Mr. Speaker, it is completely unacceptable for any employees not to receive the pay they earn. While problems still exist with the pay system, we have taken a number of steps to better support our employees.

We have taken many steps to better support our employees. We created a new call centre and a Phoenix feedback form so that employee can easily contact us and inform us of any problems with their pay. We are regularly informing employees that they can request emergency salary advances in order to get the money they are owed.

Four satellite offices were set up and staffed in Gatineau, Shawinigan, Winnipeg, and Montreal to handle employee cases, and we are committed to keeping these offices open until the backlog is eliminated and the issues are resolved.

Each month, our pay centre receives a steady stream of new pay transactions from the 46 departments it services. As a result, at any given time there are more than 80,000 pay requests in the system awaiting processing.

After rolling out Phoenix, our processing speed dropped sharply as employees adjusted to the new system. This slowdown caused our queue to expand so that we now have more than two months of additional work to process. This is over and above the new transactions that are always entering the system.

Over the next several months, we will return to normal processing times. At that point, we will be consistently meeting our service standards and employees will see transactions processed more quickly. We will also continue to work closely with all of our partners. For example, the Canada Revenue Agency website provides information and a 1-800 number for employees who have concerns about the tax implications of their pay problems.

The Treasury Board Secretariat set up a claims office for employees who have incurred expenses as a result of problems related to Phoenix, and we will continue to work with the unions on many levels, particularly on the recent agreement to have government IT experts help improve Phoenix.

Additionally, we continue to resolve the remaining cases in the backlog, which are extremely complex and require a number of time-consuming manual calculations. A dedicated group of expert compensation advisers are working as quickly as possible to resolve the approximately 11,000 employee cases that remain in the backlog. To date, we have closed pay transactions for over 86% of the employees in our backlog.

Our government recognizes the significant impact that issues stemming from the Phoenix pay system have had on the hard-working employees of the public service. These problems are totally unacceptable. With the last pay period before Christmas occurring tomorrow, we strongly encourage any employee who is not being paid or who has not been paid the proper amount and is facing financial hardship to let us know immediately and request emergency pay. No family should have its Christmas impacted irreparably by a Phoenix pay issue.

Leona Alleslev

Transcript

Adjournment Proceedings

Discussions (0)