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The Functionary
 A newsletter all about the federal public service. 
Brought to you by
Kathryn May
Hi, everyone. This fall’s return-to-office is still a front-burner issue for the public servants, but there are other things going on as they gear up for the new hybrid workplace and the return of Parliament later this month. And policy wonks, take note: the Institute of Public Administration of Canada is celebrating its 75th anniversary with a packed three-day program Sept. 7-9.
 
So, let’s jump in.
 
Today:
 
* Bilingualism bonus: “Are we going to carry on forever and ever?”
* Geography: Where the PS jobs are.
* What say you?: Next survey on hybrid work is in November.
* Inflation: Could raises and more hiring help? 
* Bits and pieces: Two DM farewells, and DM tenure: it’s pretty short.
* Jargon: Pierre Poilievre’s pitch for  a Plain Language Act.
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LANGUAGE
Ah, what to do with the bilingualism bonus?

For years, a parade of Canada’s commissioners of official languages urged governments to eliminate the bilingualism bonus, saying it’s basically no longer fit-for-purpose. Yet, it lives on 45 years later.

Treasury Board President Mona Fortier recently rejected extending the $800-a-year bonus to public servants who speak Indigenous languages. The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) backs it for the 500 employees who speak an Indigenous language on the job. It also wants the bonus bumped to $1,500.

The last big study into bilingualism was led by former bureaucrats Matthew Mendelsohn and Patrick Borbey. It recommended scrapping the bonus and redirecting the money – more than $60 million a year – into a language-training fund managed with federal unions.

Michael Wernick, the Jarislowsky chair in public sector management at University of Ottawa, was Canada’s top bureaucrat when he launched the study. He weighed in on scrapping the bonus in an Aug. 24 LinkedIn post and sparked a big debate. 

It’s a good question: Why spend money on the bonus for people who are bilingual rather than training those who aren’t? One reason is because the bonus is enshrined in the collective agreements of employees as compensation and the unions won’t give it up without something in return. 

“My view is that’s not much of an excuse for inaction,” says Wernick. “You could calculate the present value of paying the bonuses for a few years and give everyone a cheque at the time the bonus program is terminated. Otherwise, are we going to carry on forever and ever?” 

Bonus or not, bilingualism is an issue the government will have to tackle with the shift to hybrid workforce – both as language of service and language of work.
 
The Borbey-Mendelsohn study found public servants’ ability to speak French and English has increased over the years, but that isn’t translating into an increased use of French in the workplace. Instead, it is regressing. And stories abound about how the problem got worse during the pandemic when Zoom and Teams meetings were dominated by English and documents weren’t being translated into French.
 
Treasury Board is counting on hybrid work to help diversify and disperse the public service across the country. It allows people to take federal jobs without moving to the National Capital Region, where more than 43 per cent of the public service – and the bilingual jobs – are concentrated. But how to do that with existing bilingualism and HR policies is a big question for the future of work.
Is there a topic you'd like to see explored? Let us know
Where the jobs are. Hybrid work could change the concentration of people in the National Capital Region. More people could be hired to work anywhere in Canada.

Source: 29th Annual Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada.

Last stand for the office. With Labour Day behind us, public servants are expected to return to the office this fall and begin the public service’s next work chapter as a hybrid workforce. All eyes are on how this rolls outs out, especially with a rebellion in the making among public servants who want to do their jobs at home and stay permanently remote. Meredith Thatcher, co-founder and workplace strategist at Agile Work Evolutions Inc., says this shift to flexible work “is to the office what the car was to the horse and buggy.”
 
Source: LinkedIn
Survey says... There needs to be more consultation. Some public servants say they haven’t been consulted enough. Departments surveyed employees at various points during the pandemic and will continue to as they roll out and experiment with hybrid work. For that big-picture look across government, Treasury Board says new questions about hybrid work will be added to the next Public Service Employee Survey being launched in November. 
 

Source: Reddit

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
Want to help with inflation? Hire public servants. Give PS a raise.

So says the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). Like most unions, PSAC was miffed when governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, urged businesses to hold the line on pay increases, which he says could risk feeding an inflationary spiral. 

PSAC countered with its own report by l’Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomique. The study’s takeaways:

  • stable public-sector jobs with cost-of-living increases are good for the economy and will fight inflation, not cause it.
  • Real drivers of inflation are unaffordable prices of goods and services for consumers, and price hikes by Canada largest corporations, which enjoyed record profits during the pandemic.

But the impact of public sector employment growth on the economy since the pandemic is a  contentious one. Governments drove most of the job growth since the pandemic, which the Fraser Institute argues is “unsustainable.” Canada needs a dynamic private sector and economic growth driven by public-sector growth, and higher payrolls will strain public finances.

Contract talks. Meanwhile, PSAC and 150,000 of the workers it represents are at an impasse in contract talks over the government’s refusal to pay raises that keep pace with inflation. The backlash over return-to-office, including extra costs in commuting, is heating up the wage battle. PSAC wants a 13.5 per cent raise over three years and more rights around remote work enshrined in collective agreements.

Mediation in September. PSAC and the government are going to mediation (Sept. 12-14, 20-23) to sort out some of the snags at the “common issues” table that affect all employees before heading to Public Interest Commission (PIC) hearings to help resolve the impasse.

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BITS & PIECES

DM farewells. Marta Morgan, deputy minister at Global Affairs Canada, and Shelly Bruce, the chief at Communications Security Establishment (CSE) both said their goodbyes to the public service last week.

Caroline Xavier replaced Bruce in the July shuffle, but Morgan’s departure in a senior portfolio is a big vacancy that can’t be left empty for long. She had an intense three years – under four ministers – from the scramble to repatriate thousands of stranded Canadians when COVID hit to the detention and return of the two Michaels, and the Ukraine war.  

More holes to fill. The pandemic has been hard on deputies, who went flat out, and then there has been, of course, pervasive social media, escalating something into issues that suddenly need their attention. There are a number of empty positions with more expected to come. This week,
Arun Thangaraj begins a new job as associate DM at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada – making IRCC among the few departments with two associate DMs. His previous job as associate DM at Transport hasn’t been filled. Other empty spots include:

– president of the Public Service Commission;
 – associate deputy minister at Agriculture;
– chief administrative officer at RCMP;
– deputy minister of public service accessibility at Treasury Board.
 
DM tenure: one to three years. An
enterprising public servant recently examined the tenure of deputy ministers and found they typically spend between one and three years in the position before moving on in the department or to another department. The shrinking length of time deputies spend in posts over the years has long been an issue.

Some say a study should be done on length of assistant deputy ministers (ADMs) appointments before they get promoted to deputy ministers, which anecdotally seems to be getting shorter. That
last major study on ADMs found they tend to move from job to job after less than two years in a position and often don’t have the depth of experience for the top jobs.

A study to watch. Did you know government
spends $4.6 billion a year on IT contracting? Researchers at Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration have been disentangling the morass of government contracting data and released initial findings last week at govcanadacontracts.ca.

 
Last word: Enough with the jargon. Pierre Poilievre, the frontrunner for the Conservative party leadership, wants a “Plain Language Act” to simplify the legalese and bureaucratese used in government. Who doesn’t support understandable and clear language? Even bureaucrats do. But what can of worms will this open to enforce and monitor in all documents, in two languages and 300 departments and agencies, and then who hunts down the non-compliant?
Kathryn May writes about the federal public service for Policy Options magazine. She is the Accenture Fellow on the Future of the Public Service, providing coverage and analysis of the complex issues facing Canada’s federal public service for Policy Options. She has spent 25 years writing about the public service – the country’s largest workforce – and has also covered parliamentary affairs and politics for The Ottawa Citizen, Postmedia Network Inc. and iPolitics. The winner of a National Newspaper Award, she has also researched and written about public service issues for the federal government and research institutes. Follow Kathryn on Twitter: @kathryn_may
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