Agreed.

The new Pay Plan Job Evaluation System is fully implemented. Like any system of this nature, there will be continuing changes to jobs and the need to constantly deal with those changes and re-evaluate the jobs that are changing. In addition, we are continuing to perform quality control checks across the government because this ensures that we have consistency in how jobs are rated. This ensures that issues that are raised by employees are addressed. We have a continuing quality control effort done interdepartmentally. That sometimes gives rise to job evaluation changes.

In addition, we have in our collective agreement a process whereby employees who have a concern with their evaluation, that management has not been able to resolve, they have the ability to call for an independent review by a committee that is headed up by an independent chairperson. The committee's decision will be binding on the government. We are encouraging employees who have remaining concerns with their evaluations to access that process and we are trying to work with the union to get that process working. We have already had appeal reviews with our excluded staff. That process is well underway.

We are very encouraged by the numbers of appeals that are rising. They are very low for a major initiative of this type. Many jurisdictions see job appeals when they introduce a new system anywhere from low to very high. I know of a couple of jurisdictions where the appeal rate was in the 20, 30, 40 percent range. We have been very fortunate at this time. We have about 50 appeals on about 4,000 job evaluations, which we are very encouraged by. We are proceeding to deal with those appeals with that independent appeal process I mentioned. There will continue to be, as with any new job evaluation system or any ongoing existing system, refinements as you go forward. This one is fully implemented. We are still ongoing with maintenance and quality control work, but largely it is a done deal.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No. The reason that no private market comparitors is used is because you are not permitted to build market comparitors into your job evaluation system pursuant to the Canadian Human Rights Act. The Canadian Human Rights Act lays out very stringently the methodology and the criteria you have to use to evaluate jobs. Jobs have to be evaluated on their relative skill, effort required, knowledge required, problem solving difficulty required, and working conditions. Those are the only factors that you are able to evaluate a job on. Each job in an organization has to be rated relative to the other jobs in that organization. You cannot rate jobs based on what market conditions exist more broadly. If you do so, you are open then to a complaint under the Canadian Human Rights Act. We have followed very carefully the provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act with respect to job evaluations.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are means by which individuals, as I have described, can appeal a job evaluation if they think it is wrong or if they think that their position has been improperly rated against other positions in the same organization. There is a process for people to appeal and have those concerns aired and considered by an independent process. With respect to market conditions, we cannot under the Canadian Human Right Act, adjust occupational groups within our organizations for market conditions. We can do things for temporary market aberrations, such as we did with the nurses last year. That can only be short term and those market adjustments or market supplements have to be very carefully considered. If you do not have the necessary justification, you can generate a human rights complaint if somebody feels aggrieved because of such a market supplement measure. There has to be a great deal of caution in even using tools like market supplements.

With respect to whether we will be out of step with market over time, that is an issue that we try to address through doing regular market surveys, looking at our compensation package in general. But we have to keep all of our internal job relativities intact to make sure that we do not violate any provisions of the Human Rights Act.

Agreed.