Mr. Chairperson (Gerry McAlpine): Order, please. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This afternoon this section of the Committee of Supply will resume consideration of the Estimates of the Civil Service Commission. When the committee last sat, it had been considering item 17.1. Civil Service Commission (a) Executive Office (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits, on page 32 of the Estimates book.

* (1440)

Ms. Becky Barrett (Wellington): The minister was discussing the concern that I had raised about the Speech from the Throne paragraph talking about the reduction in the size of government over the next five years by 10 percent through I believe the minister was talking about vacancy management and increasing the training and increasing skill levels of employees, both current and new employees. I do have some issues to continue in that line of questioning.

The minister spoke about how the function, the vacancy management was going to be undertaken through two methods. One was the Estimates process and then–well, I guess it is one–the Estimates process as done by the individual departments and then as carried through and improved and put into structure through the Treasury Board process. This would be a yearly process that is undertaken.

Now, my concern is that that is what happens currently. There is currently the Estimates process that is undertaken every year, and then it goes into Treasury Board. It goes through the whole process and comes out as first the Speech from the Throne, then the budget and then the Estimates. We are talking here about a five-year plan that has as its goal, according to the Speech from the Throne, the reduction of approximately 1,400 positions. This is after a reduction of 3,500 positions over the last 10 years according to the minister's own comments last week.

So we are not at the beginning of a civil service reduction process. We are well through or into a reduction in the civil service. I think that there is a minimum below which it is impossible to function as a civil service or as any organization, below which you just cannot function effectively. I am not saying that I know that 12,600 is that limit or anything close to that limit. I do not pretend to know what the actual lowest number is.

But the concern that I have is not so much with the number, although I am concerned about that. I really do think that that has some potential for being very troublesome. But I do not see anything either in the Speech from the Throne or in the minister's first answer–now, granted he only had one answer last week, but I would like the minister to address the issue of the plan.

I am not comfortable with the plan being simply a continuation of the Estimates process, because that does not guarantee that there will be at the end of five years a reduction of 10 percent or even anywhere close to that. I think it is incumbent upon the government as a whole to, if you are going to look at something like this–and you put it in the Speech from the Throne, so I am assuming that it is a real goal of the government to do–that you need to have more than just the annual Estimates process that is begun by each department, that when you get to the Treasury Board or the putting together of everything, you really have to have something more, I think, than that.

One of the other issues is, people do not, maybe they do, and this is a specific question that maybe the minister can get information for me on. Is there information on how many people within the next five years will be eligible for early retirement, which I am assuming would mean those from the ages of 45 or 50 on? I do not know how you determine retirement, if it is age or age plus years of service or whatever, but if the government is making the statement in the Speech from the Throne that they have a goal of 10 percent reduction over the next five years through attrition only, without layoffs, then the government should have based that statement on an understanding of what the pool of potential retirees looks like right now, where they come from, which departments are they, which jobs do they currently hold, and is there a plan in place for training, either training replacements for those positions, or changing the definition of those positions.

So I guess I have a general comment and then I have some specific questions.

Mr. Mike Radcliffe (Minister charged with the administration of The Civil Service Act): Mr. Chairman, some of the more specific and direct questions I think that my honourable friend has raised I would like to address first.

First of all, I guess, one of the more straightforward ones is that over the next five years 25 percent of the civil service workforce will be eligible, and I think the word "eligible" is a key term for retirement. That means that they will be 55, they will reach the threshold of 55 years of age. Whether those individuals opt to retire or not to retire is, of course, their particular choice. I have heard it said that that is really too young to retire. I could concur with that, being that I am now 54 years of age and I am looking forward to another five years of employment and will be asking the good people of River Heights to endorse that suggestion.

One of the other points, I guess, as a general background which I think is relevant, as well, is that my honourable colleague said that the workforce was reduced by about 3,500 people, which is true, and I am only dealing in boxcar figures at this point, but approximately a thousand of those people were health care, Department of Health people who migrated out to the WHA or the RHA system. So that, in fact, they are not longer technically in the civil service, but, in fact, they are still involved in public service.

* (1450)

The other key point I would like to emphasize, which I think is very important, is that of the 3,500 people by which the public service was reduced, less than 200 were actually laid off, which I think is a very significant figure. That should give some reassurance to everybody who is in the public service at this point in time. With regard to the role of the department, I think this is one thing that bears some emphasis as well. The department, in this case, is involved with the individuals who will be laid off or could be laid off or who would be laid off, I guess would be the right verb, and not otherwise. So if somebody needs retraining, if somebody needs another opportunity, if somebody needs counselling or resume writing or all the different attributes of finding a new job, the whole handling of the communication issue is something that the civil service department would be involved with.

The actual management of the overall reduction of government is, in fact, probably more properly an issue that would emanate from the Department of Finance. One of the things that I guess I would want to share with my honourable colleague, as well, which she may or may not be aware of, is that the different departments of our government are divided for budget purposes into different sectors. These are groupings of departments, and often what will happen is that one of the big-spending departments, i.e., Justice, Health, Family Services, will be combined with a number of smaller departments, and different goals will be set.

The deputy ministers meet through the winter months, and they review their line Estimates to see where there can be possible savings and reductions in government. Every year, we have set targets which have for the most part been met by the members of the bureaucracy, and the goals that have been set, having in mind the essential targets that the government has to face every year–and as my honourable colleague knows, we have an ongoing and ever-increasing demand for funds from Health, from Education, from Family Services, from the whole social services side of government, and the other parts of government, regulatory or other services, often have potential for efficiencies in them. So each department has a challenge put to them every year of finding further efficiencies.

I acknowledge, and I think my honourable colleague is quite correct, that at this point in time many of the departments are pared down to the bone with a view of giving service, of rendering service to the public of Manitoba in the fashion in which they do it now. However, I think everybody would agree, and my honourable colleague would be no exception, that with the advance of technology and with the rethinking of how government performs, that efficiencies will be produced.

Now, one of the roles or functions of the Civil Service Commission is to manage and supply an internship program, and I believe that my opening remarks did touch on that as well. The Management Internship Program is a government initiative, and what this is is an external recruitment at the master's level. These are drawn from the master's of public administration and other master's level programs, and the current target for 1999 is to have five such individuals.

Then we have a number of aboriginal projects, Aboriginal Management Development programs, and the target for '99 in this particular case is–I am told that there are 22 individuals from the Management Internship Program right now. This is the external recruitment from the master's levels of public administration. That was six in '96, five in '97, six in '98 and five in '99, for a total of 22 individuals.

The Aboriginal Management Development Project is recruiting internally, internal development, and targeted at training and upgrading people of aboriginal background. In 1998, there were nine such individuals identified and who entered the program, and in '99 there are eight for a total of 17.

Then, in addition to that, the Aboriginal Public Administration Program, which is, again, an external recruitment of aboriginal people with an emphasis on youth, is focusing on recruiting six individuals. So that touches on the remarks I made in my opening remarks that there were six individuals. So that would be a total of 45 people, and that speaks to the training complement, the training side of government.

So this touches on the role of what the Civil Service Commission directs itself to. My honourable colleague I know is looking to me for some specificity as to how government is going to achieve reductions. At this point all I can do is speak to the impact, speak in broad generalities and speak to the existing structures.

The remarks in the throne speech are an overall, broad goal. That goal is reviewed and discussed every year. All of the broad goals of government are reviewed prior to the Estimates being presented by government or prepared by government through the Treasury Board process. I know that what my honourable colleague is looking for is to say, well, there are going to be five meat inspectors that are going to be eliminated or there are going to be six teachers. We cannot do that because that is not the case.

So my honourable colleague is saying, no, that is not the case. All we can do right now is say that as people identify what their intentions are and as they step forward and say: we are going to avail ourselves of this opportunity for maturing and moving off and accessing our pensions, then government will say: all right, we will react in a positive fashion and a proactive fashion and as the technology improves and increases, as the different programs, for example, SAP, which is a program that has just been introduced right now, government will be able to streamline its operations and then take the people who were involved in, say, for example, the whole process of writing cheques and recording expenses and revenue, et cetera, and retrain them for different functions, that is the process that will be ongoing as we move through the next five years.

* (1500)

Ms. Barrett: The minister spoke about the aboriginal training. I have some questions on those specific programs when we get to the human resources line. Frankly, the minister did not say anything new in his latest answer, but he did say that as people identify that they want to retire, the government will react proactively. Now, a specific question: how much lead time do people who are choosing to retire have to give to their various departments in order for them to access the retirement package?

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, under the collective agreement, the minimum time that an employee needs to give for notice is two weeks. It is one pay period. This I think is a norm not just confined to the public service but right across industry. I know when I was operating a small law firm here in town, that that, in fact, was the norm of what a clerk or a secretary or an employee would often say, which is I am obliged to give you two weeks, which is one pay period. However, I am told that by custom, and only by custom, especially when you get into higher levels of management or of administration in the government, usually one month is the custom that many employees give by way of notice to their employer.

The Department of Labour–I guess this is a little more responsive to my honourable colleague's question–has developed a succession planning model, which has been applied to the Department of Labour. It is now being applied to the Department of Highways. The commission has developed this model for all of government. What this model or plan does is it has to elicit the information from a particular department, but the managers of the department would take the plan and apply it and say, all right, it would identify what are the key positions in that particular department, what are the ages or the demographics of the individuals who are currently filling those positions, and so what is the potential for gaps or holes in providing government service.

Then it goes on to say what is required–it asks the question of administrators–to train existing individuals. It helps to identify who could be promoted from within, what would be required to create new skills, and what sort of plans should be instituted for recruiting outside individuals such as I have touched on with the Management Internship Program and other issues, of course, what is required for recruiting outsiders in order to maintain the skein or the service level that is provided by government.

So this is a model that is being applied right across government at this point in time, and I think this is perhaps more of what my honourable colleague was driving at: is there a succession plan in place? Yes, there is.

Ms. Barrett: Yes, that is more what I was, I think, looking for.

The succession planning model asks managers to identify "key positions." Is there a way to identify what key positions are? I know that you are looking at an enormous range of programs, et cetera, but I guess the concern I still have is that if you can say 20 percent, or 18.7 percent in the case of the Department of Labour, of people will be eligible for retirement by the year 2001. I am assuming that in the Department of Labour, the managers and the key people know where those people are located or can find that out, and perhaps that is what the succession planning model helps them to do.

But, again, key positions. The question is: do the managers identify everybody, or does a succession planning model focus on key positions?

* (1510)

Mr. Radcliffe: Well, I think my honourable colleague, Mr. Chairman, has touched on really the heart and soul of this program, because the definition of the word "key" is, in fact, the essence of the model or program. What that means is, does the individual who is being considered at any given particular time or a position and the occupant of that position right now possess and exercise scarce qualities that go to the heart and soul or the mission and function of the government? If that person were to leave, would the service be, would government be capable of continuing with the service? So that is the rough idea of what a key position would be. Does that person have scarce qualities, or are these qualities that are generally obtainable?

If an individual is a generalist and there is a ready supply of other individuals with the same skill set, then that elicits, I guess, one sense of review, in other words, where would one recruit other individuals with the ability to answer the phone, to be courteous, to be compassionate, to be a good listener, and to analyze demands and needs as they are coming in the door from members of the public?

Does somebody have, I guess, acute negotiating skills, analytical skills, which are the culmination of 10, 15, 20 years of government service, in order to promote labour peace? Is that something that is unique and, in fact, something that is scarce to the marketplace? If so, how does one train or discover other individuals with similar characteristics?

One of the other functions of this whole model, as well, is an assessment of whether it is still appropriate to be going on offering the same services to the public. For example, I can point to the Fire Commissioner's office, for example. The Fire Commissioner's office received legal advice that, in fact, they were not required and that it was not appropriate for them to give continual inspections of premises. They could train local individuals at a municipal level to perform this function, but this was not something that either was mandated by the Fire Commissioner's office by their legislation, and, in fact, it gave rise to other legal liability which was not within their service package.

Their whole role in labour has changed. They are now the trainers of the inspectors, not necessarily the inspectors themselves. If they are inspecting, they do it at the behest of private corporations or municipalities and they do it for value. That is an indication of how the whole face of government had changed in that respect with an assessment of what is the appropriate skill, what is the appropriate service, have we done this before, should we continue to do this? Because as one I think acknowledges, the fact that somebody has done something in a particular fashion for 20 years or 30 years is not in itself a reason for continuing it if the circumstances of the workplace today do not demand it. I think that that ongoing measurement and analysis and assessment of the government role in the workplace, in all the regulatory functions and all the services, is ongoing in government, and it is part of this succession planning model.

I have heard discussions even in the realm of education, where the whole role of teaching is being reassessed. Teachers are saying, you know, should they continue with the classic model of one teacher to 18 to 25 children, or should that model change? Are there other ways to convey information? I think that we are all, because government is a living, flexible, changing creature, I think that the planners and the designers in government are continually looking at improving, changing the role of government and changing the way that it does provide service.

Ms. Barrett: Well, a comment, yes, the role of government is to provide changing, flexible services. I think that no one would argue with that. Any civil service that does not respond to the needs of the citizens that they serve today is going to get into trouble. But that is not what the throne speech said. The throne speech said: reduce the size of government without laying off any government workers. It does say that Manitoba will have a unique opportunity to reorganize how it serves our citizens. Yes, but it also says: and to reduce the size of government without laying off any government workers. Then there is the 10 percent, you are looking for a 10 percent reduction out of the pool of 25 percent.

Flexibility is one thing, but an argument, I believe, could be made that this goal, in a sense, reduces the government's flexibility, reduces the department's flexibility, because if you say to each department in the planning process or in the succession planning model that the goal is overall 5 percent reduction and you, the Department of Labour or Department of Natural Resources or the small departments are going to have to bear more of that reduction because of the way government is, we have to keep the higher percentage of staff in the education, family services, health care, those things, those government departments–and I am using this as a for instance, not necessarily as that was what it would actually show itself to be, but if you are saying that as a goal it is not just flexibility and good service but to reduce the size of government by 10 percent, then your succession planning model is truncated in a sense.

It has no opportunity to say let us try a succession planning model that says we can keep the same 100 staff that we have, we just reconfigure them. It says, umm, we have to look at some reductions, may be more or less, but our goal is a reduction as well as service. So I would suggest that the concept of flexibility is a little less flexible than once you have this paragraph in the throne speech and the succession planning model than it might have been otherwise.

When you spoke about identifying the key positions, that made sense to me, and then in your response, I got unclear again. I can see that this is going to be a pattern. You talked about a person possessing and exercising scarce qualities that go to the mission and function of government, but then I got confused. Maybe the minister was putting in another element, because it is not just the person but the function I believe that you were talking about; that is, can the function be done in a different way as well as does the person have characteristics? So is it either/or or both end?

* (1520)

Mr. Radcliffe: Well, I apologize if I, in fact, through my discourse confused my honourable colleague. What the succession planning does or the model is aimed at is identifying the key positions which I defined as being a skill set having scarce skills in the employment world, and then distinguishing those from skill sets that are generally obtainable. Then I moved on and said in addition, or I meant to say in addition, the whole succession planning and government business evaluation proposes to evaluate the service and the function that is supplied at this point in time and identify whether, in fact, that service can be provided in another fashion.

For example, do we need nine different or seven different individual kitchens or cafeterias in hospitals, or can this all be done through one food commissary and food delivered to the bedside? I use this only illustratively, and I know it is a contentious issue at this point in time, but I point this out because government has said, you know, for the function of numbers, we can identify a different way of doing things, so there is no sacred ox that ought not to be measured and assessed. Just because we have always done something in one particular fashion does not mean it should not be re-evaluated, reassessed.

Another illustration would be, say, we have one flood forecaster right now that works for government. If this individual should get to the position where he or she reaches retirement age, do we need to employ a flood forecaster full time with full benefits or can we employ a service? Are there individuals who offer this consultation or this advice and this information in the marketplace? There are different ways of arranging the production of service. I would suggest that the evolution we have seen over the past number of years of the whole delivery of health care has moved from an institution-based delivery system to a community-based. People are now staying in their homes longer. People are not in institutions.

The '50s and the '60s, I guess, the style of delivering health care was that we built very large significant institutions, and we have seen right across the country different provinces who have gone around closing down many, many, many of these institutions as the price of labour got so high that we could not afford to maintain delivering service through those institutions, and that we had to redefine the job roles of individuals and re-identify how we could deliver the same sort of support system to the populace. For example, if you are paying a nurse $50,000 a year, $45,000 a year, then you do not want that person doing menial tasks on a ward. You want that person who is highly trained today, highly skilled, doing functions which match their skill set.

Twenty years ago or 30 years ago, a nurse did backrubs. A nurse did counselling. A nurse did a lot of issues at the bedside, which today those individuals do not have the time to do, do not have the strength to do, because those positions have been reduced because the costs of employing those individuals of a high-skill set–and that is not to demean the skill set of the people of 30, 40 years ago, but the wage structure has changed. With collective agreements, those people are now probably far better paid than they were collectively 20, 30 years ago, and so they do have to be used in a far more careful manner.

This is one of the reasons why there has been change in evolution. People are now living in their homes until they reach the stage where they need constant care because they are a danger to themselves or to the public, and then they are put in institutions if that is necessary, if they do not have support systems within their own homes.

Mr. Chairman, 20, 30 years ago, as you well know, you could go in for minor surgery, and you would stay for three or five or six days. You went in and had a baby, and you would stay in the hospital for six or seven days. Now it is 24 hours and you are home. I can only point to these illustrations to point out to my honourable colleague how the face of government has changed, and the face of government will go on changing as we have to meet these different market demands.

Ms. Barrett: As my colleague the member for Transcona (Mr. Reid) stated while the minister was speaking, he is off on a tangent. Yes, in one way; no, in another. I think his comments have been very illustrative and, dare I say, scary.

I say "scary" or "frightening" or "concern," giving me grave concern, because I think the issues that he raised, which, No. 1, was the centralization of the food delivery service to hospitals, and the other being the change from institutionalization to community-based health care and the comments he made about staffing and nurses and costs, et cetera, I believe, have a direct impact on the whole issue of the succession planning model and how it is implemented.

I think if these examples which are in the public venue–I mean, I have no quarrel with what the minister is saying as to the actual change that has taken place, but if the minister is saying that he believes that the centralization of food production, the way it has been implemented in Winnipeg and the potential implications for its implementation throughout the province, is a good example of succession planning and for reducing the civil service over five years, then I think we really have a major problem. Using the frozen food situation as an example, to us it does not appear, and I think to most people it does not appear, that this was well thought out, that it was thought out completely. Thought out, not thawed out–and I apologize for that. The way it has been implemented has shown enormous weaknesses in the planning or certainly the implementation.

* (1530)

It is way behind in its scheduled implementation into the two largest hospitals in the city. Its cost overruns are phenomenal, and I do not believe we have heard the end of the cost overruns in this particular situation, and yet, at the same time as we have seen terrible problems with this particular initiative, personal care homes are being built without kitchens.

One in my constituency is being built, a personal care home, and I am digressing here for a brief moment, that was over five years late in the actual beginning of construction. It does not have a kitchen, which is predicated on the assumption that the United Shared Services Corporation was going to be a viable entity and was going to be able to provide high-quality, nutritious food to not only all the hospitals in the city but the personal care homes, and that has proven to be not the case. It has proven from day one not to be the case.

If this is an example of what the minister is saying that the government is going to be doing as a result of this statement, that the goal is to reduce the civil service by 10 percent over the next five years, then that does not give me, nor do I think it will give the people of Manitoba, any degree of comfort. The other thing I would like to say is that, yes, we have changed at least in theory from an institutional to a community-based health care system, but the reality is that we still have far too many people going to tertiary health care systems, going to situations that they need not go to, staying in hospitals far too long because there is not the community-based support actually in the community.

So when the minister is talking about community-based care as another example of how government has implemented civil service reductions, there may be reductions in the civil service, but it is not because there is a heck of a lot more community care because we have not yet had the implementation of the community-based services that we need to take over from the institutional-based care.

Another very brief comment about that that strikes fear into my heart is that one of the reasons the minister gave for changing from institutional to community-based health care was that the price of labour was too high. Well, when I put that together in the context of what we are talking about, which is a goal of a 10 percent reduction in the civil service, I am thinking to myself the minister who is in cabinet, who is responsible for the Department of Labour, who is responsible for the Civil Service Commission is making comments like the price of labour is too high which is one of the reasons we are going from an institutional to a community-based setting. When I put that into the context of a reduction of 10 percent in the civil service, it says to me that it is cost, not service, that is driving this process or has far too high a degree of importance in this process.

I will not go into the issues that the minister talked about, about counselling being an unimportant part of the nursing situation. If you talk to any nurse who is frustrated, tired and burned out, she or he is frustrated, tired and burned out because they cannot do what they used to do which was provide that bedside care that may have included moving a patient, turning a patient over, providing a bedpan, but it also included things like counselling. Nurses who are in palliative care are not able to give–well, not so much the palliative care units, but in regular hospital units are not able to hold dying patients' hands because they have too many patients to deal with. That is the kind of change that this government has undertaken.

If these are the kinds of examples that the minister is using when talking about the succession planning model, then there is a lot of concern that we have on this whole issue.

Mr. Radcliffe: Well, Mr. Chairman, I think that the honourable colleague and I are going to have to agree to disagree on the concept and the issue of the cost of government. I think that my honourable colleague has literally missed the boat if she thinks that we can go on producing government services, creating the network that sustains the services that government has done in the past in the same old fashion without addressing the issue of cost.

I can only say that we can look to the two elections that have just occurred in the past month in the province of Ontario and in the province of New Brunswick. Really, the people of Canada are saying that government has to readdress how it does business, and to go on doing the same old, same old, and just paying out more and more money for the same level of service is just not good enough.

We can only look to the example of British Columbia, and the administration in the Province of British Columbia has literally brought that province to its knees through the policies that it is has instituted. British Columbia five years ago, 10 years ago, was the envy of the Confederation, of the whole union in Canada, and the socialist government there has just been outrageous, the way it has handled the cost of doing business with government.

I walk the streets in River Heights, and people at every door say to me with a sense of indignation, a sense of anger, that they are frustrated with the tax level and with the lack of responsibility, the lack of accountability of the people who are imposing taxes on them. Each year they look to rising tax levels. I do not think that the municipality has reduced its taxes in the last number of years in Winnipeg, and people's incomes, unfortunately, are not matching the demands that are being made upon them for taxes.

I do not think any Manitoban says for a moment that they do not want to pay their fair share. They will, and they do, and I think that the spirit of volunteerism in Manitoba indicates the good faith and the good will that our citizens have, but when they look at their tax bill ever increasing, they are sending a message to government which cannot be ignored. Any government that ignores that ignores it at their peril, that we must continue to analyze, to measure and to come up with better ways, more efficient ways to provide the essential services that are required in order to maintain the safety net, to maintain the human services that we do produce. But we cannot persist in carrying on providing them in the same fashion that we have been in the past. There has to be change.

I acknowledge to my honourable colleague that change is painful and nobody likes change. The human animal does not like change, but, in fact, this government has been an instrument of change, and it is going to continue to be an instrument of change. The examples that I illustrated are only one or two small elements of the change that this government has introduced and will continue to introduce in the Province of Manitoba.

The succession planning is another issue of change that we will be introducing, and there will be an ongoing and vigorous assessment of the services and the functions that government provides. I can only look back to, for example, when the steam locomotives were discontinued by the railways. I can remember that it was an integral part of one collective agreement that the position of fireman be maintained in the cabs, long after the need for a fireman had disappeared.

So we have got to look at the same thing here in government on the issues that we have today. If there is machinery that is being inspected that no longer exists or that the quality of installation is such that it does not need independent examination, then is it appropriate to continue having independent examination of boilers that no longer blow up or steam vessels that no longer exist?

* (1540)

These are only illustrations to my honourable colleague that government has to continue to re-evaluate. Is the cost of the individuals going to be the sole and determinative feature? Absolutely not. Is the level and quality of service going to continue? Absolutely. But I think that any government who just blindly says that we are going to maintain a bloated or inflated staffing level, regardless of the service that they provide or the need for the service, just as an end in itself in order to foster employment, really has no future, and I read into my honourable colleague's remarks that that is perhaps the goal or the mission that she is advocating rather than trying to identify the real needs of the people and moving to supply them and furnish them.

Ms. Barrett: The minister will know when he reads Hansard that that is not anything that I said, not for a moment suggesting that we retain a bloated or inflated staffing level. I guess, as I was saying to the minister, he picked several examples in discussing the succession planning model, and those are not examples I would have used, as I stated, to say that that is a positive thing.

The minister talked about an earlier answer, another set of examples of potential changes of things that needed to be looked at, and he used the phrase "regulatory functions." I am wondering if he could give me some examples of some regulatory functions that could be looked at. I assumed in the succession planning model or something are these functions that need to be performed. Could he give me some examples? Examples that do not include regulating coal-run engines when there is not one. I mean, let us get at least into the latter half of the 20th Century if we could.

Mr. Radcliffe: Well, I only used that example to make a point, but I did want to also put on the record, because my honourable colleague had left a description of a reality which I would suggest does not exist at this point in time when she indicated that our health care system does not provide community support system.

I can only direct my honourable colleague's attention to the home care budget that has increased so dramatically over the last number of years. I believe that at this point in time our government is now spending somewhere close to $125 million, $130 million a year in providing home care support to individuals who are residing in their homes, who need attendants to offer either domestic support or medical support or, in fact, nursing care support in their homes. So I think that that situation flies in the face of the argument that my honourable friend is making.

With regard to the regulatory regime, I do not think that any specifics have been identified at this point in time that would be appropriate to reduce, but I would say to my honourable colleague that government is always mindful and always watching and always aware of the regulatory fabric that government performs and is trying to synthesize and make more efficient the regulatory pattern.

I can only point, say, for example, to Consumer and Corporate Affairs. For example, when I started practising law and I was articling, one was trained to go to the Land Titles desk and write out a legal description and all the endorsements on a legal title longhand. We had a young man, and I deliberately say "a young man" in those days, who went and got a very large, cumbersome title book, hauled it out, threw it on the counter in front of you, and you then wrote out the title longhand.

Well, today, with electronic communication, we have individuals who are employees, either male or female, in the Land Titles Office who can immediately transmit the entire copy of the title to a legal office, so you do not need a clerk to go down to the Land Titles Office. You are in constant communication 24 hours a day, and it is hoped that in the future Land Titles, Corporations and Vital Statistics and the Companies Office will merge their functions, so that wherever one might be in the province of Manitoba, one could access the registry and have electronic communication.

So there would be an improvement of service, a change in the way that the regulatory or recording network is provided and would ultimately lead to an efficiency and a change in the personnel.

Ms. Barrett: So the minister, in his answer, was talking about a technical change to a particular regulatory function, but he was not speaking about changing the fact that there needed to be a registry of land titles or people registering. The function itself remains; it is the technical way it is being done that is changing. I have no problem with that, but that was not my question, and perhaps I was not clear.

Or is the minister saying, then, that it is not the specific regulatory functions that are being looked at here but just how they are to be enforced and using new technologies? I certainly got the impression from his earlier comments, and that is why I asked the question, that there may be some regulatory functions that the government is looking at, or might be looking at, to eliminate or to move outside of government, i.e., contract out or privatize. Is that an accurate statement?

Mr. Radcliffe: I think my honourable colleague has really put her finger on the whole concept of government and the change in the evolution of government, that there is not necessarily any reduction in function, but it is the process and the how-to that is being changed so that costs and the cost of labour can be reduced or managed and so that people are best employed to match their skill set and their education.

Ms. Barrett: The minister, in his response to my concerns that were raised about his examples of succession planning, mentioned that he was concerned or wondering if I was advocating the retention of bloated or inflated staffing levels in government, and I am wondering if he can share with me, because I certainly would not be wanting to retain in any way bloated or overinflated staffing levels, which departments or elements of departments might now have bloated or inflated staffing levels.

Mr. Radcliffe: Well, I think that my honourable colleague is well aware that with the downsizing of the number of people who are in the civil service in Manitoba, that, in fact, our government has made sure that there is no oversizing or inflated numbers in government. But as I was not involved with government in the days when my honourable colleague's associates were in power, I think I can only direct her to those years and those staffing levels, if she would consider the size of government.

* (1550)

Ms. Barrett: Back perhaps more directly to the succession-planning model, you said that managers in the departments were going to identify key positions and the ages and the potentials for gaps and holes and then move forward from there into what is required to train existing individuals, identification, who should be promoted, et cetera, et cetera.

I am not calling into question the concept, but it seems to me that this is a fairly labour-intensive process if you are really, truly looking at all of the staff for whom you are responsible in order, No. 1, to determine what the key positions are; and, No. 2, particularly who those individuals are who have those scarce qualities. This cannot be done, I would not imagine, just very superficially if it is going to be done well.

Has any thought been given to what that does to the current manager's role? Is the model going to be implemented using the existing managers, and is this just an additional responsibility that they will undertake?

Mr. Radcliffe: I think my honourable colleague has hit upon a very good point, that, in fact, the manager's role in government is a very onerous role and one that they handle very well. A manager, in presenting a business plan, they must look at their physical assets, they must look at their financial assets, and they must look most importantly at their human assets, and they have to assess this on a constant basis.

The commission has designed, in fact, a tool for the managers in government to really effect the management role that is expected of these individuals, and the commission is there to support these managers, as well, as they fulfil this function, so that really the succession planning is not an onerous burden, but it is an enhancement or an additional tool to enable the managers to fulfil their real function.

Ms. Barrett: I am now making an assumption here about the Estimates process. I am assuming it starts from the more hands-on level and moves further up the food chain, if you will.

Let us assume that the managers or someone at somewhat that level is one of the beginning processes for programming and putting forward the Estimates requests. Is there some requirement that they respond to how they have looked at and implemented or filled out, if you will, the succession planning model? Is that going to be a requirement for them to get their programming and planning through the Estimates process? I guess what I am asking is is there going to be an accountability function on the part of the managers or someone to have filled out or fulfilled the succession planning model?

Mr. Radcliffe: The whole issue of succession planning forms an essential ingredient in the business planning which managers must do in the administration of their departments. To date, the production of the programming has not been combined with the succession planning. They have been two independent functions or streams within the management of departments, but it is proposed this year that the whole business planning management tool will be combined with the measurement and analysis of the financial side of the program determination.

How this will be done will be determined by Treasury Board, and I would suggest that my honourable colleague would be well advised to ask Finance how they propose to combine these two management tools.

Ms. Barrett: I will ensure that that question is asked but clarify for me which two management tools. The succession planning model combined with the–

Mr. Radcliffe: With the measurement and ongoing analysis of the program costing and accountability.

Ms. Barrett: So what Finance is looking to do through Treasury Board is to require that managers in the process reflect an amalgamation of program, costing, accountability, and succession planning. Is that an accurate statement?

Mr. Radcliffe: That is correct.

* (1600)

Ms. Barrett: I will ensure that those questions get raised in Finance.

A specific question on this same area, and this goes back to notes that I took when the minister was responding to questions in the Department of Labour. The question is does the Civil Service Commission–well, I know the answer. The Civil Service Commission has information on the percentage of those eligible to retire. Do the departments themselves currently have information on what categories and what levels, or is that something that is going to be part of the function of the succession planning model?

Mr. Radcliffe: Each department does know and has at hand the figures on the demographics of their department. They know the age of the individual employees and they know the years of service. When we said that there was 25 percent that were going to be eligible for retirement, that is on an average across government. Some departments are higher and other departments are lower.

Ms. Barrett: Again, in the Labour Estimates the minister said, and this is not verbatim, that he could not promise that the change will be restricted to just retirement.

I am wondering if he can explain that comment in the context of what he said last week in his response to my first question when he said here, and I quote: "The major issue here to consider is that this reduction will not impact on any active employees, i.e., that means that this statement is not a basis for commencing layoffs in government."

Is there a contradiction in comment here?

Mr. Radcliffe: I do not have the exact context of my remarks, but some of the overall picture I guess of what this issue involves is the normal ebb and flow I guess of the labour force in government, like any other institution, be that for a mortal amortization or for resignation, but also the changes will not occur just because of retirement. There will be changes that will be effected in government from the advent of technology as well. So I think that what one has to do when one is considering either managing the issue of succession planning or experiencing and living through it is that the impact of technology will change how government does business as well. So this will be part of the whole environment, I guess, of the changes.

Ms. Barrett: The minister again in Labour Estimates said, and he said again today, that another prong to this approach will be increasing and changing the skill sets that people in the civil service have. Are there civil service programs in place now, or are there anticipated to be increases in civil service programming that will help this skill set change happen, in addition to the aboriginal programs that have already been identified and which I will ask questions on when we get to that point in the Estimates?

I guess the corollary of that is I do not see a huge increase in civil service staffing, but there is some increase, but most of it, as the minister stated, was in the area dealing with the aboriginal program changes, additional programs for outreach into aboriginal management programs. But is it reflected in this year's Estimates some recognition that there will have to be training undertaken to enhance the skill sets of, I would imagine, a fair number of employees if you are going to implement this program?

Mr. Radcliffe: Madam Chair, I am pleased to submit for my colleague's inspection or perusal a Guide to Training and Consulting. I have a 1998-99 volume produced by the Organization and Staff Development of the Manitoba Civil Service Commission, and what this does is offer to the line employee in government a whole myriad of different courses. It covers such items as who is eligible, how they register, how they cancel, how they pay for the course, accommodation for people with disability, the length of the course, the location. It covers a whole myriad of individual topics dealing with leadership, personal development, professional development. It touches on harassment, facilitation skills, Internet training, designing web page, hiring workers with disabilities and on and on. I will not read obviously, the whole thing. My honourable colleague is, I am sure, aware of this document, and this has been reproduced for '99-2000 as well.

* (1610)

So that deals with the line employees, I guess, and the majority of the courses are anywhere from one to two to three days in length. So that is one of the focuses of the department that has aimed at increasing the skill set and the abilities and the education of our current staff. In addition, this year's Estimates contain an item for $300,000, which is aimed at executive management training. It is a fund that has been set aside, and it is targeting those managers, those middle managers who are in the 35-45 year old age group. This is to increase the skills of this particular group.

I am told, as well, that the SAP program has contacted and touched on over 1,200 individuals at this point in time, and the amount of training that these individuals–sorry, that would be by October, that will be the number of individuals, and the training will be anywhere in duration from seven to 23 days in total impact. This is a program of general application right across government, and that would impact on the line employees.

So these are just a few of the programs and courses and resources that are available to individuals in government.

Ms. Barrett: Maybe these questions are better dealt with under 17.1.(b), which is Management Information and Support Services where SAP is referenced.

The reason I am asking this line of questioning is that it is my understanding that the succession planning process is a fairly new concept and that again going back to the goal of the 10 percent reduction in the civil service and the concomitant plan to train and retain and upgrade skills, et cetera. It seems to me, I imagine there are over 20 individual departments. I do not know exactly how many. I should know exactly how many and I do not, but there is a range of departments that go all the way from Agriculture, Natural Resources, to Health and Education.

Now, the civil servants, many of the functions are similar throughout those departments, but a lot of them are, I would imagine, technical in nature and where many of the skill sets may be similar, the information or the knowledge base is not. You not only need a skill but need the knowledge. So if you are moving from a department that may have, after you have gone through the process, an abundance or excess of staffing that could go into a department that is under-resourced or moving around from department to department keeping in mind the flexibility comment that the minister has made.

It seems to me you need to have to some fairly specific training programs established. I may have a copy of the guide that the minister referenced in my office, but I have not seen it right now. It seems to me from what the minister was saying that it is general, not that they are not good programs. Not for a moment am I saying these are not valuable in and of themselves. I am looking specifically to over the next five years 1,400 positions potentially being eliminated or amalgamated or changed. Is the retraining or upgrading required to deal with at least some of those positions reflected in current civil service programming, or is there going to be an additional training component needed?

Mr. Radcliffe: The succession planning programs that we are discussing right now do focus more on in general what one could refer to as core competencies. I use the analogy with my department at this point of saying: are we going to take an agrologist, somebody who is skilled and trained in agriculture, and ask them to go and call upon and problem solve for single parents or for challenged children or things of that nature? Absolutely not, the professional skill sets are not going to be cross-trained at all. There is no intention of doing that. In fact, throughout the whole concept of succession planning there will still be a need for recruitment as particular people with particular skills and specialized skills retire and there will be a turnover of personnel. That still will be an element of the civil service.

* (1620)

What the civil service is focusing on at this point in time is the general analytical and communication skills of managers and assistant managers and training people and amplifying their skill set so that people who are of a portable nature will be able to move from department to department.

As my honourable colleague knows, sometimes deputy ministers will move, but, in fact, the specific employees, say, in Justice will remain in Justice. There is no attempt or intention to move them out of that particular grouping or skill set. That would be absurd, because a lawyer is a lawyer is a lawyer or an ecologist is an ecologist and all the other types of individuals that I was discussing with my honourable colleague yesterday or the day before with regard to hygienists. One could not move them out of that field of endeavour. So it is the general, portable skills that the Civil Service Commission is focusing on at this point in time.

Ms. Barrett: The minister is saying that the professional skill sets, i.e., I am assuming that people who are largely in the professional/ technical categories that we look at in the Estimates books who have been specifically trained or professionally trained are not going to be cross-trained. Visions of runners dance through my head at that, but be that as it may.

I am assuming that what that says is two things, the implications of that statement are two in nature at least. One is that, as you said, if you are an agronomist you are going to stay an agronomist. You are not going to be asked to become a social worker. The other is that that may very well be an area of the civil service across departments that is less affected then by the succession planning process.

If you are not cross-training agronomists to becomes social workers and you are looking overall over five years for a reduction of 10 percent, then you are likely to be looking elsewhere for those reductions unless you can cut programs that the agronomists might be involved in or the social workers might be involved in. It would seem to me that the only way a professional/technical person is likely to be affected is through program changes rather than retraining. To me that says that the impact is more likely to be felt on the lower levels of the civil service.

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chair, my honourable colleague is trying to probe, I guess, to find out what level or what area of government will be reduced or what department will be reduced. Many of her questions have been directed at trying to focus on individual departments. So, I think, as an illustration to assist in making the point of how this is going to be implemented, I can share with my honourable colleague that in the Civil Service Commission, for example, with the advent of increasing and improving technology, management has been reduced since 1991 by approximately 50 percent. Administration staff has been reduced by 44 percent, professional staff by 18 percent. So this gives my honourable colleague an idea of the mix that has happened to date.

This is what presumably we could expect in the future that as people retire, positions of general application may not be needed, or, in fact, even professional positions might not be needed if a professional person has additional technical skills and abilities that they can perform more work in less time with less effort than they could previously. This will be deter-mined by the diagnostic tools that are applied and set out in the succession planning model.

* (1630)

Ms. Barrett: Could the minister define what a position of general application might be? Are these admin support positions? I mean, every single Estimates book for every single department, every single subcategory has three classifications of staffing. One is the managerial, the second is the professional/technical, and the third is the administrative support. Now, I would assume that is a general guide as to the different employment groupings that follow in every single department.

So when the minister talks about positions of general application, that is meaningless for me, at any rate, and I would like to know what he means by that. I am not trying to get into the detail in each department. I know that is not feasible. The minister probably does not even know that in the Department of Labour because it is an ongoing thing. I am trying to get at what this change, the new application, is going to be looking at and the role of the Civil Service Commission in that process. So positions of general application just does not mean anything to me.

Mr. Radcliffe: Again, I think my honourable colleague is trying to focus on where the reductions are going to occur in government, at what levels and what different categories of employees. She quite correctly cites that employees are designated or divided into a managerial group, an admin support group and a professional group. The succession planning will impact on all three. For example, right now with the introduction of the SAP program, there will be reductions in savings in the internal services that are offered to government. There will be individuals who are performing functions now, and those positions may become redundant. So as those individuals retire, a number of positions could perhaps be eliminated, but that will vary from department to department.

What the succession planning does is start people thinking, start the managers thinking, so that they can identify which are the crucial services that the program cannot function without and then to identify functions or skill sets of a general nature that can be replaced by new recruitment and to apply this to the demographics or the profile of the employment service.

Ms. Barrett: I still do not have a sense of what position of general application is. I guess, I am concerned that again because the goal is reduction in civil service that is a concern to me not because I am in favour of a bloated or inflated civil service, because heaven only knows that the statistics that the minister talked about in his last answer show that there has been an enormous reduction in the civil service over the last 10 years. We are not starting from a bloated, inflated civil service here when the Speech from the Throne mentions this additional 10 percent over five years. So we are paring down, a continual paring down after we have pared and pared and pared.

The concern I have is it appears to me that this goal was put out as a goal five years without a great deal of forethought. It seems to me if you do not understand the implications of it, then it runs the risk of being merely an exercise in reduction rather than being truly a necessary thing to provide a better civil service. I think probably we will not know that because there is very likely to be a change, whether the minister is retired or the critic is retired or not.

I think we could go on and on, on this. Part of it is a function of the fact that it is in its very beginnings, and it is impossible to have the Civil Service Commission know all of that stuff. I just wanted to share with the minister what the Labour critic has said that there is a subdepartment within the Labour department that has already combined a professional/ technical job with a management job, and the impact of that is or can be that you water down each function which can lead to, in the case of many of the Labour department functions which are regulatory and enforcement, a lessening of both of those vital functions.

That is one of the major concerns I have that if you have this goal in mind, you are going to end up potentially, in order to achieve that goal, losing another goal which is providing effective, efficient, good government to people which includes, to my way of thinking, enforcement and regulation of the existing laws on the books and an accountability function. I am afraid that you get down too far, and you are going to have the potential of losing that. So I appreciate the minister is taking this amount of time on this issue. We will make sure that when the Finance Estimates come up, we will talk about that process in more detail and perhaps get some information in that regard.

Maybe the minister could answer a couple of specifics on this, or maybe, again, it is too early in the process, but will there be a voluntary separation plan available to people that may be identified as a result of the succession planning model who may be seen to be redundant or extraneous or de trop?

Mr. Radcliffe: There is no voluntary separation plan in existence at the present time and nothing contemplated at this point.

* (1640)

Ms. Barrett: So the succession planning model is designed at this point to be utilized solely for people who are eligible and opt to retire, whether it is at 55, 60 or 65?

Mr. Radcliffe: Yes, it is designed to impact on the positions of people who separate from government for whatever reason in those age categories that my honourable colleague mentioned.

Ms. Barrett: I am not sure what category we were on, 17.1.(b), 17.1.(a)(1).

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Dyck): Item 17.1.(a) Executive Office (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits for $175,700–pass; (2) Other Expenditures $60,400–pass.

Item 17.1.(b) Administrative Services (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits.

Ms. Barrett: I am interested in the SAP system, anything the minister can tell me about it.

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to be able to respond to my honourable colleague. First of all, SAP does apply right across government. The anagram refers to System Application Product is the name of the plan. Basically what it does is it combines the ability of government to pay its bills, the financial side of it, of Finance, with the human resources system. So it attends to payment of bills and also payment of payroll. Ultimately, the SAP system will be able to generate reports on records of service. There will be database information on the recruitment process in government; for example, has a position been advertised, has the selection process been completed, details of that nature. It will also contain particulars on benefits, and so a benefits report can be generated out of the system.

The system is administered by Information Technology, which is found within the Department of Finance. So I can point my honourable colleague to a department where she can obtain specific information on what this program will do.

Ms. Barrett: In the Activity Identification of the Estimates book and the statement earlier by the minister that 1,200 civil servants will be trained in the general application of SAP over a seven- to 23-day period–the Activity Identification says: "Participate in the Better Methods Service 1st initiative to support the implementation and operation of the newly implemented SAP corporate integrated Human Resource Management System."

So it sounds to me like the Civil Service Commission has some–well, may I ask the question? When it says participate in SAP, does that mean just as any other department would participate, or is there a specific role for the Civil Service Commission through its role as a Civil Service Commission in the implementation of SAP?

Mr. Radcliffe: My honourable colleague is quite correct that the Civil Service Commission will be engaged in an active role in the SAP plan. Once the plan is fully implemented, the Civil Service Commission will be the proprietor or the manager of the human resources side of the SAP process. The Civil Service Commission will be the authority or entity within government that will maintain the database, will effect changes and improvements to the system as it evolves through government.

I would share with my honourable colleague that, in fact, four to five staff members have been seconded from the Civil Service Commission to a Better Methods, which is another government initiative that is ongoing. This is, in fact, one component piece of the Better Methods process. The whole human resources reporting and maintenance of the program will be based in the Civil Service Commission. So that is the participation level. It is very specific. It is more than just the general across-government application.

* (1650)

Ms. Barrett: When the minister said, in an earlier response, that 1,200 people will have been trained in SAP by October, he mentioned the training sessions from seven to 23 days in length. That seems to me to be fairly extensive training for a recording or reporting mechanism. Could the minister give me some more specifics on what is involved in that training?

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, in response to my honourable colleague's request, the payroll people, the attendance people, the people who attend to pay vouchers, the accounts payable people will all have very specialized and specific training and those will be the types of people that will be involved with up to 23 days of training. The benefits specialist in government, people who are trained to administer the benefits of government, our general secretaries, for example, the secretaries in our office will probably get three to five days worth of training because they just need a general navigation, they just need an overall and quite a simplistic view and grasp of the system.

The timekeepers, individuals like timekeepers or, in fact, the managers who are sitting around the table right now will require approximately seven days worth of training so that they can solicit reports out of the system. At the present time, the managers have to rely upon specialized staff in order to elicit this information, so they will acquire a working knowledge of the reporting base so that they can analyze what is going on. But that will require a minimal level of training.

Ms. Barrett: Now, are these various groupings in each department then? So that is why the number of 1,200 is quite large. It is these individuals who have been assigned the various tasks to implement the data collection, if you will, are in each department.

Mr. Radcliffe: That is correct. The majority of these are departmental roles and it would be the individuals who are collecting the data and putting it in. There are some people who have a specialized role in, I guess, the Department of Finance or the Department of Human Relations that will require more extensive control and inputting but my honourable colleague is correct.

Ms. Barrett: Who are timekeepers?

Mr. Radcliffe: Timekeepers are clerical individuals who are located in the departments who do as the function suggests, record the time. The difference between pre-SAP and post-SAP is that the individuals now instead of preparing sheets of paper, submitting the paper to the payroll department of the people being present in the department and at work, or leaves or absence or compassionate leave or any of the other variations on this scheme, these individuals input the data directly themselves into the system, so they are, as the title suggests, the keepers, the recorders of the time, and they are individuals located in each department who perform this clerical function.

Ms. Barrett: In a department such as Agriculture or Natural Resources or, I suppose, Energy and Mines maybe to a lesser extent, where you have people located throughout the province and in some cases not in an office, but whose jobs require them to be literally in the field, is there any change in the reporting of their hours or the gathering of the data so that the timekeepers can input it from pre- to post-SAP?

Mr. Radcliffe: The essential difference between the system prior to the implementation and the system after the implementation is only the recording of the information. In other words, it is being recorded electronically, and it will be done by the timekeepers directly. But the whole process of collecting the information will be identical to the way it is being done now in government.

* (1700)

Ms. Barrett: So if an employee of a department is being asked now in addition to their regular responsibilities to collect time sheets or time information to be inputted, that would not be as a result of the function of the implementation of SAP but as a function of a change in the job descriptions or in downsizing or something within the department?

I am thinking of a person who is in one of the departments that is in the field, and this is a part-time person who is now being asked in addition to this person's other duties to implement what I understood to be the SAP part of that unit or something, but perhaps I got the wrong information. If this person is being asked to do additional information collection or retrieval or something, it is not as a result of the implementation of SAP. It is more likely an internal departmental reorganization.

Mr. Radcliffe: And this is an individual who did not collate or collect information and record it on paper previously, is that correct?

Ms. Barrett: Yes.

Mr. Radcliffe: The role that my honourable colleague has defined, in fact, could be part of the implementation of the SAP process. We would have to know more about the position of the individual before we could say with any authority whether this was a reorganization of the job role or whether it would be an implementation of the SAP program. So if my honourable colleague could share with me afterwards the particulars of this, then we could give a more accurate answer.

Ms. Barrett: I will endeavour to get more particulars. The information that I got from this individual was pretty much what I have given to the minister. I guess, I was not aware enough to know what further questions to ask, so I will try to get more information. But what you are saying generally is there could be some job description reorganization as a result of the implementation of SAP. It is not just the people who were dealing with the paper flow originally; they are now dealing with the computer data entry. There are other sort of cumulative changes that SAP has had in some other areas as well.

Mr. Radcliffe: That is correct. Apparently the whole flow of information has been analyzed and redesigned, so that is why it is so difficult to give any specific answer with any authority.

Ms. Barrett: I thank the minister for that, and I will endeavour to get some additional information on this particular situation and see what the concern is. I know that the individual with whom I spoke was quite concerned, because this individual felt that the additional responsibility was impeding the work that was already being done, and this person is only part time at any rate. So I will see if I can get some more information on that.

The minister said that 1,200 people would be trained by October. How many people are going to need to be trained in total in order for this system to be fully functional, or will that be the full complement?

Mr. Radcliffe: I am advised that there will be an additional 500 people who will be involved with the program as the whole recording of the benefits and the data on human resources is recorded and organized in a report fashion.

Ms. Barrett: So at the end of the whole process, there will be 1,700 people involved who will have been trained in one form or another?

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, 1,700 to 1,800, I am told, by the end of October of 1999.

Ms. Barrett: I am extrapolating from what the minister has said. It is my understanding that design to move from a paper system to a computer system, I would assume then that there is more potential for generation of more detailed information quicker and faster and more efficiently. The minister may be surprised, but I have no problem with that tone as well as content.

Are any of these 1,700 people–these are all current employees. There is no additional staffing required to implement this program?

Mr. Radcliffe: They are all current individuals.

Ms. Barrett: Also in the Activity Identification, a couple other programs that I am interested in, one is the CHRIS program and the other is the MEIS program. Could the minister provide me with some information on those two programs?

Mr. Radcliffe: The CHRIS system that my honourable colleague makes reference to is the Corporate Human Resource Information System, which basically is the time recording to generate the payroll for employees for government. This system is not Y2K compliant. It is old technology and is being replaced with the SAP system. Likewise, the MEIS, the Manitoba Employees Information System, was the software that stored the personnel records, the employment equity records, the history, classification, and the salary levels, the salary history of the employees in government. This too was not Y2K compliant and SAP will replace that. So SAP is the Y2K solution for these programs.

* (1710)

Ms. Barrett: I would like to ask the minister questions about the Better Methods. Better Methods is a government-wide program. Who owns it? Who is responsible for the Better Methods program?

Mr. Radcliffe: The owner, if one can use that terminology, is the Information Technology office, which reports to the Department of Finance. Mr. Kalev Ruberg is the individual who is in charge of that department, who, in fact, is responsible for the reporting to the Minister of Finance.

Ms. Barrett: It appears I am going to be the deputy critic of Finance with the questions that are being channelled to Finance.

Under the Expected Results on page 26 of the detailed Estimates, it says completion of the implementation and support to the ongoing operations of the Better Methods, Phase III. How is that played out in the Civil Service Commission?

Mr. Radcliffe: The line which my honourable colleague has referenced on page 26 of the individual report refers to the four to five individuals that have been involved in the configuration of the SAP program that we have already discussed.

Ms. Barrett: I am prepared to pass this subappropriation.

The Acting Chairperson (Mr. Dyck): Item 17.1.(b) Administration Services (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $562,200–pass; (2) Other Expenditures $296,800–pass.

Ms. Barrett: The minister in an earlier response spoke about the executive development programs: Management Internship Program, Aboriginal Management Development Project, and Aboriginal Public Administration Program. I would like to ask for some more specific details on those issues.

Mr. Radcliffe: I can share with my honourable colleague the Aboriginal Public Administration Program. It is a two-year training program to recruit and introduce aboriginal people with a priority on youth to the systems and processes of government. It is a co-operative effort between Northern and Native Affairs, the Secretariat and the Civil Service Commission.

Initial intake is six interns. The funds are allocated from the Internal Reform and Workplace Adjustment appropriation, involves centrally managed work assignments, orientation, structured training, networking and mentoring over a two-year period, and the ultimate goal is the successful placement in positions throughout government and/or native organizations. The framework for the program has been approved as a new initiative for the '99-2000 recruitment for the first stream of interns targeted for the fall of 1999.

Ms. Barrett: Did the minister want to do the other program at the same time? Fine.

Mr. Radcliffe: I was going to go through each one of them. I thought we would go back. The Management Internship Program was a new initiative approved in the '95-96 Estimates co-ordinated by the Civil Service Commission and funded through Internal Reform. The object is to proactively recruit younger, talented employees to assist in meeting future requirements of government consistent with public service renewal and change. Five or six interns are recruited each year over a period of five years, centrally managed rotational work assignments, orientation, structured training, and interning over a two- to three-year period, designed to provide accelerated learning and maximum exposure to government. The ultimate goal is to provide middle management or professional career positions within the government departments.

I have set out in a previous reference that there were six interns recruited in '96 that completed their program, and they have been placed in positions throughout government. Five interns from 1997 are moving into their third year to be placed in positions during '99-2000. Six interns recruited in '98, are moving into their second year of the program. Five interns recruited in April and May of '99 and are currently in a six-week orientation. Graduation of the second group, in other words, the grouping from 1997, will allow for an additional intake next year.

The Aboriginal Management Development Project: A two-year pilot to train and develop existing aboriginal employees to acquire skills to complete and to compete effectively for management positions. This was announced in the fall of '96, a partnership between the Civil Service Commission and departments who provide services to aboriginal people as well as clients, customers and partners. A commitment to both employment equity and management renewal, initial intake of nine management trainees was identified and sponsored by departments on the basis of proven supervisory experience and demonstrated leadership potential.

There are centrally managed work assignments, orientation, again similar to the other programs, structured and networking, mentoring over two years. The ultimate goal is the successful placement and enhanced ability to compete for management positions in government. The current status, the nine employees sponsored by Northern Affairs, Family Services, Highways and Transportation, Justice, Health, and Natural Resources, have completed the program and gone on to better jobs.

A second intake of eight employees is scheduled for the fall of '99. The make-up here will be three from Justice, two from Government Services, one from Highways, one from Northern Affairs and one from Finance. So that is a summary of all three programs.

* (1720)

Ms. Barrett: The Aboriginal Public Administration Program, the first one that the minister spoke about, how are these individuals recruited? How will the six come from the pool? Where will they come from?

Mr. Radcliffe: The positions will be advertised and recruited through open competition.

Ms. Barrett: Where will they be advertised?

Mr. Radcliffe: It will be advertised and circulated in the universities found in Manitoba, i.e., Brandon, Winnipeg, Manitoba, et cetera, the community colleges and a number of the aboriginal employment organizations or service organizations who deal with the placement of aboriginal people. The list is not exhaustive at this point in time, but it would be organizations, for example, like the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs or the Manitoba Metis association. Those are just two organizations to illustrate the point, but there will be more.

Ms. Barrett: What are the criteria that will be used to determine which of the applicants will be hired? Are there any academic criteria or age criteria or other criteria?

Mr. Radcliffe: The criteria are post-secondary education, academic education, individuals who are proficient in a knowledge of aboriginal culture and language, individuals who have a demonstrated ability and interest in public administration.

Ms. Barrett: Who will be selecting the six individuals?

Mr. Radcliffe: The selection boards have not yet been formed or the process been completed yet, but there will be a representative from the Civil Service Commission. There will be aboriginal representation from the Indian Affairs secretariat, Native Affairs Secretariat, and there will be some selection from Human Resources in the government departments.

Ms. Barrett: The minister stated that the universities, community colleges and aboriginal service organizations were being looked at as sources for this program. How is the program being advertised, if you will? Is it just through written material? Are there any staff that have been assigned to actually go and speak with the potential applicants or at least the post-secondary institutions and the organizations? It seems to me it is quite a specific set of criteria that are being looked at, set of skills and knowledge base that is being looked at. I am wondering if there is just more than the normal set of advertisements that are going to these organizations.

Mr. Radcliffe: The whole plan has not yet been completed, but one of the options under consideration is to send one or two of individuals identified who have been spear-heading the organization here, being one individual, Bernard Carriere, or the other one, Mr. Joseph Morrisseau. These people would contact the employment placement counsellors in the colleges or institutions involved, would have those people solicit individuals who might be appropriate, and then the individuals I mentioned would sit down and describe the program and review the individuals who would be so identified. That is one possibility. There would also be written communication, but these are all alternatives that the Civil Service Commission is considering at this point in time. It would be a variation or a mix of this sort of approach.

* (1730)

Ms. Barrett: So the program yet is still in the planning stages or at what point? The minister mentioned that it was anticipated to be beginning fall of 1999. We are mid-June 1999. How close is the program to being actually able to be advertised and applicants sought?

Mr. Radcliffe: Mr. Chairman, the plan or the roll out is to have the proposal or program in a position to be advertised in September of this year, so all the communications work would be done now through the months of June, July and August, so that it could roll out in the month of September.

Ms. Barrett: If it is advertised in September, then when is it anticipated that the first six young people would actually be beginning their two-year program?

Mr. Radcliffe: The selection process will be confirmed over the course of the next month; in other words, by the middle of July. The process then, the initial contact with the institutions and the organizations that I mentioned will then go out subsequent to that after the middle of July. The target date–and again this is just a target date at this point–is to have the six participants identified, recruited, committed and ready to start the program by September 20.

Ms. Barrett: Well, the minister said earlier that the advertising would go out in September, or that is what I heard; I may have been inaccurate. So, if the advertisement is going out in September, how can you have all the people in place by September 20?

Mr. Radcliffe: My honourable colleague makes an excellent point, and, in fact, I misspoke myself. The adverts will go out earlier through the course of the summer. May 21, it is anticipated that there will be a distribution of call letters announcing the program. June 4, it is anticipated there will be a receipt of expression of interest from the departments.

So there will be an uptake from departments of government that the call letters go out to. By June 25, it is hoped that the final selection criteria, the area of search, the method of assessment, and the composition of the selection committee will be finalized; that is June 25, 1999. July 11, the information will be disseminated to the collateral agencies. August 8, there will be the advertising of the job postings. September 3, the screening process will hopefully be completed, and September 7, the final selection of interns will be completed. By September 20 to October 11, the orientation process will be conducted. On October 12, the first placement of the four- to six-month course will commence.

Ms. Barrett: I find it interesting that the activity of getting information out to the collateral agencies, which is the universities and community colleges and other agencies, and the advertisement and the screening, et cetera, and selection, all takes place during the summer months. That causes me a bit of concern.

Well, I guess the question is have the collateral agencies been notified that this program is being planned and that they should expect this activity to take place, so they have been able to at this point identify some potential applicants, so that young people do not go hither, thither and yon? Most particularly, when you are looking at young aboriginal students, they may very well be going back into their home communities.

So I have a bit of a concern about the time line here, not the number of days between any of the activities, but the fact that it is taking place through July through August.

* (1740)

Mr. Radcliffe: My honourable colleague does make a good point, that, in fact, there will be individuals who may be out of touch, who on the first round of this program would be appropriate individuals. However, a conscientious effort will be made by the commission and by the selection committee here, in this particular case, to contact the individuals in an appropriate fashion. That is why the two individuals, Carriere and Morrisseau, have been chosen, because they will be familiar with where appropriate individuals could be found. Obviously by contacting the institutions of secondary learning, the records of these individuals will be available.

It would have been more advantageous, of course, to launch this program in February or March but, unfortunately, with the government calendar, the programming and the funding did not become available until the latter part of April, early May. So therefore the first year there is going to be a hiccup. Nonetheless, we think, we are reasonably confident that with some intelligent efforts, the appropriate people can be reached.

Ms. Barrett: I wish the government all the luck in the world in this. I think it is a very good concept. Having participated for five years at least on the internship hiring committee, I know how students who are of the calibre that you are looking for are highly advantaged in getting jobs in the market. Sometimes we in the government area have a big challenge in making sure these people are interested and willing to come.

Question: how much are they going to be paid?

Mr. Radcliffe: In the neighbourhood of $30,000 to $31,000 a year.

Ms. Barrett: I think that is it on that. I am sure there are other things that will come to my mind, but I will leave that because I would like to spend a few minutes on the SOA. So I am prepared to pass this area.

Mr. Chairperson: Item 17.1. Civil Service Commission (c) Human Resource Management Services (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $1,054,600–pass; (2) Other Expenditures $660,600–pass.

17.1.(d) Labour Relations Services (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $1,237,400–pass; (2) Other Expenditures $318,100–pass.

17.1.(e) Organization and Staff Development Agency, no dollars.

Ms. Barrett: I was going through the Guide to Training and Consulting that the minister gave me earlier today and noted that the facilitators in many of these courses, well, they are either from the Civil Service Commission, or some are from other government departments, and others are from OS and D itself, and others are external.

Is there any information as to the percentages of facilitators that come from within the government as versus outside facilitators? I could probably add it up myself but did not have the time.

Mr. Radcliffe: I am told that the majority of the facilitators are private sector facilitators or vendors. There are three staff involved, including the director from OS and D. Other than that, they are all from beyond government. I am told there are a number of Civil Service Commission individuals who run the employment equity aspect of the courses but, other than that, the majority of them are from the private sector.

Ms. Barrett: I notice that there is a culture diversity workshop that is facilitated by a member of the Civil Service Commission, Louise Chippeway, but also Debbie Neufeld from Family Services. So I assume there is at least one that is internal. But the minister is saying that the majority are from the private sector.

Mr. Radcliffe: Correct.

Ms. Barrett: How are the consultants or the facilitators chosen for the various courses?

Mr. Radcliffe: The OS and D group of the Civil Service Commission maintain a list of individuals from the community who supply this sort of work. They draw this list from their own knowledge and network in the community, individuals who self-submit, and they also circulate a request to the community for such facilitators. It is done on an interactive basis but largely informal.

Ms. Barrett: But the OS and D hires, contracts with the facilitators to provide the course?

Mr. Radcliffe: That is correct. Then the course presenters are evaluated on a constant basis, as well, by OS and D and by the participants themselves. So there is an evaluation and a prioritizing of the individual facilitators.

* (1750)

Ms. Barrett: Who pays for the tuition for these courses?

Mr. Radcliffe: The individual departments are the most frequent entities that pay for the courses.

Ms. Barrett: The most frequent? Are there cases where the client pays for the course?

Mr. Radcliffe: I am told that none of the individuals end up paying for these courses, but, in fact, from time to time the Civil Service Commission itself may pay for a course if there is a government-wide strategy that is being presented, for example employment equity.

Ms. Barrett: There is a reference to Manitoba measures in a couple of the courses. Could the minister explain what Manitoba Measures is?

Mr. Radcliffe: Manitoba Measures is the appellation given to the whole business planning process that we discussed earlier by which government departments and managers and administrators and deputies arrive at their budgeting process. It is a concept of service delivery.

Ms. Barrett: Who decides which civil servants will attend which courses? Do the civil servants themselves ask to participate in these courses or do the managers or senior members of departments suggest that individuals take these courses? Are they required or are they at the person's own initiative. How is it determined?

Mr. Radcliffe: Ultimately it is the department who makes the final decision whether the employee should go ahead and take the course or not. In fact, it can be at the initiative of a manager who is doing a performance evaluation or assessment of the individual employee, or the initiative can come from arising out of a request from the employee who wants some more personal development.

Ms. Barrett: Now, for the first time in these whole Estimates I have some specific financial questions. They are found on page 77 of the Estimates book. There are four or five of them. I am sorry, page 57, excuse me. That was a test, I failed. Okay, the first question is–these are all expenditure items–the books and course materials, there was a large bump up in '98-99, and then there is quite a reduction in '98-99 projected and then the current budget. I wonder if the minister can explain that spike.

Mr. Radcliffe: We cannot be specific at this point in time. We can only estimate that that was the purchase of some course material, then ongoing maintenance thereafter. We will inquire and if there is any other component to it, we will certainly undertake to advise.

Ms. Barrett: Also, office and printing costs, actual '97-98, almost $39 million–no, thousand. It goes down to 13 for the revised '98-99 budget and then down even more. I am wondering, that is quite a reduction.

Mr. Radcliffe: We will have to undertake to supply the particulars on that, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Barrett: I have two more, perhaps the same. It is likely we will have to have the minister get some specifics. The next one, professional fees, have reduced almost $100,000 from '97-98 to '98-99.

Mr. Radcliffe: The same. We will have to comply with the request.

Ms. Barrett: And the final is the audit expense which does not occur in 1997-98 and does in the future years.

Mr. Radcliffe: I think that '97-98 is blank because that was the first year of the program, and you audit at the end of the program.

Mr. Chairperson: Resolution 17.l: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $4,365,800 for Civil Service Commission for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 2000.

Resolution 17.2: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty the sum not exceeding $112,800 for Civil Service Commission for the fiscal year ending 31st day of March, 2000.

This now concludes the Estimates of the Civil Service Commission. What is the will of the committee? Call it six o'clock? [agreed]