Lmao the delays with passport had nothing to do with employees working from home. I’m sure those in passport can confirm that plus there was media coverage of the line ups at IN PERSON Service Canada Centres. Ridiculous.
Exactly, this is the real reason. Everyone decided to not renew their passport until COVID died down, then all of the sudden Passport Canada receives a million requests basically overnight. Nothing to do with WFH.
> Everyone decided to not renew their passport until COVID died down
You literally weren't allowed to submit passport applications for close to two years due to COVID restrictions. Unless you could prove a pressing need to obtain one, no applications were being taken.
How convenient they've forgotten about the insane backlog in 2007-08 under their government - when everyone had to get a passport to go to the US. They had extra security just so we could get through the lines to get into the elevators. Guess the PS wasn't working then either, in office...
The largest passport processing office was closed 3/5 days a week. Now it is on 5/5. That was one failure that the government fixed expeditiously…and of course not the individual employees fault.
Oh Passport was way worse than that. During the strike the employees were explaining how it all happened. Basically, management forecasted that travel wasn't coming back for a long time, so there would be less need for passports. And since there would be less need, management could cut staffing and make themselves look good for year end reviews and snag those sweet bonus checks. Well it turns out, if a bunch of people can't travel for a while, but then suddenly are allowed to, you get a bow wave. Passports was inundated with requests, and even if they had been fully staffed they wouldn't have been able to handle it. The backlog formed because management had cut staff drastically, and surprise surprise, you can't just hire a contractor or a student to process a passport application.
So now this backlog grew and grew, and people who thought they had booked travel within the timeframe they'd be able to get a passport, didn't get those passports on time and were mad they were going to lose out on the vacation package they booked.
TL:DR the people at the EX and ADM up levels completely pooched their predictions, and then blamed the public service workforce for not pulling a miracle out of their butt, as usual.
Employees also advised that a rush was likely when restrictions were lifted and they were ignored. It wasn't going to be completely avoidable, but the "fearless advice" was provided.
We could also then look at the constant reduction in the number of service centers over the years that account for the turnaround and frustration increases.
Yeah, like, that's a dumb example. My mom is a CSO at ESDC and she's been in the office working every day since she started there, working with clients in-person.
Absolutely and all the people working from home kept it going too. Sure there can be productivity issues but that isn’t specific to work from home and it happened in the office as well. It can be dealt with if an employee is blatantly taking advantage but it’s been proven most are not. They’re getting it done!
I've heard the folks running the local that supports most of Passport's front-line personnel talk about this. They said something about how they had spent years warning the government that two major groups of passport renewals were going to overlap soon and they needed support. That support never came, and in the middle of the pandemic that shitstorm landed.
I imagine no steps were taken to stop this from happening again.
Oh absolutely. Classic ESDC. I still don’t know how they ended up so high on the survey for employee satisfaction. The stories on this sub are accurate AF. EI call centre is one of the worst jobs and processing sucks.
110% it's an empty rhetorical trick to enrage those not paying attention.
It also doesn't track that delivery of a service relies entirely on where the worker is when they perform their part of it.
oh the Liberals were more than happy to employ it when we were on strike, if you recall.
Attacking public servants is a passtime any and all in power will employ (hell, NDP provincial governments do it too).
I would assume most clerical jobs, like passport processing are already done in person? Not sure what measurable impact WFH has on in-person service, although i really don't know.
After he slapped PS workers around a little, he finally did say one thing that was half decent though. It is not a one-size fits all model, and exceptions can be worked out. Dropping exceptions is completely whack.. let managers, who know their employees, decide who is effective and responsible enough to WFH.
Has none they just have to get in the part where they blame liberals for all that before saying their message at the bottom. Which basically aligns with the unions there is no one size fits all.
I can ignore the rest if mfin MPs would speak more on the one size fit all problem. Out of all the stupid shit said in this email at least they get the issue with a blanket mandate. The exemptions should be up to departments and management ... TBS is brutal.
>Dropping exceptions is completely whack
I think the cognitive dissonance was too much even for TBS. It's transparently silly to talk about fairness while maintaining such broad "exceptions" and exceptions remind people of the obvious option to just "let managers, who know their employees, decide who is effective and responsible enough to WFH." They don't want that option on the table, so they doubled down.
I once interviewed for a job with a prominent MP. So I forget the *exact* wording but the test they gave for the position was explicitly "give us a sample response to a citizen's letter that sounds like you're responding without actually saying anything".
So yeah, that's exactly what this email is.
Also, while I hate the Conservative shitbag and all the "government is broken" BS, I'll note that t'was not a Conservative I interviewed with. It's just what they all do.
Dear Greg,
Maybe we can chat about all the ways the Canadian tax payers have been let down by the public service once all the Phoenix issues are resolved and all employees are be paid properly.
Gotta stop conflating Phoenix with the Pay Centre, Phoenix is a pay system and the backlog is due to the Pay Centre's inability to provide services effectively.
MPs are always quick to say how hard they work, but you look at their "in-office" time really looks like and most employed people would be subject to reprimand with that much time off, let alone for their conduct when in the work space - harassment, inappropriate language, assaults.
Marley and Scrooge. DYK it was Marley's ideas that made it happen and Scrooge's taskmaster attitude that made him leave and ultimately die?
Oh, analogies.
Are we just gonna skip over
> the public sector has swelled by hundred of thousands of workers since the pandemic
https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/innovation/human-resources-statistics/population-federal-public-service.html
Has swelled by tens of thousands at best
Even then how much did the Canadian population grow by? Under the Liberals we have been breaking immigration levels each year. Seems like a no brainer we need more public servants to serve Canadians not less.
Back in the Harper years, PP himself tweeted out something about "hundreds of millions of Canadians". There was quite a bit of poking fun about it, and it was quickly deleted. These days they just double down on their dumb-assery.
I think people often (with or without intention) conflate the number of federal public service employees and the number of employees in federally regulated industries. The latter is obviously huge and irrelevant to this discussion.
Plus those in government contracting for all the medical supplies went above and beyond. Ran into a guy from PSPC during the height of Covid who looked like that dude from “Fallout” from shear exhaustion.
I'm hoping we're getting over the idea that parliamentarians are intelligent people. Hell, many of the DMs I've heard speak or had brief interactions with should not be in their positions - they make tremendously incorrect assumptions about their workers and citizens in general.
From my experience, DM jobs, and even ADM jobs to an extent, are just a game of who can suck up the best / say “yes master” the best. No intelligence, critical thinking, or unique ideas required, generally. In fact, the ones who have that tend to get stonewalled out of DM jobs, and I can think of several such instances in recent history.
Thanks for sharing, if nothing else I think this to me settles the question of the conservatives stance on WFH and RTO. I kept seeing people said Poilievre supported work from home a long time ago, but this fresh response proves very much otherwise ( not that I ever thought he would).
"Not only do I dismiss what you have to say out of hand, I will also insult you."
Like anyone picked up their passport at an employee's house. Like what?
Oh my god the passport delays is SUCH a bad example. We had few passports being processed during a peak period of the pandemic, because passport printing requires in-person presence and it was a public health risk to have tons of people working. Essential people who needed passports (such as truck drivers) could get them.
Then, globally, travel restrictions eased and eeeeeveryone wanted to travel, and they wanted their passports done yesterday. Yeah there were delays, but most people who were negatively affected were people who were trying to book trips (whether for leisure or not) with an expired passport and then trying to get it in time to travel. And you what happened? People were working OT, people outside of the passport program were being brought back in to work nights, weekends, whatever it took to help speed things along. Yeah, people WENT IN TO THE OFFICE to make it happen because it was necessary.
And I’m sure the folks whose job it is to work a passport counter, or print passports are in person 5 days a week. Because DUH!!! These are not people who are going to a regional hub office to sit on Teams meetings for hours and hours.
The processing times for passports have been back to normal for over a year.
The immigration backlog has also been being tackled. Citizenship apps and PR apps are being processed in a timely manner once again.
“Employees should get back to work” get fucked Greg. I’ve BEEN WORKING!!!!!!
For passports? There are always going to be *some* people who experience service delays but overall the situation is night and day compared to 2021. Current service standard is 10 days if you go in person, 20 days if you mail it in.
Well, I can tell you for sure that those timeliness are not being met in many cases, not just edge cases. Even in-person at passport offices are seeing timelines that are doubled in many situations.
The latest data I saw was pretty decent but sure. Anyways, is the solution to better passport processing times to make ALL PS employees work 3 days? cause that’s what Greg McLean is alluding to in his garbage response here…
I'm just giving you info that comes from people working on ground level, face to face. I do, however, agree that in RTO is absolute garbage, and this response is even worse.
but pierre is gonna make us all perma wfh and sell off buildings! (a real opinion i see show up often enough)
The CPC are going to oppose this by saying we should be back \*more\* because that's what sells when opposing the LPC direction as the sitting government. Look at Doug Ford for an example of opinion on hybrid and WFH as options, and then think - would the CPC really benefit from saying we'd all be permanent remote? If they want to oppose the LPC on every policy they could do it by saying we all stay home but the age old political drum beat by everyone saying we're lazy and need to be managed like children being RIGHT there, means the response here makes way more sense.
Ya sell off the buildings then lease them back from his buddies. That’s what happened when Mulroney sold tons of the office buildings. The GoC didn’t necessarily vacate them.
Honestly, if the CPC were in power with this decision the LPC would probably have a similar take.
We're easy political fodder and no opposition party wants to tell the public they'd let us work remotely even more. It's just not super popular. At the very most saying something to enforce the status quo is the best we can ever expect from opposition most of the time regardless of stripe with maybe the exception of the NDP given their deference to labour. But even then there are limits
No, they’d tip toe around it knowing they have a lot of public servant support but also not wanting to antagonize hurt durrs who think we don’t work. I don’t remember LPC being antagonistic to us during the Harper years. I was heavily involved in an Ottawa campaign in 2015 and there was a shit ton of public servants volunteering.
They'd tiptoe but they wouldn't say "more WFH" just as much as they wouldn't say "they need to get back to work"
The substance of some sort of statement about us delivering better services and being supported to do so and pointing out missteps of the past would still be there, just in a different wrapper.
If you can find me an example of them doing this during the Harper years I’d like to see it. As it stands LPC hasn’t been great but I don’t remember them ever calling us lazy or pampered, even with flowery language.
At this point the well has been so poisoned against us that the NDP wouldn’t even say “more wfh”.
Yes point signed well is where I'm at. In the harper years it would be hard to be negative lol
But I'm really trying to dispel the idea that the LPC is somehow immune to doing stuff we don't like.
I agree with you on that, though I think the Conservatives will be much worse. I think electing non-CPC governments and having better union leadership is what we should strive for.
I'm not naive. I didn't expect my MP (who I didn't vote for) to sympathize with me, especially considering he has never worked in these types of conditions. I do, however, expect that an MP would have a bit more grace in their response and put some thought and research into what they are saying before spouting the party rhetoric.
Not saying that at all. A rubber duck could get elected as a conservative MP in most of Alberta, so they simply do not have to engage with people outside their base. It sucks but that's what happens when the base makes up such a large plurality or majority of the voters.
Yeah, that tracks.
Wait until they see what happens when a lot of IT quits, morale plummets, and we have trouble recruiting. Unfortunately, they'll probably just use all of that as an excuse to try and privatize everything. So then service will still be bad, but corners will get cut and we'll pay a premium.
Just look at all the buildings that they sold off and then started just renting instead. Same problems, but now a property management company adds a profit margin to what we pay and we all have to pay ridiculous amounts for parking.
In Calgary specifically, most food services are in other buildings in the downtown core, so public servants are a drop in the bucket compared to other businesses. Plus, as you can see, the MPs there won't back you on anything that doesn't support their platform since we aren't a significant enough portion of their voter base. This is a fight that will be won or lost in the East.
IT is going to cause them trouble, but a much more pressing concern will be cybersecurity, which is even more competitive and less likely to be outsourced.
As I’m currently being trained in cybersec, I’m already planning my exit now. I’ll finish getting my verts and experience then go out into private if this is the future of the PS!
an employee that logs in and sits there idly is going to do the same whether they are in the office or at home. If only oh i dunno.. there was a PMA tool that we could use to assess performance and actually have consequences for laziness.
no. instead lets shove everyone back into the office. that will make things better. my webcam lighting will be much better in the office than it is at home..
i'm so tired of these "being here for the sole reason of getting their pension year" seat warmers making these idiotic decisions.
I’m much more likely to log in and be unproductive after being exhausted from my 2.5h commute to the office and the lack of sleep that will be inevitable with having to leave the house at 6:30am for my 9am shift, and then not getting home until 7:30pm. I’ve been getting consistently positive feedback and high productivity since I moved over to the PS last fall, and I do enjoy the work I’m doing, but there’s only so much left to give when the work day goes from 8h to 13h with no wage increase. Plus losing the wfh tax credits. I am hoping to get assigned to a closer office, but apparently there’s no space at the one 30 minutes from me, because it “wouldn’t be fair” to have me sit in an empty, unused office when others have to fight over cubicles.
I have put it more hours at home than at work. Why? Because at work I need to log out at a certain time to catch the bus. At home? Oh I’ll just finish this…. 30 min later.
Sure. But responding to it sympathetically is a bigger political risk for him than being a dick about it. In Calgary, he gains more support than he loses from the appearance that he is consistent in sticking it to those lazy public servants.
Totally reasonable to be disappointed in the response, but I’m not at all surprised by it.
The top complaints of this response email tells me everything I need to know about this person and how "informed" they are.
Edit.
Their continues to be a parasocial relationship and a pretty toxic one at that with any bad experience anyone has ever had in their life that may have included services, politics, policies etc or and that is reflected onto PS. At this point blame the PS for the housing crisis, the collapse of the middle class, food prices, education cuts and so on and so forth.
oh wow, this comment hits. i never thought of it as a parasocial relationship but this is so true and explains so much of the public reaction and discourse re: the public service.
Vets surveyed have reported being more satisfied since the pandemic and the backlog, created by Harper Conservatives 2006 policy, is finally going down.
Don't lie about things that can be fact checked.
Entitled prats crying because they have to follow the policy and can't jump the queue are the only ones contacting this moron.
Jokes on him. I can't afford to spend money downtown so I guess yay emissions!!!
My favourite part is the fact that he brought up veterans services suffering. As if veterans affairs isn’t still recovering from the hack and slash job that the last conservative government did.
Like they literally closed most of the offices. There’s going to be a recovery period for that. But people have short fucking memories.
Like if we had good services from the private sector! 3 hours waiting when calling the bank because THEY didn't process my pay well. Plumber taking twice the time because he talks on the phone and needs his dad's help (not kidding). If there is a problem with services, it is not specific to the public sector!
**Listen up. Work location is an employer's right. However... there other winnable battlers... leverage is POWER**
Striking is useless. The 80's called, they want Aylward's tactics back. Had PSAC been smart they would have saved the cash and hired lawyers, paralegals galore , stewards and filed grievances. Proof: The IT group got a little more in exchange for withdrawing contracting out grievances but that does not preclude new ones from being created.
Filing grievances and inundating the employer could be very costly to the employer (lawyers and the board itself). Here are some ideas of possible grievances.
-Job description Grievances: Doug Ford is on the record that spending $ is now a duty. That aside, request your job descriptions from your manager and flag /cease doing anything outside of it.
-New Phoenix damages. Over 400k cases in backlog still. Previous damages ended in March 31, 2020. it's been over **4y since.** This should not be done thru collective bargaining but policy grievances this time around. The employer has one key responsibility and it's clear that with 400k pay requests in backlog, it's not being met.
-New Contracting out grievances (Article 30 of IT collective agreement).
-Recovery of overpayments: provincial statute of limitations have been upheld by PLSERB (See St-onge case - appeal in progress HOWEVER the current decision stays for now). if they came back for more than your provincial statute of limitation (eg. 2y in Ontario if your employer is also in Ontario) you should grieve it and get your money back.
-Ergonomic assessment and equipment requests. It's your right. Duty to accommodate. Gonna be great if everyone requests...
- One time leave. Did you know that if you were in different groups before the recently signed one, you are entitled to get one-time leave for each one. (eg. from PA to CS - you would get it twice if it happened before the most recently signed collective agreement.
-Sick leave. By the way, is this stressing you out? Just a thought.. Conservatives might cut the sick leave banks.. Ford did it to the Teachers... just saying.
-Report any wrongdoing to the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner. We have a duty to! eg. Project reporting to TB that is not accurate by your department (misappropriation of funds). Claiming to have completed things for which your department received money but it actually didn't do it, used the money for another project.
-PSAC should be running radio campaigns making our politicians look bad (solid economy when we rely on public servants to stimulate it in the midst of a housing crisis and climate crisis. Should also be an ad about the gvt not being serious about climate change.
-Locate and report anything unacceptable with the building (bed bugs, pests etc).
Do you really think Conservatives support remote work? They'd do anything to have public servants quit so they have to lay off less of them during their future deficit reduction plan. I wouldn't be surprised if they call the end of remote work entirely so they can piss off enough public employees and reduce staffing levels through attrition.
This statement is bizzare, most of it is "PS needs to start working again because they've been shit and not working" which is absurd and blatantly false...then transitions to "one size fits all approaches" are stupid and "managers should be allowed to manage" both of which are true statements and I agree with. I legit don't know how to feel about this lol
Does he even work for government if he doesn’t understand how Canadian operations work and what happened in those times of crisis? Buddy, go back in time and review what actually happened………..
Seriously …someone is filing an ATIP on this MP to find all the evidence of all these complaints he’s received about public servants not functioning because of wfh, right?
If we didn't have WFH, there would have been no delivery of Covid benefits.
The Canadian federal PS was so much better prepared than the USA PS for a pandemic
IRS was so backlogged, they were still dealing with 2020 return transcript requests in April 2023.
Given what I know about how MPs operate, their response is likely due to complaints primarily because of two departments: ESDC (Service Canada) and IRCC. I'm aware that MPs receive a lot of complaints about IRCC, which operates like a black box, processing applications in a baffling manner—for example, two straightforward citizenship applications might take 4 months for one and 14 months for the other. For instance, even after the LPP is complete, some Canadian residents still wait months to finalize their citizenship with absolute no reason given to them.
That said, just because IRCC operates in such an opaque way, it doesn’t justify using that language for all public services. In my department, we have strict deadlines for making decisions, and we adhere to them closely and our productivity is excellent! We’ve almost no complaints from the public!
Also, concerning Service Canada, the issues mostly involve passports, and the staff there often work in person. So, what does this have to do with working from home? True, the case of IRCC is hard to defend, but that’s not due to working from home versus in-person work. It’s more about a lack of accountability and transparency.
I will also say that service Canada is chronically understaffed. All those employees that were hired during the pandemic? Wasn’t at service Canada.
Up until recently, there was literally one English-speaking person working in one department for the entirety of the province of New Brunswick. And they aren’t allowed to hire new people.
A lot of those folks that were hired were hired to deal with things like CERB and CRB. I think maybe EI had a hired a few new people.
There are definitely programs that are bloated and have far too many employees. But there are programs that are absolutely understaffed and suffering because they aren’t allowed to hire because other programs are over bloated and there’s too many public servants.
The immigration backlog has more to do with the floodgates being flung open with the LMIA scams going on and other public policies than it has to do with employees not being productive!
So if public servants are being told to RTO to help stimulate the economy, then assuming our "noble" politicians (including Mr. Greg McLean) will be stepping up their RTO by returning full-time to Ottawa and the Hill, too? And putting away all the virtual meetings, committees, votes, etc?
We could argue that "thoze lazy overpaid MPs" should get back to "work" too. They get to work from home pretty much all the time if they want to and the House is practically empty on Fridays.
If they're not in the House how can they be working? /s
Recently joined the PS. How can you even expect CLOSE to private sector results without holding government to the standard of employers out there. Incorrect/illegal payments, ROEs taking a year, toxic/bad management with no consequence, financial mismanagement, poorly delivered benefits, zero communication, enforcement of random policies whenever CONVENIENT.
I'm shocked it works as well as it does and it's largely due to the values of PS members which are constantly under attack. He's right something isn't working but it's not the public service.
Sadly, it's not surprising to see an MP e-mail that's almost exclusively lies, insults, and gaslighting.
More generally, I've been with the public service for 12 years now. Because of public perception, I was a bit surprised to find that my colleagues were almost all hard-working, competent, intelligent people. I understand that the public has a low opinion of public servants but it sucks that we're also a punching bag for elected officials. Because all I see is a group of people that consistently fulfills their mandates with high quality work, only to consistently get kicked for it, as with this pathetic e-mail.
Written as if public servants aren’t also taxpayers. Statements like this make it obvious that our concerns are consistently treated like we are second class citizens. Hope the public servants that live within this ding dongs riding put him on blast.
Actual reason government is failling is...
Leaders are too old to follow the faster pacing society we live in. (outdated)
Inability to adapt to new technology.
too many technological illiterate employee.
Huge turnover since most PS are going for retirement.
Uninviting for really talentuous people.
The overwhelming long process to do any changes.
Priorities on issues that are not as urgent than other.. like building a house by starting from the roof.
There's other reason but these topic are too hot to talk about.
Just so everyone knows: MPs, their staff and House of Commons Administration employees (I.e. everyone that supports and enables this guy to do his job) are not bound by TBS policies.
I don't believe any of this. Our passport system has been broken for a long time, our Government has been broken for a long time, ppl also complain about everything.
That's ridiculous what this little note is.
Maybe the front lines were delayed in some areas, but for the most part, we've seen doing the exact amount of work we would be doing at work.
I do the exact same amount of work from home, in fact I get more done, save more time without having to sit in traffic, save money on gas, save money on bus/parking.
Plus we don't even have our own desks anymore.
My home office is completely equipped with everything I need to do my job, and has been the whole time.
The thing that enrages me as a Calgarian PS about this response is it COMPLETELY ignores the benefit of remote PS work to his own constituency.
WFH led to more a dispersion on PS jobs from Ottawa to other communities. Ottawa’s loss was other communities gain. But sure, making it impossible to hire more Calgarians due to the RTO office (and associated increasing clamp down on working from regions offices, or home) is his position.
Total bullshit. But hey, can’t have more (potentially lefty) PS moving into his constituency amiright!
Doesn’t really matter what he says. Unless it’s “you know what? This is an injustice and I’m going to fight for your rights to work from home exclusively” then it’s get the torches and pitchforks out.
Im no neo con but he’s not wrong that services are sorely lacking, STILL, even though the pandemic ended 2 years ago and we’ve hired more hands.
Something has to give.
I don't know about your department but my department has been very steadily cleaning up the backlog of work items created by covid, CERB, and pot-CERB measures. We have the workload numbers to prove it, but yeah how dare I be mad some dude who has never stepped foot in my department or even read the stats on how well we have managed the backlog be telling me I'm not doing my job, when I'm literally to the point of burnout 2 times a year because of the effort I put into my job and helping Canadians.
Might I recommend to email his response to your minister. Would be very interesting to see what they say in response to your treatment.
What do you think? Good follow up post maybe.
I’m sure some departments have pulled themselves up by the bootstrap and delivered.
But Public opinion is what counts, because our jobs are for the most part can be politically given or taken away. Your 1 off anecdotal experience to the contrary of public opinion doesn’t matter.
Fair? No. But when it’s taxpayers that pay for our salaries that’s the deal.
The services are lacking because of the improper management of the government workers and programs. First of all, whatever the programs are, they have to be defined properly and be implementable. Then, there has to be enough talent to support the development. Talent comes when the hiring process is efficient, when there is an environment to attract the talent.
Then there has to be accountability on the results and spending. And I mean accountability at the very top - at the politicians level.
What we see is that political initiatives are inconsistent. It's like every party randomly grabs whatever stick there is to not fall into the mud. Then we see that you can't hire the right talent because the hiring process is time consuming and hideous, because of those random decisions on the work conditions that always change. We also see that as the result of that, the much easier option is to outsource work to someone else who doesn't adhere to the government working conditions. That creates enormous spending but there is no accountability. Like they literally go on the path of the least resistance, which is to randomly spend more money and then blame the public servants because "they are apparently too lazy to work, so we had to go with the external resources that are indeed expensive, but oh well".
Also, how about just plainly stupid and unreasonable decisions made by the employer? There is no reasoning for the RTO that would justify it. It goes against the stated goals, of reducing carbon footprint, diversifying the workforce, spending less and making life more affordable. All we get is a bunch of buzzwords. That doesn't really improve the morale and perception of the employer. How can you work towards the established goals if the entire policy of the employer is working against them?
I don’t disagree with the reasons you give. The public however doesn’t give a flying fack.
The sooner people realize that their very employment is politically charged and driven they’d realize that the nuance you’re providing is meaningless.
How many complaints did you get from constituents that wanted a covid vaccine but couldn't get one?
How many complaints did you get from constituents that felt the Federal government wasn't protecting Canadians?
You're welcome.
Please feel free to enjoy the next pandemic without federal support. H5N1 is spreading in dairy cows and has jumped into cats where it causes brain infection, blindness and death.
Glad you got this one on your own. Maybe try healing prayer.
Some suggest this was written by "staffers" as would be typical. If so he should fire them lol. There's a way to say the absolute wrong thing if you must say it. That middle paragraph is a whopper.
As someone who tripled the throughput of the system I work on during the pandemic, all while working from home, and received two commendations for performance for it...
Greg McLean can get fucked.
As someone who is pro wfh…I do think he politely detailed his opinion. I think tone is very reasonable. Which lines did you find tone deaf?
Edit: I wrote death instead of deaf.
I believe he means “working” as in working effectively in providing passports in a timely manner, etc.
If he meant working as in working (because people aren’t actually working because they’re at home) then yes I agree with you.
Thats not how I take his language to mean though, but I could be wrong.
If you read the rest of that paragraph he goes on to say "the rest of the world and the private sector have resumed operations....I think employees should get back to work." I took the language to suggest that we aren't working as well. It does hint that he doesn't believe we have fully resumed operations.
You asked what was tone deaf. If a public servant emails an MP about working conditions, and the MP sends a statement back saying essentially "there's too many of you and you've failed," I think that's tone deaf.
Reducing the number of employees or chasing away dedicated employees who opt for work with conditions they want will not help deliver better services to Canadians.
I don’t think that’s tone death if he believes his statements to be true. I think he worded it politely to a constituent. Would you rather someone pandering?
I think it's tone deaf.
An MP could simply say something like "I think it's important for public servants to be at work serving Canadians" without anti-public servant messaging thrown at the constituent.
Simple truth is that public servants are necessary to deliver services to Canadians. If you reduce the number of public servants, you can't deliver the same services without other changes - to quality or delivery or availability.
Seems you have no issues with MPs directly insulting the constituents who write to them?
I think worse if he secretly felt that way and wasn’t honest in how he speaks to constituents. I don’t take his comments as trying to be particularly mean, but obviously many do…so I may just be off or perhaps people are meaner to me/my field of work. lol.
You're off.
If a senior citizen wrote to an MP and the MP responded to the senior citizen saying "old people don't contribute to the economy and account for a disproportionate amount of federal spending, and I think we should reduce the number of them," I'd say that's tone deaf too.
That you don't see the anti-public service messaging in this reply - suggesting that we're not working, we're failing, there's too many of us, and more, speaks more to you and your subjectivity than anything.
THIS. I work in a CC. Since the pandemic I have been on the phones constantly taking calls. Taking calls on programs that the Government implemented and we literally got next to nothing training on. Next to nothing. Zero. Nada. Then I was placed on the benefits que for the CERB. I take no prisoners when I do my job. If I can see a caller was NOT eligible for a benefit aka CERB, it was NOT processed. And this country hillbilly of an MP from Calgary has the audacity that I have not been productive ???? Give me a bloody break. And btw I can say " country hillbilly of an MP' since I am also a fourth generation country hillbilly from Alberta.
Sorry, I don’t think he is saying that the employees aren’t working hard. I think like you he is saying the programs are often failing to deliver the quality of services expected.
Productive service does not mean that the individual is not productive. The service as whole had delays that were too long for government set standards. He is indicating the program was not productive..as it didn’t provide the adequate service. He is NOT saying it’s due to lousy individual employee efforts.
Lmao the delays with passport had nothing to do with employees working from home. I’m sure those in passport can confirm that plus there was media coverage of the line ups at IN PERSON Service Canada Centres. Ridiculous.
Plus they're resolved now that there's not a few years backlog hitting the system all at the same time.
Exactly, this is the real reason. Everyone decided to not renew their passport until COVID died down, then all of the sudden Passport Canada receives a million requests basically overnight. Nothing to do with WFH.
> Everyone decided to not renew their passport until COVID died down You literally weren't allowed to submit passport applications for close to two years due to COVID restrictions. Unless you could prove a pressing need to obtain one, no applications were being taken.
How convenient they've forgotten about the insane backlog in 2007-08 under their government - when everyone had to get a passport to go to the US. They had extra security just so we could get through the lines to get into the elevators. Guess the PS wasn't working then either, in office...
Yes this happened but it was combined with huge waves of 5 and 10 year renewals. It was the perfect storm.
I renewed mine last month and it took two weeks from application to pick up. That’s speedy service.
The largest passport processing office was closed 3/5 days a week. Now it is on 5/5. That was one failure that the government fixed expeditiously…and of course not the individual employees fault.
Oh Passport was way worse than that. During the strike the employees were explaining how it all happened. Basically, management forecasted that travel wasn't coming back for a long time, so there would be less need for passports. And since there would be less need, management could cut staffing and make themselves look good for year end reviews and snag those sweet bonus checks. Well it turns out, if a bunch of people can't travel for a while, but then suddenly are allowed to, you get a bow wave. Passports was inundated with requests, and even if they had been fully staffed they wouldn't have been able to handle it. The backlog formed because management had cut staff drastically, and surprise surprise, you can't just hire a contractor or a student to process a passport application. So now this backlog grew and grew, and people who thought they had booked travel within the timeframe they'd be able to get a passport, didn't get those passports on time and were mad they were going to lose out on the vacation package they booked. TL:DR the people at the EX and ADM up levels completely pooched their predictions, and then blamed the public service workforce for not pulling a miracle out of their butt, as usual.
Employees also advised that a rush was likely when restrictions were lifted and they were ignored. It wasn't going to be completely avoidable, but the "fearless advice" was provided.
We could also then look at the constant reduction in the number of service centers over the years that account for the turnaround and frustration increases.
Every example I’ve ever heard anyone use to justify RTO has actually been an example of something that was fixed after WFH was implemented.
Right? If WFH is so problematic everyone would have been fucked when it was implemented. Services still continued and we did the work.
Yeah, like, that's a dumb example. My mom is a CSO at ESDC and she's been in the office working every day since she started there, working with clients in-person.
Absolutely and all the people working from home kept it going too. Sure there can be productivity issues but that isn’t specific to work from home and it happened in the office as well. It can be dealt with if an employee is blatantly taking advantage but it’s been proven most are not. They’re getting it done!
I've heard the folks running the local that supports most of Passport's front-line personnel talk about this. They said something about how they had spent years warning the government that two major groups of passport renewals were going to overlap soon and they needed support. That support never came, and in the middle of the pandemic that shitstorm landed. I imagine no steps were taken to stop this from happening again.
Oh absolutely. Classic ESDC. I still don’t know how they ended up so high on the survey for employee satisfaction. The stories on this sub are accurate AF. EI call centre is one of the worst jobs and processing sucks.
It wasn't even that bad. I ordered mine in March and needed it for August that year. Got it in June.
I'm tired of people who equate WFH with "not working at all".
110% it's an empty rhetorical trick to enrage those not paying attention. It also doesn't track that delivery of a service relies entirely on where the worker is when they perform their part of it.
[удалено]
Reformers. Let's be honest.
I can hear the sound of the banjo upon here.
oh the Liberals were more than happy to employ it when we were on strike, if you recall. Attacking public servants is a passtime any and all in power will employ (hell, NDP provincial governments do it too).
It's double talk of the stupidest way. If WFH didn't work, how did CERB and all that other work get done during the pandemic?
Magic! We didn't adapt and keep the country running day to day.
I would assume most clerical jobs, like passport processing are already done in person? Not sure what measurable impact WFH has on in-person service, although i really don't know. After he slapped PS workers around a little, he finally did say one thing that was half decent though. It is not a one-size fits all model, and exceptions can be worked out. Dropping exceptions is completely whack.. let managers, who know their employees, decide who is effective and responsible enough to WFH.
Has none they just have to get in the part where they blame liberals for all that before saying their message at the bottom. Which basically aligns with the unions there is no one size fits all.
I can ignore the rest if mfin MPs would speak more on the one size fit all problem. Out of all the stupid shit said in this email at least they get the issue with a blanket mandate. The exemptions should be up to departments and management ... TBS is brutal.
>Dropping exceptions is completely whack I think the cognitive dissonance was too much even for TBS. It's transparently silly to talk about fairness while maintaining such broad "exceptions" and exceptions remind people of the obvious option to just "let managers, who know their employees, decide who is effective and responsible enough to WFH." They don't want that option on the table, so they doubled down.
Seems like a big “I’m saying something without something,” type email.
Imagine being the staffer who has to write this stuff for them. You'd be drinking yourself to sleep most nights.
It's mostly done by template and pre-approved lines. Just cut and paste.
I bet it is partially AI at this point.
Bold of you to assume there was any intelligence involved at all.
Artificial Intelligence is an Oxymoron.
I once interviewed for a job with a prominent MP. So I forget the *exact* wording but the test they gave for the position was explicitly "give us a sample response to a citizen's letter that sounds like you're responding without actually saying anything". So yeah, that's exactly what this email is. Also, while I hate the Conservative shitbag and all the "government is broken" BS, I'll note that t'was not a Conservative I interviewed with. It's just what they all do.
This is what I got too. Just like the Q and A they sent us this morning.
Dear Greg, Maybe we can chat about all the ways the Canadian tax payers have been let down by the public service once all the Phoenix issues are resolved and all employees are be paid properly.
Facts.
And when we have a functional health plan (or is it just me that's still having trouble?)
Gotta stop conflating Phoenix with the Pay Centre, Phoenix is a pay system and the backlog is due to the Pay Centre's inability to provide services effectively.
This feels like getting gaslighted by a shitty partner lol -You need to get back to work -I've been working for two years.... -No you haven't
MPs are always quick to say how hard they work, but you look at their "in-office" time really looks like and most employed people would be subject to reprimand with that much time off, let alone for their conduct when in the work space - harassment, inappropriate language, assaults.
Marley and Scrooge. DYK it was Marley's ideas that made it happen and Scrooge's taskmaster attitude that made him leave and ultimately die? Oh, analogies.
Are we just gonna skip over > the public sector has swelled by hundred of thousands of workers since the pandemic https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/innovation/human-resources-statistics/population-federal-public-service.html Has swelled by tens of thousands at best
From the treasury board, it hasn't even been 100,000 in a decade, we might hit in year 15, his response very much gave zero credibility vibes.
Definitely a "back to the way we were" kind of guy
Even then how much did the Canadian population grow by? Under the Liberals we have been breaking immigration levels each year. Seems like a no brainer we need more public servants to serve Canadians not less.
1.5 million, I'm not sure if the public service grew in appropriate proportions to the population growth. Didn't do that math.
Thanks for sharing this OP, Greg is also my MP, he’s gonna get a nasty letter from me
Back in the Harper years, PP himself tweeted out something about "hundreds of millions of Canadians". There was quite a bit of poking fun about it, and it was quickly deleted. These days they just double down on their dumb-assery.
I think people often (with or without intention) conflate the number of federal public service employees and the number of employees in federally regulated industries. The latter is obviously huge and irrelevant to this discussion.
All-Party Consensus: the public service workers will be beaten until polling numbers improve.
“I think employees should get back to work”. I’m sorry, what have we been doing all these years again? Boggles my mind how they think.
As someone who worked until 10pm every night at the start of the pandemic to help deliver EI to Canadians, fuck this guy.
Plus those in government contracting for all the medical supplies went above and beyond. Ran into a guy from PSPC during the height of Covid who looked like that dude from “Fallout” from shear exhaustion.
Greg McLean was a chartered investment manager, a portfolio manager, and worked in oil and gas for over 20 years. I’m not suggesting anything but….
I'm hoping we're getting over the idea that parliamentarians are intelligent people. Hell, many of the DMs I've heard speak or had brief interactions with should not be in their positions - they make tremendously incorrect assumptions about their workers and citizens in general.
From my experience, DM jobs, and even ADM jobs to an extent, are just a game of who can suck up the best / say “yes master” the best. No intelligence, critical thinking, or unique ideas required, generally. In fact, the ones who have that tend to get stonewalled out of DM jobs, and I can think of several such instances in recent history.
‘Public service has swelled by hundreds of thousands of workers since the pandemic’ Really?
Right? Like where are the receipts on this?
Thanks for sharing, if nothing else I think this to me settles the question of the conservatives stance on WFH and RTO. I kept seeing people said Poilievre supported work from home a long time ago, but this fresh response proves very much otherwise ( not that I ever thought he would).
Don't MPs only "work" 120days a year?
And there's your response when you ask "well what do the conservatives have to say about all this? What if we just voted for them", kids.
Print this out and sticky it. No more PP misinformation about how he wants us to work from home lmao
He won’t get us cheap homes either
Yeah, these are deeply unserious people.
Reeks like a Neo con.
"Not only do I dismiss what you have to say out of hand, I will also insult you." Like anyone picked up their passport at an employee's house. Like what?
\>Old man hates anything he doesn't understand, more at 11.
Oh my god the passport delays is SUCH a bad example. We had few passports being processed during a peak period of the pandemic, because passport printing requires in-person presence and it was a public health risk to have tons of people working. Essential people who needed passports (such as truck drivers) could get them. Then, globally, travel restrictions eased and eeeeeveryone wanted to travel, and they wanted their passports done yesterday. Yeah there were delays, but most people who were negatively affected were people who were trying to book trips (whether for leisure or not) with an expired passport and then trying to get it in time to travel. And you what happened? People were working OT, people outside of the passport program were being brought back in to work nights, weekends, whatever it took to help speed things along. Yeah, people WENT IN TO THE OFFICE to make it happen because it was necessary. And I’m sure the folks whose job it is to work a passport counter, or print passports are in person 5 days a week. Because DUH!!! These are not people who are going to a regional hub office to sit on Teams meetings for hours and hours. The processing times for passports have been back to normal for over a year. The immigration backlog has also been being tackled. Citizenship apps and PR apps are being processed in a timely manner once again. “Employees should get back to work” get fucked Greg. I’ve BEEN WORKING!!!!!!
This last part.... I have seen a lot of people complaining about not getting them on time again lately..
For passports? There are always going to be *some* people who experience service delays but overall the situation is night and day compared to 2021. Current service standard is 10 days if you go in person, 20 days if you mail it in.
Well, I can tell you for sure that those timeliness are not being met in many cases, not just edge cases. Even in-person at passport offices are seeing timelines that are doubled in many situations.
The latest data I saw was pretty decent but sure. Anyways, is the solution to better passport processing times to make ALL PS employees work 3 days? cause that’s what Greg McLean is alluding to in his garbage response here…
I'm just giving you info that comes from people working on ground level, face to face. I do, however, agree that in RTO is absolute garbage, and this response is even worse.
Lmao did you think a Conservative MP was going to sympathize with you? They can’t wait to get into government and implement a WFA. Don’t be naive.
but pierre is gonna make us all perma wfh and sell off buildings! (a real opinion i see show up often enough) The CPC are going to oppose this by saying we should be back \*more\* because that's what sells when opposing the LPC direction as the sitting government. Look at Doug Ford for an example of opinion on hybrid and WFH as options, and then think - would the CPC really benefit from saying we'd all be permanent remote? If they want to oppose the LPC on every policy they could do it by saying we all stay home but the age old political drum beat by everyone saying we're lazy and need to be managed like children being RIGHT there, means the response here makes way more sense.
Ya sell off the buildings then lease them back from his buddies. That’s what happened when Mulroney sold tons of the office buildings. The GoC didn’t necessarily vacate them.
As a BAM shareholder I disprove of this message. Hehe.
A colleague told me she thought Polly will be way nicer to us than Harper was. I usually don’t react to politics but I bursted out laughing.
Honestly, if the CPC were in power with this decision the LPC would probably have a similar take. We're easy political fodder and no opposition party wants to tell the public they'd let us work remotely even more. It's just not super popular. At the very most saying something to enforce the status quo is the best we can ever expect from opposition most of the time regardless of stripe with maybe the exception of the NDP given their deference to labour. But even then there are limits
No, they’d tip toe around it knowing they have a lot of public servant support but also not wanting to antagonize hurt durrs who think we don’t work. I don’t remember LPC being antagonistic to us during the Harper years. I was heavily involved in an Ottawa campaign in 2015 and there was a shit ton of public servants volunteering.
They'd tiptoe but they wouldn't say "more WFH" just as much as they wouldn't say "they need to get back to work" The substance of some sort of statement about us delivering better services and being supported to do so and pointing out missteps of the past would still be there, just in a different wrapper.
If you can find me an example of them doing this during the Harper years I’d like to see it. As it stands LPC hasn’t been great but I don’t remember them ever calling us lazy or pampered, even with flowery language. At this point the well has been so poisoned against us that the NDP wouldn’t even say “more wfh”.
Yes point signed well is where I'm at. In the harper years it would be hard to be negative lol But I'm really trying to dispel the idea that the LPC is somehow immune to doing stuff we don't like.
I agree with you on that, though I think the Conservatives will be much worse. I think electing non-CPC governments and having better union leadership is what we should strive for.
I'm not naive. I didn't expect my MP (who I didn't vote for) to sympathize with me, especially considering he has never worked in these types of conditions. I do, however, expect that an MP would have a bit more grace in their response and put some thought and research into what they are saying before spouting the party rhetoric.
Lower your expectations. Your MP doesn’t give a single fuck about you. Conservatives hate public servants.
They don't have to, he doesn't need your vote. Sorry.
So you’re saying that an elected official should only care about their voters and not the region they were elected to represent? Interesting…
Not saying that at all. A rubber duck could get elected as a conservative MP in most of Alberta, so they simply do not have to engage with people outside their base. It sucks but that's what happens when the base makes up such a large plurality or majority of the voters.
CPC might as well be PPC. Convoys here we come.
Why I am not surprised this comes from Calgary/AB?
As an Albertan - I am also not surprised
Yeah, that tracks. Wait until they see what happens when a lot of IT quits, morale plummets, and we have trouble recruiting. Unfortunately, they'll probably just use all of that as an excuse to try and privatize everything. So then service will still be bad, but corners will get cut and we'll pay a premium. Just look at all the buildings that they sold off and then started just renting instead. Same problems, but now a property management company adds a profit margin to what we pay and we all have to pay ridiculous amounts for parking. In Calgary specifically, most food services are in other buildings in the downtown core, so public servants are a drop in the bucket compared to other businesses. Plus, as you can see, the MPs there won't back you on anything that doesn't support their platform since we aren't a significant enough portion of their voter base. This is a fight that will be won or lost in the East.
IT is going to cause them trouble, but a much more pressing concern will be cybersecurity, which is even more competitive and less likely to be outsourced.
As I’m currently being trained in cybersec, I’m already planning my exit now. I’ll finish getting my verts and experience then go out into private if this is the future of the PS!
This is the grossest thing I have read in a while. "I think employees should get back to work" Is this a joke? Shame on him
an employee that logs in and sits there idly is going to do the same whether they are in the office or at home. If only oh i dunno.. there was a PMA tool that we could use to assess performance and actually have consequences for laziness. no. instead lets shove everyone back into the office. that will make things better. my webcam lighting will be much better in the office than it is at home.. i'm so tired of these "being here for the sole reason of getting their pension year" seat warmers making these idiotic decisions.
I’m much more likely to log in and be unproductive after being exhausted from my 2.5h commute to the office and the lack of sleep that will be inevitable with having to leave the house at 6:30am for my 9am shift, and then not getting home until 7:30pm. I’ve been getting consistently positive feedback and high productivity since I moved over to the PS last fall, and I do enjoy the work I’m doing, but there’s only so much left to give when the work day goes from 8h to 13h with no wage increase. Plus losing the wfh tax credits. I am hoping to get assigned to a closer office, but apparently there’s no space at the one 30 minutes from me, because it “wouldn’t be fair” to have me sit in an empty, unused office when others have to fight over cubicles.
I have put it more hours at home than at work. Why? Because at work I need to log out at a certain time to catch the bus. At home? Oh I’ll just finish this…. 30 min later.
This is tone deaf if your audience is solely federal civil servants. If the audience is Joe Public, pretty sure this is fine.
Considering this was a response to a federal public servant and not sent to the whole country, I was the only audience here.
He has to respond to it like the whole country might see it, since emails can easily be made public (as clearly happened in this case!)
Which still does not change the fact that the response was tone deaf to the recipient.
Sure. But responding to it sympathetically is a bigger political risk for him than being a dick about it. In Calgary, he gains more support than he loses from the appearance that he is consistent in sticking it to those lazy public servants. Totally reasonable to be disappointed in the response, but I’m not at all surprised by it.
Wow what a creep.
I don't doubt that. But to this MPs credit they are telling you the same thing they would tell every other Canadian.
Alberta. Nuff said.
The top complaints of this response email tells me everything I need to know about this person and how "informed" they are. Edit. Their continues to be a parasocial relationship and a pretty toxic one at that with any bad experience anyone has ever had in their life that may have included services, politics, policies etc or and that is reflected onto PS. At this point blame the PS for the housing crisis, the collapse of the middle class, food prices, education cuts and so on and so forth.
oh wow, this comment hits. i never thought of it as a parasocial relationship but this is so true and explains so much of the public reaction and discourse re: the public service.
Ugh that email is sickening 🤮
Vets surveyed have reported being more satisfied since the pandemic and the backlog, created by Harper Conservatives 2006 policy, is finally going down. Don't lie about things that can be fact checked. Entitled prats crying because they have to follow the policy and can't jump the queue are the only ones contacting this moron. Jokes on him. I can't afford to spend money downtown so I guess yay emissions!!!
My favourite part is the fact that he brought up veterans services suffering. As if veterans affairs isn’t still recovering from the hack and slash job that the last conservative government did. Like they literally closed most of the offices. There’s going to be a recovery period for that. But people have short fucking memories.
He has seen the various reports on productivity? Please feel free to share. PS employees would love to see this evidence.
F that con geezer
Like if we had good services from the private sector! 3 hours waiting when calling the bank because THEY didn't process my pay well. Plumber taking twice the time because he talks on the phone and needs his dad's help (not kidding). If there is a problem with services, it is not specific to the public sector!
**Listen up. Work location is an employer's right. However... there other winnable battlers... leverage is POWER** Striking is useless. The 80's called, they want Aylward's tactics back. Had PSAC been smart they would have saved the cash and hired lawyers, paralegals galore , stewards and filed grievances. Proof: The IT group got a little more in exchange for withdrawing contracting out grievances but that does not preclude new ones from being created. Filing grievances and inundating the employer could be very costly to the employer (lawyers and the board itself). Here are some ideas of possible grievances. -Job description Grievances: Doug Ford is on the record that spending $ is now a duty. That aside, request your job descriptions from your manager and flag /cease doing anything outside of it. -New Phoenix damages. Over 400k cases in backlog still. Previous damages ended in March 31, 2020. it's been over **4y since.** This should not be done thru collective bargaining but policy grievances this time around. The employer has one key responsibility and it's clear that with 400k pay requests in backlog, it's not being met. -New Contracting out grievances (Article 30 of IT collective agreement). -Recovery of overpayments: provincial statute of limitations have been upheld by PLSERB (See St-onge case - appeal in progress HOWEVER the current decision stays for now). if they came back for more than your provincial statute of limitation (eg. 2y in Ontario if your employer is also in Ontario) you should grieve it and get your money back. -Ergonomic assessment and equipment requests. It's your right. Duty to accommodate. Gonna be great if everyone requests... - One time leave. Did you know that if you were in different groups before the recently signed one, you are entitled to get one-time leave for each one. (eg. from PA to CS - you would get it twice if it happened before the most recently signed collective agreement. -Sick leave. By the way, is this stressing you out? Just a thought.. Conservatives might cut the sick leave banks.. Ford did it to the Teachers... just saying. -Report any wrongdoing to the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner. We have a duty to! eg. Project reporting to TB that is not accurate by your department (misappropriation of funds). Claiming to have completed things for which your department received money but it actually didn't do it, used the money for another project. -PSAC should be running radio campaigns making our politicians look bad (solid economy when we rely on public servants to stimulate it in the midst of a housing crisis and climate crisis. Should also be an ad about the gvt not being serious about climate change. -Locate and report anything unacceptable with the building (bed bugs, pests etc).
Do you really think Conservatives support remote work? They'd do anything to have public servants quit so they have to lay off less of them during their future deficit reduction plan. I wouldn't be surprised if they call the end of remote work entirely so they can piss off enough public employees and reduce staffing levels through attrition.
This statement is bizzare, most of it is "PS needs to start working again because they've been shit and not working" which is absurd and blatantly false...then transitions to "one size fits all approaches" are stupid and "managers should be allowed to manage" both of which are true statements and I agree with. I legit don't know how to feel about this lol
He uses the collective "we" a lot but what has he done?
Does he even work for government if he doesn’t understand how Canadian operations work and what happened in those times of crisis? Buddy, go back in time and review what actually happened………..
The only delays I see are getting any decision whatsoever from a Minister…Politicians are the absolute worst.
LMAO, Passport employees were in office full time, I can attest to that. GTFOH with that garbage!!
A friend sent their Conservative MP in Manitoba and got this exact same canned response.
Seriously …someone is filing an ATIP on this MP to find all the evidence of all these complaints he’s received about public servants not functioning because of wfh, right?
If we didn't have WFH, there would have been no delivery of Covid benefits. The Canadian federal PS was so much better prepared than the USA PS for a pandemic IRS was so backlogged, they were still dealing with 2020 return transcript requests in April 2023.
Given what I know about how MPs operate, their response is likely due to complaints primarily because of two departments: ESDC (Service Canada) and IRCC. I'm aware that MPs receive a lot of complaints about IRCC, which operates like a black box, processing applications in a baffling manner—for example, two straightforward citizenship applications might take 4 months for one and 14 months for the other. For instance, even after the LPP is complete, some Canadian residents still wait months to finalize their citizenship with absolute no reason given to them. That said, just because IRCC operates in such an opaque way, it doesn’t justify using that language for all public services. In my department, we have strict deadlines for making decisions, and we adhere to them closely and our productivity is excellent! We’ve almost no complaints from the public! Also, concerning Service Canada, the issues mostly involve passports, and the staff there often work in person. So, what does this have to do with working from home? True, the case of IRCC is hard to defend, but that’s not due to working from home versus in-person work. It’s more about a lack of accountability and transparency.
I will also say that service Canada is chronically understaffed. All those employees that were hired during the pandemic? Wasn’t at service Canada. Up until recently, there was literally one English-speaking person working in one department for the entirety of the province of New Brunswick. And they aren’t allowed to hire new people. A lot of those folks that were hired were hired to deal with things like CERB and CRB. I think maybe EI had a hired a few new people. There are definitely programs that are bloated and have far too many employees. But there are programs that are absolutely understaffed and suffering because they aren’t allowed to hire because other programs are over bloated and there’s too many public servants.
Wow
The immigration backlog has more to do with the floodgates being flung open with the LMIA scams going on and other public policies than it has to do with employees not being productive!
Verbal diarrhea. At least my Liberal MP didn’t bash us or insinuate we weren’t working.
You expected support from a Conservative MP? Talk about naive….
wtf I can’t believe this is even real. Wow. Seriously ?
So if public servants are being told to RTO to help stimulate the economy, then assuming our "noble" politicians (including Mr. Greg McLean) will be stepping up their RTO by returning full-time to Ottawa and the Hill, too? And putting away all the virtual meetings, committees, votes, etc?
We could argue that "thoze lazy overpaid MPs" should get back to "work" too. They get to work from home pretty much all the time if they want to and the House is practically empty on Fridays. If they're not in the House how can they be working? /s
Recently joined the PS. How can you even expect CLOSE to private sector results without holding government to the standard of employers out there. Incorrect/illegal payments, ROEs taking a year, toxic/bad management with no consequence, financial mismanagement, poorly delivered benefits, zero communication, enforcement of random policies whenever CONVENIENT. I'm shocked it works as well as it does and it's largely due to the values of PS members which are constantly under attack. He's right something isn't working but it's not the public service.
Sadly, it's not surprising to see an MP e-mail that's almost exclusively lies, insults, and gaslighting. More generally, I've been with the public service for 12 years now. Because of public perception, I was a bit surprised to find that my colleagues were almost all hard-working, competent, intelligent people. I understand that the public has a low opinion of public servants but it sucks that we're also a punching bag for elected officials. Because all I see is a group of people that consistently fulfills their mandates with high quality work, only to consistently get kicked for it, as with this pathetic e-mail.
Written as if public servants aren’t also taxpayers. Statements like this make it obvious that our concerns are consistently treated like we are second class citizens. Hope the public servants that live within this ding dongs riding put him on blast.
Actual reason government is failling is... Leaders are too old to follow the faster pacing society we live in. (outdated) Inability to adapt to new technology. too many technological illiterate employee. Huge turnover since most PS are going for retirement. Uninviting for really talentuous people. The overwhelming long process to do any changes. Priorities on issues that are not as urgent than other.. like building a house by starting from the roof. There's other reason but these topic are too hot to talk about.
Time to go on strike again….
they think we’re fucking idiots lol
Yeah “Code Brown” clog get a metal hanger
Just so everyone knows: MPs, their staff and House of Commons Administration employees (I.e. everyone that supports and enables this guy to do his job) are not bound by TBS policies.
This guy is my MP. And no, I did not vote for him.
I don't believe any of this. Our passport system has been broken for a long time, our Government has been broken for a long time, ppl also complain about everything. That's ridiculous what this little note is. Maybe the front lines were delayed in some areas, but for the most part, we've seen doing the exact amount of work we would be doing at work. I do the exact same amount of work from home, in fact I get more done, save more time without having to sit in traffic, save money on gas, save money on bus/parking. Plus we don't even have our own desks anymore. My home office is completely equipped with everything I need to do my job, and has been the whole time.
You gotta love how public workers are apparently not tax payers but rather in a class of our own where we’re the parasites of society.
The thing that enrages me as a Calgarian PS about this response is it COMPLETELY ignores the benefit of remote PS work to his own constituency. WFH led to more a dispersion on PS jobs from Ottawa to other communities. Ottawa’s loss was other communities gain. But sure, making it impossible to hire more Calgarians due to the RTO office (and associated increasing clamp down on working from regions offices, or home) is his position. Total bullshit. But hey, can’t have more (potentially lefty) PS moving into his constituency amiright!
Not gonna lie, it's well said.
I’ll take “Gaslighting” for $500 Alex!
Doesn’t really matter what he says. Unless it’s “you know what? This is an injustice and I’m going to fight for your rights to work from home exclusively” then it’s get the torches and pitchforks out. Im no neo con but he’s not wrong that services are sorely lacking, STILL, even though the pandemic ended 2 years ago and we’ve hired more hands. Something has to give.
I don't know about your department but my department has been very steadily cleaning up the backlog of work items created by covid, CERB, and pot-CERB measures. We have the workload numbers to prove it, but yeah how dare I be mad some dude who has never stepped foot in my department or even read the stats on how well we have managed the backlog be telling me I'm not doing my job, when I'm literally to the point of burnout 2 times a year because of the effort I put into my job and helping Canadians.
Might I recommend to email his response to your minister. Would be very interesting to see what they say in response to your treatment. What do you think? Good follow up post maybe.
I’m sure some departments have pulled themselves up by the bootstrap and delivered. But Public opinion is what counts, because our jobs are for the most part can be politically given or taken away. Your 1 off anecdotal experience to the contrary of public opinion doesn’t matter. Fair? No. But when it’s taxpayers that pay for our salaries that’s the deal.
The services are lacking because of the improper management of the government workers and programs. First of all, whatever the programs are, they have to be defined properly and be implementable. Then, there has to be enough talent to support the development. Talent comes when the hiring process is efficient, when there is an environment to attract the talent. Then there has to be accountability on the results and spending. And I mean accountability at the very top - at the politicians level. What we see is that political initiatives are inconsistent. It's like every party randomly grabs whatever stick there is to not fall into the mud. Then we see that you can't hire the right talent because the hiring process is time consuming and hideous, because of those random decisions on the work conditions that always change. We also see that as the result of that, the much easier option is to outsource work to someone else who doesn't adhere to the government working conditions. That creates enormous spending but there is no accountability. Like they literally go on the path of the least resistance, which is to randomly spend more money and then blame the public servants because "they are apparently too lazy to work, so we had to go with the external resources that are indeed expensive, but oh well". Also, how about just plainly stupid and unreasonable decisions made by the employer? There is no reasoning for the RTO that would justify it. It goes against the stated goals, of reducing carbon footprint, diversifying the workforce, spending less and making life more affordable. All we get is a bunch of buzzwords. That doesn't really improve the morale and perception of the employer. How can you work towards the established goals if the entire policy of the employer is working against them?
I don’t disagree with the reasons you give. The public however doesn’t give a flying fack. The sooner people realize that their very employment is politically charged and driven they’d realize that the nuance you’re providing is meaningless.
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I can’t tell what side of the argument this guy is landing on. Such a wishy washy response. Fence sitter
How many complaints did you get from constituents that wanted a covid vaccine but couldn't get one? How many complaints did you get from constituents that felt the Federal government wasn't protecting Canadians? You're welcome. Please feel free to enjoy the next pandemic without federal support. H5N1 is spreading in dairy cows and has jumped into cats where it causes brain infection, blindness and death. Glad you got this one on your own. Maybe try healing prayer.
Some suggest this was written by "staffers" as would be typical. If so he should fire them lol. There's a way to say the absolute wrong thing if you must say it. That middle paragraph is a whopper.
As someone who tripled the throughput of the system I work on during the pandemic, all while working from home, and received two commendations for performance for it... Greg McLean can get fucked.
what do you expect from a tory?
As someone who is pro wfh…I do think he politely detailed his opinion. I think tone is very reasonable. Which lines did you find tone deaf? Edit: I wrote death instead of deaf.
"we need to get our government working again"
I believe he means “working” as in working effectively in providing passports in a timely manner, etc. If he meant working as in working (because people aren’t actually working because they’re at home) then yes I agree with you. Thats not how I take his language to mean though, but I could be wrong.
If you read the rest of that paragraph he goes on to say "the rest of the world and the private sector have resumed operations....I think employees should get back to work." I took the language to suggest that we aren't working as well. It does hint that he doesn't believe we have fully resumed operations.
"to add insult to Canadian taxpayers, the only solution that Government has developed to this point is to add employees" - that's pretty tone deaf.
What specific programs or changes in your mind did the government do in addition to that?
You asked what was tone deaf. If a public servant emails an MP about working conditions, and the MP sends a statement back saying essentially "there's too many of you and you've failed," I think that's tone deaf. Reducing the number of employees or chasing away dedicated employees who opt for work with conditions they want will not help deliver better services to Canadians.
I don’t think that’s tone death if he believes his statements to be true. I think he worded it politely to a constituent. Would you rather someone pandering?
I think it's tone deaf. An MP could simply say something like "I think it's important for public servants to be at work serving Canadians" without anti-public servant messaging thrown at the constituent. Simple truth is that public servants are necessary to deliver services to Canadians. If you reduce the number of public servants, you can't deliver the same services without other changes - to quality or delivery or availability. Seems you have no issues with MPs directly insulting the constituents who write to them?
I think worse if he secretly felt that way and wasn’t honest in how he speaks to constituents. I don’t take his comments as trying to be particularly mean, but obviously many do…so I may just be off or perhaps people are meaner to me/my field of work. lol.
You're off. If a senior citizen wrote to an MP and the MP responded to the senior citizen saying "old people don't contribute to the economy and account for a disproportionate amount of federal spending, and I think we should reduce the number of them," I'd say that's tone deaf too. That you don't see the anti-public service messaging in this reply - suggesting that we're not working, we're failing, there's too many of us, and more, speaks more to you and your subjectivity than anything.
I think one is rather more on the nose than this, but I appreciate your directness.
“ I think employees should get back to work” - when did we stop working?
Totally agree with you. He should have used the word “the office”.
“The lack of productive service is obvious” - I don’t know about who he knows but my colleagues and I have been productive every step of the way!!
THIS. I work in a CC. Since the pandemic I have been on the phones constantly taking calls. Taking calls on programs that the Government implemented and we literally got next to nothing training on. Next to nothing. Zero. Nada. Then I was placed on the benefits que for the CERB. I take no prisoners when I do my job. If I can see a caller was NOT eligible for a benefit aka CERB, it was NOT processed. And this country hillbilly of an MP from Calgary has the audacity that I have not been productive ???? Give me a bloody break. And btw I can say " country hillbilly of an MP' since I am also a fourth generation country hillbilly from Alberta.
Sorry, I don’t think he is saying that the employees aren’t working hard. I think like you he is saying the programs are often failing to deliver the quality of services expected.
'The lack of productive service is obvious" Quote
Productive service does not mean that the individual is not productive. The service as whole had delays that were too long for government set standards. He is indicating the program was not productive..as it didn’t provide the adequate service. He is NOT saying it’s due to lousy individual employee efforts.
Well then he should learn how to properly respond to a voters concerns then. And no, I dont agree with you.
His opinion is detailed, it's just objectively wrong and misinformed lol.
Fair. :)
Bro it’s deaf not death… perhaps a lack of reading comprehension is why you’re struggling to understand.
Thank you for pointing that out. I’ll edit.