Thank you, Madam Chair. Under directorate, this activity has a lot of hierarchy in terms of the overall mandate of the department. With that I need to elaborate on three areas, one of which I talked about earlier in my general comments that was unfortunately not responded to by the Minister. That was the issue of standardization of the overtime policies and again controlling our number one expense, which is wage dollars. With that, I believe that there is a concern about the standardization amongst departments, amongst the different types of occupational groups and how we bank, how we report, how we pay out. Does the Minister see this as being a problem, and if so, what can be done to look at improving that so that, as I said, we can look at some of those high level questions? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I will ask Ms. Beard to respond to that.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. Beard.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The Department of Human Resources has a policy itself on the use of overtime, has proper forms, we have information that we provide to clients that is in our HRM as well. The use of overtime for other departments is, of course, departmental-specific on operational needs and obviously would relate to 24/7 operations, but the Department of Human Resources itself does have strict overtime.
We have encouraged our clients also to use the overtime forms as well as to use the PeopleSoft information system as a mechanism to record reasons for overtime so that we can monitor and report on it. The use of overtime is within the Collective Agreement and each department is responsible for tracking and monitoring their overtime for operational needs.
Thank you. We’re at Human Resources, directorate, operations expenditures, $4.504 million. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d just like to continue on my questions here regarding this activity under the topic of overtime. I agree with what I’m hearing here today. But what steps does the Department of HR provide all the other departments in helping all the managements apply that the overtime rules are applied consistently? What tools are being used by HR to provide that?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Ms. Beard.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have provided tools to the departments similar to what the Department of Human Resources uses. As I mentioned, there’s a comment section in the PeopleSoft information system that we have encouraged departments to have employees fill in for reasons for overtime. We’ve also encouraged departments similar to our own department to have preauthorization of overtime in the form of an e-mail message or we’ve provided a prescribed form that departments can use for overtime as well. We’ve clearly articulated to our clients that overtime needs to be approved in advance for operational needs and we’ve provided them with a system in our PeopleSoft system so that they can have it electronically recorded, as well, for approval. We’ve communicated this out to our departments through our client service managers and we maintain the same system ourselves in the Department of Human Resources.
Thank you, Ms. Beard. Mr. Dolynny.
I do appreciate the response. I guess there would be no problem, then, for the Department of HR to provide this Member a complete list of all reporting documents that PeopleSoft has in order to report overtime banked hours as well as payouts, and would we be able to get a sample of each one of those reports and a description of what those reports can offer? Would the department commit to that?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We would go to the departments. It’s department-specific information, so we would go to the departments. Each department would have to provide that information.
On this specific item that we’re discussing, there is an increase of $99,000. With some adjustments, all of that increase, essentially, is from the Collective Agreement; $107,000, actually, was the increase in this area, so the increase itself is more than the increase we’re presenting here today.
Just so I can get proper clarification, the Member here wasn’t asking for detail reports from each of the respective departments. The Member is asking for a template of what type of report is available that describes the type of information that could be extracted if asked for. I just have to get a feeling for what PeopleSoft can offer, and I need to get a feel exactly what are the parameters of reporting available to us so that we as Members or committee can provide the proper oversight and transparency for public dollars. That was my question as I think we needed clarification on that.
We can provide that information to the Member.
Keeping with the theme of the directorate, as it says provides expert financial advice, as the Minister indicated in his opening comments that the large percentage of the $688,000 or the 2.9 percent of the expenditure growth was due to the collective bargaining increases or annual increases. I would assume that these increases are not a surprise on an annual basis. I know these are negotiated over a tenure. We saw these increases coming. This should not be a surprise to the department. That being said, by what virtue, if we know these increases are coming, we know our revenues are only growing at 0.4 percent, is there anything that the department could have done to mitigate? Knowing full well that a large portion of this was forced growth that was going to be hitting the ledger, could this department have done anything to negate that so that it was in line with the revenue?
It is not a surprise. The Member is correct; however, each year on a four-year contract we do add in the Collective Agreement and it’s the increases. If the Member is asking whether we could have reduced programs or reduced in other areas in order to make up for the collective bargaining increases, I think that was something that we wouldn’t consider at this time. We think that departments are right-sized as far as personnel go and that these are the increases to the approved positons in this business plan.
I guess it’s a simple question. Again, we know that if the department feels that it’s had the right number of people working within that department I will abide by his stewardship. The question is that we knew, the department knew that this collective bargaining increase was imminent. It wasn’t as if this was something that was coming out of thin air. We know every year there’s an increase. What is the department doing to mitigate that increase to offset so that we’re not increasing our forced growth expenditures by 2.9 percent? What could we have done differently to bring our expenditure growth in line, as we keep hearing, with revenues growing at only 0.4 percent? Where could the savings have been?
If I look at the directorate in terms of operations expenditure summary, I’ve seen no savings. If you look at the different expenditure categories, we’re spending the same amount we spent last year. In fact, we’re spending, in some cases, the same amount we spent in 2013-14. The question is: Were there savings, could there have been savings in design, and again, moving forward, can we find those savings?
I will try to have the director provide some detail on the increases and whether or not we are in a position to look at savings elsewhere.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Director Beard.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to provide detail, these are negotiated fourth year collective bargaining increases that, yes, the department was aware of but has no control over because they’re part of the negotiation process. Just to note, the Collective Agreement increases for the Department of Human Resources were $689,000, but one of the points to note is $268,000 of that was transferred to the Department of Finance. Because these collective bargaining increases were negotiated and we knew what they were before, if the Member remembers last year, a portion of the Department of Human Resources employees were transferred to the Department of Finance, but because the forced growth budget was already loaded, it loaded the full amount of the $689,000, but we need to reflect that $268,000 was transferred to the Department of Finance for their collective bargaining increases, so it’s not the full $689,000 that goes to the department.
As far as savings, the department, as with all other departments, has put aside money for the passive restraint, so the Department of Human Resources has set aside $358,000 as a passive restraint measure to hold the budget.
Thank you, Ms. Beard. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. If the passive restraint program is in full effect, what we’re hearing is over 350-some thousand dollars. I guess the question is why still the overall increase overall. I mean, these are your numbers, not my numbers. We’re still at 2.9 percent in growth. I guess that’s the question. We don’t have an endless supply of money. Our revenues, as we heard from the Finance Minister, are dismal and they’re not looking any more favourable for the next two to three years. Are we going to continue to see forced growth at three or four times greater than our revenues for the next budget years?
Again, we have a Collective Agreement that’s going to be pending for next year. I know that, but at the end of the day when the dust settles, I run an equal sign on the ledger and I’m saying why are we still growing three times greater than our revenues with this department even though I’m hearing we have passive restraint. Could we have done anything more to bring that expenditure growth in line with revenue growth of the government? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We made the reductions in training and development. We feel that we followed the processes here. We’ve made the reductions in spite of the fact that we had increases of over $1 million that were forced growth increases. That was the Collective Agreement and the fact that we needed to have individuals working on the next collective bargaining process, we still managed to hold the growth to $688,000 by reducing in other areas such as training and development. So that’s what we’ve done. We’ve reduced by that amount.
So I’m not sure that… Well, I think I am sure that the Member is asking us to decrease by the other $688,000 in order to bring the increase to zero. I guess that’s something that we would take some advice from the committee on.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Next on my list I have Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m going to follow up on where Mr. Dolynny left off for a bit. I may have mentioned in my general comments about passive restraint and that I don’t think it’s working. On top of the fact that there’s an increase to this budget, and I see in this department or this section alone under directorate it’s about $100,000. But there was a transfer from HR to Finance of a number of employees. So in spite of the fact that we had a section transfer out of this department, the department still went up overall some $680,000 and in this particular section $100,000.
I really have to say, and I think it applies to every department in this government, that passive restraint really isn’t working. In this particular case, I don’t see where passive restraint had any effect at all. I’ll leave that as a comment. If the Minister wants to try and explain it to me, that would be great, but I haven’t heard an explanation yet.
My question has to do with safe disclosure. We have set in place a Safe Disclosure MOU with the union and my understanding is that there hasn’t been great uptake on that provision, which is unfortunate. I would encourage the employees to take advantage of it; that’s why it’s there. I believe we were advised that there was going to be some work done on legislation.
I’d like to know from the Minister where legislation is in the grand scheme of things and what work has been done. When can we expect to see a legislative proposal and/or the legislation itself? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the safe disclosure, I will have Ms. Beard talk a bit on that and respond on the budget. I really don’t understand exactly what it is that the Member is saying.
We’ve had forced growth, which means we are forced to grow in the area of collective bargaining and Collective Agreement increases and collective bargaining negotiations and also in the PeopleSoft maintenance, so those are three areas that we grew in. We’ve legally had to provide French language communications and services. We grew in that. There was an increase in devolution and then we had transferred to Finance a certain amount.
When we are sitting here with a budget in front of us that is growing much less than the Collective Agreement and the other initiatives that we present here, then I don’t understand how that fact that people were moved… A bunch of people are moving. This was accounted for. The 71 positions that went to Finance were accounted for. We didn’t keep the same money that we did when we had the 71 people working for us. When they went to Finance, the money that associated with those positions was also transferred and then the mains are adjusted, too, so that when we go back to the actuals in 2013-14 they are adjusted with those positions moving over. I don’t know how those positions moving to Finance have any impact on the budget that we are speaking of here today.
I will have Ms. Beard talk a bit more on safe disclosure. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Ms. Beard.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Regarding safe disclosure, we currently have a legislative initiative that is in effect that we’ve been working on. One of the things that we’re doing is we’re awaiting preliminary results of a review of our Public Service Act. We are looking at – we’ve spoken to this before – modernizing our Public Service Act. Before we move forward with stand-alone safe disclosure legislation, we just wanted to do our research on the modernization of the Public Service Act.
Other jurisdictions have safe disclosure within their acts, so the department is just conducting research to see what would be the best practice, whether or not it would be stand-alone legislation or whether or not we could roll it into the amendments and modernization what we’re doing on our Public Service Act. We’re in the middle of doing that as well as working towards comprehensive consultation with unions and stakeholders. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Beard. Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to Ms. Beard for that info. I guess I would be interested in knowing when this review of the Public Service Act might be done, when we the Assembly could expect to see some kind of concrete either Public Service Act LP and/or stand-alone Safe Disclosure Act LP.
To the Minister’s comments, I’m a little confused. The Minister talked about adjusting mains. I have to say, when I look at this document in front of me, I see that the budget for HR – and this is just in the directorate – in 2013 was $3.78 million, in 2014-15 it was $4.4 million and in 2015-16 it’s $4.5 million. But in that time, somewhere in there we moved 71 people from HR to Finance, so albeit with forced growth and everything else, I’m not understanding how this budget has gone up. If the Minister is telling me that the numbers have been adjusted, then this is more evidence of smoke and mirrors that I constantly talk about.
What adjustment is he talking about in terms of the mains? Where is the cost for the 71 employees who went to Finance? Has it not been removed from the dollar value for the ‘15-16 main estimates? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That money has been removed, but it didn’t impact directorate. This was a whole section on pay and benefits that was in Human Resources that moved to Finance, and all the people that were in the management and the whole group from there moved over but it didn’t impact on the directorate specifically.
Thanks to the Minister. I will say okay, fine, but I look at page 227 when we are looking at the whole department and again the whole department has gone up.
So if we have gone from ‘13-14, $19.5 million to $23.7 million in ‘14-15 and $24.3 million in ‘15-16 and presumably the 71 positions have been accounted for in this budget on page 227, the loss of them, and yet the budget still goes up. This is where I am having difficulty and I suspect my colleague is as well. Thank you.
Had we left the 71 positions in the budget, then you would have seen a huge decrease, so what we did so that we’re able to compare apples to apples, was to remove completely retroactively to those positions left. It has no impact at all. Maybe what I am going to try to do is try to get Ms. Beard to add some of the details on how that had occurred. It is like we are comparing the… I think the department has 119 people, so we’re comparing that all the way along, not the 190 people that were in the department previously. It is as if those 71 people had never existed in the system. I think it is 78 people actually. Sorry, I don’t have that number here, but it is like they never existed as far as this main estimate goes.
If the chairman is okay, I will have the director do more response.
Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Ms. Beard.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the Minister has stated, what the Department of Human Resources budget was decreased by, to reflect the transfer of those employees to Finance, the Department of Finance budget went up by the exact amount, so there is transparency there. It is shown throughout the movement from one budget to the other.
To provide a little bit more detail on the expenses that are going into the department, the increase to the Directorate is a reflection of the collective bargaining increases. That is the only increase that has gone in there. What the Minister was referring to, with the transfer this year, was it is simply a timing difference.
When the budgets are loaded for forced growth for the collective bargaining increases, they were loaded into the Department of Human Resources, so the Department of Human Resources then had to transfer the ‘15-16 collective bargaining increases to the Department of Finance, so the detail of the budget overall growth for the department is really only reflected in the collective bargaining money that we got through forced growth for the actual implementation and negotiations that we are going to have to do for the upcoming round. We do have $434,000 overall.
We do have the collective bargaining increases for year four which was stated, the $689,000. Of that, $268,000, which is what the Minister was referring to were collective bargaining increases for year ‘15-16 for the Department of Finance, those were transferred over. The only other true increase to the budget is we were awarded one position change, so there is a senior French languages human resources officer that we have hired this year to help us meet our commitment for the French language. Other than that there isn’t a huge increase to this budget and we do have, as previously mentioned, $358,000 that we have set aside for passive restraint, so overall the net effect is $688,000, but it truly just reflects the Collective Agreement increases for year four. The collective bargaining negotiation money that we got and the one position for the French languages senior human resources officer. Thank you.
Thank you Director Beard. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank for the explanations. Just a comment, I am pretty much floored by the fact that the numbers that we have in front of us for this department were not comparing apples to apples basically. These numbers have been fudged, so to speak, to remove the 71 positions from the previous year’s estimates so that the numbers can look good. I’m having difficulty following this, so I can only imagine what somebody in the public is going to be doing in looking at this. They are going to think everything is just grand.
There’s no reference in here to the fact that the numbers have been adjusted for the 71 positions. There should be a comment, for heaven sakes, somewhere in the budget which says that there should be a corresponding comment in the Finance section, and yet this basically looks like everything is the same from one year to the next and we absolutely know it’s not. The Minister mentioned I forget however many hundreds of millions of dollars that it is off, so just a comment. I really would recommend that we don’t do this again. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Those position transfers where reflected in the ‘14-15 budget year. That was the year that those occurred. The removal of those positions from this process is proper accounting procedures.
No further comment, Ms. Bisaro? Committee, we are on page 231, Human Resources, directorate, operations expenditures, $4.504 million.
Agreed.
Agreed. Page 232, directorate, active positions, information item. Questions?
Agreed.
Agreed. Page 234, Human Resources, labour relations, information item. Questions?
Agreed.
Agreed. We will go to page 235, labour relations, operations expenditures, $3.291 million. Questions?
