Senators Defend Decision Not To Call Leaders At Phoenix Slum Pay System Hearings – National



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Senators studying how to solve the Phoenix pay system debacle did not ask any of the leaders who led the failed deployment to appear before them.

Members of the Senate's National Finance Committee held a press conference Tuesday for their report on the fiasco, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of federal employees being underpaid, overpaid or not paid paid since it was put in place two years ago.

While the report focused on the pay system debacle, senators were quickly questioned repeatedly about why, despite senior officials and the minister responsible for the file, they did not The same goes for the three leaders who led the deployment and who were accused of ignoring the warning signs that the system was not ready.

READ MORE: Phoenix payment system will take five years to repair and cost billions, report s

"No, we did not do it," said independent Senator André Pratte, who is vice-chair of the committee, when asked if the committee had asked them to appear

.

LOOK BELOW: Senators say that Phoenix's problems have discouraged people from entering the public service






. This decision did not work well with Michelle Wiltshire, a former federal correctional worker. One point she owed $ 35,000 because of the pay system problems – and she's still backlogged.

"It makes me furious that these other leaders have not been called," she said. As part of its study, the committee called among its witnesses Minister of Public Works Carla Qualtrough, Auditor General Michael Ferguson, Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick and senior badociation officials representing IBM and Canada, who built the Phoenix Compensation System.

But Senators said that they also thought that the executives who led the failed deployment would not be fair

"If we called them to the committee, when asked if the committee disagreed with Ferguson's May 2018 finding, which accused the "government culture" of the debacle, and declared three senior executives responsible for the case The Chairman of the Committee stated that the issue was not so simple

READ MORE: "An Incomprehensible Failure" – The Auditor General Criticizes the Deployment of the Phoenix Pay System

"No, we are not, but we say that this It's not all, that responsibility is shared with many other people and institutions. It would be too simple to say that there are three leaders and that we receive them as witnesses and that we aim them, "said Conservative Senator Percy Mockler

" It's a lot more complicated.

READ MORE: Liberal Senator Mobina Jaffer, also vice-chair of the committee, said the committee believed that because senior officials had not been named in the official reports on the question, that it would not be

"The Auditor General has not named these people," she said.

"The fact that he himself did not identify them, as he did in the past,"

However, several of the leaders have already been publicly identified in media reports and in testimonials in other places.

LOOK BELOW: Senators Oppose Phoenix's Remuneration System






Rosanna Di Paola Remains in the Federal Public Service

. She has led the case since 2013 as Assistant Deputy Minister of Accounting, Banking and Compensation, but was reorganized as Senior Advisor in She was also the only official to testify in a Labor Court. in the context of the fiasco

Last summer, Di Paola was appointed Regional Director General of Quebec and Assistant Deputy Minister for Special Projects of the Department. [19659003] Another senior official responsible for the file, former Assistant Deputy Minister Brigitte Fortin, retired last year

None of the participants was fired.

SEE BELOW: It was not ready






The report itself warned that federal fiscal advisers brought to help solve the problem were not trained so Adequate, increasing the likelihood that compensation compensation system failure will take years He also warned that these costs are expected to reach $ 2.2 billion in the next five years

The committee blamed the Phoenix debacle for a systemic cultural problem within the government in which senior officials play.

According to the report, no one was held accountable

Among its five main recommendations, the committee asks the Trudeau government to set targets for the treatment of unpaid claims, "

He also urges the government to do more to help employees in financial difficulty

With files from the Canadian Press

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