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When It Comes To Payroll, The Buck Stops At Trudeau

If you know someone in the Public Service or someone who has recently retired from the government, chances are you know someone who hasn't been paid or who isn't receiving the pay and benefits that they are supposed to be getting. We all have friends in that situation. And it isn't pretty.
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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives at the NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland, Friday, July 8, 2016. Starting Friday, US President Barack Obama and leaders of the 27 other NATO countries will take decisions in Warsaw on how to deal with a resurgent Russia, violent extremist organizations like Islamic State, attacks in cyberspace and other menaces to allies' security during a summit described by many observers as NATO's most crucial meeting since the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives at the NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland, Friday, July 8, 2016. Starting Friday, US President Barack Obama and leaders of the 27 other NATO countries will take decisions in Warsaw on how to deal with a resurgent Russia, violent extremist organizations like Islamic State, attacks in cyberspace and other menaces to allies' security during a summit described by many observers as NATO's most crucial meeting since the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

If you know someone in the Public Service or someone who has recently retired from the government, chances are you know someone who hasn't been paid or who isn't receiving the pay and benefits that they are supposed to be getting. We all have friends in that situation.

Stop and think for a minute about the impact on them personally or on their families.

  • You can't pay your bills or mortgage
  • Your credit rating which will impact you for years to come will suffer
  • You can't get welfare or EI because you have a job
  • For those who have been let go from positions in the government, if you can't get your Record of Employment, you can't apply for EI
  • If you have retired you are missing your main source of income
  • Many are waiting for their severance package -- that is the income they need to transition to their next job

The payroll issue is much broader than the examples above and impacts some 80,000 people -- that's a lot of workers.

That's a lot of families.

Passing the buck is what politicians of all stripes are famous for doing and both Scott Brison and Prime Minister Trudeau are pretty good at it when it comes to the PHOENIX payroll issue.

"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the ongoing problem with the Phoenix pay system that has affected tens of thousands of government workers "is an unacceptable situation" inherited from the former Conservative government." (CBC News)

Really? The election was when? You have been in power nine months- take some responsibility for the mess that was rolled out under your watch, not under the Conservatives, in February of this year.

Your government was warned in February that there were significant problems, but you kept rolling out the same flawed system month after month.

How about telling the media how many senior level management types are impacted (if any). Tell us how many Deputy Ministers and Assistant Deputy Ministers across the government aren't getting paid.

"Trudeau said he has tasked the clerk of the Privy Council to oversee efforts to fix the system. Asked whether anyone will be held accountable for the system's problems, Trudeau said the government is right now focusing on addressing the problems first." (CBC News)

Trudeau claims to be open and accountable so tell us this: On what date (yes the exact date) did you ask the Clerk to do this?

You claim to run an open government, how about releasing all of the memos since the election, that were sent to yourself, the minister in charge, the Deputy Minister and your Chief of Staff about PHOENIX problems. Don't the public and the public servants impacted have a right to know the real timeline?

Trudeau said "There will be time to talk about lessons learned down the road, but we are taking this very, very seriously and ensuring that people get the support and the pay that they are owed." (CBC News)

We can all read between the lines of that bafflegab. In other words no one at a senior level will pay a price for this fiasco. It will be shunted off to some internal senior level committee which will consult with themselves and come to the conclusion that no one was responsible and these issues could not have been anticipated.

Just how serious are you? Would any of your senior managers (Deputy Minister's and Assistant Deputy Ministers) still have a job if they were working in the private sector and 80,000 workers were having pay problems? These folks need to be fired, reassigned or demoted.

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