OGGO Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, March 27, 2003

À

1045

The Chair (Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.))

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

À

1050

The Chair

Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, Canadian Alliance)

À

1055

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Paul Forseth

Á

1100

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Paul Forseth

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Á

1105

Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ)

Mr. Scott Serson

Á

1110

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

Mr. Scott Serson

Á

1115

The Chair

Mr. Roy Cullen (Etobicoke North, Lib.)

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Scott Serson

Á

1120

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Roy Cullen

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

Á

1125

The Chair

Mr. Paul Forseth

Á

1130

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Paul Forseth

The Chair

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

Mr. Scott Serson

Á

1135

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Gaston Arseneault (General Counsel, Public Service Commission of Canada)

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

Mr. Gaston Arseneault

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

The Chair

Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.)

The Chair

Mr. Paul Szabo

Á

1140

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Paul Szabo

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Paul Szabo

Á

1145

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Paul Forseth

Mr. Scott Serson

Á

1150

Mr. Paul Forseth

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Paul Forseth

The Chair

Mr. Tony Tirabassi (Niagara Centre, Lib.)

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Tony Tirabassi

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Tony Tirabassi

Mr. Scott Serson

Á

1155

Mr. Tony Tirabassi

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Â

1200

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Â

1205

Mr. Alex Himelfarb (Clerk, Privy Council Office)

Â

1210

Â

1215

The Chair

Mr. Paul Forseth

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

Mr. Paul Forseth

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

Mr. Paul Forseth

Â

1220

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

Mr. Paul Forseth

The Chair

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

The Chair

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

Â

1225

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

Â

1230

The Chair

Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.)

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

Â

1235

Ms. Carolyn Bennett

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

Ms. Carolyn Bennett

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

The Chair

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Paul Forseth

Mr. Roy Cullen

Â

1240

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

Mr. Roy Cullen

The Chair

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

Â

1245

The Chair

Mr. Paul Forseth

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

The Chair

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

Â

1250

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

The Chair

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

The Chair

Â

1255

Mr. Alex Himelfarb

·

1300

The Chair

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

The Chair

Mr. Robert Lanctôt

·

1305

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

---

NUMBER 028

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

---

EVIDENCE

Thursday, March 27, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

À  (1045)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.)): Members are at the table, so let's start the meeting.

    This is meeting number 28. Until 12 o'clock we will hear from Mr. Scott Serson, President of the Public Service Commission of Canada, and from 12 o'clock to 1 o'clock from Mr. Alex Himelfarb, Clerk of the Privy Council.

    Scott, you're a veteran of this. If you will keep your opening remarks as concise and as brilliantly focused as they normally are, members will have lots of time to get into the issues with you.

    Mr. Scott Serson (President, Public Service Commission of Canada): Mr. Chairman, this is our second time before the committee on this issue. We have about 14 recommendations that we presented the last time, and I thought I'd run briefly through some of the comments we've heard from other witnesses and try to reinforce some of the key recommendations.

[Translation]

    My preliminary observations will be brief so that we can discuss what the Public Service Commission of Canada and several other witnesses regard as being minor amendments, but ones important to the bill.

[English]

    Virtually all the witnesses have underscored the bill's desirable effect on increasing flexibility for managers, but a number have cautioned that this greater discretion should be counterbalanced with measures to safeguard against abuses. We emphasized last time that the key is to find the right balance between flexibility and fairness.

    For example, the Professional Institute of the Public Service singled out a provision that allows managers to establish qualifications, operational requirements, and organizational needs. They were concerned that the wide discretion offered could open the door to bureaucratic patronage. The fear is that some managers could use the qualifications to orient the staffing process toward a particular candidate. The commission believes, based on its work of the last three years, that this is a real risk.

[Translation]

    Recommendation 1 in our presentation seeks to offer protection against this possible abuse by ensuring that the PSC is granted the power to audit the way in which managers establish and use the qualifications, so as to ensure that they constitute a judicious basis for selection. We are of the opinion that this authority would also enable the PSC to audit the process of transforming term appointments into indeterminate appointments, in order to deal with a concern raised by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.

[English]

    Similarly, recommendation 2 proposes to give the PSC authority to take or order corrective action as a result of audit.

    Mr. Chairman, unlike the Auditor General, under this bill the Public Service Commission is overseeing staffing authorities it has delegated to departments and for which it is fully accountable to Parliament. Just as we are permitted to do under the current legislation, we believe we need to be able to assure Parliament that any errors or wrongdoing discovered through audits are corrected. Otherwise, the PSC's ability to hold mangers to account would be reduced, even though their discretion would increase.

    Several witnesses have now endorsed this recommendation to allow the PSC to take post-audit corrective action, and I would encourage the committee to actively consider this amendment.

    As well, I should point out that the public accounts committee, in its report last week on the Groupe Action affair, recommended that the Treasury Board:

actively monitor departmental contracting activity in accordance with section 5.1 of its contracts policy placing a greater emphasis on a challenge function, and intervene to correct problems as needed.

    We're arguing to build these necessary safeguards up front in the staffing system.

    In our submission, we also raised the issue of ministers' staff priority appointments to the public service. The public accounts committee report last week also called for a review of that section of the PSEA that requires the PSC to proceed with such appointments. Their concern was that these ministers' staff appointments had the potential to create opportunities for conflict of interest.

    Mr. Chairman, the Public Service Commission has already reviewed this section. Recommendation 5 of our submission calls for the PSC to have the discretion not to proceed with a specific appointment where it considers that such appointment could be perceived as impairing the political impartiality of the public service. Again, I would urge the committee to give attention to this proposal.

    As well, Mr. Chairman, the committee will recall that our recommendations 6 to 12 aim to strengthen the commission's independence that could appear to be reduced somewhat under the bill and to enhance its effective governance and its relationship with Parliament.

À  (1050)  

[Translation]

    Among those who have appeared before you, others have pointed out the need to maintain the independence of the PSC. In view of our reinforced role as overseer of the integrity of the staffing system provided for in the bill, they have supported several of our proposals which aim to further strengthen this independence and tighten our ties with Parliament.

[English]

    We would urge the commission to give active consideration to these measures that range from Parliament providing guidance with respect to criteria for the appointment of commissioners, to a parliamentary committee role in reviewing this legislation after seven years, to Parliament playing a greater role in authorizing the funding for the PSC, as it does for the Auditor General, and as, I understand, the Auditor General stated she believes should be extended to us.

    Mr. Chairman, last time I appeared, time did not permit me to mention our recommendations 13 and 14, so I'll do so very briefly. The first seeks to protect the considerable investment we've made over the years in standardized tests for use during the selection and assessment processes, which are under a threat of disclosure in the new legislation.

    The second would allow the PSC the flexibility to delegate more of its powers and functions to deputy heads, not only for their own department but for delivery to the whole or part of the public service.

    I would be pleased to elaborate further on these two recommendations, should you wish.

[Translation]

    Finally, I know that several witnesses have made recommendations aimed at strengthening elements in the preamble of the bill. I would urge the committee to take a close look at these suggestions.

[English]

    We're ready to work with the committee during the clause-by-clause review of the bill as it considers our recommendations, and if the commission can be of further assistance in helping to assess the staffing-related recommendations of other witnesses who have appeared before the committee, we'd be happy to do so, Mr. Chairman.

    Thank you very much.

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

    Mr. Forseth, if you are ready, take it away.

    Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, Canadian Alliance): Thank you.

    Before I get into my main questions about you giving us some advice around political activities, leave, and so on, starting on page 149 of the bill, I want to talk about a statement you made in your brief. You said “...we have made over the years in standardized tests for use during the selection and assessment processes, which are under a threat of disclosure in the new legislation”. Could not contracts and copyrights related to the MMPI and other psychological tests cover that off? To maintain the integrity of these tests, you have to be a qualified psychologist to obtain the test. There are all kinds of contractual and copyright things you enter into to use the standardized tests used in the psychological and psychiatric profession. Could you not employ that for your areas?

À  (1055)  

    Mr. Scott Serson: We could look at that, Mr. Chairman, but our concern was more particular than that. The proposed Public Service Staffing Tribunal, in investigating a selection process, could call witnesses and seek to review the adequacy of the tests created by our Personnel Psychology Centre. All we were looking for was a simple clause to make sure that could be done in camera so that the results and bases of those tests were not revealed.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: Well, it certainly sounds a reasonable one to me. My approach would be that the more independent validation and the wise use of so-called objective measures and so on is helpful to support professional judgment. Perhaps in competitions where you have some kind of a scoring, it would assist in the more grey areas of evaluation, such as personal suitability, local adaptability, and so on.

    I think you have been following what I've been saying both in the House and at committee on several occasions about this section on page 149 around political activities. One concern is that there's going to be...an employee has to ask. So a decision is going to be made, yes or no. If the decision is no, that employee really has nowhere to go to say it's being unreasonably withheld. There's no appeal process to anyone else.

    That's one issue.

    Secondly, they talk about leave. Well, the term “leave” implies you're coming back. There's no reference as to how long these leaves are or whether the start date is negotiable. And if you come back, there's nothing that says if you're going to take an unpaid leave, we're going to guarantee you'll be able to go back into your ministry at some comparable level to where you left, that you won't be sent to the secretarial pool at the front door or become the security guard in the facility.

    So there's the issue of what leave implies.

    Then there's the whole issue of having to take leave to even seek a nomination, which a person may or may not even get. In my case, I received a nomination, I was nominated as my party's candidate, a year in advance of the election. Not knowing exactly when the election was going to be, I continued to work in my job.

    I certainly didn't have to obtain the permission of my employer to--in my own private business--join a political party, seek a nomination--and all the business involved in that nomination--and then continue to work, wondering when the election would come. When election day finally came, obviously I contacted my employer and said I couldn't perform my duties any more, and we negotiated a start date of the leave. The leave was for five years, a five-year contract. At the end of the five years, I would either decide to come back or resign.

    But in the bill, under these leave provisions, as soon as you become elected, boom, you're no longer an employee; you're out, you're gone. Does that imply you have to cash in your pension and all those provisions? What if I were elected and there was a snap election and I was defeated? Circumstances would have changed, and within two years I would have been wanting to come back. I would have been covered under my provision for leave, because it extended for five years. Under this provision it doesn't cover that at all.

    I see in the legislation it does allow for a local municipal councillor to become elected and be a councillor and still be engaged in the public service. I think that's very commendable--subject to conflict of interest and so on.

    The other things are some of the great discouragements that I see as still controlling from the top down, to my mind. I wanted to push the envelope to see if we could find a way to loosen this up a little bit, but still maintain some of the other protections we're trying to guard--public image, conflict of interest, and all the rest of the things this appears to be trying to address.

    I'll leave my comments there and maybe you could help me.

Á  (1100)  

    Mr. Scott Serson: Well, you'll have to help me work through the number of questions. I did want to come first with a set of facts on this issue in an effort to be helpful.

    I asked the staff to look back at the data on political leave. Since 1968, we've had 334 requests for leave. Leave is being granted in 282 of those situations. Leave is being denied in 31 of them, so you're talking about roughly 10%. Now, those are requests, not individual persons. There could be multiple requests here. I'm giving you a sense of the requests.

    Leave is being granted conditionally in eight situations and the request for leave was withdrawn in six. That gives you a sense of how this system is currently working.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: That's very good data.

    Mr. Scott Serson: In terms of the current situation, as I understand it, public servants may ask for a leave of absence from the Public Service Commission to seek a nomination as a candidate and to be a candidate. The current policy is to allow leave without pay to take effect only on the day the employee is nominated as a candidate for elections, and employees must agree to refrain from making public announcements on their intention to seek the nomination and from participating in activities related to nomination candidacy during working hours, etc.

    Our concern about Bill C-25 is that it now provides that the employee shall request and does not give us the kind of flexibility you were talking about in terms of, for instance, shorter stages of leave during the process. Again, we may not be going as far as you would like, but we are trying to provide some flexibility so the hardship is not as great on the employee through the process for seeking nomination and being nominated.

    You asked about the situation when a person looks to come back into the public service, whether the position would be held. Right now, employees on leave can retain their positions, which cannot be filled on an indeterminate basis unless they're absent for more than one year. The exception to this would be that when they're in what we judge to be a highly sensitive position, we would work with the department to arrange for a position to be held in a less sensitive area of the department. If the individual's leave lasts for more than one year and they are replaced on an indeterminate basis, then they are entitled to priority consideration in terms of other jobs in the public service when they seek to re-enter the public service.

    I get lost in these kinds of questions, Mr. Chairman.

    The Chair: Mr. Serson, we'll allow you to find your way back while we move on to Mr. Lanctôt. Mr. Forseth will come around again in another cycle.

    Monsieur Lanctôt.

Á  (1105)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    Thank you again, Mr. President of the Public Service Commission. Clearly you've read all the evidence given by the witnesses, especially the unions. That's quite obvious, since you began with that. However, you say that several witnesses have appeared and proposed minor amendments. Perhaps in writing they look minor, but these are very major amendments that are being requested, contrary to what you say.

    It frightens me a bit when you say that they're minor amendments, especially concerning the Public Service Employment Act, where they talk about staffing and appointments, and this whole part from which the unions, among others, have told us they have been excluded. As can be clearly seen, this is a swing of the pendulum so significant that we've ended up at the other extreme, where managers and directors are being given full arbitrary authority.

    I consider that the amendments we're being asked to make are of very great significance to those parties. I understand that you are stressing the importance of your Recommendation 1 and that you are there as a "watchdog" to audit things, but the bill is there, as is indicated in the preamble--I hope that that hasn't been taken away and that we'll keep going in that direction--, not only for executives, not only for managers, but above all for all public service employees. But these people have come and told the committee that they have felt and still feel excluded from something very important.

    We talk about classification; we can talk about section 29 and section 30. What they are asking for--and that's why the written amendments may look to be minor, but they are quite significant--, is to be involved. Amendments must therefore be made so that these people can participate. Probably different qualifications and criteria will be established for each position, but they will at least feel they've taken part, because there's one thing we mustn't forget: when we're given a mandate and we talk about conflicts of interest, the appearance of a mandate properly fulfilled or the appearance of a conflict of interest is just as important as what actually happens. It's the same thing when we talk about arbitration, about someone who'll decide.

    Imagine all the problems that could arise in the minds of employees, of public servants, if their representatives said to them that they've been working for years on a bill and that they're excluded. That's what they've been telling us. Imagine the effect this will have.

    It says in the preamble that we want better relations and better consultation between unions, representatives and managers. But I haven't heard a single union, or almost, say that it felt very involved, not even in the drafting. And it's no longer just in the drafting; it's going to be in all the classification criteria. They're not even there anymore. You're changing huge aspects. They're not even governed by the Canada Labour Code; they at least want to begin somewhere, and we're refusing to include them. We wonder why, and the representatives also wonder why not.

    So, I hope that your statement whereby the amendments are minor pertains only to the writing, because the change to be made is huge. I'd like to hear what you have to say about that.

    Mr. Scott Serson: In reply to this question, Mr. Chair, I'd like to say that we have our concerns about the risks in this bill, but I also want to say that there are some things the witnesses have not raised up to now.

[English]

    Mr. Chairman, they are these. Proposed subsection 29(3) gives the Public Service Commission the responsibility to make policy on appointments...revoking appointments, and on corrective actions. Proposed section 16 says that deputy heads must follow these Public Service Commission policies. Proposed section 30, in the definition of “merit”, says that the PSC has to be satisfied that persons meet essential qualifications. And further, you have the Public Service Staffing Tribunal, and we know and share some of the concerns about that.

    Our argument on this is that rather than insert wording that we may not understand the implications of further down the road into the definition of “merit”, we would prefer to be given the capacity to audit how managers are using this authority to set further qualifications.

    We could then report back not only to managers and unions...and I underlined the last time that we work regularly with a group of managers and unions. In fact, we have a group right now working on the issue of co-development, without any clause in the law asking us to do it. We could report back to them. More importantly, if we could get a regular relationship with a committee like this, we could report back to you and tell you how well these clauses are working.

Á  (1110)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: Another important point that was raised concerns merit. They're afraid that this criterion will be weakened and that in fact it will not be a question of merit. Considering the way it is written--and I rather agree with their way of seeing things--, it almost becomes a minimum. Once again, there's something arbitrary where all the additional qualifications are concerned. The situation could even become a scenario like this one: I really want someone to get a position; I find out from that individual what his other qualifications are; he already has all the qualifications established; they're a minimum, and he has them; he has other qualifications, and what do you know...

    I don't want to talk about bad faith, but it's still possible that such and such an element will be included in the additional qualifications and that, just by chance, this candidate has them all. I understand very clearly that your position requires you to make sure the necessary audits take place. But how are you going to be able to do that? A challenge is reduced to two possibilities, including abuse of authority. There won't be abuse of authority or rather, you won't succeed in proving that there was. That professor from Hull or Ottawa who appeared before this committee stated that there should be a reversal of the burden of proof. That way, it wouldn't be up to the employee to demonstrate that he has the best qualifications, but to the employer to demonstrate the contrary. That's a good suggestion.

    How, as a commissioner, will you determine that there's been an abuse of authority; furthermore, how will you change the appointment then? You won't be able to. But the prevailing arbitrariness will be more Machiavellian than you can imagine. I'm not saying this would happen very often; in fact I hope that this wouldn't be so, but it remains that our role is to protect people and not to assume that everything is done in good faith. We have to foresee situations fraught with danger, as slim as the chances may be that they will arise.

    The problem, among others, is that there are not enough opportunities to make a challenge. I could go on, but my time has surely run out.

[English]

    Mr. Scott Serson: I don't believe you and I are disagreeing. I fundamentally believe that we can rely on public service managers to look for a qualified individual. They may not always want to search in the kind of legalistic and mechanistic way they have had to in the past for the best qualified people. You have a job to be done, you have a certain number of hours to do it, your performance hangs in the balance, and so you want well-qualified people doing the job.

    We're talking about the margins, the potential for abuse. We recognize that. We're asking for two authorities. We're asking for the authority to audit. When we audit and we find something wrong, we're prepared to make a first recommendation to the deputy to clean it up. If it's not cleaned up, we're looking for the authority to clean it up. It's to get at those small areas of abuse that we think could potentially take place.

Á  (1115)  

    The Chair: Thank you, Monsieur Lanctôt.

    Mr. Cullen.

    Mr. Roy Cullen (Etobicoke North, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I'm sorry, Mr. Serson and colleagues, that I missed the presentation.

    One of the groups we had this morning looked at “employment equity”, and I'll use that term, in other words, at the public service being representative of society, in general, and at some of the challenges of reaching those objectives within the public service.

    And I asked the gentleman about this, under this bill.

    By giving managers a little more flexibility, it seems to me that a manager then could say, well, the points for these two candidates are fairly close, but I do have some hurdles of this department or division in terms of reaching some more representativeness in terms of Canadian society as a whole, so I'm going to go with this candidate in lieu of this other candidate. They're about a half a point apart, and when you get into that kind of measurement, it doesn't make any difference at all, it seems to me.

    One of the responses was this. It's like a two-edged sword. When you give a manager that kind of flexibility, it's like defining an RFP. We all hear the stories, and perhaps we've been there ourselves, where we scope an RFP because we have a particular person or company in mind. And we know that's a continuing challenge within the Government of Canada, and within all governments, and in fact within the private sector as well.

    Would your proposal, in terms of giving the Public Service Commission that kind of auditing capability, provide a group like that a little more reassurance that if someone is defining jobs to meet someone they had in mind, that you could come in there, even if the authority is delegated, and really closely look at that and try to fix it?

    Mr. Scott Serson: That's exactly what we're looking for. We believe the definition of “merit” allows a manager to take the positive measures you're talking about, to look across a wide pool of qualified candidates and to say, my particular need is that I have to increase the diversity of my workforce and therefore on the basis of those qualified candidates I'm going to put a premium on that diversity objective.

    But I think there is also a reasonable concern, certainly based on my experience over the last three, four years, that if you get into measures of things like personal suitability, that can very quickly become, looks like me, talks like me, acts like me, therefore it's the best candidate. And that we can't have happen.

    So for exactly that reason, we are looking for this increased ability to audit--not to review all qualifications. That's up to the managers to determine. They're determining the nature of their workforce. We want to make it clear that we have the jurisdiction to go in and see how those qualifications are being set vis-à-vis the fairness of the staffing process.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Now, on the auditing capability that you propose, perhaps you could describe, in terms of delegated authorities, what exists today, if anything. Would your audit process be on a kind of rotating basis, or would it be based on complaints or risk assessment...departments that seem to be deviating from the norm? How would that work?

    Mr. Scott Serson: Well, I was quick to point out the last time I was here, Mr. Chairman, that during the nineties our audit capacity was cut quite drastically, along with many other audit capacities in the Government of Canada. So under this piece of legislation we would have to rebuild, and we've started that process.

    Since taking on the job of president, the way I've started to construct that now is I've turned first to the question of making sure the accountability agreements we had with departments were clear and uniform.

    Secondly, I've asked deputy ministers to report to me every year or two, depending on the size of the organization, on how they're using their delegated authority.

    Thirdly, we're seeking to bring together the information we have independently in the organization and then to do exactly that risk analysis.

    I think there's a real thirst in the public service for greater flexibility, for a greater sense of ownership of the staffing system, as I said the last time I was before the committee.

    The way I would propose to see this proceeding, and this will be up to the new commission, is that we take that information, we do a risk assessment, we do an audit on the basis of that risk assessment, and then we're very careful about whether we need to bring back a policy with respect to the broad numbers of departments or agencies or whether we have to focus just on the delegation agreement with that deputy minister or agency head, where we found the problem, and address the issue there.

Á  (1120)  

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Do I have time for another one? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. Serson, the Public Service Commission is a body of the Parliament of Canada. Is that correct?

    Mr. Scott Serson: I may have to rely on my legal adviser here. We're a bit of a unique organization, Mr. Chairman, in the sense that while we do report to and are a creature of the Parliament of Canada, we have some executive functions. So in comparison with other organizations that are traditionally called agents of Parliament, I think we have in the past had a stronger relationship with the executive of the public service than other organizations.

    I see this piece of legislation moving us more into the ambit. We're giving up certain of our executive authorities to the employer--not all of them but quite a number of them--and that's moving us more toward the agent of Parliament concept.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Before I run out of time, I'm interested in the question of the appointment of the commissioners and yourself. For example, we have the situation of the Auditor General, who is clearly a creature of Parliament. How are the commissioners appointed now? Is it by order in council? Is there any reference to Parliament?

    Mr. Scott Serson: Right now, commissioners are appointed by order in council. We've put into our submission a recommendation to add to the legislation, at a minimum, some criteria to govern the selection of commissioners. In the discussion we had before the committee last time, one member was pointing out the importance of the commission being non-partisan itself, if it's going to govern a non-partisan staffing and recruitment system. So that is the proposal we have there.

    We've had an active debate among myself and my fellow commissioners about whether we should be going further. It's something I would encourage the committee to think about, whether Parliament should have a role in appointing, at a minimum, the President of the Public Service Commission.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Okay, thank you.

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

    I'm going to interject a quick question here, Mr. Cullen. On the last point you raised, this topic came up last night in the meeting on the ethics commissioner. I think there is some dissatisfaction with the method of appointment of officers who report to the House of Commons. There was a suggestion that we might want to standardize that around all of the officers, so they are appointed by the House and report to the House and take the governor in council out of it.

    I pose that to you, Mr. Serson, as a question. If you were to become more an officer of the House, then maybe you should take on more of the trappings of an officer of the House.

    The second is, can you comment to me on the whole issue of public service conflict of interest and ethics guidelines, particularly at the executive and deputy minister level? Is that something the commission is involved in at all right now?

    Mr. Scott Serson: Mr. Chairman, on the first issue, all I can say is we've had an active debate among commissioners. We continue to have some executive functions. We've been concerned about whether that should in any way restrict Parliament's role in making our appointments. On the other hand, we understand strongly with respect to our credibility, particularly the increased discretion, for instance, that we're getting with respect to political activity, that it would be very important that we be seen to be non-partisan and have the confidence of Parliament. So if the committee wants to explore that further, we'd certainly be comfortable with that.

    We're not directly involved with ethics. You may know that I am co-champion for the office of values and ethics, working with public servants across the country. We have made a recommendation to the clerk that we adopt a statement of values and principles for the public service, and I think work is continuing on that.

    From an ethical point of view, the issue we have looked at, and why we brought forward the recommendation, was the situation with Public Works and Government Services Canada and the Groupe Action affair, because that involved a former ministerial staffer who came in through the priority process. And there we were concerned--and this is why we put this recommendation for a small change into our package--about perceived conflict of interest, possible conflict of interest.

    It is not that we want to change the question of ministerial priorities. We've worked with too many former ministerial staff who've come into the public service and have made a tremendous contribution, but in this particular case there was at least some doubt about whether that individual should have been appointed in that sensitive area.

Á  (1125)  

    The Chair: Yes. I would rather deal with the specific, though.

    The genesis of the question that was raised last night, I think, comes in several forums. It has happened too often in public management. Every time we hit a problem, we create a new device or a new vehicle or a new set of systems for it, when we have existing systems. Going through this process of modernizing the ethics and conflict of interest processes in the House, the question has come up: why wouldn't we simply expand that and apply it to, certainly, the senior levels of the public service, deputy ministers and senior executives, for example? Why not put it in the same kind of process of asset disclosure and private interest and the other kinds of regimes, given that all public servants, ultimately, are accountable to the House of Commons, rather than create a second or a third system?

    It strikes me that there's an interesting question here about how we deal with the Public Service Commission, as it becomes more of an agent of the House.

    Anyway, I'll pass on to Mr. Lanctôt and come back to that, maybe outside of this forum.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: Okay, let's go back to pages 151 and 152 of the bill, to carry on where we were on political activity. Pages 151 and 152 of the bill, proposed subsection 114(1):

An employee may seek nomination as or be a candidate in a federal, provincial or territorial election only if the employee has requested and obtained a leave of absence without pay from the Commission.

    I can understand or accept the concept that an employee asks and may be successful in obtaining leave in principle, but then what about the start date?

    Then I go across the page to proposed subsection 115(4):

The Commission may make permission under this section conditional on

(a) the employee taking a leave of absence without pay during the period in which he or she seeks nomination as a candidate or is a candidate;

    I find it absolutely unacceptable that a person would have to be on leave without pay to seek a nomination and continue.... Being the nominee, he now is the candidate. But we do not have fixed elections at the federal level yet. In British Columbia, to become a candidate in a municipal election...we have fixed election dates and we're able to calculate that. At the provincial level we now have fixed election dates. After the election, within a few days, the premier announced when the next election was going to be. So we can plan our lives around that.

    I simply think that being a nominee and being the candidate for a party.... Until the race starts there is absolutely no reason why this individual should be on leave without pay, because the other areas about conflict of interest and being an acceptable person cover the areas of political comment, what you're trying to protect against. If there was going to be a real problem of this person being a candidate, it would be covered off in the permission sections in the first place, which have to be considered.

    I have no problem with the concept, but I really have a problem with the so-called start date and where it says you have to be on leave without pay even to seek a nomination. You may or may not get that nomination. You may win the nomination, but you may be hanging around for a year or so before the election starts. Why should someone be on leave without pay until, say, the writ is dropped? When the writ is dropped, then obviously go on leave without pay.

    That's the way it worked for me. Of course, there was the additional advantage; I was a provincial employee going up to the federal level. Now, there may be additional problems federal to federal, but I've tried to outline that part of it for you to respond to. Then I'll go on to the next clause.

Á  (1130)  

    Mr. Scott Serson: Again, I'll let my colleagues advise me if I get this wrong, but I think we agree with this point of view. That's why, in our proposal, we were suggesting the addition of another clause that would allow that:

(5) The Commission shall make permission under this section conditional on the employee, seeking nomination as, or being, a candidate in a federal, provincial or territorial election, taking one or more leaves without pay at the time the Commission considers the most appropriate.

    I think the way we saw that was that if there was a period of active time where the individual was seeking nomination, we would have the flexibility to say they should take leave until they have nomination. Then, while they're awaiting the election call, we could allow that person to come back to work. We could tell them, in that period of time, to be a little bit careful about political activities and then reapply when the election call is issued. We felt exactly the same as you, that the current wording was forcing us into a very long period that might cause hardship for the employee.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: Okay.

    That's interesting. I'll come back to another part of it in my next round.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Forseth.

    Mr. Lanctôt.

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: I'm coming back again to the issue of merit, knowing full well that no provision has been made for the protection of whistle-blowers. Such protection is not ensured, except for the integrity officer, but we won't go back to that. The aim is to change this culture so that it will be non-partisan. In my opinion, there must absolutely be a framework act, and that must be seen to as quickly as possible.

    The prevailing mentality--I hope it will change, but it definitely exists within the public service--is that we give the boss the results and the performance he wants, to keep him happy. We hear that from many public servants, and often this attitude is not consistent with the public interest.

    So, we want the money of citizens of Canada and Quebec to be used properly. It remains that the whistle-blower, whether a journalist, MP or someone else, even though he probably does his job better than many others--and perhaps even better than his superiors, given that he took the time to blow the whistle--does not have any protection. Take a minute to think about what is written in this regard in the bill.

    The supervisor of an individual who has blown the whistle may stand in the way of the latter's advancement, even though the whistle-blowing was aimed at protecting public funds. Do you think that this individual, in such a context, will get an appointment? His supervisor will certainly not be happy about what he's done.

[English]

    Mr. Scott Serson: I think an event like that could change the dynamics in the workplace in a negative fashion, but I will say two things. First, your question in many ways is one for the public service integrity officer, Mr. Keyserlingk. He has been on the job now for some time, and I think he's going to report. I know one of his preoccupations is this need to protect whistle-blowers, and I'm sure he'll have something to say about that.

Á  (1135)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: Isn't the integrity officer going to appear?

    Mr. Scott Serson: But I think it would be necessary for him to report on his first year on the job to the government.

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: In my opinion, it would have been interesting to hear him, but I hear you.

[English]

    Mr. Scott Serson: I'll give you an honest answer. Under the old bill, I think the Public Service Commission could receive a complaint from an individual who felt he was being unduly discriminated against because of something he had done in a staffing process. Under the new bill, I'm honestly not sure whether an employee could use this as a basis for a complaint about abusive authority to the Public Service Staffing Tribunal.

    Do you have any other ideas on this?

[Translation]

    Mr. Gaston Arseneault (General Counsel, Public Service Commission of Canada): In my opinion, with respect to the bill, it would be possible, in cases where a candidate was the subject of favouritism when another person didn't get a job or a promotion because he blew the whistle, to claim abuse of authority. To my mind, he could then make his case.

    I also think that if the Commission succeeded in getting what it is asking the committee for, with the audit powers it had, it would be able to audit the way in which people receive promotions and how, in some cases, the're prevented from getting the promotions due to them.

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: And imagine what this will be like without a framework act. Imagine that we don't have this law but we want this to be a non-partisan public service. That's what we want. But without a framework act, if we ask for this and we manage to show the Public Service Commission that there is an abuse of authority, there's isn't anything providing a framework for all that. So, all there is, is reinstatement in the same position or the appointment that should have been made. What kind of labour relations will that engender? Do you understand what I mean?

    It's really important for us to sit down quickly. I'd have liked this to be as part of an examination of this bill, because it's as if we were going at it backwards. We talk about culture change. We want a non-partisan public service that will manage public funds correctly, and still we forget sections as important as this one, which is part of the new culture. Some things are missing.

    Mr. Gaston Arseneault: We move that the committee add this provision.

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[English]

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Lanctôt.

    Mr. Szabo.

    Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.): How much time do I have, Mr. Chairman? I have about five issues.

    The Chair: Well, you have about 30 seconds an issue, so get going.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: All right. Maybe I'll just start with a comment.

    The issue Mr. Forseth raises on political involvement puts public service employees in a different position from all other Canadians, quite frankly, and I think you have to justify that. If you impose this restriction on their latitudes, etc., which is different from the same job in another environment, shouldn't they be getting a pay premium for giving up that right to participate in the democratic process as freely as any other Canadian? It's kind of an interesting argument and you may want to comment, but let me get the others out.

    When you appeared before us last time, a few issues came up. I want to follow up on them, and hopefully we can make some progress. I think the PSC has to move forward a little bit in the way you have mentioned.

    One issue was having a better relationship with Parliament. I've actually discussed it with the minister and she agrees. I think you need a home and a place to report to, and unless somebody has a better idea it probably is this committee. So we should make some plans.

    Second, reporting more frequently was one of your recommendations. We had the Auditor General before us and a couple of others. I asked the question, “Do you think this is a good thing?” It was unanimous. They thought you should have the latitude to be able to report to Parliament on matters within your purview that you felt were important enough and couldn't wait for the annual report. I support that change, and hopefully we'll get it.

    You may want to comment on any of this at the end.

    Finally, on the operational role, you said you were unique and I think I know why, but I want you to answer why you should be unique. For instance, the audit responsibility you're asking for, in my view, is an operational role that seems to be outside the purview of an agency of Parliament.

    So maybe you would like to comment on a couple of those items.

Á  (1140)  

    Mr. Scott Serson: I'll comment on the last one, Mr. Chairman, because I think it is an important one that I'd like to underscore.

    The Public Service Commission is an old institution dating back to 1908. When we started, whether it was necessary or not, we were doing the staffing and recruitment. If you look at our operations today, we will be transferring a variety of functions to the employer, but we remain the recruiting agency for the Government of Canada. We proposed the legislation in the preamble to delegate. That's the route we've been on. But we will still be involved in certain parts of that operation. We operate the Government of Canada jobs website. We advertise on that and make referrals from various pools. So that's a very operational undertaking.

    The reason for that is in the past parliamentarians felt it was necessary for the Public Service Commission to pre-audit a lot of this activity because they felt, in the end, how easy is it to audit staffing operations? I have to be frank. That's still an issue for me as president. We're just getting back into auditing now to see if it is a tool we can use to get at some of these problem areas. That is the issue.

    If we get through the legislation and I'm still around as president, I would like to talk to the committee. Where should the Public Service Commission be going in some of these operational areas, and what are parliamentarians' views on the necessity of having a central government job website? Is it necessary to have it in the hands of an independent agency, and for what reasons? Get into a little bit of that dialogue.

    The previous commission wanted to discuss those issues with Parliament before the commission started to devolve and delegate. But in the end, the deputy minister said not to move forward with that because there were no resources to take on any of those activities. I came in at the tail end of that, so we did not proceed and we waited for the legislation to come. But now we will have to go back to that issue, given the kind of guidance that's in the preamble.

    I don't know whether I'm confusing you or clarifying things.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: I did have one last question, just to help corroborate, Mr. Chairman. The development of the bill has been going on for a long time. How long were you involved in the development of the foundations that ultimately led to this bill?

    Mr. Scott Serson: Well, you're touching on a story that is not a happy one for me.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: I was afraid of that. Maybe I should finish so I don't surprise you with the end result here.

    The CLC and the Public Service Alliance were before us, and they said they were in collaboration with you. They told us they did not have adequate consultation on this bill, and they didn't have enough time to influence this bill. They said there had been information sessions but not consultation sessions.

    This concerns me because this is an important bill and I thought all essential stakeholders--PSAC, CLC, and the other major labour unions--would necessarily have been fully consulted, had their best kick at the can, before the bill got to print. Did that happen or not?

Á  (1145)  

    Mr. Scott Serson: I want to be fair on this, so I have to tell you my own personal take on it. I started in the public service as a guidance counsellor nearly 30 years ago. Since then I've been in increasingly responsible positions. In most cases during that time when there was a problem to solve in my area, a minister, a boss, would come to me and tell me to solve the problem.

    In this case, the government decided not to put together a working group but to create a task force. When that process started we were assured there would be a steering committee for that task force and we would be part of that steering committee. The steering committee met for the first three months and then it disappeared.

    We did have lots of opportunity to make presentations to the task force. Some of our ideas they took and some of our ideas they didn't take; sometimes I understood the rationale and sometimes I didn't. I certainly had plenty of access to the President of the Treasury Board, and I want to commend her for that.

    So that was the kind of balance. I found it a little bit too much command and control for my liking, but there you are.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Tirabassi, do you have a question? I'll go to Mr. Forseth now. But if you're interested, we're coming close to the end of the time, and you have not had a chance to ask questions.

    Go ahead, Mr. Forseth.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: Finishing off the question I was asking, back to page 151 of the bill, proposed subsection 114 (4) says:

An employee ceases to be an employee on the day he or she is declared elected in a federal, provincial or territorial election.

    Then I go to the next page, and it says:

The Commission may make permission under this section conditional on...the employee taking a leave of absence without pay or ceasing to be an employee if he or she is declared elected.

    So those two parts are related.

    My question is, once I'm elected, why did I take leave? Leave is gone. It disappears when I'm no longer an employee. That did not apply to me. I was still an employee of the provincial government. I was still on the seniority list. I didn't have to cash out my pension or deal with whatever other implications happen when you cease to be an employee. You are severed. You're gone. So leave that was granted evaporates. That's why there's no time limit for the leave. It doesn't contemplate the following type of situation. Someone is elected and goes on leave. Maybe there's a snap election and they don't run again, or something else happens. They have, say, a five-year leave. Within two years they're out of the federal system. They want to go back and continue their professional career, but because they got elected, they are out. In essence they've had a forced resignation. That is my problem about why a person is automatically no longer an employee the day they are elected and all the implications that flow from that.

    Mr. Scott Serson: Mr. Chairman, these are not clauses that we drafted. I understand the concern being expressed here. On the other hand, I have some sympathy with the drafting.

    I think the view is that once you're elected, you become a partisan political player. I don't want to imply that in the three and a half years I've made a careful study of this, but the commission does get complaints about former candidates being public servants, in even local elections where there is some party affiliation, and this kind of thing creeping into the workplace. There was a job competition in such and such a community. An official from party X is a member of the staff there, and all the individuals from the other party were eliminated from the competition. We have had to look at complaints of that nature. Once the person is a candidate, I suppose there is a possibility for leave without pay or something, but--

Á  (1150)  

    Mr. Paul Forseth: That's what we're talking about, leave without pay. The purpose of this mechanism is to grant leave. But once you're elected, what's the point of leave? It has evaporated? There's no provision for coming back. Things such as a seniority list, a pension, and being able to go back are gone if you get elected. I'm trying to get some help with that. If you don't have any further comments, that's fine. I'm throwing that out as an anachronism.

    Mr. Scott Serson: I don't have any further comments.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: Okay.

    The Chair: Mr. Tirabassi.

    Mr. Tony Tirabassi (Niagara Centre, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I also would like to thank Mr. Serson for appearing before the committee.

    I want to go back to Mr. Szabo's inquiry about consultation versus sharing of information. This is important to me as well. It's my understanding that this bill is the result of a two-year process. You mentioned the task force. I think it helps to know that a website has been posted and that you would take an interest and make inquiries based on what you see on the website. Then there's a response to you, and that is more information exchange. In your answer you mentioned that there was an actual face-to-face exchange with representatives of the task force. I think you even alluded to the fact that they took some of your considerations, and others they didn't take.

    Mr. Scott Serson: Absolutely.

    Mr. Tony Tirabassi: So from that, I surmise that it was more of a consultation.

    Mr. Scott Serson: Yes, I think that's fair to say.

    Mr. Chairman, I tried to be clear that my issue is probably ownership, which is our role. Therefore, to end up debating with others certain points that we thought were important was sometimes a little bit frustrating.

    Mr. Tony Tirabassi: Now that I have the answer that we were looking for, I am going to refer to another issue. It is with regard to the ministerial staff appointments.

    As I understand it, Bill C-25 replicates the existing priority appointment regime for ministers' staff, which does not provide for the kind of discretion you're seeking. If Bill C-25 did provide this discretion--and understanding that these circumstances would be rare and would be handled by the commission on a case-by-case basis--what period would you suggest such decisions be based on?

    Mr. Scott Serson: Did you ask about the kind of criteria to be used?

Á  (1155)  

    Mr. Tony Tirabassi: Yes.

    Mr. Scott Serson: I think they have to be the same kind of criteria that we look at for political leave.

    I think we'd want to look at whether the appointment was in the same department as the department that this staff person had worked in with the minister. We'd want to look at the nature of the position and how senior it was. We would want to look at the nature of the program; obviously, if it's a fairly administrative program, it's not a sensitive one. We would want to look at the nature of the responsibilities and at the nature of the reporting relationship. I think it's one thing to say that this individual is working on a fairly regular basis for a DG or an assistant deputy minister, versus a situation where just because of the nature of the job there is lots of contact with the former minister. These are the kinds of criteria we'd be looking at.

    To be helpful, I want to indicate again that the numbers are fairly small. We calculate that there are probably about 400 ministerial staff who are entitled to this priority. Over the last 15 years, the Public Service Commission has received an average of about 39 requests per year. In an average year, 34 of those requests are really entitled to the status. In the end, 25 of those requests decide to register with the PSC to activate their priority status. On average, 17 of those 25 are appointed, with approximately 50% being appointed to their home department. This shows how rare it would be. Only 10% are appointed to EX positions, or about 6 in 74 positions over the last three years. I think it's only those EX or senior managerial positions that we would be worried about.

    So it's a fairly rare circumstance, but again we were struck by the Public Works situation and concern. There have been a couple of other examples. These are usually the examples brought to my attention by those outside the public service, as being symbolic that “There must be a problem here”.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Tirabassi.

    I note that we're almost at the conclusion of this section, but I do want to ask a quick question.

    I have these two schedules. One refers to public services being defined for purposes of the Public Service Labour Relations Act and organizations subject to the Public Service Employment Act. I understand that certain organizations may operate under a federal mandate but are basically paid for by fee collection, or whatever, and that they stand outside of the act.

    You may want to make a broad comment on this, and maybe we need to meet separately to deal with the details. We have a number of organizations here that are entirely funded by the government or public money, and yet they seem to fall outside of the Public Service Employment Act entirely while availing themselves of the Public Service Labour Relations Act. Is there some rationale that makes sense of this? There is a whole bunch of....

    As you know, I've been trying to figure out what the public service is. I now have five estimates of its size from five different organizations. I keep trying to identify what we're talking about. So can you explain the rationale for...particularly the ones named in schedule 5?

    For example, I understand that CCRA is not subject at all to the Public Service Employment Act, except for political activities. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research is in the same position. But then the National Research Council isn't even named. It's completely outside; it's not here. So people who work for it, or for the National Research Council, the National Film Board, the National Round Table on the Environment, or the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, all of which I believe are 100% funded, are not considered to be part of the public service--except they get bargained under the public service. That's what it seems to say here, and I'd like to understand the rationale for it.

    Mr. Scott Serson: I'm going to turn to my legal adviser.

    Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

    Mr. Scott Serson: Mr. Chair, I would make one point relating to the bill before I do this, because I don't know whether you're asking a technical question or a policy question.

    The policy question for us is this: when CCRA left, there was a real desire to have the organization left with the PSEA and therefore left to the responsibility of the Public Service Commission. There was a real desire to have an organization that would do some innovation, and I think that has proven to be wise. But the deal that was worked out was that the Public Service Commission would continue to monitor the staffing system of CCRA in order to facilitate an interchange between that organization and the core public service. There are other clauses in this legislation that would extend that a little bit further, allowing the staff to be deployed in the public service.

    From a monitoring point of view, I would ask Gaston to respond to your more technical issue.

    The Chair: As the clerk is not yet here, let me ask you another question. I'll just keep asking questions until he arrives.

    I'm trying to sort out this issue of the size of the public service. The ability to access employment in the National Capital Region, which is under program review, goes to Mr. Forseth's question. Prior to 1994, just over 30% of the public service was in the National Capital Region. I notice program review could be divided into two periods, the period of the reduction of the public service, which ran from 1994 to 1999, and then the period from 1999 to the present, which has had some building back.

    In the period from 1994 to 1999, the federal public service presence in the regions outside of the National Capital Region declined by 31.7%. In the National Capital Region it declined by 19%. Incidentally, PCO grew by 10%--but that's a different issue or a small thing. In the build-back period, the regions grew by 5.7%; the National Capital Region grew by almost 19%; and PCO grew by a further 13%. The net effect was that employment in the regions has decreased by nearly 25%. Was that an unintended consequence or was it a policy?

  (1200)  

    Mr. Scott Serson: I don't believe it was a policy. I believe it was an unintended consequence. But my personal view on this, which is not based on a study we've done--

    The Chair: Let me just go further then.

    So now we have a public service that has moved from being 30% of the public service in the National Capital Region to 40.8%--which is growing under current trends--and a limitation on the ability of Canadians from other parts of the country to apply for jobs in the National Capital Region. To me, this seems outrageous.

    Anyway, I see that the clerk as arrived, so maybe we'll let him answer the question.

    Thank you, Mr. Serson. We'll no doubt want to talk to you again before we move to clause-by-clause consideration.

    Mr. Scott Serson: Would you permit me one other thing, Mr. Chairman?

    The Chair: I will permit you one other thing if it is extremely brief.

    Mr. Scott Serson: I know that the staff of the Public Service Commission will be looking for the blues on this, which has been my experience. I've been surprised by how attentive they are.

    So if you'll permit me, I'd just like to read into the record that as their president I'm very proud of them. In the last two years it's been a period of uncertainty for the Public Service Commission, yet they've kept working and kept focused on the integrity of the staffing system. I'd just like the committee to know how proud I am of them, and of my two fellow commissioners, Nurjehan Mawani and Michelle Chartrand, who are fine public servants and fine Canadians and great collaborators.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Serson. I suspect that I can echo those sentiments about all public servants on behalf of this committee.

    Thank you.

    Members, we'll bring the clerk to the table. We have an hour before we're done.

    Welcome, Mr. Himelfarb.

    I am led to believe that you've done this on more than one occasion, so I will let you begin with your opening remarks.

  (1205)  

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb (Clerk, Privy Council Office): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Translation]

[English]

    I'll be brief in my introductory remarks.

    You've spoken with the President of the Treasury Board and with a number of witnesses who have provided context for this legislation, the broad purposes and objectives. It would probably be more useful if I made myself available to answer questions you might have.

    Let me make just a couple of general remarks, comme contexte. First of all, this legislative reform is a part of a larger government commitment to modernize how we manage, to improve how we provide service and advice in a diverse and changing world. Modern comptrollership is part of that. Government online is a part of that.

    What drives this is an attempt to move from the strict and sometimes confining command and control approach of the past, which was highly centralized, to an approach focused on values and results that gives more flexibility, that allows the public service greater opportunity to adapt to changing circumstances and to respond to diverse regional needs.

    Inevitably this means that as we move from command and control we have to clarify responsibilities and enhance accountability. A huge part of this reform and a lot of parallel initiatives we've undertaken are designed to clarify responsibilities and enhance accountability through Parliament to Canadians.

    This legislation is part of that enterprise. I would also add that this legislation is only part of our human resources modernization. There are a number of parallel activities in the Treasury Board and across the government that are not legislative. They include the preparation of guidance to deputy ministers about the implications of their responsibilities and to ensure that their accountability is clear. They include the development of a revised post-employment code and conflict of interest code for public servants to ensure that the ethical base for the delivery of our new responsibilities is clear. They include the development of an integrated management framework that specifies how we will measure results and how they'll be reported, which will be part of our guidance to deputies.

    Those reforms are key, as are reforms to try to figure out how we manage more effectively horizontally and how we become more permeable, which we can't legislate but which is probably one of the most pressing issues confronting us.

    How we implement this legislation and the related features of human resources modernization--how we make the public service more permeable to the outside, more transparent, more accountable, and also at the same time more innovative, more creative, and more collegial--will be very much tested by how we do the non-legislative initiatives and how we implement this legislation.

    In my view, this legislation is key because it's enabling. It moves away the underbrush that inhibits our next steps toward reform. It tries to remove some of the very burdensome process that can swallow us up and make us less attractive to those who want to join us.

    Let me talk about, quickly, the four key drivers of this legislation, and then open it up to any specific questions you might have.

[Translation]

    The first one is to clarify the roles and reinforce the accountability mechanisms of public service institutions and managers.

[English]

    This is a driver for all of our reforms, to clarify responsibility, enhance accountability, and encourage managers to take on all of the responsibilities of management.

    One of the difficulties in having a commission that has had full responsibility for staffing for so long is that managers saw human resource management as outside of their own sphere of responsibility, as something that was taken care of by an outside agency. They didn't internalize the responsibility for it. As well, when things went wrong, it wasn't clear who was accountable.

    What we want to move toward is a public service where all managers take responsibility for managing, recruiting, and developing the talent we need to serve Canadians better, and to be accountable for how they manage and develop that talent.

    That's a driver. I think that clarifies accountability. We've left the Public Service Commission in as the safeguard for merit and to ensure adequate reporting to Parliament. We gave them the responsibility to monitor our implementation of this legislation, the extent to which we safeguard merit. They have the power to impose corrective action.

  (1210)  

[Translation]

    The second one is to simplify such elements as the staffing and recruitment process so as to make them more effective while reinforcing guarantees to ensure protection of merit.

[English]

    The notion that we can't compete for young graduates and new talent because it takes us so long to make a job offer isn't good for the public interest. This isn't good for public service, and neither is the notion that we can't develop our talent, that we have so many procedures--much of it in law and much of it in case law because of the court's interpretation of the definition of merit.

[Translation]

    Monique, who's the expert,

[English]

gave me a couple of recent examples of court decisions that tell us how we have to mark each answer in a test. And I'm not criticizing the decision, but imagine a thousand decisions like that, which make the process so burdensome. Our commitment to merit is to allow us to break through some of that case law, to clear away some of the underbrush.

    But I should assure the committee that our commitment to excellence remains. I would say there are two ways in which that's assured. One is when you have managers accountable, they're also accountable for performance, and it makes a whole lot of sense to get the best people you can get. But the other is, clearly, within our capacity to create a qualified pool within this definition, our policies can require us to take the best of that pool for jobs. So in fact we have a lot of mechanisms that would incent us to go for excellence and a lot of ways to ensure that this happens.

[Translation]

    Third, we have to give more prominence to the employees' learning and training.

[English]

    If we're going to hold public servants accountable, clearly we have to give them the tools and the knowledge and the training they need to live up to that accountability. And I think although we've made real progress, a case can be made that we have made sufficient progress. Part of it is that the responsibilities for learning and training are fragmented; part of it is that we haven't had, until very recently, a whole government learning policy; part of it, frankly--now this is going to sound old-fashioned when we're talking about innovation and creativity--is the need to get back to the basics.

    I think we went away from core curriculum, really basic things like the Financial Administration Act, good quality project management, which used to be pretty much compulsory as you moved through the ranks. We're looking at having a seamless training program, from orientation through to the development of our leadership, that also provides the basics and a continuum of leadership development. But we have to go back, in my view, to some of the basics.

    I also think the false barrier we built between public servants and executives by having two different training institutions didn't recognize the continuum of leadership development. It created a false barrier and was inefficient. A strong commitment to learning and a rationalization of the machinery of learning is a key driver of this legislation.

[Translation]

    Finally, relations with bargaining agents must be improved so as to create a productive and positive working environment.

[English]

    The old antagonistic, industrial model of management-labour relations is not part of the future. It wastes energy and it doesn't build the kind of workplace and relationships necessary if we're going to achieve our vision of excellence in public service. Some will criticize this for going as far as we have, and some will say we haven't gone far enough, but the key is to go in the direction of building a strong labour union relationship built on creating a joint approach to a better workplace and better workplace conditions, and a deeper, less confrontational understanding. In doing this we've implemented a number of--not all, but a number--the recommendations of the Fryer committee so that we de-escalate confrontation and emphasize partnership.

  (1215)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    The chair recognizes Mr. Forseth.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: Thank you very much, and welcome to the committee.

    I understand that someone in your position doesn't come to committee very often, so we certainly think this is historic. You talked very much about enabling, about having a new day with the public service. In much of the testimony they've used the term “a culture change”, and I think that's what you're looking for.

    I'll get specifically down to the issue of the merit principle as defined in the bill. You talked about trying to clean away some of the sagebrush or whatever that has been built up from various court decisions. I'm wondering if in the desire to get that flexibility...we've often heard the criticism that the actual definition is watering down what “merit” really means. You did touch on it; you said that operationally we could select the so-called best, but nothing in the law, the way I see it, directs you toward that. I'm wondering if we could tweak the definition just a little bit so it gives some objective direction, not just operationally but actually in the definition, so it does talk about finding and developing processes that will produce the best.

    The excuses that have been given--and I call them excuses--are length of time of process and all kinds of other stuff, which to my mind are administrative problems that should have an administrative solution, not a legal solution. Let's talk about all of what you've heard. I'm certainly sure you've been following some of the debate in the committee here and also reading in the media about the problem of the definition of merit as proposed in the bill. What are your comments about those issues?

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: We understand that's one of the issues that creates difficulty. Let me answer generally first and then specifically.

    Generally, I don't think we can legislate culture change. I think we--and I suppose, although I hate to say this in particular--have to be held accountable for providing leadership that is demonstrably pursuing excellence. I think this committee is uniquely positioned to do that, but you can't legislate it. The fact that there was no definition of merit--the courts have defined it for years--is not an administrative problem, it's actually a legal problem.

    There are numerous examples of legally imposed procedures we cannot administratively shake that have nothing to do with excellence; it's not available to us. The rule of law is one of our values as well as excellence, so we're bound by those. Clearing the brush means clearing that legal brush, not the administrative brush. We did, however, feel it was necessary to put in the text of the legislation the word “excellence”, and it's there; you'll find it there. It's more than symbolism, it's an absolute commitment.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: It's only in the preamble, though.

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: But it is a commitment, and it's a commitment that drives us to it, against which Parliament and committees can hold us to account. Putting it in law will create process burdens that take us back to where we've come. I think putting it in policy, in our commitment to be accountable for performance, is even more powerful.

    We have looked at every possible way to remove the brush of how many days, how many questions, what mark for each question, and how you measure it. There are just piles of procedure. The people used to blame the Public Service Commission; they wanted the commission out because they blamed the commission for all those procedures. It wasn't institutional, it was years of the courts defining merit.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: Yes, the courts were defining merit because you had nothing in a statute. Now we're making a stab at it. But I can come up with all kinds of ideas about how a position should be advertised--talking about time limits, how long they're posted, stating exactly when and where a competition is going to be held, and a person's availability for that. I could go on and on about administrative fixes for the whole kind of difficulty you talked about, where they say, well, if the Public Service Commission isn't going to deliver for us, we're just going to find a way around it. We had evidence in the committee that it was euphemistically called “innovation”, in other words, beating the system, which is what that means.

    I'm still going back to the culture change and overcoming the cynicism. I think there's a great amount of cynicism and indifference out there where people say, well, this is another bill and it's not going to change anything. That's what we get from the lower community level across the country.

    The symbolic value of perhaps tweaking the merit principle clause is going to have a tremendously positive effect in operationalizing the whole spirit of what we're trying to do here with the bill. When we have a definition that simply says “satisfied that the person to be appointed meets the essential qualifications for the work to be performed”, I have a great deal of trouble with that, and so do a lot of other people.

  (1220)  

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: I truly do understand the issue you raise. I'm convinced this provides us with the legal framework, and we will provide the policies committed to excellence. It also provides us with the flexibility to ensure that we have a representative workforce, to create pools that represent....

    I understand the National Council of Visible Minorities spoke to you.

    It allows us to address representativeness, the ability to provide service in both official languages, and it is always, always driven by the need to make sure that anybody in the pool is qualified.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: But all those other additions, talking about special needs, official languages, and all the rest of it, are covered later on in the definition in proposed paragraph 30(1)(b). In proposed subparagraph 30(1)(b)(i) it says “any additional qualifications”, and then there are proposed subparagraphs (ii) and (iii). I don't accept those reasons you support what I call a poor definition; it doesn't fly because it's covered in the next section.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Forseth.

    Mr. Himelfarb, you can make a brief response to the specific....

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: There really is in some ways nothing more dangerous than making a promise you can't keep. The very best qualified, endless appeals...how do you ever demonstrate it? There has to be somebody, somewhere who's better, and I worry about making commitments that seem hypocritical.

    I'm very committed to making promises we can keep and be held accountable for, and I'm not convinced that hiring the best-qualified is a promise any organization can keep--any organization. Yes, we can promise to hire someone qualified in a fair process with real accountability, and yes, we can promise a commitment to excellence, but I'm not convinced that a promise to hire the best qualified is one we can keep--or anybody can.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Monsieur Lanctôt.

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, Mr. Clerk.

    I think that the ultimate goal of this bill is noble. But after hearing several witnesses--I don't know if you have read the reports of all our deliberations--, I get the impression that there's a big gap between the principle of a culture change and the passing of enabling legislation to allow this change, and the way the text has been written.

    The noble side of this bill is that there should be more consultation. But we've heard people from the unions tell us that they haven't been consulted. They were simply informed as the process unfolded. Today, we're presented with a bill. Did they trust you when you gave them the information? When I listen to you, it's all very nice. Those people probably had the same impression, but then you show up with a "baby" that says something else. That's where the problem is.

    You want to improve union-management relations, but the employees haven't been consulted, and then you show up with a bill in which there's talk of the notion of merit--I talked about it in all these sessions and I'll talk about it again--, but that takes away the possibility of negotiating, in a collective agreement or elsewhere, any classification element or criteria to be set. Your ultimate goal is to be more flexible, but at what cost to all these public servants?

    I gave some examples to the Commissioner a little while ago. One of the changes that need to be made would be to make it so that the public service was non-partisan, but elements are being proposed that would make it more so. Something as important as the protection of whistle-blowers has been forgotten. This could have been included in the bill, or if we didn't want to include it in an enabling framework act, we could have adopted another act to protect these people at the same time. How do you expect there to be a culture change if things as important as that are forgotten?

    I come back to my example of a little while ago. Someone may be super-qualified, and even the best qualified, but if he dares to blow the whistle on the way public funds are spent or say how they should be spent, his supervisor will certainly not like that. It could harm his advancement and harm him in many other respects. But it was in the public interest. His manager, to whom the Commission has delegated this authority, is the one who's going to decide on the qualifications of people in the staffing process. The requirements will now be lowered, since it will not necessarily be the best candidates who get the positions. The candidate who blew the whistle meets the requirements of the position, but he may not be selected. At the Commission, try to prove there was an abuse of authority. It's complex, but it's your bill. You have restricted the grounds for possibly challenging abuse of authority. Abuse of authority may be very difficult to prove, and that is where the big problem will be.

    Your intention is to improve the public service and to recruit people, but if the unions leave in this way... They came to tell us that the bill has to be amended, otherwise, you're going to create a mess. Your principle is good, but there are a lot of amendments to make to your "baby."

  (1225)  

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: I think you asked more than one question. There are at least two.

[English]

    First of all, I'll address consultation avec les syndicats. I understand that at least one union indicated to you there had been insufficient or no consultation. I didn't lead those consultations myself, but I am assured that there were extensive consultations. In fact, I actually talked to one or two of the union leaders myself--not PSAC, as the chairs have--and I think many of them would say there were extensive consultations.

    I will say there was a bit of a blip. Because of protecting cabinet confidences, the consultations were in part more on direction than detail, and I think that was frustrating. We were trying to find the right balance to protect cabinet confidence but also to bring the unions in.

    Since that time, since being opened, it's been intensified and has been more open, more detailed, and more complete, and it would be continuous. It would be continuous through the implementation process and it would be a very close partnership.

    I actually believe implementing this legislation is the first step in strengthening that partnership. If there were some blips before, the relationship won't improve by one. We have work to do, both sides have work to do, but our commitment to doing that work is absolute. If there were mistakes or inadequate processes before, this is part of just continuously making it better.

    With respect to issues of partisanship, we did not change everything. There are some parts of the old law we've brought forward. What we've tried to do is be less prescriptive about political activity. We have left in the incentives for exempt staff to continue to want to do that work because it's often short-term, and the opportunity to join the public service after you've done that work is one of the ways you can attract high-quality people to support the government of the day, whatever that government of the day might be. It's not a huge surprise that people who have a public interest end up wanting to join the public service.

    I can understand debates around some of the issues. Our public service has people from every political persuasion; they vote in every particular way, but they must do their job in a way that's non-partisan. They must have gotten their job not because of partisan interest but because of competence, and they must do their job in a way that's credible and visibly non-partisan. The notion somebody had of previous partisan interest, well, that shouldn't disqualify them from participation in public life--je pense.

  (1230)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Madam Bennett.

    Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I'm interested in how we make this all work, and obviously where it came from was some frustration with the excellence factor, that there were excellent people in the public service feeling frustrated. There's obviously a recruitment problem in terms of getting the brightest and best set of university...and there's a retention problem in keeping the brightest and best. You've been very clear that you can't legislate a culture change, yet what I'm hoping is that in the definition of merit or the execution of looking at merit, some of the things behave in a way that would demonstrate a different culture could be, if not measured, evaluated.

    Part of the concern we have as parliamentarians is that this relationship between Parliament and the public service has been viewed by some as verboten and by others as dysfunctional, yet we know that when Canadians look at us, they see us all. If one side is atrophied and stupid, the other side looks bad, and vice versa. In the “two and two makes five” we're hoping for, is there some approach you have as clerk where, when a deputy minister says that Parliament is a minor process obstacle, that wouldn't be viewed as meritorious behaviour or comment?

    As a family doctor...to see that somebody who doesn't want to go back to work because their boss is just bad...and I could send them back, but I know they'll be sick again. Are we measuring people off work...or the return to work capacity and the flexibility of that manager to be able to get their people back to work in some sort of flexible way?

    The 360 kinds of evaluations...are there ways of us showing that people who are attitudinally incorrect move on and that there's a way of you feeling that you can move to the excellence you hope for?

    Basically, it says in the bill that it's the protection of the public interest, and therefore defining what's in the public interest to a certain amount is political. Deciding what's necessary, making the necessary possible, is a political decision, and therefore there has to be a relationship.

    I want to know, how are we going to move forward in that the unions have come and said they hate this bill? PSAC hates it, so how do we go forward and make this work?

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: That's a huge question. Let me start with a bias and then try to answer the questions the best I can. My bias is that if we don't improve the relationship between public servants and the parliamentary committees, everybody loses. It increases the distrust Canadians have. The public service had a tough year. Our reputation has been tarnished, and public servants suffer more than anyone when that happens. It's been a tough year.

    We're going to solve that in partnership or it won't be solved. The key to that is articulating public service values that are enduring, that don't depend on the definition of the public interest of the government of the day or on linking it to the government of the day's definition of public interest, and making sure it's measured, it's consequential, and the results are available to Parliament through committees.

    We are working right now at putting together guidance for deputies that includes an integrated accountability framework for management. I think that's the key part of this reform agenda. You can't put it into law; it is evolving, it does change, and a lot of it is established in negotiation. But I would be privileged to share that with this committee and then come back, have the committee's views on it, have a really good open discussion about it, and see if we're making progress.

    I can promise you now--an absolute promise; I said I like to make promises I can keep--it will not be perfect. I promise, but I think you'll see it's a real commitment to answering the kinds of questions you've raised.

  (1235)  

    Ms. Carolyn Bennett: On the horizontality piece, which also feeds into e-government, I think, we have heard at some of the crossing boundaries meetings and things that sometimes managers have a problem letting their staff go to a meeting that's about something that crosses departments. Can you let us know how that will move forward when you come back for the longer conservation, how horizontality and an appetite for horizontality and results that are across the whole of government would be measured or evaluated in the managers.

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: Absolutely, and you'll see it prominently. We have to go beyond turf, beyond programs, and you'll see it prominently figured.

    But let me counterbalance what you say by indicating that there are increasing numbers of examples where major files, from Kyoto to health reform to aboriginal children, have been managed across departments horizontally and even challenged traditional lines.

    You and I worked together on a project that challenged traditional lines, where we were trying to find more permeable, more partnered approaches. Some files need to be right across government, otherwise they make no sense. We're getting better. And we have to hold people accountable for making faster improvements.

    Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Thank you.

    I guess as parliamentarians all of us are exposed to these spectacular public servants whom we learn from. I guess we just want to make sure whatever we're doing here allows their light to shine and allows them to operate optimally and with their full potential.

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: I'm not being glib by saying this committee offers opportunities that didn't exist before. You have responsibilities and you'll push us, but we have to make better use of it in a positive, constructive way--maybe, for example, before the guidance is completed, rather than after.

    So I wouldn't mind talking to the chair and to members about how we can make use of this committee.

    The Chair: We can begin that conversation in a minute.

    Roy.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Himelfarb.

    I'd like to ask a question, and the chair might rule me out of order because it's somewhat off topic, but I'd like to approach this in the broadest possible way, if I can. You talked about the need for parliamentarians and the departments and officials to have a closer relationship. A couple of weeks ago we were doing the supplementary estimates in this very committee, and we were dealing with the office of the information officer. We were told by the person representing that office--they were looking for something like $250,000 in their supplementary estimates--that they were advised by the PCO and the Treasury Board Secretariat that they couldn't tell us anything about what that request comprised. They came back the next day....

    You're probably going to say that was the Treasury Board Secretariat, but....

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: I just don't know.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: I'm just highlighting this in the sense that we, as a committee, said it was not acceptable. Were there matters of national security involved? No, definitely not. So they came back the next day and gave us all the information we needed.

    But to me, if we're going to build good relationships between departments or agencies of the government and parliamentarians, we need to be a little more sensitive around issues like that.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: They had to give notice because it was to do with cabinet confidences or something. By serving notice and having no one intervene, they felt that since notice had been given, they could come back here.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Mr. Chair, with respect, it's a bit of gobbledegook.

    In terms of the substance of the issue, to come before the committee looking for support for $250,000 in supplementary estimates and tell us they can't tell us a thing about what it comprises is a little bit off the wall.

  (1240)  

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: I would have to know the background of the issue. It doesn't sound like the kind of advice we'd give. I know there was another parliamentary agent who was here and was asked to provide information that was protected from ATIP, but the committee wanted it. They asked PCO's advice, Treasury Board's advice, and we said give it. We understand you got it.

    Our approach is the more open the better.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Okay, I'll move off that.

    In regard to La Relève, which was undertaken or spearheaded by your predecessor, has there been any follow-up or new initiative?

    One area I'm particularly concerned about, which we heard from the Public Service Commission and other deputy ministers, is that many departments still don't have a very comprehensive human resource development plan. Many of the deputy ministers are hiving human resource development and human resource matters off to lower levels of departments, because either they're not interested or they don't have the time.

    I wonder if you'd comment on that.

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: The programs that my predecessor started are still functioning. They're being assessed now and are being modified and brought up to date, but that's part of the non-legislative package.

    The issue that's been raised to you and gives you concern is an issue that's been raised to me as well, and it gives me concern. Our coordinating group of senior deputies who oversee the talent, the human resource side of this, met on the programs quite recently on how we can deal with the notion that HR is seen as some technical issue that has to be given away and isn't integrated into the deputies' responsibilities. I will tell the committee before the deputies are told that one of the decisions of the group was that all deputies will come to that committee, which I'll chair. They'll present their human resource and succession plans, they'll be challenged by that committee, and they'll be helped by that committee as the first step of making sure that deputies--all deputies, me included--understand that HR has to be fully integrated as one of the key aspects of management.

    The issue you raise is absolutely key. Some deputies are showing leadership; all deputies have to.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: I'm glad to hear that, because government is people; it's a people organization.

    Do I have any more time, Mr. Chairman?

    The Chair: You have a minute and a half.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Okay, thank you.

    On the issue of horizontal management, I guess I'm going to ask you if it fits within the context of this legislation, just to stay on topic. You may or may not be aware that this committee has a subcommittee looking at public service issues in a wider sort of mandate. We talk a lot about horizontal management and the need to do a better job at managing horizontally. One of the questions I've been putting to a lot of witnesses is, is it possible to organize the public service in a way to optimally deliver on horizontal management?

    You know, in the private sector, organizations have gone flatter and less hierarchical. Government, by it's very nature, seems to be hierarchical. Could you tell me what is being looked at, what are some of the initiatives you're working on to get better horizontal management in government?

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: First of all, there are innumerable examples of attempts that, more or less, worked well. We've created special task forces where we put people together because the issue had such moment that we couldn't depend on the more informal relations. We have sometimes had centrally driven processes. That is what we did on aboriginal justice. We actually created a committee and a support structure in the centre. Each of those, by the way, has difficulties. One of them is that because it's outside the department structure, it doesn't necessarily take root for the next phase. When it's in the centre...for example, in PCO, we're supposed to challenge. We don't do a good job of challenging our own work.

    We're now studying every one of these, and there are about a half a dozen examples of different ways to force it on the policy side and see whether we can start matching the right mechanism to the right purpose. Although we support a democracy, we are ourselves not a democracy, by definition, because it's elected officials who are responsible for the totality of what we do. So we have to find that balance. But we are looking at a number of models. In fact, I'd be happy to share the parts of those models that work. Frankly, all of them have some limitations.

    On the policy side, though, it's easier than on the delivery side. What really worries me, and what I'd like us to think about new models of delivery for, is regional delivery. If you take a city perspective, whether it's Winnipeg or Toronto or a small community, you'll often have 12 or 15 different agencies serving the same client. It's fragmenting for the clients, not efficient, and it doesn't provide a whole government view. We have to find a better way.

    So we launched, I guess about six months ago, three pilots of integrated delivery around urban aboriginal issues and around one other issue, to test whether we could bring all of those regional agencies together, pool the resources, get ministerial approval for: “We don't own the resources, Canadians do; let's pool them.” We haven't assessed that yet, but they're running. So we're looking at it both on the policy side and on the delivery side. We're not there. But is it a commitment to move that way? Absolutely.

  (1245)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Forseth, be brief.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: In your comments you talked about the accomplishment in the bill of bringing training together, and there's a section of the bill that deals with that. But why not all the training? There's a big hunk of it left in Public Works related to computers and so on. I'm wondering why that was not done.

    The other aspect of training is...there are a lot of great sounding words, but unless there are the resources there--training leave, courses available, staff time in order to take these courses--it's simply not going to happen. Beyond the commitment is a real financial commitment to make it happen.

    Let's talk about the two aspects of the commitment to ongoing staff development.

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: There are a number of other training elements not covered in law, including official language training, that have to be treated seriously and may well have to be integrated, that we have determined and our legal advice suggests we don't need legal change for. These are machinery issues. We are looking at those, and I'm prepared to come back and report on them. I don't see the job being finished. What we saw was: create the legislative frame that allows us to continue to do this. In some ways we bit off what we could chew, but I think there's more to be done.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Lanctôt.

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I see, Mr. Clerk, that you will certainly have to come back because several questions about things such as horizontality--which, for now, have little connection with bill C-25--have been raised. I'll let them pass so that we can take advantage of your being here.

    But to come back to C-25, I go back to the question I asked earlier, but to which I have not received an answer. How come countries like the United States, among others, acquired legislation protecting whistle-blowers in order to enable their public servants to live freely and in non-partisan fashion while performing fully?

    We've been talking about this for quite a long time, and we want to get off on the right foot and adopt a new culture. Why is there no provision in the bill, or in some parallel legislation, respecting the protection of whistle-blowers?

[English]

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: I apologize. I forgot to answer that part of your question.

    I think it was a year ago that we put our policy in place for identifying wrongdoing. We encouraged that to be dealt with seriously within departments, but we wanted to make sure there was an avenue outside of departments that people felt safe to use.

    That policy hasn't been running for very long, the office hasn't been tested for very long, and we are learning what works and what doesn't work. Our commitment to create a safe place to identify wrongdoing is absolute, but we have this separate process. We will learn through that process what works, what doesn't work, and what additional steps have to be made so that employees will feel safe in bringing wrongdoing to our attention. The commitment to do that is right.

    We felt we were at a stage in the process where our learning hadn't been completed, where we didn't know enough about what would work to provide assurance, safeguards, and comfort. Sometimes doing things very legalistically will inhibit people from bringing things forward. But to create the climate where people feel not only comfortable but know it's wanted is a shared goal.

    We do have a process, but it's too early in the day to conclude how exactly to proceed, how well it's working and how we could make it work better.

  (1250)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: Does that mean that you prefer to apply a political or administrative process rather than impose certain obligations that would protect the workers?

[English]

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: No. We started a policy process before putting forward this law to learn how to do this better and whether it's needed in law or not. We will know at the end of that process if it's working really well and if people believe it's working really well. If they feel we have to provide even greater protection, we'll need to have a look at that. I think the issue is important, but we're--

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: I'd like to make a comment. There was a policy on harassment. But that did not prevent one person in five from being a victim of it. In this connection, nothing was provided in the bill either.

[English]

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

    Mr. Cullen is next for a very brief intervention.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Thank you.

    I know my colleagues have been accommodating, so I'll stay away from horizontal management. But if our subcommittee continues its work, perhaps you could come back and we could explore that further, and also some of the delivery concepts you're working on in terms of consolidation and regional.... Some of the issues there around risk taking and risk acceptance are important. As politicians we're the first to blame. When you decentralize you take on more risk, but sometimes we're not prepared to live with it.

    I'd like to come to a very specific question on the Public Service Commission, which is mostly a creature of Parliament, although it may be somewhat of a hybrid right now. I'm wondering how you would react if we had a similar process of appointment in the Public Service Commission, recognizing that partisanship in the public service is always an issue but is being addressed specifically by this act, where the president and maybe the other commissioners were appointed, like the Auditor General, with the approval of Parliament.

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: I rarely talk about the appointment process; however, it is a two-hatted organization, a hybrid. It has executive functions as well as parliamentary functions. So it makes it a bit of a stranger beast than most. Because of the executive function, it's still the staffing agent and the source of delegation of the staffing. So it still has a concrete delivery responsibility as well as a parliamentary role.

    I think that complicates everything now. Had we gone whole-hog as some people wanted and made it entirely a body of Parliament and given staffing directly to deputies, then I would say absolutely. But we haven't done that because we felt it was important to preserve the non-partisan definition of merit.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, although that is an area the committee will be looking at closely as it considers amendments next week.

    I'm going to take these last few minutes to make a couple of comments. Let me start by saying I appreciate your comments on the complexity and the range of issues that need to be dealt with in what is a very large series of changes. We have this bill to deal with, but I think the committee will undertake, assuming members agree, to bring you back soon--right after the Easter break--to begin a more fulsome discussion about those issues.

    I have to say I'm one who certainly believes that public management is infinitely more complex than private sector management. I don't think you apply private sector solutions to the public sector successfully. There are lots of examples of this.

    I'm also one who is somewhat profoundly depressed about the Canadian public service, particularly the senior levels. I want to be careful how I say this. I'm one of those who believes that there are no bad people, just bad systems. So when I hear you talking about clearing away the minutiae.... It seems every time we've had a problem in public management, we solve it not by reforming the beast but by adding on a new layer of complexity, or a new series of checks and balances, to the point where....

    I've been looking at procurement lately and talking to the people in procurement policy. They say, “You know, Reg, there are four things that drive procurement, and only one of them is the needs of the department that's trying to buy something”, because of this tremendous jurisdictional overlapping. So when I hear you saying, in the policy approach to this, that we want to hire excellence and we want to hire in an efficient and effective way, I accept that. I was a public servant, admittedly in a much smaller system, but even there you could see the tremendous disconnect between the need to have a competent body in place to do a job and the steps you had to go through to get there. However, there's another side to this, and it goes back to your comments about the use of the House and this committee.

    I think the House has some responsibility to change how it functions and how committees relate to departments, and all of that. I don't say this is strictly a departmental issue. But I think one of the observations I would make about the decisions on the executive side has been that they have moved things out of the public purview in order to solve these administrative problems.

    The creation of the CCRA as a separate agency has had some merit. I spent a lot of time looking at their use of information technology, and it's exemplary, first class, but I have serious questions about accountability in that agency.

    I look at this attitudinal thing. Carolyn mentioned this comment, which was a quote about Parliament being a minor obstacle, and I heard your response and listened to it carefully. But it strikes me that we have built systems that have tended to make it more difficult to see the outcomes of expressed public policy. If you're going to move to accountability regimes with deputies and senior managers, then presumably one has to define outcomes and hold them to account in some fashion against those outcomes.

    Now, this is not germane to this particular bill directly. I suspect it will be part of a discussion we'll get into as we move into the next phase of this. But as I look at this bill, what's going through my mind is, how much of this is clearing away and reframing the system so we can acquire excellence, we can go to the universities and say, “Let's get the best and the brightest in here”, and how much of it is an attempt just to move more of the operations away from public purview and real public accountability?

    You heard me quoting the statistics about the impact of program review. As a person coming from a region, I have to tell you, my confidence in this public service to deliver anything that's sensitive to my region is damn near zero, because I just see this complete disconnect between this little world that sits here and the world that I and the people I represent live in.

    Public management in this country is badly broken. So I hear this as a start of a rebuilding of that, a reframing. I see excellence in the people I deal with in the public service, individually, but I have real problems with how decisions are made systemically.

  (1255)  

    If there's one role the House plays, it seems to me it is as a national values clarification exercise. I have to deal with Mr. Lanctôt and all the trouble he causes me in order to come to a consensus that reflects the best of what Canada is about. Yet we substitute that exercise for the values of a very small number of managers who live in this town in a very important sector of our decision-making, and I find it very difficult to accept. That's a road I'm going to want to have a very lengthy discussion about with you and senior officials, how we bring in those cultural changes on both sides of this table. The House also has to change its approach to this work. It strikes me that it's fundamental if we're going to build some confidence back into both the public service and the democratic process in this country.

    Mr. Alex Himelfarb: I welcome what I take to be an invitation for an ongoing dialogue, and I accept.

    There's a lot in what you say. I don't exactly accept the conclusions.

    There are problems. We've had a tough couple of years, and it hurts public servants deeply. Our reputation with Canadians and the elected officials we serve is vital, and it's what attracts people to this game. We are trying to clear away the brush and to create a place that allows us to rebuild. Legislation doesn't rebuild. People rebuild. We have to do it together with the unions, parliamentarians, and the elected officials we're directly responsible to.

    I'm not pessimistic. That's a conclusion I would disagree with, although I accept much. In 1993 there was a massive reorganization, which would have taken the private sector years to consolidate. In 1995 there was program review. After the referendum there was a devolution of significant responsibilities, without passing any judgment. There was a profound change in relationships. There were years of state stagnation, not renewing from any place, kind of hunkering and looking inward and cutting and reducing.

    Now is a chance to rebuild, and the people are committed to doing it. What I find in public service leaders and public servants on the ground, even though we may not be plugged into the west and the regions, which is something we are hearing, is a real commitment to values and service and an energy to do things differently. We have a responsibility collectively to create that climate where possible.

·  (1300)  

    The Chair: I appreciate your being here. I think we will have some interesting times with the clause-by-clause. We will see you shortly after the break.

    For the information of members, we are adjourned for today. We will not meet next week in order to give members time to work on their amendments. We will convene at 9 o'clock on Tuesday morning, April 8, to begin clause-by-clause.

    Should members need any assistance from the clerk on the drafting or whatever, please avail yourselves of that. One can always move amendments from the floor, but amendments should be submitted to the clerk by the end of work next Thursday if possible. They will then be drafted and translated and put in front of members. That will allow time for members to consider them.

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: Mr Chair, I want us to understand one another. We're being asked to table amendments for such and such a date. If I don't have the reports in French, if the recommendations by the witnesses who appeared are not yet in French, I'm sorry, but I'm not going along with that. There are lots of reports that I haven't read because they haven't yet been translated into French. I'm telling you that if I'm missing one of them, we won't be ready.

    It's important, Mr. Chair. And don't forget that this bill is very complex. That's what we said to ourselves at the outset, and we don't want to hold the process up. I don't want to hold it up; I simply want to do my job right. How many pages are in the bill? It's not just a matter of reading briefs. We're going to examine it section by section. But I first want to read the text, section by section. I've read the principle of this bill, of course, but I want to read the sections one at a time to see whether there's anything to be improved. How can you expect that to be done in one week? I think that's quite ridiculous.

[English]

    The Chair: Thank you.

    I would point out two things.

    On the first issue of the translation, I am surprised that you don't have those documents translated already. And I would ask the clerk to get on to that immediately and find out why the translation service is not producing it. It should be possible, given the resources we have, to turn those things around a lot faster. If that's not the case, I would like to know about that. And if that's not the case, then I may entertain a decision to slow things down. I think we have a commitment to do that, so I have no argument with that one.

    The second one, though, is, you didn't get the bill today. You've had the bill for a long time, so your researchers have had time to look at it and become acquainted with it.

    While I agree that you need to have all of the relevant documentation, and we'll undertake to get that to you, I don't think a week is an insufficient amount of time to prepare necessary amendments.

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: I probably see the importance of this bill in another way from you, because I think that one week will not be enough. It's true that we've had the bill for some time, but we've heard witnesses right up to today. We have to hear all the witnesses before drafting any amendments. Even if we have our researchers, as you say, I think that we, personally, as members of the committee, have to give ourselves time to understand properly as well. It's not just the researchers. If you want us to do our job properly--furthermore, there's a holiday coming up--, we have to be allowed to study the bill as we should and to present amendments that make sense. Giving us the time to do our job right isn't holding the process up. That surprises me, especially coming from you, Mr. Chair.

·  (1305)  

[English]

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Lanctôt.

    I will look into this matter of the translation immediately and I will speak to you in the House this afternoon.

    Thank you.

    The meeting is adjourned.