Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to address the finance committee today.

My name is Mark Weber. I appear before you today as a member of the national board of directors of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which represents 245,000 members, most of whom are federal public service employees. Many also work for post-secondary institutions, territorial governments, non-profits, indigenous organizations and even some private employers. I am also the national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, a component of the PSAC, which represents over 12,000 employees of the Canada Border Services Agency. That includes 9,000 members of the border services group, who have now been without a contract for two years.

On the positive side, budget 2024 provides significant funding for post-secondary students, workers and institutions, especially in remote locations. This is good news for our members in that sector, and we congratulate the government on these announcements.

We suggest that the list of eligible professions include occupational therapists. Also, if not already included in the definition of “nurse”, please include registered practical nurses, RPNs; licensed practical nurses, LPNs; and registered nurses. Ideally, distribution of these funds would happen no later than 30 days after the act receives royal assent.

Bill C-69 provides language that clarifies in the Canada Labour Code that employers are responsible for properly identifying employees as such, instead of skirting responsibilities by claiming that they are contractors. This is also a welcome and long-overdue change for Canadian workers.

We are also pleased to see language around an employee's right to disconnect during non-work hours. Unfortunately, this section makes some of the same mistakes that the Ontario government has made in its changes to Ontario's Employment Standards Act and should include minimum standards that apply to all workers and employers, along with meaningful penalties for breaches of these standards.

While the elements mentioned above are certainly positive, we are concerned that the budget and the bill leave out some important aspects. There is no money for Phoenix damages or increased funding to hire and retain more staff to deal with the nearly half-million Phoenix cases still in the backlog currently. There is no money to increase capacity at the pay equity commission, which is sorely behind.

Even more concerning are two issues that are included in Bill C-69.

First, changes are made to the Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act. We understand from different sources that these are housekeeping changes made so that the Treasury Board can move money to and from members' plans in the case of a non-permitted surplus, or possibly in the case of increased draws from the plan or reduced revenues. The federal government would do well to remember that any surplus that may be realized will have been built on employee contributions. Before any move is made to use that surplus for government spending, it is essential that members be consulted and that inequities be rectified.

One such inequity is the differential treatment for public safety occupations. The PSAC has long called on the federal government to provide border officers, federal defence firefighters and fisheries officers with pension provisions equivalent to their peers in public safety divisions of other departments and governments. Right now, CBSA officers, federal firefighters and fisheries officers must work at least five years longer than their peers, leaving them at increased risks for occupational diseases and injuries, and making recruitment and retention increasingly difficult as well. The fact that the federal government continues to refuse to implement the simple legislative changes that would correct this inequity is deeply insulting to our members. Budget 2024 is a chance for the government to change this.

We also have questions about proposed changes to the corrections act to permit the housing of immigration detainees in federal correctional facilities. As the bargaining agent for CBSA, Correctional Services and immigration workers, PSAC must be consulted on any changes to job classifications, locations of work and responsibilities. Who will provide what service to detainees under this new framework? How will jobs interact and overlap, and will the government confirm that services will not be contracted out? Public safety duties should never be offloaded to the lowest bidder, and private security companies have no role to play in these or any public institutions if we wish to ensure the integrity of sensitive public safety processes.

I thank the committee and look forward to your questions.