NDP MP Randall Garrison is calling on the Liberal government to put money in this month’s budget to replace the troubled Phoenix payroll system and clear a backlog of issues affecting thousands of federal employees.
Garrison said his Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke constituency office continues to help people resolve pay issues more than three years after the system launched.
“It’s now a regular part of our workload,” Garrison said.
“Seriously, I have a person who works on case work. It used to be that two-thirds of the work was immigration and visa issues.
“Now, she’s [spending] a significant part of her day … trying to help people with Phoenix pay system problems.”
Garrison said it’s unacceptable for the Trudeau government to continue blaming the previous Conservative government for the system’s failures.
“Three years into it, no, no one’s going to buy that,” he said. “So I would hope there’s money in this next budget for two things: One is to do the work to replace this system, because it clearly doesn’t work; the second thing is a bigger allocation to get more staff working on the backlog.”
On Jan. 23, the government’s public service pay centre dashboard showed 275,000 unresolved pay issues.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada says its members still face many of the same issues that emerged the day Phoenix was introduced, including people who continue to receive incorrect pay or no pay at all.
“Every second Monday, folks are looking at the Phoenix pay system to see whether they’re going to be paid correctly or not,” said Jamey Mills, regional executive vice-president.
“It’s extraordinarily stressful to go through that, especially when a lot of our members are living paycheque to paycheque.”
He said employees also continue to have problems receiving accurate records of employment, which can prevent them from receiving employment-insurance payments during seasonal layoffs.
“It’s an issue that members have been facing from coast to coast to coast,” Mills said. “It hasn’t just been not being able to receive records of employment, but it’s also been that a lot of folks have received inaccurate T4s.”
In the House of Commons recently, NDP MP Wayne Stetski questioned Environment Minister Catherine McKenna about the impact on Parks Canada’s seasonal workers.
“Parks Canada employees continue to have problems with the system as many work full-time in the warmer months and are on call in the winter,” Stetski said. “Their pay transactions vary and they continue to encounter serious errors with pay and benefits.”
McKenna said government is trying to fix the problems.
“I work every single week on Phoenix issues with Parks Canada,” she said. “We have made investments. I am also working very hard for the minister responsible for Phoenix. We need to ensure our employees are properly paid.”
Public Services and Procurement Canada acknowledged some employees are experiencing delays receiving record of employment.
“Records of employment can be delayed for various reasons, such as delays in processing terminations or missing/incorrect data (for example, a valid postal code),” it said in a statement.
“As part of our efforts to stabilize the pay system, we are redesigning human resources processes, such as terminations, to speed up the processing of transactions and reduce delays in producing records of employment.”
More broadly, the ministry said it has taken “significant steps” to stabilize the Phoenix system by hiring more people to fix problems and reduce delays.
“Overall, we have seen more than a 25 per cent reduction in the queue (almost 160,000 transactions) since January 2018,” the statement said. “Although we are making steady progress, there is much work to be done. We continue to take action on all fronts so that all employees get paid accurately and [we are] seeking industry expertise to help find innovative solutions.”
