Speaking Notes for Patrick Borbey President of the Public Service Commission of Canada on Experiential Learning and Pathways to Employment for Canadian Youth at the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities - November 30, 2017

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before your Committee today as you examine the topic of Experiential Learning and Pathways to Employment for Canadian Youth.  I am pleased to be here with Roxanne Poitras, the Public Service Commission’s Youth Engagement Ambassador.

In most cases, departments send senior officials to appear before Parliamentary Committees.  I applaud the Committee for asking Roxanne to join the discussion today, because it is rare for young people to get a chance to gain this experience so early on in their careers.

I will provide some general information on the Public Service Commission and the Government of Canada’s recruitment programs, and then ask Roxanne to take a few moments to describe her role as our Youth Engagement Ambassador.

The Public Service Commission promotes and safeguards merit-based appointments and, in collaboration with other stakeholders, protects the non-partisan nature of the public service.  We also administer centralized recruitment programs on behalf of Treasury Board.

The student recruitment programs include,

·the Federal Student Work Experience Program (FSWEP), which recruited over 7,000 students in 2015-16;

·the Post Secondary CO-OP/Internship Programs, which saw almost 4,500 hires over the same period; and

·the Research Affiliate Program (RAP), which had almost 400 hires.

Graduate recruitment programs that may also be of interest to Committee members, given that they are often used by younger Canadians, are,

·the Post Secondary Recruitment Program (PSR); and

·the Recruitment of Policy Leaders Program (RPL).

The eligibility criteria for these programs are available on the GC Jobs website.  What I would like to emphasize is how important these programs are to the future of the federal public service.

Roxanne and I are both products of the government’s student recruitment programs. I grew up in a Northern Ontario mining town and the government was not a major employer in the area.  I had not given much thought to a public service career, but I applied for a federal summer job.  That was 35 years ago. I have had a fulfilling career working at headquarters and in the regions, in organizations both large and small, providing a wide range of services to Canadians.

About the Public Service

My message to Canadian youth is the public service needs to recruit.  It needs to do more external recruitment and it needs to recruit younger Canadians.

To put things into context, our last annual report stated that approximately 12 percent of public servants were already eligible to retire in 2015-16 and that 25 percent were eligible to retire in the next five years.

Last year, only 32 percent of our job ads were open to the public.  If we are to hire a younger and more diverse workforce, we will have to open a larger percentage of our job ads to the public.

Our workforce is also not reflective of the under age 35 labour force availability.  Within the federal public service, only about 21 percent of employees are under 35 years of age.  However, the number within the Canadian population is around 35 percent.  Forecasts show that by 2028, 75 percent of the Canadian workforce will be made up of what we describe today as the millennial cohort.

Student Hiring

Young Canadians are interested in joining the federal public service.  We know this because the number of applications we receive remains high. In 2015‑16, we received nearly 55,000 student employment applications and over 53,000 graduate recruitment applications.  However, applications are not enough.  We need to turn more of them into hires.

By its nature, student hiring is external hiring.  It brings new talents into government.  It also provides a clue about diversity.  Students hired in 2016-17 came from the following Employment Equity groups:

·Aboriginal Peoples – 4.8 percent;

·Persons with disabilities – 2.7 percent;

·Visible minorities – 19.7 percent; and

· Women – 58.3 percent.

The Public Service Commission made positive changes to the student application process last year.  By putting an emphasis on the user experience of candidates and managers, we were able to reduce the time it took to apply for a student job from 60 to 6 minutes.  I admit that this did not have a huge impact on the number of applications received, but we did receive them sooner. This translated into hiring managers being able to access them sooner and making appointments in a more timely manner.  Another bit of good news is that our inventories are on-going, meaning students do not need to re-apply every year.  I was also pleasantly surprised to see that 32 percent of our student applications self-identified as visible minorities.

The Public Service Commission also spends a fair amount of time on campuses.  For example, we conducted over 270 outreach events last year.

Furthermore, Deputy Ministers play a key role in post-secondary recruitment.  Each university is partnered with a Deputy Minister Champion who works on strengthening the relationship between the Government of Canada and that university.  This adds to the Government’s commitment to recruitment.

It is important to point out that the federal public service hires the largest number of

CO-OP students in the country.  However, I admit that the program is under-utilized outside of the National Capital Region.  The CO-OP program provides an important, career focussed pathway to our workforce.

I firmly believe the Public Service needs to hire a greater number of younger Canadians, including students and recent graduates.  We need to bring in qualified and talented people at the entry levels, and then provide them with training, mentoring and coaching.  We need to allow time for the transfer of corporate knowledge.  It is only by doing so that can we ensure the renewal of Canada’s world class public service.

I would now like to ask Roxanne to explain her role as our Youth Engagement Ambassador, and then we will be happy to answer your questions.