Mr. Speaker, our government is committed to doing whatever is necessary to ensure that public servants are paid accurately and on time.

When the problems with the pay system first emerged, our number one priority was to address the most serious problems: those employees receiving no pay at all. This is why we hired additional staff at the Miramichi pay centre and established satellite pay offices right across the country. This also allowed us to bring down wait times for parental and disability leave, which unions had asked us to prioritize. The problems with Phoenix ran so deep that it took us time to understand what was wrong and to identify solutions to stabilize the system.

We are implementing a series of measures focused on bringing the pay system to a point of stability. These measures, developed with employees, departments, agencies, and unions, are aimed at reducing the backlog of late transactions and wait times for missing pay. These measures are also well aligned with the recommendations of the Auditor General.

Going forward, our efforts to stabilize the pay system fall into four broad areas, namely, accountable and informed decisions, improved processes and technology, increased capacity and service, and partnership and engagement.

Allow me to now briefly discuss our efforts to increase capacity and improve service.

Since the launch of Phoenix, we have more than doubled the number of compensation advisers. We have hired 300 employees to bolster the ranks at the pay centre in order to expedite the processing of transactions and reduce wait times for employees.

We are aware of the need to provide more useful support to employees, and we plan to enhance our client contact centre by hiring up to 100 recruits. Employees will then be able to obtain detailed information about their pay file directly from those working at the contact centre.

Finally, employees can consult the Pay Bulletin to obtain pertinent information and the latest news on the progress we are making.

Over the past several months, we have been focused on implementing collective agreements. More recently, we have focused additional efforts on overpayments so that employees will have accurate slips for the tax filing season. Once we have completed work in those areas, we will be shifting more resources to reducing the number of outstanding transactions in the queue.

In closing, I want to thank the dedicated employees at Public Services and Procurement Canada and across departments and agencies who are working tirelessly to ensure that their colleagues are paid accurately and on time.

Karen McCrimmon

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Adjournment Proceedings

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