Serson, from page 17 of the recruitment action plan, that the three key groups that are more likely than others to leave are visible minorities. I connect that with the fact that in your report you identify visible minorities as being concerned about compensation very specifically.

I don't know whether anyone has any comments on that. I don't think we should be afraid of committing Parliament to supporting the public service with appropriate compensation in legislation, as opposed to leaving it up to the regulations, where it is out of the control of this panel.

The Chair: Mr. Serson.

Mr. Scott Serson: Compensation per se isn't my issue. In response to both things, I think the public service needs to be concerned about issues like promotions, whether they are based on merit, whether they will continue to be based on merit. I assume, Mr. Shepherd, you were trying to get at mobility. If we have a more decentralized, less rules-based system, how do we ensure that mobility takes place between departments and agencies and gives us that breadth of experience we are looking for in senior managers?

On the compensation issue per se, I would turn to my colleagues.

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Mr. Frank Claydon: Mr. Chair, as far as I know, the issues of compensation have been dealt with as policy matters under the control of the Treasury Board as the employer. To my knowledge, it's not something that's been treated in legislation. I guess I would be somewhat concerned that this could become set in a way which would make it difficult to make changes to respond to market situations or to other changes in the environment we're in. It seems to me to have a big implication for dealing with the unions on an ongoing basis and so on. I'm just expressing some concerns about going in that direction.

Mr. John Williams: Mr. Bryden.

Mr. John Bryden: I have no further comments. I've said my piece, and I'm sure the witnesses will consider it.

The Chair: I just wanted to ask a few questions.

Like other members, I'm quite concerned about the high percentage of casual and specified-term hires. These people move through the system; casual becomes term, term becomes indeterminate, and it seems to be largely because of the complexity of hiring an indeterminate person. This is a situation that has been going on for quite a number of years, so why is it only coming to the forefront now, Mr. Serson?

Mr. Scott Serson: I'm not sure what your question is, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: I'm saying there's a problem in the low percentage of indeterminate hires. We've been hiring casuals and term hires, who then move through the system, because it's too complex to hire somebody off the street as an indeterminate hire. Why have we tolerated this situation, and it's only coming to the forefront now?

Mr. Scott Serson: I think, in large part, we're recognizing it increasingly because of the challenging labour market we've faced over the last couple years and the fact that we're beginning to say to ourselves, we had a hiring pattern during the years of program review where we could legitimately say there was uncertainty about next year's funding, so we should be using more terms and casuals. We were in a deficit-fighting mode. Now we've emerged from that into a hot labour market, and these issues about whether--

The Chair: So you're actually saying it was a policy decision by the PS?

Mr. Scott Serson: No, I'm not saying it was a policy decision. As the Auditor General says it is today, Mr. Chairman, it can be related to one's attitude towards whether the dollars are going to be there next year, whether one is working with sunsetted programs, and whether one feels one can afford to hire a term. I'm not saying it's exclusive, but there's a wide variety of factors that come to bear here. What I think we need to do is get a little bit more evidence from managers about why they're using these tools so extensively. That's what we're going to try to do.

The Chair: Does the Auditor General agree with that comment by Mr. Serson?

Mr. Michael McLaughlin: Mr. Chair, there is a need to look at what information is available. As we did the audit work and found the information, we brought it to Parliament's attention. I think in earlier reports from this committee there was a question of whether more information should be provided to Parliament on a regular basis about the issues that face the public service from a human resource management point of view. We believe that had this information been gathered and presented earlier, the problems would have been identified earlier.

The Chair: Okay.

Talking about “identified earlier”, one of the issues that's been on the table for a couple or three years, if not longer, is the fact of our aging civil service, especially in the executive ranks, where about 70% are going to be eligible to retire in the next five or six years. I looked at your annual report, Mr. Serson, from the Public Service Commission, and I didn't see anything in here about a problem with the executive ranks, corporate memory, corporate experience disappearing, how we're going to replace that, how you're going to deal with that. Why wouldn't we have an in-depth discussion of that in your annual report to Parliament, so that we can be aware of these looming problems, which are definitely going to be a serious concern to us?

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Mr. Scott Serson: We can certainly go over those issues again.

The Chair: Why aren't you discussing these issues in your annual report to Parliament?

Mr. Scott Serson: While they remain a concern, and we can share with the committee an updated assessment we did with our colleagues in the Treasury Board about the turnover in the executive ranks, we chose not to highlight it, Mr. Chairman, because we have programs in place to address those issues, and those programs are performing reasonably well. They'll both be evaluated within the next year.

The Chair: So you didn't feel it was a significant enough concern that you should report to Parliament that's it's an issue you're addressing?

Mr. Scott Serson: We chose the issues we felt were more important at this time.

The Chair: I'm sure a few extra pages in the report wouldn't have been that expensive.

I'm also concerned about this process of months to hire people. I know in the private sector it doesn't take months. I understand that in the public service there are more criteria to ensure that our civil service is representative of the community at large. Paragraph 2.82 of the Auditor General's report points out that agencies can, in some cases, get it all done in two weeks with largely the same criteria as the public service at large, but you're taking three to six months. Why are agencies and crown corporations and so on able to get it done in two weeks or a little bit longer, and you're three months to six months?

Mr. Scott Serson: What I read the report to say is, we approached managers in those agencies who told us they were using the same kinds of values as the public service, but I didn't see any sign that the Auditor General had probed on those issues.

With respect to what agencies are doing, Mr. Rimmer has been looking, for instance, at CCRA, so perhaps he'd like to comment on that.

Mr. Douglas Rimmer: In reference to the public service world, we've been doing some review of the time it takes to staff positions, particularly focusing on relative merit competitions, which are the most elaborate, and therefore, in some cases, the slowest procedures. We find around a four- to five-month timeline, but we note a fairly wide dispersal there. Some 25% of those processes we looked at were done in an average of six weeks, another 25% were considerably longer. On average, these processes had 100 applicants and resulted in 10 appointments, so some of them were large processes involving hundreds of candidates, and it takes a while to work through those.

As we've looked at work done elsewhere, we've had information from CCRA. They indicate that they've improved their staffing performance principally by their reform of the recourse processes they no longer have to follow, as a separate employer, and the new recourse process they've put in place at that agency.

The Chair: Mr. McLaughlin, do you have anything to say about your in-depth analysis of the crown corporations?

Mr. Michael McLaughlin: Mr. Chairman, in conducting the work for this particular chapter, we surveyed the crown corporations, and we did not do detailed audit work with respect to them.

The Chair: Mr. Claydon, you mentioned in your opening statement that you've increased your hiring of visible minorities, but I understand that they're leaving as fast as, if not faster than, they're coming on board, which means you're not moving ahead at all. You neglected to mention that in your report. Any comment on that?

Mr. Frank Claydon: Mr. Chair, I'm not clear what you're referring to.

The Chair: You say in your report you've been able to double the recruitment of visible minority employees in the past two years, but I understand they're not staying, so you are not moving toward achieving a civil service that represents the community at large. You can hire as many as you want, but if they don't stay, you're not going to get ahead anywhere. Are we moving ahead towards achieving appropriate percentages of visible minorities and other categories of people?

Mr. Frank Claydon: The answer to your question is, yes, we have made a significant improvement in the percentage of visible minorities who are in the workplace over the last couple of years. That is happening. With your comment that a number of visible minorities are leaving, I assume you're referring to the study that was done by the Public Service Commission of Canada. I think it's important to see that in light of the intentions of people to leave over a period of, I guess, five years. Our hope is that with what we're doing in recruitment and trying to improve the workplace, encouraging diversity, a lot of those people who are planning to move will change their minds and stay in the public service, so that we'll see even more growth. We are making progress at the current time.

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The Chair: Mr. Quail, the universal classification system was the great panacea to resolve the employment equity problem the government had. Is UCS a dead issue, or is it going to stay?

Mr. Frank Claydon: The whole question of classification reform isn't easy. If it were easy, it would have been done 15 years ago, or whenever the people started to work on this. The president said just last week that there is going to be a response from the government in the spring, and that's our intention. We're working actively to make sure that happens.

The Chair: Is that a yes or a no?

Mr. Frank Claydon: It isn't dead.

The Chair: It isn't dead. Is it on life support?

Mr. Frank Claydon: It isn't dead, and it's going to be coming out kicking and screaming in a couple of months.

The Chair: In a different format.

Mr. Bryden, you have a quick question. We're going to wrap this up in a few minutes.

Mr. John Bryden: Mr. Chairman, I've had a chance to think about what Mr. Claydon and Mr. Quail said on the suggestions about merit compensation. Surely, one can put in legislation the principle of merit compensation, of bonus compensation of some kind. You don't have to spell out what the money is. I understand where Mr. Claydon is coming from. Unions don't like the idea of merit pay, merit bonuses, because, in their view, it flies in the face of the principle of absolute equality among workers. But I suggest that you give it careful consideration. Parliament can trump your union problem. We're all elected by the people. We have a broader, shall we say, constituent base than any union leadership. If it's a matter of giving public service employees an opportunity to do good work and get paid for it, because they've done good work individually, we should try to find a way to do it. If we do it in legislation, I think that's just fine.

The Chair: Okay, you've heard the comments of the committee, and we normally have a closing comment by the Auditor General.

Mr. McLaughlin.

Mr. Ranald Quail: Can I make one comment?

The Chair: Yes, Mr. Quail, please.

Mr. Ranald Quail: I'd just like to go back to Mr. Murphy's question. I don't have any problem understanding that if we don't make the recommendations to the government, the government can't act. That's the responsibility of the senior public servants, including the people at this table, including myself, who am, along with my colleague, responsible for the task force, reporting to the clerk and reporting to the president. I don't know whether I'm answering the question or not, but I certainly feel the heat, not from Mr. Murphy only, but from lots of other people, from my colleagues, and from the public servants. We have an opportunity, we've been asked to do it, and if we fumble, we'll have nobody to blame but us public servants.

The Chair: Very good. As politicians, we know what it means when you say “feel the heat”.

Mr. McLaughlin, your final comments.

Mr. Michael McLaughlin: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We're very supportive of the efforts to introduce the legislative change. As Mr. Quail had said, it is required now. The problems within the system have been studied for 40 years, and the responses to address issues within the current legislative framework have been inadequate. This is clearly demonstrated by the behaviour of hiring managers in the various departments, who, in order to fill the demands that have been placed on them to get work done, are hiring on a short-term basis to fill positions. We feel the existing system is somewhat dysfunctional.

Regardless of the legislative action taken, as we point out in our chapter 3, recruitment practices must be improved in order for the public service to meet its demographic challenges in an increasingly competitive workforce.

While indeterminate hiring programs are paying off for the employment equity programs, as mentioned by various witnesses, term hiring does not support the employment equity goals, since the same controls are not applied when we do term hiring or casual hiring.

Finally, we would urge Parliament to maintain oversight of human resources issues, challenges, and progress. People are crucial for an effective public service, and without enough right people in the public service, Canadians will not get the programs and services they deserve and require.

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The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. McLaughlin.

The bells are ringing. Therefore, this committee is adjourned until 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 21, 2002, when we should be considering chapter 10, DND, of the 2001 report of the Auditor General.

This meeting is adjourned.

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