I'd like to thank you, Madame Marleau, for our being here today.
I am here with two of my colleagues, Phil Charko, assistant secretary of pensions and benefits for the Treasury Board Secretariat, and Rick Burton from the Canadian Public Service Agency.
I'm Hélène Laurendeau, the assistant secretary of labour relations and compensation operations for the Treasury Board Secretariat.
We are representing the portfolio that supports the Treasury Board as a committee of ministers, and we're here as a representative of the employer for the Treasury Board. The division of responsibility—just to give you an idea—between our two organizations is that....
[Translation]
The Treasury Board Secretariat is responsible for compensation planning, collective bargaining, terms of employment, pension and benefits policies as well as refund policies and pay administration.
The Canada Public Service Agency is responsible for human resources planning, including demographic research and analysis, designing the classification policy framework, developing policies for the executive group, developing policies in the areas of employment equity, official languages and ethics.
[English]
We are here today to provide you with some details on a couple of important things with respect to compensation: how compensation is set; how people who perform duties in the public service are paid; and how pay and benefits services are delivered to employees who are performing duties in the public service. You have in front of you a general deck, which will be followed by a more detailed deck to be presented by my colleague Mr. Burton.
In the presentation itself, on page 2, we will go through very quickly how compensation is set in the federal public administration, with a primary focus on core public administration; the make-up of the federal public administration itself; who is involved in the management and administration of compensation, pay and benefits, in departments within the core public administration, and their specific role; and we will also cover with you the two main service delivery structures for the administration of pay and benefits in departments within the core public administration.
Let's start with how compensation is set in the federal public administration. Sound management of compensation is fundamental to attracting and retaining staff and renewing the public service. Recently, the Treasury Board adopted a policy framework for the management of compensation as part of its policy review initiative. That framework sets out specific principles and approaches to manage compensation.
All Treasury Board decisions—and those decisions can be taken directly by Treasury Board or through collective bargaining—with respect to compensation are to be guided by four overarching principles: external comparability, which is basically about being competitive with, but not leading, the compensation for similar work in the relevant labour markets; internal relativity, which is basically about reflecting the relative value to the employer of the work performed; individual or group performance, which is basically about rewarding performance where appropriate and practicable, either based on individual performance or group performance, depending on the types of jobs we are referring to; and the fourth, and not the least principle, is affordability, which is obviously a key overarching principle in determining compensation for the federal public administration. The cost of compensation must obviously be affordable within the context of the commitments to provide services to Canadians.
The compensation framework can be found on the Treasury Board website, and if the members of the committee would like to have a copy of it, we could make sure we send you a copy of the compensation framework itself.
What I just covered is how compensation is set for the federal public administration.
What is the federal public administration and what does it include? That's what we cover on page 4 of the deck.
[Translation]
The federal public administration, in the widest sense, includes five main elements. The core public administration includes all employees of departments named in Schedules I and IV of the Financial Administration Act. The core federal public administration is made up of the departments for which Treasury Board acts as direct employer. These are all departments for which Treasury Board, as central employer, conducts collective bargaining and sets the terms of employment.
The federal public administration also includes 27 separate agencies.
[English]
Those are also known as separate agencies in English.
[Translation]
These are agencies such as the Canada Revenue Agency and Parks Canada which, although they are totally dependent on the public purse, have some latitude to conduct their own collective bargaining. Nevertheless, they must comply with the compensation policy framework.
[English]
and must obey the same principles I just covered. It also covers the RCMP
[Translation]
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, including both its regular members and its special constables and civilian members appointed under the RCMP Act. As you certainly know, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is not a unionized workplace but its decisions are nevertheless governed by the compensation framework I mentioned.
The compensation framework also governs the Canadian Forces, including officers and non-commissioned members enrolled in the Canadian Forces, as well as Reserve Forces.
Finally, Crown corporations make up the last element of the compensation management framework.
[English]
Our presentation today will focus on the first element, which is the core public administration and its activities with respect to pay administration.
We're trying to help you understand who is involved in the overall management and administration of compensation, pay, and benefits, and their respective roles.
On the top left you start with Treasury Board Secretariat, which manages the compensation reserve and provides planning and reports on compensation. Treasury Board Secretariat also ensures that the government decisions on compensation remain aligned with the compensation framework and the four principles. It also establishes policies and issues directives with respect to how pay is supposed to be administered and how pensions and benefits are supposed to be administered within departments. It also provides support to Treasury Board in making decisions on compensation, and it performs the activity of negotiating collective agreements.
On the top right you have the Canada Public Service Agency. With respect to the core public administration, it is responsible for designing occupational group structures, that is, for determining how the workforce will be divided into groups with respect to specific responsibilities. It is also responsible for design classification standards. This is how we can prioritize among the various jobs, between the low-level jobs and the high-level jobs, within the various groups that constitute the occupational group structure.
The agency is also responsible for developing the classification policy framework, for maintaining the integrity of the classification system, and for monitoring how the classification system is used. It is also responsible for executive compensation.
On the top left is Public Works and Government Services. It is basically the service provider. It requires that the departments provide administrative and other services that are required for the disbursement of pay, employee benefit plans, and superannuation pension plans. Basically, they are responsible for making sure that policies are applied and that information is properly input in the pay system to make sure that paycheques are issued to every employee and that pension cheques are issued to every former employee who is entitled to a pension, of course.
It operates and maintains the public service payroll system. It is responsible for the system itself, its maintenance, and any coding or development that is needed to meet the requirements that are determined by a compensation decision. Public Works also delivers training on the application of the technical functions of compensation. That's the technical part. The policy part is provided by other training. It also delivers pension administration.
Departments have an important role to play. Deputy heads of the 36 departments that comprise the core public administration are responsible for ensuring that the terms and conditions of employment are administered in accordance with collective agreements and other compensation decisions, directives, policies, or standards. They must as well provide the most suitable organizational structure and allocate the necessary resources to make sure that compensation services are provided to their employees. They of course also have to classify jobs, and they ensure that their internal staff have taken the required training and have the skills and competency to administer pay, pensions, and benefits.
If I were to depict the interaction between those four pillars of activity with respect to compensation, I would say that the Canada Public Service Agency is primarily responsible for organizing the workforce in a logical and appropriate manner. Treasury Board Secretariat is responsible for making sure that once the workforce is properly organized, decisions with respect to how they should be compensated are made. That's true for pretty much everybody except the senior cadre, which is still part of the agency.
Public Works and Government Services is there to actually support the systems and the IT framework that actually delivers and prints the paycheques. Departments, however, are the ones that know what this workforce of 186,0000 is supposed to be doing on a daily basis. They're the ones who can determine what their duties are for job description purposes and therefore how they should be classified, because they know the activity. And from that we can determine what their pay should be, based on their experience and where they should be pegged in the pay structure that has either been negotiated or determined by Treasury Board decision.
Departments as well are the interface with that same workforce. They are there to provide the services to make sure that whoever is performing X duties has a proper job description, that this job description is properly classified, and that they are appropriately paid for the classification group and level. They are also the ones who know the individual employees who may have access to other compensation benefits such as specific premiums for duty-related issues. So they're the ones who can use the pay structure and provide who fits in a particular position to be able to instruct Public Works and Government Services to issue the proper cheque. They are the ones who control overtime. They are the ones who know who the supervisors are as opposed to the worker bees. This is pretty much how this big wheel works.
On page 6 you have the two main service delivery structures for the administration of compensation, pay and benefits, within departments. We know two basic models. These models once again have to be decided by the deputy head of each department, depending on their clientele, their level of activity, and what is most suitable to reach out to their workforce.
The first model is the most common, which is the generalist model. An employee has an inquiry; they need to have an explanation on their paycheque or they need to know when their promotion will be processed. They formulate an inquiry to a generalist advisor, who will in turn provide them with advice on pay, understanding the pay structure, or understanding how their paycheque is structured, on insurance and other benefits, and on pension.
The second model, which we call the specialized model, starts again with an employee inquiry or information that is required by the employee. The first level of processing is a call centre for general inquiries. Once the inquiry is determined, the request for information is then channelled to either a pay advisor, who is a specialist in pay, an insurance advisor, who obviously is a specialist in insurance, and the same thing for a pension advisor.
The two models, as I said, currently exist. All the people who are providing these services are known, generally speaking, as compensation advisors, and we have approximately 2,100 of them scattered all over the core public administration.
That pretty much covers my general presentation. I don't know how you want to proceed, Madam Chair. Would you like questions on that before we move to the second presentation?
My name is Rick Burton. I'm the vice-president of HR modernization at the Canada Public Service Agency.
[Translation]
The purpose of my presentation is to describe the public service-wide compensation capacity-building work and results in the compensation community.
I will describe the context and the capacity-building methodology.
[English]
A few words on community demographics and
[Translation]
priorities and progress to date.
[English]
Finally, I have a short comment on classification of compensation advisors.
Compensation advisors have to be seen in the context of a broader effort that we're undertaking to rebuild the capacity in the human resource community. Compensation advisors we see as part of that community of interest, and we're taking care to make sure they're included in our efforts.
Overall our goal is to develop a healthy, sustainable human resources management committee so that we're delivering relevant quality service based on evolving roles in human resource management, which, as you probably all know, are changing dramatically.
Our key focus in the initial efforts was on the HR specialists themselves, because that's where we actually saw a real challenge that we needed to fix in terms of capacity. Our second focus of the initiative is to focus on compensation advisors, and that work began in earnest in March of this year. I'll have some more to say about that.
The next slide, slide 5, makes the point--I hope it makes the point--that we've taken a very rigorous approach to making sure that we know the nature of the capacity issue. Quite often you hear dramatic stories, but when you dig into them, they don't turn out to be the reality; in some cases they are. We want to be sure that we take a very rigorous approach.
You can see the lists of things we've done here; I won't cover them all in detail. We've surveyed the heads of HRs, those people in departments that Hélène referred to, who actually are the focal point for HR management. We've had an interdepartmental working group with our central agency, going to look at the whole issue of compensation community. We've done a number of focus groups, particularly in the regions, because we wanted to be sure we were getting the regional input and not just hearing from headquarters in various departments.
The most important step in this is that in August and September we conducted demographic analyses of the current and future needs of the compensation community, and we've consulted best practices literature to find out what's going on in the private sector, and so on, that we can bring to bear on the community in the public service.
We've presented our plan to a committee of deputy ministers. I want to make the point here that this is a public service-wide initiative, and deputies are very concerned about the health of this community and the HR community generally. We wanted to be sure they endorsed the approach we were taking. The plan we've developed is in an annex in your report; I think I missed one annex in my earlier comments.
I've attached three annexes. The first one talks about the general approach we're taking to rebuild the HR capacity, and I can take you through that later, if we want to, in question period. The second one talks about our approach for the compensation community. The third one, when I get to it, will refer to the work we're doing for the professional development of the community, which of course includes compensation.
Finally, we've consulted over 650 compensation professionals across the public service, and we continue to do that.
The next slide covers some of the demographics of the community. I'll just go through it very briefly. As Hélène said, there are roughly 2,100 employees in the compensation community. The community, on average, is 45 years old, which is only a year and a half older than the average of the whole core public administration that Hélène referred to, and 55% of those 2,100 employees in the community are actually at the AS-02 working level, the compensation advisors who we generally refer to now when we're talking to you. The average salary in the community is $51,700.
We're making good progress in terms of the makeup of the community in terms of representation in the areas of people with disabilities and aboriginal people. However, we're not doing so well on the visible minority representation, which, as you can see, is slightly lower than the workforce availability for visible minorities. The good news is that we're over our target in our recent recruitment campaign in terms of attracting visible minorities, so that is a good news story.
Perhaps the key issue, in terms of some of the earlier discussions that have gone on, is that the attrition rate projected over the next two years is 10%. If we compare that to two years for which we actually have records in the overall core public administration, it's 10.5%, so it's not, in our view, a crisis, but it's definitely something that needs to be managed, and that's why we've taken this public service-wide view to it.
I should say too that training is an issue—and I'll touch on it in a minute—but it does take a considerable amount of time to train compensation advisers, anywhere from one to two years. We've done a lot of work to put new systems in place that ease their work, but Hélène can tell you that when you add up all the collective agreements and all the overtime definitions, there are about 71,000 payrolls that these folks have to deal with.
Then, finally, there are 258 vacancies across the community. Again, that represents the whole 2,100, so when you break it down to the 1,500 or so who are actually the compensation advisers at the working level, it's not that many.
[Translation]
Priorities for action are as follows: attract and retain qualified candidates to ensure community health and renewal; provide common training and career development; and formalize the transfer and acquisition of knowledge, expertise and skills.
[English]
Progress to date on the community. I think when our president, Nicole Jauvin, was here back in April, she mentioned that we were about to engage in a fairly massive recruitment campaign, so I'd like to just give you an update on where we are at this point.
Our first annual recruiting drive is under way. We received 5,800 applications from across Canada, including people inside the public service. We ensured a commitment to build a representative workforce, and as I referred to earlier, we are now able to meet our visible minority targets in those areas.
We've come out, through a very structured assessment process, with 128 qualified candidates, with strong representation, as I said, from the visible minorities: 29%. That breaks out about almost half and half: 58 who are external to the public service and 70 who are internal. So while there has been a concern I think expressed with people moving out of this group, there's a certain healthy vitality of people who want to move into this area. So I think it's good, from a career progression point of view.
Departments have committed to hiring 113 of these candidates, and this we're planning to do every year for the next four to five years until we really build up the capacity. Some of the issues here revolve around how many candidates can a department absorb and train and manage in a year. It still leaves us a few extra, where, if the department has a pressing need, we now have people in a mini-pool who can actually be picked up fairly easily.
We have developed a professional development framework, as I said earlier. The third annex in your package does lay out that framework, and you'll see that we have quite a learning program for the HR community, as a whole, including compensation advisors and including a program for certification.
Curriculum development certification training is under development. I want to say as well that there has been excellent support in the community, across departments and agencies, in this effort, and I want to acknowledge the work that the Public Service Alliance have done with us, who represent these advisors. They've participated in these discussions and held their own. And many of the things that we're hearing are common, and it gives us some comfort that we're tackling the right issues. The next recruitment drive is scheduled for September of this year, so we'll continue the process.
Finally, I would like to just say a word about classification if I could. Classification is about internal relativity, as Hélène said: how do we measure the relativity of work within the public service? Not the work outside, but inside the public service. It's about group and level, so are you a member of this group or that group, and then within that group where do you come in the pecking order?
In the evolution of the work assigned for compensation and benefits advisor, they've been reclassified, as you can see on slide 9, three times, from a CR-04 to a CR-05 in 1989, from a CR-05 to an AS-01 in 1997, and from an AS-01 to an AS-02 in the year 2000. Some of this is meant to track and reflect the evolution of work and the complexity of work. Collective agreements are more complex now; there are more complex transactions. These compensation advisors do play an advisory or an analytical role. I want to make the point, though, that they are not financial advisors, so there's a limit to where they can go in terms of providing advice to employees.
There has been no significant change to the work since 2000. There was a classification grievance, resolved in 2003, which confirmed the classification at the AS-02 level. This was an interdepartmental grievance committee that looked at the work right across the public service and confirmed that it was at the 02 level.
In our system, classification decisions are final and binding unless it can be shown there has been a significant change in the work, and, as I said, there hasn't been since 2000.
I don't want to get into the details of where we're going more broadly in classification or form, unless you ask me, but we are looking at this group of people who are members of the AS community, who themselves are part of a broader group, the PA community.
If I could take you to the other handout that I hope you have with you, I'll just take you to one point there, just so you see where the compensation advisors fit into the whole job structure of the public service.
Every job in the public service you can find on this page, and the colour code reflects union representation. You can see the numbers in each group and so on. So I'll take you to the very top left-hand corner. In the yellow you will see a group called the program and administrative services, or the PA group, as we refer to it. It comprises many former groups in the public service, including the administrative services group, which is the AS group.
The compensation advisors are within that AS group; they're not exclusively the group, but they're members of that group. So you can see where it fits in the broader context of classification.
Our reform efforts are towards modernizing the standards, one by one, and describing the work in each of these groups, and we're making fairly good progress in doing that. We intend to look at the PA group, because you can see that it's 89,000 strong, which is almost half of the core public administration that Hélène referred to.
That's the end of my formal brief. If at some point you want to go through the three attachments I provided, I'd be happy to.
:
Thank you, and welcome.
I'd like to take this right back to a very, very basic principle. We've as yet to determine whether there is a problem. We've heard there's a problem from a number of people, but this committee needs to have that verified. You are a part of that answer. Number one, we need to know if there's a problem. If there's not a problem, then there's no sense us carrying anything any further, once we have identified whether or not there is or not. If there is a problem, then we need to know how to fix it--what plans you have in place, or what suggestions you or other departments should or could make. I think it's almost that basic a principle, and we, as a committee, have not been able to determine that because we have not had the information from the various people. We've had rumour and discussion and complaints, so we need to know if what we're hearing is valid. Somehow, some way, we need some activity from within your organization.
You mentioned how the cogs of the wheel have to work together effectively. Well, wonderful, but if there's no effective communication within all of those cogs, and all that information isn't being disseminated through, you're not going to have that information. I find that very, very difficult when I compare that--and this is not a comparison, but maybe an anachronism between public sector and private sector, and I'm not suggesting one is superior.
Let's just take our banks. They do payroll services for people across the nation. They do hundreds and hundreds of thousands of cheques and transactions and look after that. People don't get their paycheque late. It's there. How? Why? Why can't we do that as a government? Is it because a particular agency or a particular department is falling down, or is it because there's a lack of communication between all departments or because somebody's not doing their job, or we have a system that isn't effectively communicating internally? We don't know. We need to know that so that we can make a recommendation to Parliament to suggest how this place should work so people can get paid.
I think that's a very, very simple request, and I'm just trying to take it to that base guttural level, because people need to get paid. If they are getting paid and you have that information and you can determine that and bring that to this committee, then we'd be thankful, and we can go back to the people who are complaining and say, well, no, there's really not a problem.
We need to be assured. I hope I'm making myself clear on behalf of the committee to suggest that we just need answers. The people have put forward a complaint and we must follow it through. We recognize we're not asking you to bear the brunt of this on your shoulders. We're certainly not here to harp on you as witnesses, to suggest that this is just your problem. If it's a system problem, if it's an overview problem, if it's a communication problem, if it's just simply a lack of direction, or if there's a weakness in any particular area, we need to know that. There are comparables out there. How many people work in the distribution of the payroll system for the government? How many people work in the payroll system for, say, private sources? Is it comparable? Is the efficiency rate similar and/or the same? Should we maybe be hiring this out or farming this out, or should we do more and more ourselves? We need to make intelligent decisions, and with that, we need information.
That's it. Thank you.
:
I understand the concerns of my colleagues on the other side, and I share some of those concerns as well. But to me this whole argument is about striking a balance. We're asked to pass judgment on this right now. If we have every bit of information and we scuttle a deal, perhaps we've made a wrong decision. If we have no information or not enough information and the deal progresses and isn't satisfactory to the taxpayer, then perhaps we've made a wrong decision.
We are going to be subject to a right decision or a wrong decision, regardless of where we go with this. We are assigned, and we ran for this office, to make some decisions and to gather the best information we have at our disposal.
I'm going to vote against this, not because I don't want more information—of course, I would like more information—but with all respect, Madame Bourgeois.... It's not because I just don't want the motion; it's because, from the testimony that has been given at this committee, I have a deep concern that if more information were to come out, we could just tip that balance to where it could adversely affect the deal and/or the taxpayer.
So I'm going to make a decision. You may make the decision otherwise, and I respect that. But I hope you would also recognize that my, or perhaps our, thoughts on this are not to simply counter a motion so much as to recognize and try to do what is best for the taxpayer.
I really believe that if we mess up this deal and/or the potential of this deal—because this deal is not a done deal.... This deal is only accepting proposals, and then the minister and staff and deputies are going to assess the information. They don't necessarily have to go ahead with this. As they've said, they're only entertaining proposals.
As this information comes forward—information that has to be collected with a fair bit of confidentiality, for competitive reasons—they're going to pass judgment. I'm satisfied that we've had enough information from the various witnesses here that there is a level of protection for the Canadian taxpayer and a level of expertise in place to guide the minister and/or the departmental officials, regardless of which party they are, to making a right decision.
Their duty is to not do something wrong for the Canadian taxpayer. There isn't one member or one minister here who's going to deliberately make a wrong decision and adversely affect the Canadian taxpayer. They would be held wholly and highly accountable for it if they made that wrong decision.
Quite frankly, I'm personally satisfied that there has been enough information given, not to give me a 100% level of surety and/or security, but that I'm inclined to let the process proceed. If I take a look at the other option I have, with this striking of a balance, and go the other way such that we stop the process basically in its tracks and the Canadian taxpayer loses out, then we have made the wrong decision. We're all going to have to come to terms with that decision.
I don't know whether I've adequately explained my position on this, but it is certainly not a partisan position, not a political decision, but a decision based on what we feel would be a good decision for the Canadian taxpayer in the long run.
Those are my thoughts on it.