The Canadian Press
OTTAWA—Auditor general Michael Ferguson has been asked to determine how a move to modernize the federal government’s payroll system turned into a fiasco in which more than 80,000 public servants were paid too much, too little, or not at all.
Public Services minister Judy Foote said Ferguson has agreed to conduct an audit of the problem-plagued transition to the Phoenix pay system.
She added the objective is to find out what went wrong and assure that similar problems can be avoided in future.
In the meantime, Foote is blaming the previous Conservative government, which initiated the move to Phoenix, for cutting 700 payroll staff and skimping on training.
Foote said the number of public servants still experiencing problems with their pay cheques has been whittled down to 67,500 from 82,000 in mid-July.
And she remains confident the remaining cases will be resolved by the end of October, although public service unions are skeptical.
Foote was grilled on the Phoenix system during an appearance yesterday at a Commons’ committee.
She said the previous government had the option of doing “a full court press,” directly training every employee involved with the new payroll system, or simply training a few people who could train everyone else.
They opted for the latter because “it was cheaper.”
Since problems emerged in the spring, Foote told the committee that 250 additional compensation advisers have been hired to help eliminate the backlog of problem cases.
Opposition MPs said Foote must take the blame for proceeding with the second phase of the transition to Phoenix in April—despite warnings from public service unions that the government wasn’t ready.
But Foote countered she was assured by bureaucrats that “we were in a ready-to-go state,” and that “there was no going back” to the old payroll system and no way to run the old and new systems simultaneously.
NDP MP Erin Weir pointed out the old and new pay systems operated in tandem from February to April, and questioned why that couldn’t have continued until the glitches with Phoenix were ironed out.
