Pay problems strike 64% of Manitoba federal workers

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This article was published 21/02/2018 (2255 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Almost two-thirds of federal public servants in Manitoba aren’t being paid properly, documents tabled in Parliament show.

Some 6,464 people employed by federal agencies and departments are being underpaid or overpaid, or have had problems with their benefits. That accounts for 64 per cent of the 10,087 civil servants in the province.

The Liberals released the data after Quebec NDP MP Karine Trudel asked how many public servants are affected by the disastrous Phoenix pay system and where they work.

Her colleague, Transcona MP Daniel Blaikie, said the pay issue comes up often in Ottawa, but it’s putting immense stress on workers across the country.

“I’ve had people in my office that are looking at defaulting on their mortgage because they’re not being paid properly,” Blaikie said. “It’s disappointing to think that our federal government can’t get its act together to pay its employees.”

Phoenix went online in 2016, with the intention of centralizing payments for a quarter-million federal employees. It instead has led to unpaid student workers, overpaid employees who face stiff tax deductions and others grappling to access their benefits.

It’s unclear how many agencies and departments are affected in Manitoba. Of the thousands of affected employees in the province, 97 per cent are administered by a central payment centre that serves 55 departments.

That number includes: the Canadian Grain Commission, headquartered on Main Street in Winnipeg; Correctional Services Canada, which operates Stony Mountain Institution; Health Canada, which runs the National Microbiology Laboratory on Arlington Street; and Parks Canada, which is in charge of Riding Mountain National Park. It’s unclear whether employees at those specific workplaces are affected.

Other departments specified the number of employees affected: 183 work for Transport Canada (six in Churchill, the rest in Winnipeg), 25 at a branch of Industry Canada, 14 at Statistics Canada, and one each for both the federal archives and Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The Transcona-based Freshwater Fish Marketing Corp. and the Winnipeg branch of the Royal Canadian Mint are not listed.

The former Harper government purchased and launched Phoenix while the Trudeau government expanded it to other departments.

Last November, the auditor general estimated the problem couldn’t be fixed until after the October 2019 election. By that time, Ottawa will have spent $1 billion fixing problems caused by a system that was supposed to make payments more efficient.

Manitoba is among the least-affected provinces. The National Post has compared all regions in the data and found 94 per cent of New Brunswick’s federal civil servants had problems with Phoenix, making it the hardest-hit. Saskatchewan came in second, with 92 per cent of federal employees affected.

Blaikie said he had a civilian employee of the RCMP ask him to make sure members of the force weren’t rolled into the Phoenix program. He raised the issue with Treasury Board president Scott Brison last November. Ottawa eventually decided to delay those plans.

For Blaikie, it illustrates the wasted time spent in Parliament and the bureaucracy trying to rectify Phoenix issues.

“Paying employees in any organization is a bread-and-butter issue that you really need to get right, or you’re not going to be able to focus on what it is you’re doing.”

This week, the news website iPolitics reported the federal Liberals were looking at moving to a system other than Phoenix, while they resolve outstanding cases.

“You may find there is a new way that can actually address this issue faster,” Public Services Minister Carla Qualtrough said. That conflicts with the auditor general’s assessment that it would be impossible.

Qualtrough’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Blaikie said it would be “unconscionable” if the Liberals were to switch to the new system without keeping the old one running.

“Phoenix is in disarray by the government’s own admission,” he said.

“It just strikes me as really odd that, in the 21st century, that this is a problem for government.”

He couldn’t say what the NDP would do if it inherited the problem.

Blaikie noted union groups have offered to help Ottawa sort things out, and executives overseeing the troubled program have received bonuses.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada did not respond to a request for comment.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca

Public-servant pay issues by electoral riding