Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

PSAC members all over the Province, coordinated by their Area Councils, are spending the summer letting the public & politicians know the value of strong public services – services that should be protected and improved. They are attending events in their communities, meeting with the public, distributing fans and leaflets with the Public Services Are Cool message and website address, and encouraging people to send a message to Ottawa …

Federal public employees are on the job every day to protect our health, safety, environment, culture and standard of living. Our quality of life would be poorer in Canada without them. As workers, citizens, and neighbours, they contribute to strong communities.

I expect their employer, the Government of Canada, to treat them with the respect they deserve. That means compensating them fairly for their labour, providing them with the equipment and infrastructure they need to do their jobs well, and ensuring there is enough of them to get the job done properly.

I support federal public emplyees because their work supports me. Quality public services bring us quality of life. They help keep us safe, healthy and secure. Social programs and benefits support us in difficult times: when we’re ill or unemployed, or facing economic hardship. They provide security in old age.

Quality public services promote social equality and cohesion, and are vital to our prosperity and a sustainable environment.

Quality public services: they’re the ties that bind us together.

Visit www.publicservicesarecool.ca to send a message to your MP, sign on to the petition, and enter to win an enviro-friendly bike.

Here are some photos taken at various events around the province …

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source: Vancouver Sun, Friday, May 04, 2007

What is it going to take for the managers at Passport Canada to get their act together? Furious people waiting in endless lines, angry letters and phone calls to Passport Canada staff and to newspapers, and media reports and editorials so far seem to have had little effect.

• Related: Passport Offices – Not enough staff, computers, to meet demand

The lineups continue, as does Passport Canada’s practice of telling people that they’re not going to be seen after they’ve waited hours in the cold and rain. In fact, the agency’s arrogance has reached new heights in the past few weeks.

Consider, for example, The Vancouver Sun’s attempts to find out merely who’s in charge of the Vancouver office. Calls to the offices of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day failed to yield an answer.

Letters and phone calls to Passport Canada CEO Gerald Cossette went unreturned, which suggests he has no interest in serving the public or taking responsibility for the mess he’s created. And Ottawa-based Passport Canada representative Fabian Lengelle told a reporter that he wasn’t sure whether he should release the name of the person in charge in Vancouver. Now that’s hardly the right attitude for a government agency that’s supposed to be serving the public.

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True or False?

• You are paying too much tax.
• To be fair to all, everyone should pay the same tax rate.
• A reduction in taxes would help working families.
• Individuals can’t influence governments when it comes to tax cuts.

Try the new tax quiz at the national website.

Kent Spencer, The Province, Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Canadians should brace themselves for long passport waits “for months” to come, says a spokeswoman for the workers who process passport applications.

“There is no end in sight,” Kay Sinclair, Vancouver-based vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said yesterday.

“I’m told the situation could last for months. Employees could be asked to work all summer to keep up with demand.”

A backlog of applications has developed since the U.S. required all passengers arriving in the U.S. by air to carry passports starting Jan. 23.

About 2,000 PSAC members have been working overtime on weeknights and weekends to process applications, said Sinclair. Printers are running 24 hours a day.

“The job is really stressful,” she said. “Sometimes the public have taken out their frustrations. There’s pressure in terms of [not] taking breaks and holidays.”

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The latest profile of federal workers shows women have made important progress in the public service.

The proportion of women within the segment of the public service known as the “core public administration,” or CPA increased steadily over the period studied — 1995 and 2006 — and since 1999, women have outnumbered men, Statistics Canada data released yesterday showed.

The study compared data from 1995 and 2006 to track employment trends in the federal public service and how workers compare to the rest of the country’s workforce.

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The Federal Government Department of Finance has launched an online pre-budget consultation to give Canadians a chance to have input to the development of the 2007 Federal Budget. Last year they reported receiving 6000 responses to their online consultation process.

The government online consultation is a bit restrictive in the choices it offers but you can select ‘Spending’ as your top priority. In the box for comments write in your own words about the need to continue delivering quality public services to Canadians.

• PSAC Labour Day message: Defend Quality Public Services

Now is your chance to send a message to the government! Click to visit the the Department of Finance website and have your say. Note that the closing date for this consultation is February 28^th.

OTTAWA — Kenyan-born Mohamed Khandwalla is living in a frustrating limbo in Toronto, despite being armed with a master’s degree in pharmacy from Britain, fresh credentials as a registered pharmacist in Canada and the love of a good woman.

Khandwalla says his wait to get permanent residency in Canada, which he expected would be about six months, has stretched to a year, and could last another 10 months or so based on what the local immigration office is telling him.

The 29-year-old says the waiting is getting him down because he is barred from working or travelling outside Canada while his application is pending.

“Trust me, it’s a problem, it’s very sad,” said Khandwalla, an only child whose father has not seen him since he married his Canadian bride in November 2005.

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper today established an Advisory Committee of nine eminent Canadians to advise him and the Clerk of the Privy Council on the renewal and future development of the Public Service of Canada. The Advisory Committee will also report annually as part of the Clerk’s report to the Prime Minister on the state of the Public Service, which is tabled in Parliament.

“The public service must continue to adapt to meet the changing realities of Canadian society and be well equipped to best serve Canadians in the coming years,” the Prime Minister said. “This is particularly true as the current baby boom generation retires. The future development of the Public Service requires sound advice, innovative solutions and strong support from both within and outside government.”

Read more at pm.gc.ca.

Public servants in Canada are less likely to be visible minorities than workers in the private sector and that is worrisome, says a report released Tuesday.

The report was released by the country’s Public Service Commission, an independent agency that is supposed to ensure Canada’s public service is competent, non-partisan and representative of the population.

Maria Barrados, president of the commission, found three main areas of concern in this year’s report:

• the “unmonitored movement” of employees between positions in the civil service and positions in ministers’ offices
• the underrepresentation of visible minorities in the public sector
• questionable ways temporary staff gained longer-term and permanent positions

In one of its main concerns, the report found that in 2005, fewer minorities worked in the public service than worked in the private sector.

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OTTAWA – Despite feeling that they are overworked and have had no improvement in working conditions, public service workers are still strongly committed to their job of providing quality services to Canadians, according to the latest results of the federal government’s Public Service Employees Survey.

The survey, released today by the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada, found that 90 per cent of federal public service workers admit to being proud of the public services they deliver, and 96 per cent say they are committed to making their organization successful.

• View the results of the survey online at hrma-agrh.gc.ca

“These results confirm what we’ve been saying all along: That our members care deeply about their work and that public services need to be defended from cutbacks and privatization,” says Public Service Alliance of Canada National President John Gordon.

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Defending Quality Public Services

The PSAC supports strong public services and service delivery and remains unalterably opposed to privatization of public infrastructure and public services.

Quality public services are essential in building strong economies and inclusive societies. Privatization undermines the ability of public sector workers to provide the kind of services to the public that they would like to provide. The PSAC’s People behind the Services Campaign in 2004 highlighted this commitment.

After 20 years of pro-privatization policies, neither Canada nor the world are better or fairer places to live. The gap between rich and poor has widened.

Continue reading the PSAC Defending Quality Public Services policy at the national website.

Student Employment

A significant number of employers, including many, that count unionized PSAC members amongst their employees, routinely hire students.

The PSAC believes that employers, including the PSAC itself, have an obligation to future generations of workers, and that this obligation can be partially met by hiring students.

The PSAC is equally clear that students should be hired into carefully crafted and monitored programs that are designed to assist them in advancing their academic skills and acquiring social and workplace knowledge and skills – including an understanding of the role of Unions in workplaces and society and not into determinate and indeterminate positions. Under no circumstances should students be hired as a form of cheap labour for employers, or in any way to undermine the employment security of the employers’ regular workforce.

Continue reading the PSAC Student Employment policy at the national website.