PACC Committee Report

OBSERVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

First Meeting (5 October 2000)

In his opening statement to the Committee, the Auditor General of Canada, Mr. L. Denis Desautels, presented the findings of the study on the federal government’s human resource management regime. The study revealed that the current framework governing the federal human resource management in the “core” public service is unduly complex and outdated. The framework is too rigid and procedural, not adapted at all to an environment that faces significant challenges in human resource management and in an increasingly competitive labour market.

Since 1962, the existing legislative and structural framework controlling the human resource management regime has been the focus of extensive review and research. A broad consensus has emerged on the need for comprehensive reform of the legislative framework and the administrative systems that support it. However, all previous attempts at reform have been limited to modest administrative initiatives that stayed within the confines of the legislative framework, leaving its fundamental structure essentially untouched. Despite agreement on the need to improve the human resource management regime, questions have been raised as to the practicality of legislative reforms.

The current framework suffers from the fractured responsibilities between the central agencies, line departments and the various other players. Nobody knows who is really responsible for taking charge of the initiatives to reform the human resource management regime, as well as reporting back to Parliament.

Public service staffing remains a major source of frustration to managers and employees alike. It takes too long to fill vacant positions. On average, the time required to fill a vacancy in the “core” public service can take between four to eight months, depending on whether the position to be filled is an existing position or a new position. For quasi-public organizations, it takes only 60 calendar days on average to fill a vacancy. In one case, a federal department, Revenue Canada, circumvented the problems in human resource management and staffing by converting to agency status ( i.e., Canada Customs and Revenue Agency), taking itself outside the legislative purview of the human resource management regime. This example serves as an indication of the difficulties associated with the current regime.

The federal public service is ageing and is currently under significant stress and strain. It must rejuvenate itself by attracting younger knowledge-based workers. To do so, it must offer interesting career opportunities while managing, at the same time, to satisfy changing expectations about the workplace. It must do this while competing with the private sector and other public sector jurisdictions.

 Managers need to have more authority in staffing but also be more accountable for their decisions. Furthermore, the human resource management regime must balance employee interests with the pressing need to modernize and streamline the processes for staffing and related recourse.

Recent developments in the human resource management regime include the increasing delegation of responsibilities to deputy ministers and the move towards a more collaborative and team-oriented management style initiated under the leadership of the Clerk of the Privy Council. In order to overcome the inherent difficulties in the delegation of powers, one must clearly assign each participant’s responsibilities and accountabilities to streamline and simplify the regime.

Specifically, the Public Service Commission is Parliament’s agent in preserving a non-partisan, merit-based, representative and professional public service. The Commission has multiple roles and responsibilities. The appropriate role it should play has been the subject of a number of reviews and studies, particularly in relationship to the Treasury Board as the employer of the civil service. The Commission has undertaken extensive consultations with its stakeholders as to what responsibilities it should assume. This has led to proposals to re-emphasize its core mandate of protecting the merit principle by focusing more on oversight responsibilities and moving away from its various operational roles. How the oversight role would change and whether its operational role is to be further restricted would be examined at a later date.

Another point is that the Public Service Commission, the Treasury Board and departments need to improve the content of their reports to Parliament. The Commission must better disclose the extent to which government-wide and departmental performance meets the objectives of the Public Service Employment Act. The Treasury Board Secretariat and departments need to improve their reporting on human resource management matters for which they are responsible ― in both what they are supposed to accomplish and what results they actually achieve.

The Committee was very interested in the comprehensive review of the legislative framework that controls the federal government’s human resource management regime. Some members wondered about the necessity and practicality of legislative reform considering the low level of political interest in this issue and the current state of labour‑management relations in the public service. Instead of government-wide legislative reform, some would rather consider administrative reform on a department-by-department basis.

Mrs. Barrados agreed that the issue was very complex but that it required immediate action. She indicated that while current government initiatives go in the right direction, there are limits to what they can achieve without legislative reform. In addition, they are too slow and don’t deal with the fundamental issues that need to be addressed. The first area that requires substantive reform is staffing. The government’s ability to hire and promote the right person to the right position in the public service has been curtailed by the slow accretion of amendments, legal precedents and re-interpretations to the regime’s legislative framework, considerably slowing down the staffing procedures. Reforming the staffing function will require legislative change and that involves Parliament. Although the federal government would prefer to reform the staffing function within the existing legislative framework, it is the view of the Auditor General that the only way to get significant improvement to the human resource management regime is through legislative reform.

Further, deputy ministers currently have little influence in managing their department’s human resources. Their roles and responsibilities with respect to departmental human resource management should be formalized.

As the head of the public service, the Clerk of the Privy Council is the one who should be leading the change to the human resource management regime because the Clerk possesses the required overview to understand how changes in one piece of legislation affect other pieces of legislation.

The Committee wondered if the current status of collective bargaining in the federal government could prove to be a major impediment to reforming the legislative framework. Members enquired how the current collective bargaining environment could impact the proposed reforms. How could we expect effective legislative reform, especially human resource management reform, if labour-management relations are adversarial? How could the public service recruit people in the knowledge-based economy if collective agreements restrict upward mobility of employees?

Ms. Barrados noted that the reluctance to implement comprehensive legislative reform stems partly from outstanding collective bargaining issues. The federal government is currently trying to resolve labour-management issues, especially in the area of reforming the universal job classification system. Mrs. Barrados notes that more needs to be done to improve flexibility in staffing. In terms of current initiatives, the Advisory Committee on Labour Management Relations in the Federal Public Service, chaired by John L. Fryer, established in the fall of 1999, has been mandated to review the state of labour-management relations in the federal public service. On 26 May 2000, it tabled a first report identifying the outstanding labour-management issues that need to be addressed. A second report was tabled in June 2001 that contained recommendations designed to address the issues raised by the first report.

Members also enquired as to what a streamlined human resource management regime would look like. Did it involve making the whole system uniform or did it consist of a more decentralized model of human resource management? Many models could be considered. At one extreme, one could contemplate a totally centralized and uniform public service system with a single job classification and remuneration system that applies to all federal departments and agencies. Mr. Desautels believed that such a system, while simple in appearance, would in reality be very complex to implement and it would deprive deputy ministers of the discretion to manage their own human resources. Considering the existing conflict between central agencies and individual departments on staffing powers and responsibilities, a more decentralized public service regime might be considered by granting each department more flexibility in terms of job classification and remuneration systems. The question is: what kind of human resource management model would the federal government and Parliament like to see evolve out of the reforms? Major players need to clarify and simplify their respective roles and responsibilities. It is important that parliamentarians provide their input on this issue. After considering the testimony, the Committee makes the following recommendations:

RECOMMENDATION 1:

That the Government of Canada immediately address the outstanding labour-management issues in order to remove any potential obstacles to the undertaking of a comprehensive legislative review of the human resource management regime.

RECOMMENDATION 2:

That the Government of Canada initiate consultations with all key players regarding what type of human resource management model should be adopted for the federal government, and, once completed, report their findings and recommendations back to Parliament.

RECOMMENDATION 3:

That, once the type of human resource management model is established, the Government of Canada, and in particular, the Clerk of the Privy Council, initiate a comprehensive legislative review of the human resource management regime.

RECOMMENDATION 4:

That the legislative review, at the very least, consider the streamlining of the public service staffing function, together with the formalization of responsibilities and accountabilities of deputy ministers in the management of the human resources with their respective departments. Once the review is completed, the government should report back to Parliament so that its recommendations are considered in order to improve the federal government’s human resource management regime.

RECOMMENDATION 5:

That the Public Service Commission together with all stakeholders, including parliamentarians review and clarify its roles and responsibilities, particularly with regards to the protection of the merit principle in the public service.