SCYR Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH AT RISK OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

SOUS-COMITÉ SUR LES ENFANTS ET JEUNES À RISQUE DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DES RESOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, May 3, 2000

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.)): We have three members present, one of whom is a member of the opposition. I know others are coming in, but we don't want to delay, and we will allow people to join us as they will.

Today we wish to welcome, from the Treasury Board of Canada, Secretariat, Monsieur Michel Papineau and Monsieur Marc Gagnon. Monsieur Papineau is the director of the human resources management group.

[Translation]

Good afternoon, Ms. Gagnon. One of your cousins is here.

[English]

Just to remind people who are visitors for the first time, the subcommittee this year is pursuing two tracks. One is the whole issue of the balance between family and work. We have had a number of people come to talk to us from research organizations from the private sector. We are now about to hear from the Treasury Board about how we do, as the Government of Canada, in handling that challenge, what we do to encourage it, and perhaps a hint of where we may be going with this.

It will be recalled that one of the reasons we're doing this is that in the last Speech from the Throne, that particular business of family-friendly workplaces was specifically referred to as part of our strategy on children and families.

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At about 4:30 or a little after, we will switch hats and move on to the consideration of the other volet of our thinking, which is the whole issue of how we can support communities in their work to support families and children, and we have a work plan to discuss.

Let me then, without saying anything further, welcome Monsieur Papineau and Monsieur Gagnon.

I gather, Monsieur Papineau, you're going to lead us through your presentation, and then we will turn it over to the committee as soon as we can.

Mr. Michel Papineau (Director, Human Resources Management Group, Treasury Board of Canada, Secretariat): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Translation]

I welcome your invitation to speak to the responsibilities of Treasury Board in its capacity as an employer.

[English]

Therefore I'll limit my comments to the Treasury Board universe where the Treasury Board is the employer, which means a number of separate employers and crown corporations will not necessarily be covered by the benefits I will talk about.

[Translation]

As you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, we are working in close co- operation with our colleagues from the Human Resources Development Department regarding the promoting and sharing of the research results. I won't address the information which was shared with the committee regarding the state of the research done by the Conference Board, and I also won't add to what has already been said by our colleagues from the Human Resources Directorate.

[English]

I will therefore limit my comments on the Treasury Board as employer to what we do directly for our employees.

We have distributed various documents: two decks, one in English, one in French; a list of benefits that we consider family-friendly benefits; and an attached booklet, which I'll talk about in a few minutes.

The flexible working options in the Treasury Board have existed for the last ten to fifteen years. A number of options, such as part-time, have existed in collective agreements and in employer policies for a number of years. If I go back to some comments that have been made by Mrs. MacBride in terms of the survey of employers, we have participated with the Conference Board in the survey of employers and have concluded from the data of the Conference Board that the array of measures that exists in the federal public service compares very favourably to the average employer. In two areas particularly, when it talks about leave measures and about work arrangements, the federal public service is ahead of the average employer.

Family-friendly programming for us as an employer is important. We've talked about competitive recruitment and retention, and those issues are important for the federal public service. We will be competing in a very tight labour market in the coming years, so we have to adjust our benefits to prospective employees.

Also, because of the program review and our aging workforce, we will have to examine and adjust the programming in terms of our benefits to ensure we retain quality employees, in that we may be facing a significant number of employees who could retire in the next five years.

I would like to go quickly through the summary of what we have in terms of benefits, so I'll move to page 3 of the deck to highlight some of the key benefits we have.

Maternity leave is up to seventeen weeks. I must also clarify that with the maternity leave, as an employer we cover what we call a salary top-up, which in fact guarantees the employee 93% of their salary for that period.

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Parental leave is now a maximum of 26 weeks, which would be extended, to meet the Speech from the Throne commitment, to up to one year. Both the first and the second one would be applicable to the mother, so the mother could take maternity leave and parental leave, one subsequent to the other.

We also have care and nurturing leave, which is a leave-without-pay provision that allows a parent to take up to five years of leave without pay for care and nurturing of pre-school children.

Family-related leave is up to five days during one year.

Leave for elder care, which is recent, in fact is a leave without pay from three weeks up to five years. So that provision applies to what we would call or what you've heard Mrs. MacBride call the sandwich generation: people who have to care for elder persons and also care for children.

We also have a day care policy in the public service. We have fourteen on-site day cares across Canada that have been implemented over the years to support our employees.

Other types of programs we have that were introduced are as follows.

Leave with income averaging was introduced in the 1995 budget and subsequently agreed to with our union colleagues. It is a flexibility that allows an employee to take between five weeks and three months of leave each year and have their salary averaged over the twelve-month period. It has proven to be fairly successful, at least in the last two or three years, when we've had an increase in take-up rates.

We also have part-time and job-sharing options. Job sharing is essentially part-time employees sharing one job.

A variable work week has been in the collective agreement for some time. Not only are we talking about flexible hours of work, where one employee could request to have start times and finish times that vary, but employees could ask that their work schedule not be the standard five-day work week. It varies from collective agreement to collective agreement; it could go to four days a week in some instances.

[Translation]

We have other policies which are not necessarily directly related to family responsibilities. I don't have a list of them here, but they are in the schedule I handed out. They include things like education leave, telework and more flexible hours and self-financed leave. All these benefits are available to employees.

[English]

Why is programming important for us at the public service? It's important to meet our commitment in terms of the Speech from the Throne. It's important that we do evaluate how we benchmark with other employers. It's important that we adjust our benefits according to the needs of our changing population; I've alluded to younger workers. And it's important for us that we identify the needs of our population, evaluate the take-up rate, and adjust the benefits to ensure they meet the needs of our clientele.

It's also an objective we have to ensure the public service maintains its status as an exceptional workplace or a workplace of choice, to ensure that in the totality of what we would call compensation and working conditions we offer to prospective employees we're perceived as being competitive. It's evident that in some instances our working conditions will be average, if I think in terms of salary. In other instances, when we're talking about flexibility of working arrangements, it could mean in this instance that this would be a leading-edge benefit that we would have in terms of selling the federal public service as a workplace of choice.

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In terms of our challenges, we have committed to, as I mentioned, working closely in collaboration with our colleagues in Human Resources Development in the promotion and research agenda. So we will therefore be sharing extensively with our colleagues and with other employers all of the policies, employee guides, collective agreement articles, publicity information, to ensure that we provide as much visibility as can be afforded to this initiative. We will also use some of the fora that we have, as an employer, to share experiences with colleagues; and I'm thinking of a federal-provincial meeting that we have of Treasury Board employers at the end of May. So we would use those various fora to share our experiences and to foster an exchange of information with key partners.

I've alluded to the demographic issue. Currently our young workforce, or the workforce we have that is under the age of 30, is only 9%. Our younger workforce represents 26% of working Canadians, so it's evident that we have to ensure that we market and adjust our benefits to attract these younger workers in order to make the public service a representative workplace.

I've added culture. It's important for us, in terms of communication, that we have a communication drive for our own managers and our own employees. Because of workload, because of high service standards, in some instances it has been difficult for managers to maintain quality service to Canadians and try to reconcile the needs and requests of employees. Through our promotion effort we will try to emphasize the importance of those measures for employees in terms of the impact it has in terms of retention, the impact it has in terms of our recruitment, and the impact it has in terms of our harmonious relations with unions. We will also be working in collaboration with our union colleagues. As you know, the federal public service is highly unionized. In some cases, when we're talking about salary top-ups, if there are requests we will be including them at the table and discussing them with union colleagues.

What we will be doing in the close future is automatically extending parental leave periods to meet with the Speech from the Throne. I've alluded to the fact that what we have now is parental leave up to 26 weeks, so those will be adjusted. Salary top-ups will be discussed, if they are being discussed, at the negotiating table, taking into account all the types of costs that relate to collective agreements. We will be promoting family-friendly measures. We will be identifying areas where we may need to adjust some of those benefits. And we will be consulting significantly with a number of stakeholders to advance further this agenda.

[Translation]

That is what I had to say, Mr. Chairman. If members of the committee have questions, it would be our pleasure to respond.

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The Chair: Thank you very much.

[English]

Mr. Lowther, perhaps you could start, and then Madam Gagnon.

Mr. Eric Lowther (Calgary Centre, Canadian Alliance): Sure.

Thanks for the presentation. I'm not really well versed on all the nuances of your policies, so I'm going to ask some questions that are going to expose that pretty quickly here.

You made reference to a number of programs you have, from part-time variable work week to leave of absence for caring up to five years, quite a suite of what we're calling family-friendly initiatives. What I was curious about is whether you have any numbers on the take-up rate. You have, let's say, 1,000 employees. Out of 1,000, how many of these would actually be accessing them? Are they window dressing with maybe 2% out of the 1,000 or something, or are they really a major part of working in the public service that people would opt for?

Mr. Michel Papineau: I can answer some of the questions that you have.

Evidently in a number of flexible working arrangements the cost of maintaining adequate databases would be fairly extensive. So what we have in some instances is data that relate directly to our pay system, where, if a person goes on maternity leave or takes any type of leave, then we have some information. For telework and variable work weeks, our information database is very small.

I'll give you examples of maternity leave for 1997-98 and 1998-99. I don't have duration in terms of those, but in 1997-98 we had 2,324 persons, and in 1998-99, 2,831 persons.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Can you tell me out of a total of what possible number, to make it meaningful for me?

Mr. Michel Papineau: We have presently 180,000 employees. But as I mentioned, with program review and the freeze we have in terms of recruitment, the average age in the public service is 43 years old. So the number of persons within that age bracket is much smaller than one would normally have.

Mr. Eric Lowther: So we're talking about a 2% take-up rate.

Mr. Michel Papineau: It would vary. That's what we have in 1997-98. It could have been significantly more eight or ten years ago when the average age of the public service was younger.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Do you think it's trending down, then, the people who are making use of these family-friendly policies?

Mr. Michel Papineau: At least from the research we've seen, the fact that an employer would have a good array of these types of benefits is key in order to be able to attract younger workers. So if one did not have these types of benefits, one would not be able to compete on the market. So it is important from a competitive perspective that an employer have a number of these types of benefits, and that's why the comparison was done by the Conference Board.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Yes, so there's an attraction to bring on new people because you offer this. I would think it would appeal to certain types of potential employees who are planning a family or maybe in the middle of family or whatever, whereas others might be looking for strictly a larger paycheque and don't need the benefits. So somewhat by having the benefits, you're going to be more attractive to some than to others, based on personal circumstances obviously.

But in your overall employee base, 170,000-and-some, going back to my earlier question, beyond the attractive nature for new employees, do you have a feel generally that the take-up rate of people accessing family-friendly policies within the public service is trending down just because of the aging population and not as many people having kids as they get older within the public service or something? I'm curious as to whether it's trending in that direction.

We keep adding on these things.

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Mr. Michel Papineau: I'd say it varies with the cycle in life of our employee population.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Yes.

Mr. Michel Papineau: I have alluded to retention as well as recruitment.

So the needs of our employees vary, depending on their cycle in life. Our objective as an employer is to ensure that we meet those needs and that we target areas where we feel we need to be competitive. I've alluded to younger workers; we are underrepresented in terms of younger workers.

It's evident that when we do recruitment at universities, the federal public service won't be offering salaries similar to those of some private sector employees. So salary is not going to be our advantage. Our advantage is interesting work, and variety in terms of movement, work, and career; pride in working for Canada and for Canadians; and the types of benefits, the flexible benefits that one would have in terms of working conditions.

Mr. Eric Lowther: If we can take this 2% as a sort of thumbnail of people who make access to these family-friendly benefits, realizing that's only the maternity leave component, so maybe there are other things that aren't captured, we can maybe even double it to 4%, to be generous.

I think I know the answer to this, but I thought I'd ask it anyway: Do you have any estimates, even, of the hard dollar costs of extending these types of benefits—you know, to have to train somebody who's going to be there for a short period of time, or making commitments to hold a job position open for five years if somebody goes on a caring leave of absence, or the challenges of managing the extra payroll or administrative costs of having split shifts or part-time shifts? Is there any dollar assessment of the impacts of these programs?

Mr. Michel Papineau: Our approach has always been a total compensation approach. So whenever we do comparisons with outside stakeholders, all of our benefits—usage and salaries and pensions—are included in terms of the costs of doing business for a specific group, and those are taken into consideration in negotiating work. A number of those conditions are negotiated with our union colleagues, so whenever we sit at the table, we take into account all of our costs from an employer perspective. And all of our costs include all usage of all of the benefits.

And we're only looking at a portion of the benefits. In terms of vacation leave, we haven't talked about vacation leave, but that's an important aspect of family-friendly measures.

So all of our benefits are taken into account in terms of the total cost of those benefits, in comparison with the outside market, in negotiating our compensation benefits. In some instances, salary may not be as good as that of some private sector colleagues. Some leave might be a little bit more important. But in the total we should compare with outside markets.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Do you actually try to quantify that? If I'm looking at two job offers, I get x dollars here with very few benefits, but when I look at the public service, I get lower dollars but I have these benefits. This benefit is worth some dollar figure and this benefit is worth that much, so we can kind of net it out on a common denominator of value expressed in dollars. Do you do that kind of thing?

Mr. Michel Papineau: We in fact did benchmarking of best practices last year and learned that our competitors are doing that. Some private sector companies even have on their websites a master index that helps any employee compare any job offers that they'd be getting from competitors.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Interesting.

Mr. Michel Papineau: We're not there yet, I must admit. That is something we're looking forward to sharing with our employees first, to demonstrate to our employees that in total they might be getting the impression that they're not fairly treated—often we're in the press in terms of salary issues, and our colleagues do identify salary as a key issue—but the other aspects of it compare very favourably.

But we're not there yet. We should be, in that we should be able to share quickly with our employees what grosso modo are the large costs of a number of those measures that they need to add up the salary—

Mr. Eric Lowther: Yes. I think that would be important.

The final thing.... Maybe I'll come back; I'll let somebody else have a turn. But how many of these family-friendly initiatives, of which you listed a whole bunch here, are driven more by unions and union negotiation than a management buy-in to the whole program? You know, your arm is twisted into doing it; if they can't get more dollars out of you because you're under some tight fiscal constraints, they'll say, well, we'll try to get some other benefits, which has really driven a large part of these.

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I'm not asking this with any agenda. I'm just curious to know.

Mr. Michel Papineau: Over the last years, I would venture to say, in some instances, because we have to remain competitive as an employer, whatever we would get at the table as an employer we would want to consider whether it's important for employees. In other instances....

Take pre-retirement transition leave, which is a leave we introduced in budget legislation in 1995, where employees could take up to two days' leave each week without penalizing their pension when they're two years from retirement, or leave with income averaging. These were in fact imposed by budget legislation in 1995 because we felt it would alleviate the effect of job loss on employees. Telework would be another example.

In some instances, some of those benefits were employer-driven. They met with our objective in terms of where we would want to go and what were some of the imperatives the employer had.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Would you say, though, the majority were union-initiated? I mean, that wouldn't be out of the norm. They're in touch with their members and bring forward the issues.

Mr. Michel Papineau: Yes. I would say a significant number of those are negotiated in collective agreements.

The Chair: Thanks, Mr. Lowther.

[Translation]

Ms. Gagnon.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon (Québec, BQ): I believe we must be competitive, but as a society we also have the duty to meet the needs of families. Everyone knows how hard it is for women in the year 2000 to strike a balance between work and children. Also, young fathers are more involved today than were their fathers from our generation. I feel we must do everything we can, through either the private or public sectors, to help women and young fathers strike a balance between family and work obligations. It is not as easy as it may seem to juggle both work and family life when you have to quickly switch from one to the other.

I have a question regarding maternity and parental leave as presently provided by the government. Do public servants receive 55% of their salary under parental leave paid through Human Resources Development Canada, or is it more?

Mr. Michel Papineau: As far as I know, and Mr. Gagnon will correct me if I'm mistaken, for maternity leave, which extends over 26 weeks, we pay the difference between what employment insurance pays and 93% of the employee's salary. For parental leave, I'm told it is 93% of the salary for up to 10 weeks.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Fine. You have answered my question.

Did I hear you say that 2% of public servants take advantage of the different types of leave? Is that correct?

Mr. Michel Papineau: I gave you the figures. Over the past two years, approximately 2,500 people went on maternity leave.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: What percentage of public servants are eligible for this type of leave?

Mr. Michel Papineau: We tried to identify the eligible target group, but it was hard. We did not have a single indicator. Given the provisions of the Privacy Act, all we could do was estimate the number of people based on their average age. Therefore, we did not have a mechanism to help us define that target group.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: If it was 2% of the 9% of young people...

Mr. Michel Papineau: Nine percent are under 30 years of age.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: All right.

Mr. Michel Papineau: You have to be 40 years old or younger to qualify for parental leave.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Or even 45 years old.

Mr. Michel Papineau: Yes, things are changing. So, who do you target?

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Our chairman is living proof of that.

Voices: Ah, ah!

Mr. Michel Papineau: So, we don't have the necessary data to tell you what the target group is. However, given that 93% of the salary is paid, those who want to take maternity leave can afford to do so.

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Ms. Christiane Gagnon: My second question as opposition critic on parental leave somewhat relates to that matter. The Minister has said that she generously doubled the length of parental leave, but that might not help someone who works part time and whose spouse does not have a steady job; she may not be able to afford to stay home for a year if she only gets 55% of her salary. I forget the number of weeks, but they say that many mothers soon go back to work. So it would be interesting to find out how many people are eligible for parental leave but don't take advantage of it. It shows that salary is a factor.

Mr. Michel Papineau: That's not our case.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: I know that in the private sector, because of Human Resources Development Canada's parental leave provisions, salary is indeed one reason why women or fathers don't take the leave.

I've often heard it said that mothers take parental leave much more often than fathers do, because they earn less than their spouses and because no man would agree to take leave and collect only 55% of his salary. So salary seems to be one reason why people choose not to take parental leave.

Mr. Michel Papineau: But in our case, public servants get 93% of their salary for 36 weeks, so salary should not be a factor preventing them from taking leave.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Regarding the 93% figure, is there a salary cap? Is a person eligible for 93% of her salary, but only up to a maximum of $42,000 or $50,000, for instance, or is there no ceiling?

Mr. Michel Papineau: It doesn't matter how much she makes.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: That's another problem with Human Resources Development Canada's program. I believe it is capped at $39,000. We would like to see that ceiling increased.

In any case, I can only approve of the policy, even though I'm not planning on having anymore children. I feel we should...

A Voice: [Editor's Note: Inaudible]

Some Hon. Members: Ah, ah!

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: If that should happen, it could only be through divine intervention.

I think we all must contribute to helping our young people... There used to be 8 or 12 children per family; today, you might have three or four kids. In today's competitive world, women have to work outside the home to make ends meet, and we must find ways to help them. Even if some people rely on themselves to find help, we need institutional support providing stable and quality child care services. Child care often looks like a patchwork quilt. After a year, grandmother cannot look after the child anymore, or the babysitter moved or she was not up to the job.

If I were between 20 and 30 years old and thinking about having a child, I would ask myself if I would be able to find a stable caregiver. As a future parent, that's what I would worry about. Would I be able to keep my job? Would I be able to maintain a balance between work and my private life?

Of course, we would like private sector workers not to have these worries, but I'm glad that your program is very supportive of families.

Mr. Michel Papineau: I want to set the record straight on something. I think I said 26 weeks plus 10. Maternity leave is 17 weeks and 10 of the 26 weeks fall under parental leave.

A little earlier, it was said that the public service must reflect values our society holds dear. This factor comes into play when some policies are implemented. Despite the fact that the cost of these policies is reflected in the employees' overall payroll, it is one of the instruments used to convey such values and to try to convey them to other employers. We try to share our practices with other employers. In co-operation with our colleagues from Employment Canada, we will explain our policy and our guidelines to other employers to show them that they work.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Regarding the job situation, my Reform colleague said that these programs were only available to 2% of the population and that they cost a lot of money. But I think that young people today want a certain degree of stability and that a company's benefits can be a deciding factor for a potential employee. Do you have any data on this? For instance, if I had to choose between working for a company which provided benefits, but at a lower salary, and one which provided none, which one would I choose? Faced with this choice, what would a young person do? Would this person opt for the business which did not provide any benefits or the one which did, but at a lower salary?

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Mr. Michel Papineau: Obviously, if both places paid the same salary, benefits would be the deciding factor. In fact, they rank among the top five employment conditions for young people in today's job market. Increasingly, people want to strike a balance between their private and work lives. So, salary being equal, in those conditions, and if the work is potentially interesting... Of course, young people want to do interesting things and work for a business which will allow them to keep their skills up to date. So training and employability are important factors. When you talk about job conditions, the quality of computer equipment, for instance, can be a deciding factor. So, if the salary is the same, these types of job conditions can be a deciding factor for potential employees.

The Chair: Ms. Gagnon, I will now give the floor to Mr. Jackson.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Yes.

The Chair: Fine.

[English]

Mr. Jackson.

Mr. Ovid L. Jackson (Bruce—Grey, Lib.): Are you through, Christiane?

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. Ovid Jackson: I partially agree with Christiane in that young people do have multiple jobs. When you are young and going through things, you don't have the same resources you do by the time you hit middle age, and that's the time when you need a lot of resources.

But I want to remind Christiane that women are taking over now. They're actually adjusting very quickly to the changing economy and styles of work. Unfortunately, they're the ones who have to have the babies. Well, I'm not sure if that's unfortunate or not; that's actually quite good. But guys can't have them.

You sometimes hear cultural stereotypes. You sometimes hear a lot of male doctors, for instance, saying that women shouldn't be in that profession because they'll take more time off. Well, I know a lot of new-age, sensitive guys who will take just as much time off or maybe even more. So I don't think you can stigmatize people like that any more.

The question I have is with regard to something that I think is innovative. It's going to be off the wall, I think, but I'll ask it anyway. You showed us a lot of different programs and lot of the things you do for people, but I think what's really required in today's world is almost a bit of counselling. I think when young people get together they get on a treadmill. They have two cars, and somebody picks up the baby, and they're rushing all over the place. If they sat down and looked at a program of flexible hours, say, or using the computer at home, or one person staying home....

And it's not necessarily the guy. In most cases that I know of—and I'm a former high school teacher—it's the women who are making more money than the guys nowadays, because the guys are sitting around waiting for these construction jobs that don't show up any more, jobs where you use these big machines and a lot of big muscles. Women just go ahead and have the babies and so on. That's partially why they just go ahead with their lives. Otherwise, they'd be waiting for these guys who are still hanging around waiting for construction jobs.

I know; I taught. I was a technical teacher, so I know what's been happening. I know from experience that technical stuff regarding cars, for instance, is very complex. Women adjusted better to sitting and reading diagrams along with thyristors and semiconductors and all that stuff that's required. The guys would just say, look, give me something to do. But things don't work that way any more.

I've always felt that along with your program you might need a counsellor to sit down with these young people, or even with your own staff members who are on a treadmill, running all around in all directions. You're actually working a little harder now with the computer when the computer was supposed to take the job away.

In your travels or experiences, are there any movements in this direction?

Mr. Michel Papineau: There are perhaps three or four areas I could allude to. One is the orientation program we have for new employees. We have colleagues, called union representatives, who do support employees in terms of some of the choices they have to make. Each employee has a pay and benefits adviser in terms of asking questions as to what applies to them.

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As well, as I was alluding to earlier, we're trying to have an employee-friendly Intranet site. All of these benefits are in different collective agreements and different policies, and it's a jungle to try to find out what all of those mean. With some of the departments we'll be evolving a pilot to put on a publiservice website a very user-friendly Intranet site.

For instance, employees could click and find out what are flexible working arrangements. They could quickly see all of those benefits in a very easily understood and comprehensive manner. In some cases, the employer policies are not in collective agreements and collective agreements do not include employer policies.

We're trying to pilot that aspect of it so that all employees would have easy access to the benefits and to the communication packages that one would have. Often when we have an employer policy we attach a list of questions and answers for employees or for managers in terms of what's of key interest to them.

So we will be piloting this project this summer with Agriculture Canada, the objective being to have it public-service-wide next year. When we talk about benchmarking in terms of the leading edge and supporting employees, that's one of the avenues that we see we would want to evolve.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: How are you doing with your recruitment? I know you actually have programs in terms of universities. How is that program working out? Are you still drafting, going in and interviewing people?

Mr. Michel Papineau: I don't have that data directly with me. We do have a subcommittee of deputy ministers examining our recruitment strategy, ensuring that from all departments and from the corporate perspective we come out with a corporate strategy in terms of who we would want to target and how we target them. That process is evolving now in terms of recommendations that would be made from the working group to what we call a subcommittee of deputy ministers, a COSO subcommittee, which will then evolve the strategy in consultation with the Public Service Commission, our recruitment arm for the public service.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: That's pretty well la relève. And how is that doing?

Mr. Michel Papineau: Yes, it's a revised portion of it in terms of maybe being updated or being targeted to some specific areas. With those recruitment challenges we've identified pockets of key skills areas where we feel we might be having shortages, and we've ensured that there are targeted recruitment strategies for those.

On the other hand, in terms of other subcommittees—for instance, what we're doing vis-à-vis this committee—we're trying to package the benefits or the working conditions of the public service in such a way that we would design employer “branding”, as we would put it, so that when our recruitment arm goes outside to recruit employees, prospective employees don't only talk about this job versus this job but about all of the advantages of working for this employer. That work is going on now in a number of subcommittees.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: What about people with disabilities? Is there a component? Are you attracting any? There are lots of talented disabled people.

Mr. Michel Papineau: It's evident that the recruitment strategy will include our employment equity issues. There's a significant amount of work. We will be publishing, with our colleagues from the employment equity group, a guide to employment equity for employees and managers. It will include as an annex all of those flexible working conditions to be able to support recruitment and retention of employment equity targets.

This booklet, which I think will be called “Everyone Matters”—they haven't finalized it—will be published in June or in September this year by the employment equity division of the Treasury Board.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: Okay.

Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Before we thank you for coming, because we do have a second piece of work to do today, the work plan on communities, perhaps you would permit me just one observation and two questions.

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The first observation is that there's a very interesting group of employers within the federal government that we might be thinking about, and that of course is MPs and senators. The rules that I think you described do not apply to us as employers, yet if we're going to be model, if anyone should be model, it might well be argued that it should be those of us who employ people on the Hill, if anyone is to be sensitized. So we might think about that for future work and future research. That should get them.

My two questions are interrelated. It's the whole issue of, in a very large organization with a complex number of rules and a great variety of working conditions, everything from National Defence to you-name-it, how proactive can Treasury Board be as the government employer in terms of getting ahead, in terms of becoming a best practice? That's one question. How fast can you move, or is it always, just by the sheer scale of the thing, going to lag?

The second question is how proactive is Treasury Board or the government in actually going out and soliciting, researching, and doing focus groups on civil servants, on the people who work for us? So instead of waiting, there was the question, are you mostly driven by union demands? That's one way of expressing the will of workers, for sure, but I would have thought one way of avoiding conflict might be to anticipate it. How much of that can you do, and is there any chance you can do more of it in the future if we're to be a model? Do you feel you have a renewed mandate to be more urgent about the federal government being a model employer?

Mr. Michel Papineau: I would say yes to your second question. One of our objectives is also to renew our partnership with our union colleagues.

We have had discussions in what we'd call, in our jargon, blue sky for the National Joint Council, which is a council of unions and the Treasury Board that talks about working conditions other than working conditions that are negotiated at the bargaining table, the objective being to renew this forum to ensure we can talk openly about issues that we would want to advance and on which we would want to advance our agenda.

It is our objective to use that initiative, and we've also initiated early discussions with some union colleagues to use this initiative to see if we can advance the agenda in two ways. One is in terms of trying to harmonize what we have as working conditions that are flexible, that support families, that we could harmonize in terms of our communications and marketing exercise. Our union colleagues are very good in terms of communications and marketing. They have journals to their membership that are far-reaching, so they are very valid partners in terms of communication promotion agenda. We would also want to involve them in terms of, when we talk about assessing needs of our population, conducting focus groups, being able to say to our employees.... And do it jointly, because it's a very fine line when you're in collective bargaining what the employer's and the union officials' responsibilities are. So we will be carrying on those focus groups with our union colleagues.

The Chair: On that note, I'm going to thank you very much on behalf of the committee. It has been a very useful first discussion. I suspect it will not be our last discussion with you. As your plans evolve, we'd like to be kept informed.

What I think is important for our other colleagues to know is that we still have a vote in 30 minutes. Do not ask me why. Do not ask why the bell tolls; it's only tolling for thee. This means that, if we may thank you for being with us, you are excused.

We're now going to move into a consideration of future plans. It's not by any means a closed session. If you find this kind of stuff riveting, you are free to stay, but you may have other things to do, and we thank you both for coming.

Mr. Michel Papineau: Thank you.

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The Chair: Colleagues, in order that we take advantage of the time that remains before our vote, I'm going to ask Ms. Mackenzie to give us a two-minute summary of the plan, which was circulated to you. I am told there have been a few changes even since that plan because of some preliminary work we've been doing.

Do you want to remind us how we got to the plan?

Ms. Julie Mackenzie (Committee Researcher): My understanding is that at your last formal meeting in which you discussed future business, there was an agreement to approach the coming sessions on two tracks, one being the track we've been following the last few sessions, which is family-friendly workplace policy. The other track is looking at community-based models and best practices of what could be done in terms of implementing a national action plan on early childhood development.

With that in mind, this has been the third session on family-friendly workplace policies, so what we had discussed then would be, starting with the next meeting, to begin looking at community-based programs and services.

What we are proposing is to have the “understanding the early years” project, which is being implemented by Human Resources Development Canada in five pilot projects across Canada. They're looking at community-based programs across Canada in various communities, and they're also looking at indicators and feeding back through a loop into the communities on what's working, what isn't working, and so on.

After that, the change is for the week of May 17. We had proposed Janet Whillns of the Success by Six program, Clyde Hertzman, who's a very well-renowned researcher in this area at the University of British Columbia, and someone, possibly the minister—

Mr. Eric Lowther: If I may interrupt, I'm sorry, but I've lost my copy of this document and I want to follow along with what you're saying, so I'm going to be rude and get one. Thank you.

Ms. Julie Mackenzie: I'll be very brief. I'll just highlight the change to this. Clyde Hertzman, who is the second witness proposed for May 17, unfortunately is not available on May 17, so we were going to suggest that he be scheduled for June 14, when we were planning to have a national round table on community-based models. He would be equally appropriate for that session because he's very familiar with this area and has been active in his community in these types of models.

Do you want me to continue to go through the list?

The Chair: Sure.

Ms. Julie Mackenzie: I'll just flag the next one that might be a subject of discussion, which is June 7. The chair of the subcommittee on disabilities, Carolyn Bennett, has proposed doing a joint session with her subcommittee on looking at children with disabilities in the area of early child development. So we have scheduled—

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: June 7?

Ms. Julie Mackenzie: June 7.

The Chair: A joint meeting has been suggested.

Ms. Julie Mackenzie: Yes.

[English]

So that would include CICH, the Canadian Institute of Child Health, which has done considerable work in this area. They will be releasing, probably a week after that, a report on the progress of Canada's children, which will include substantial information on disability. So it will be very up to date in terms of being a witness.

CCSD, the Canadian Council on Social Development, has written extensively on the area of children with disabilities, and in particular, Sherri Torjman has specifically referred to ensuring that children with disabilities be included in government policy dealing with early child development.

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Sharon Hope Irwin, of the SpeciaLink project in Nova Scotia, has also been suggested as someone who would be a very good witness. That was suggested by the Carolyn Bennett subcommittee.

The Chair: Then the 14th would be an attempt to do, in a sense, a cross-country roundup of communities, une représentation à travers le pays, that are doing a good job and are leaders in this area. I think you've been in touch with Madam Gagnon's office for suggestions from Quebec, where there are some particularly good examples. We want to bring people together to understand what best practices look like. If there is to be a national action plan on early childhood development at the community level signed off by December, we want to know what kinds of communities this would lead to and how we can reinforce the good things and expand and diffuse their efforts. That was the thought.

I should also mention that in a slightly odd arrangement, I missed this. I arrived late yesterday at the meeting of the main committee, and they had approved our budget. But we hadn't actually asked them to do that. This is convenient. It means that should we decide to move in this direction, we do not have to go back to them for money to bring the witnesses in from places such as British Columbia.

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: I timed this so that the representative from British Columbia would be here. We have a vote at about 4:55, so we have half an hour. So life's okay.

We're just going over the proposed work plan. There have been a few changes, including—and this will interest you, Libby—that Clyde Hertzman, who we'd hoped to have earlier, will now come later with the community round tables on June 14. He couldn't come because he's going to be travelling in Europe, I think.

Ms. Libby Davies: Who is he? I don't know him.

The Chair: Clyde Hertzman is in Delta—yes, in Fraser north. He is both a researcher and an epidemiologist who has been mixed up with Fraser Mustard, so he understands these issues theoretically very well. But he has also been a community mobilizer of one of the five Understanding the Early Years communities across Canada. So that's the British Columbia one. He's very much involved with the Windows of Opportunity group of Lois and the Early Years Action Group.

Ms. Libby Davies: I don't know him. After I read the work plan, in lieu of him—because I didn't know who the heck he was—I was going to suggest Dr. Yelland as sort of an on-the-ground model of how governments should be working together for early childhood development.

The Chair: It's all arbitrary, and these can be moved about. I was thinking we might want to invite Lois Yelland to the June 14 meeting. The particular reason for Clyde, which is arbitrary, was that having had Margo Craig-Garrison the previous week talking about the HRD Understanding the Early Years project, he would come in as a sort of eloquent example of one of those communities and who also had some of the theoretical knowledge. But it was a purely arbitrary decision. Indeed, if we found somebody from Quebec that could go in there.... It's all a little bit arbitrary.

Ms. Libby Davies: I think someone from Quebec would be excellent, because we know that things are actually working there.

The other thing I would be interested in is that when we had Judith Maxwell here, I made reference to a family support centre in New Brunswick that is funded by HRDC, and I would sure love to know how they're doing. It was in Judith Maxwell's presentation. I questioned her about it, and she said she was going to get me some more information, which I haven't received. I would be curious to know how they got federal funding and how they're doing.

But I think it would be really interesting to have someone from Quebec who is on the ground.

The Chair: I think it's crucially important, because they're such leaders.

Ms. Libby Davies: Yes.

The Chair: What I was going to suggest is that if we have a general direction, I hope people will come up with additional names for any of the sessions. We'll try to fit them in as we can.

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I don't want to anticipate what you might want to do, Eric, but I think you know Dr. Genuis and his work in Calgary, and you might want to think about whether he and his group would fit in on May 31, for example. It's that kind of suggestion we need. So we need all of your help.

Mr. Eric Lowther: What are the mechanics here, John? If we have a list of people of the Vanier Institute type, the academic research type, do we submit that to you or to the clerk?

The Chair: Why don't you just give it to the clerk. Perhaps you could give us a little flexibility, because we don't have all the details in terms of scheduling. We'll try to fit them in under themes. I was thinking that the Calgary folk...I can't remember what that outfit is called. What's it called?

Mr. Eric Lowther: It's called the National Foundation for Family Research and Education.

The Chair: I think we might be able get them on for May 31, but we may have to play around a bit, if you give us that flexibility.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Yes.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: Mr. Chair, can I move that the work plan be approved subject to all these little adjustments you're going to make? Would that be appropriate?

The Chair: Sure. Hold that until I see.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: I have to get to my office, but I don't want to leave before you vote.

[Translation]

The Chair: Ms. Gagnon would like to add something.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: [Editor's Note: Inaudible]

[English]

The Chair: Okay, do I have general approval for the direction, subject to modification?

[Translation]

Yes.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: I'm not sure I understood everything. You're looking for witnesses for the May 31 meeting to talk to the importance of the role both parents and the government play. Is that right?

The Chair: We're trying to match witnesses with subjects. Frankly, it's really quite arbitrary, since we could also hear from community groups, either before or after. We're trying to be consistent with our themes, if you will, in our choice of witnesses and subjects, as far as that is possible. If you would like to submit names of witnesses to speak to the subject of the role of parents, we would ideally have them come to that meeting, but we could make accommodations, insofar as possible.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: In my riding, for instance, an organization has created a type of home for children.

The Chair: Yes.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: They are taught parenting skills. The children are taught how to feed kids and how to help them do their homework, for instance. So, this organization helps parents as well as children.

The Chair: In my opinion, that would be a community organization, which should testify on the 14th. The May 31 meeting will be more theoretical. We won't be discussing specific examples.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Fine. So, at that meeting, we would discuss theories about the role of government, for instance.

The Chair: Yes.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Some people say that the family rather than government should play that role and that there is already too much government intervention in day care. There's no consensus on that issue.

The Chair: That's why I'm suggesting we hear the Calgary group on the May 31 meeting, since it will argue that point of view.

[English]

Libby.

Ms. Libby Davies: In the interest of trying to get as many people as possible—

The Chair: Within the budget.

Ms. Libby Davies: —yes, within the budget, we would set up panels. Is that right?

The Chair: Yes.

Ms. Libby Davies: How many does that usually involve? Is it three or four witnesses?

The Chair: Three is probably the maximum, given the amount of time available and to allow people enough time.

Can we have approval in principle?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: Is the budget approved that has already been approved? We love that. It's a little rough.

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: Thank you.

Back to you, Libby.

Ms. Libby Davies: For that one on the community-based stuff, if this guy Clyde Hertzman can't come but he can come to the round table, then I could suggest another person. I'll give you her number. Her name is Rita Chudnovsky. She's one of the key early childhood development people in B.C. She's national chair of a child care advocacy group. She would be a very good person. She's sort of based in community stuff.

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The Chair: Okay. What I would do is keep filtering those names in. Within the framework, we'll try to be as flexible as we can, but we don't want to overburden either the number of witnesses or the budget. Perhaps we could understand that we're just going to keep working informally like this and putting forward names for dates.

Class dismissed.