Measures to increase Public Service Commission support to departments and agencies (20-05)

Colleagues,

The Public Service Commission (PSC) is taking steps to provide you with additional flexibility to staff positions that are related to the COVID-19 situation or to ensure the effective functioning of the Government of Canada.

Effective immediately, until September 30, 2020, 2 new measures are in place to provide flexibility in relation to the assessment of second language qualifications:

1. Deputy heads are exempted from the requirement to use the PSC’s Second Language Evaluation (SLE) tests when assessing second language proficiency (reading, writing and oral) for term appointments to bilingual positions.

Application

The above exception may be used for appointments to bilingual positions that are for a specified term up to a maximum of 12 months.

Requirements

• The Head of Human Resources or persons identified by the deputy head must confirm that the alternative SLE assessment is for an appointment to a position that is a result of the COVID-19 situation or that is to ensure the effective functioning of the Government of Canada.
• The assessment must respect the Guiding Principles for Alternate Methods to Second Language Evaluation Tests.

2. Extension of the validity period of existing SLE results for new appointments.

Application

The above extension applies to persons who are appointed for a specified term or for an indeterminate period whose SLE results are more than 5 years old.

Requirements

• The Head of Human Resources or persons identified by the deputy head must confirm that this extension of the validity period is for an appointment to a position that is a result of the COVID-19 situation or that is to ensure the effective functioning of the Government of Canada.
• Persons appointed to bilingual positions for a specified term longer than 9 months or to indeterminate appointments must confirm their official language proficiency through SLE tests approved by the PSC, within 12 months of the appointment.

Departments will be asked to report on the use of these new measures in their regular 2020-21 reporting to the PSC. More information about reporting will be provided soon.

We are also currently exploring new flexible service alternatives to support you, such as an oral proficiency test that can be administered by our language assessors and taken by your employees from home and a modified unsupervised internet test for reading and writing skills.

In addition we would like to emphasize that we will continue to expedite all urgent requests related to priority clearances, and provide direct support to your Human Resources specialists through our Staffing Support Advisors. We remain available to process requests for candidate referrals from the Post-Secondary Recruitment or Recruitment of Policy Leaders inventories and the Federal Student Work Experience.

We will soon publish Questions and Answers on our website and we will be updating them regularly.

Thank you.

Patrick Borbey
President

D. G. J. Tucker
Commissioner

Fiona Spencer
Commissioner