XPost: can.politics, bc.politics, ont.politics   
   XPost: ab.politics   
   From: ConsRCons@govt.cda   
      
   Read this and you'll see where '20,000' of the jobs lost in Canada were   
   from.  And while you're reading this, know that his MPs had their   
   salaries raised and he expanded the job numbers for his favoured   
   departments - overall increasing the federal payroll by 14% !   
   _____________________________________________   
      
   Fight over public servants’ benefits is more about dollars than sense   
      
      
   By Kathryn May, Ottawa CitizenJanuary 24, 2014   
      
      
   If you have spent any time in Ottawa over the past few years, you’ve   
   heard that Stephen Harper hates public servants. The message has been   
   printed on buttons and T-shirts, scrawled on signs, and even written on   
   a banner and towed across the sky behind an airplane.   
      
   The “Harper Hates Me” campaign was the Public Service Alliance of   
   Canada’s peevish response to the Conservative government’s initiatives   
   to cut spending, eliminate 20,000 jobs and remake the public service.   
      
   But if union leaders thought Harper’s frontman for this plan would turn   
   the other cheek, they were wrong. Tony Clement, the president of the   
   Treasury Board, has been all too willing to engage with them; he has   
   questioned public servants’ work ethic and productivity, insinuated   
   they’re lazy, overpaid and underperforming, and vowed to “bring them in   
   line with the private sector.”   
      
   Buried in this testy exchange is the government’s broader plan to   
   overhaul the management and culture of the public service. No one, not   
   even union leaders, believes there aren’t lessons to be learned from the   
   private sector, which has already adapted to a rapidly changing digital   
   economy.   
      
   But the unions and the government seem to be stuck arguing about   
   compensation, and whether public servants are paid too much compared to   
   their private counterparts. While it may benefit both sides to present   
   themselves this way — the government as the crusader for Canadian   
   taxpayers and the unions as the defender of their members who are being   
   denigrated for political purposes — it does little to advance the   
   conversation that needs to be had: how best to fix a public service   
   ill-prepared to serve Canadians in the digital age.   
      
   No, Tony Clement doesn’t hate public servants, but he also isn’t about   
   to accept the status quo.   
      
   “By and large the public service is populated by dedicated people who   
   care about their country and they want to contribute to it and that’s   
   how I see them,” said Clement in an interview. “Are there exceptions to   
   that? Absolutely … as there are exceptions in any field of work.   
      
   “But no, I want to work with public servants and I really do believe the   
   approach I am taking is fair and reasonable and will actually help those   
   who want to work hard to work hard, get compensated and do productive   
   things for government services and therefore our economy.”   
      
   Harper’s choice of Clement to lead this transformation isn’t surprising.   
   In his early political days, Clement was described as an “eager young   
   worshipper of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan” whose reforms were   
   all about making government smaller and more businesslike.   
      
   Clement’s latest mantra about paying the public service like the private   
   sector began when the government declared affordability and   
   comparability as the twin pillars of its compensation policy in the 2011   
   federal budget.   
      
   Since then, Clement says he has “picked his spots” and tackled, one at a   
   time, the kinds of perks and benefits workers in the private sector   
   don’t have.   
      
   “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time,” he says.   
      
   It is a tactical approach in keeping with the prime minister’s   
   philosophy of gradual incrementalism, a step-by-step to government   
   reform. The changes are likely to stick, since successor governments   
   would be wary of undoing any of Clement’s reforms and risking public outcry.   
      
   Clement’s first move was to eliminate the severance pay that public   
   servants used to collect when they quit or retired. He then changed the   
   pension plan so new hires have to pay a larger share and work longer   
   before they are eligible to collect it. These two measures will save   
   billions in the long run.   
      
   He then ordered all employees to have performance agreements with their   
   bosses and that those be strictly enforced to get rid of poor performers   
   and reward the stars. He tied more of executives’ pay to their   
   individual performances.   
      
   At the same time, he froze departments’ operating budgets and oversaw   
   the elimination of 20,000 jobs. He launched Shared Services Canada to   
   consolidate information technology and other “back office” services   
   duplicated in departments across government such as financial and human   
   resources.   
      
   Now, he has set his sights on absenteeism — public servants have the   
   highest rate in the country — and he’s going to replace accumulated sick   
   leave with a new short-term disability plan during the collective   
   bargaining that is poised to begin. Clement says he “set the table” for   
   these changes, and others he has in mind, with reforms to the Public   
   Service Labour Relations Act that change the rules for bargaining to   
   give a far stronger hand to the government.   
      
   Clement says his chief supporters are Canadians who can no longer   
   tolerate their tax dollars going to support wage and benefit levels most   
   of them don’t enjoy. A study by the Parliamentary Budget Office shows   
   the average public servant costs taxpayers $114,000 a year, when   
   pensions and benefits are rolled in, and could reach between $121,000   
   and $129,800 by 2015.   
      
   “My north star for this is what would the average person in the average   
   job outside the public sector say ... and whether this is reasonable.   
   That’s how I judge whether something is out of whack or not,” said Clement.   
   [. . . ]   
   But while Clement and the Tories may see these broad “structural”   
   changes as their end goal, they are very aware of the political benefits   
   of exploiting the image of the fat cat bureaucrat in the run-up to the   
   election in 2015.   
      
   Ian Lee, a professor at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business,   
   said Clement is cleverly capitalizing on the larger reform plan for   
   short-term political advantage.   
      
   He gets the fiscal win of saving money and shrinking the $44-billion   
   annual wage bill, and scores politically by satisfying the party base   
   and other Canadians who “don’t have positive images of the bureaucracy.”   
   He predicts the Conservatives will use the reforms on the campaign trail   
   to tout their credibility as solid fiscal managers, arguing these   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)