Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Villeneuve.

That's fine. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Page 2-94, 2-95. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had a question in 2-92, I had my hand up I believe, but maybe nobody saw me.

Was that 2-93, Ms. Lee?

Page 2-92, please, 2-92.

Thank you. Does committee agree to go back to 2-92?

Ms. Lee.

Thank you very much. I just wanted to ask questions about, could I just get a brief analysis about what has been the major problems that have caused so much difficulties in certain files? I mean, is it lack of training on the part of the employees, or there was just too much work? I just want to get a little bit of sense because I'm assuming that with the amalgamation of the new department, you have a handle on what the problem areas are and how you're about to fix them, and also I'd like to ask if, from reading this, if the human resource department is going to take over the pay and benefits area or it will stay within the realm of providing expert advice in a sort of hands-off kind of approach? It's not clear to me from reading this. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as I stated earlier, the labour relations and compensations services portion are now going to be covered under the employee relations section of the budget, but since we're on the subject, it's the same matter. The issues that we've had to deal with from within the amalgamation process, number one, was to work with departments to identify...One of the first stages was to identify all of those that were within the departments and boards that did work in the HR section right down to the quarter position, and that would identify what revenue would have to come and if a person stayed back in a department if the majority of their activities were involved in some other portion of work. But there was a lot of back and forth on that, identifying who actually was involved in HR, what time commitment of a position or a portion of a position, and then setting up the new organization as to where these individuals would now fit within a new organization.

So what we found a lot places was it wasn't a straight slide from where they were doing their work in a department or board. There was, in some cases, a step up that required some work and some further training. So there was a lot of working with individuals, assessing their potential, the level of work they were doing and how they would fit into the new organization and trying to find the best fit. In a lot of cases, we were able to slide people over almost to the same position equivalent in a new organization, or worked with them and came up with a training portion to allow them to move up to a slightly different level within a new organization, and some

individuals would not go up to the step they were, but would take some training and then go up to the step they found themselves in in the old departments they found themselves in. To get that underway was one.

The other issue was when these employees were then transferred over to new offices and began the amalgamation process in earnest once we knew who was going to fit into what part of the organization, came along old files, old boxes. As I stated earlier, when this organization came together, approximately 1,000 files in backlog were identified and when we add that to the fact that when we did the amalgamation process there was some slowing down of how we could get back to individuals, the hiring processes, deal with employees and the matters they were dealing with day to day. So there was an additional slowdown in the initial phases.

Once we got people up and running and fitting into the new organization with some tuning, I guess one would say, because not everybody did fit into the place they were put into, there was further changes. Then when we identified the workload that was really required of us, we had to do a further fairly significant shift because initially it was going to be laid out almost equivalent in client services, as well as compensation benefits side of things, and we ran into, because of the backlog and dealing with pay and benefits side of the equation, we had to do some more shifting to re-evaluate where we were going to put people to deal with those backlogs, and put the appropriate people in he right places to try to do some catch-up in this area. So those were big areas that we had to deal with and come up with the right training component of that.

As well, when we started to get people in place to find our systems that were in place and how people used those systems differed quite significantly from if it was one that came from one department into this organization.

As well, our PeopleSoft system itself had been in the past customized to fit the government in how it did its business in the day, back in the day I guess, but now, as we're seeing, it it's not working out that way. What we need to do, as I highlighted going to the new version 8.9, is to adapt how we do business with the system, not adapt the system to how we do business because we're finding out the wisdom of back then of adapting the system to us caused us some grief going forward. So that also causes a lot of people in the field grief trying to deal with the issue of our personnel. Thank you

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Ms. Lee.

Thank you. There was a second part to my question, which was whether this employee benefits or the new section will be doing this job for the boards and agencies, or if they will remain sort of consulting, or sort of the arm's length kind of service? Thank you

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for that portion, not responding to that part of the question. We do all of the boards out there except for WCB and the Power Corporation. The rest of the boards do that and that is a significant shift. That alone has caused some growing pains; let's just put it that way. Thank you

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Given the time I think it might be appropriate for me to move to report progress.

There's a motion on the floor to report progress. The motion is non-debatable. There's a motion on the floor. The motion is not debatable. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is defeated.

---Defeated

The motion is defeated. We will continue. Can we have order. Can I have order, please. We're on page 2-92 and 2-93. Page 2-94, 2-95.

Page 2-96, 2-97.

Page 2-98. Ms. Lee.