Integrated strategy for human resources and pay
Progress update session, March 2026

Alex Benay: I’m happy to see that, even in the question, the word “arriéré” is hard to pronounce for a Francophone, since you use the word “backlog.” So, thank you. Joking aside, though, our intent is to not onboard any department with backlogs. That has always been the case and always will be. That’s why, for our three pilot projects that we mentioned, we’re focusing on their backlogs to ensure that, by the time the system is implemented, there is no backlog. So, there’s a schedule available online. You can go and find all our documents from our management boards with the deputy ministers and with the assistant deputy ministers. All our decisions, our records of decision are online. So, you can look at the schedule, it’s posted in our documents. Then you can see where your department currently sits in the schedule. We’re going to guard a bit against trouble, in the sense that plans change. If a department isn’t ready, we’re not going to onboard it. There’s a chance that the schedule you see online will change, but that being said, the intention is to never onboard a department that has a backlog. We went through that at PSPC in the past. I wasn’t there, but I’ve heard many horror stories from compensation officers who received data and situations not suitable to pay, proper pay, at the time Phoenix was brought in. Many departments sent us a pile of data to manage, to clean. We don’t want to go through that again, and we won’t. You have… we... how we’re operating within the project, the principle is no bad data. So, no backlog before we onboard anyone.

Kim Steele: The answer is yes. It’s included in the system and also in the demo. Employees can also put their preferred name. So, that exists in the Dayforce system.

Alex Benay: As I’m not the employer, unfortunately I can’t answer your question. That’s a question for the Treasury Board instead. I’m sorry. Our responsibility at the moment is to recover the funds, and those are the Treasury Board’s directives. So, I recommend that you ask the Treasury Board that question, unfortunately. What I can tell you, from the point of view of the process we want to use to recover the funds, we have started going back to the department. And you’re going to see a theme throughout the day today. Procedures for overpayments. New overpayments that are created in the system. What we want to focus on at PSPC is the overpayments, the historical cases, because just like I said for the last question, we want to ensure that all files are up to date before implementing the new solution. So, if you have any questions about the process, we’re able to discuss those, but as for whether the process is ethical or not, unfortunately, that’s not a question for PSPC. Sorry.

Alex Benay: That’s a very good question, and in the current context, I think, despite the fact that we talked about not taking questions on workforce adjustment, I think you’ve found a way to ask a question that is still very relevant. We have a dedicated team at the Pay Centre that will be capable of taking calls from people who have received a notice or a notification. Great French, by the way... Sorry. Anyone who is going to be affected by the process, our pay team, a team dedicated to those individuals. So, you’re going to get top-notch service.

Kim Steele: That’s an excellent question. We have a roughly five-year rollout plan. We’ll begin with one organization. The first will be onboarded to Dayforce sometime in July 2027. It’s our first Vanguard organization. After that, it will be PSPC and Shared Services sometime in December 2027. After that, every year, there will be a group of departments, organizations, every year after that. It’s a little hard to explain in a short answer, but we have a plan that was shared with the departments.

Alex Benay: Yes. It will all be tied to the implementation schedule. We, right now... how can I describe it to you? Everyone has problems everywhere, and we’re forever in a negative cycle. In order to stop the spin, if I may, that we’ve been in for the past decade, we want to focus on the departments that will be part of the pilot project to ensure that all the files are up to date, that we implement Dayforce, that those departments are okay and that we can move on to the next department. I know this may not be an ideal answer, but it’s how we’ll be able to process all the complex cases, too. Clearly, we have a team that will continue to be dedicated to the backlogs. So, if you’re part of that group, you’re going to be processed separately from Dayforce, but we have to start juggling the backlogs in two ways. For the implementation on the one hand, in order for the departments to be up to date, and on the other hand, we’re going to continue with our team that’s dedicated to addressing the most complex backlog cases. As I mentioned, this is the first time that we’re at 100,000 cases in the history of Phoenix. We have estimates giving us figures of approximately 70,000 backlog cases in the next quarter. So, we continue to make progress. Right now, we have positive momentum. It’s our intention to be close to 50,000 by late summer, early fall. So, again, our projections are quite positive. I know that I’m asking for patience for something that has taken a really long time, something that’s taken too much time, but we have several strategies in place at this point in terms of processing the backlogs. So, thank you for your continued patience.

Kim Steele: The answer is a bit complicated, but really, it’s both. The Dayforce system is based on different types of permissions, so if someone has section 34 rights, that’s one type of permission, but there are other permissions for approving vacations, etc. So, it’s important for us to work with the departments to determine the rights of each manager in the system.

Alex Benay: One, I’ll be out of a job, to start! Two, I would say that—I’m going to answer the question in two parts. First, you have to understand just how dysfunctional Phoenix is. Our pay officers at the Pay Centre have to use a calculator, Excel macros and a calendar to try to reconcile our HR and pay system. Each department has an HR system that’s somewhat different. We have one pay system. The Dayforce system is an integrated HR and pay system. That’s the big difference. In the early 2000s, 2010s, when we designed our current system, we made the extremely wise decision to decouple our human resources, federate our human resources services and integrate our pay systems. We expected that to work well, because the Government of Canada has a history of doing a great job managing things in a federated manner. I’m trying to be sarcastic and polite at the same time. On top of that, what did we do? We took an Oracle solution—and everyone around the world who had that solution had implemented it as an integrated solution—and we, in our infinite wisdom, decided to decouple Oracle’s HR and pay system. The only entity on the planet to do so, by the way, according to Goss Gilroy. I’ll tell you right now, there’s no way the system could be worse than what we currently have. We have thousands of code updates that we manage every day. The technology is archaic. We have an unintegrated service model that doesn’t work. So, it’s not just the technology. I can tell you that, from a modern technology standpoint, it works better, because the two are integrated. The decision that we’ll be left with, if we decide to move forward after the test that we’ll be doing, the testing that we’ll be doing in June on Dayforce, is what are we going to do about our service model? We have four different models. It’s very Government of Canada to have four different service models. That doesn’t work. We can’t have federated human resources and a centralized pay centre. That has created a lot of problems for many people over the years, and I’ve seen people here at PSPC work hard to barely get to a point where we’re able to catch up on our backlogs. So, that doesn’t necessarily work. So, it’s clear from that perspective, the model we’re moving to, whether it’s the service or the technology, will be better. It will depend in part on you. It will also depend on things like: Is your data up to date? Are your requests on time? Are managers sitting on requests, like they do now, which is creating overpayments? Are those things going to be managed properly within the department? Because I know that some of you are going to go on Reddit and say that we’re blaming the managers. That’s not what we’re doing, but it’s very obvious to us, when we look at the statistics, that many overpayments, more than 70%, currently arise because managers are not approving the transactions on time. So we, as I just said, our pay accuracy is 98.8%, and transactions are not being approved on time in the current system, they need to be approved on time in the future system, too. So, it will be a two-way street. It’s not a one-way street. The last thing I’ll say about this question is that, if we continue to move forward with Dayforce and it doesn’t work—I think you’ve already heard us say that we’re going to operate two systems simultaneously. We’re going to operate our old system that works “okay,” so we can go back to that system in case there’s a catastrophic error that arises with Dayforce. Once again, we’re taking Goss Gilroy’s lessons learned, and that’s why we have plans for Oracle now, plans for Dayforce in the future, and why we need a centralized data centre so we can manage both environments. It’s extremely complex. So, that creates other complexities, but in case things don’t go well in Dayforce, we will have an environment that we can go back to—something we couldn’t do with Phoenix.

Alex Benay: I love that suggestion, because it would make our lives so much easier, but unfortunately, collective agreements, etc. We don’t have the right to keep you from moving. So, that won’t happen, first of all. Second of all, the question is extremely relevant. I’m being told, from all quarters and all sides, what the biggest risks of Phoenix are. Well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but for us, what you have just described is one of the big problems that will have to be managed over the next five years. There are going to be—given that we don’t want to do a big bang—there are going to be some departments on Phoenix; there are going to be some departments on Dayforce. That’s why we want a centralized data management tool so we can better manage transfers between the two. So, your data will not necessarily be just in Dayforce or just in Phoenix. It will be in our central repository. And we’re going to be able to point various systems to that central repository. Our goal is to do away with the fact that it can take three, four, five, six months more to transfer files between departments, because you’re going to exist in a centralized way with the Government of Canada. Right now, you have no relationship with the Government of Canada as an employee; you have a relationship with your department. And that’s what has to change to try to eliminate any potential problems between the two systems and to operate two systems simultaneously. It’s one of the reasons why, as much as we may criticize the decisions that were made in the past, it’s one of the big reasons why our predecessors chose to do a big bang. It was precisely to try to avoid the problem that you’re describing.

Carl Hurtubise: So, if we look... that’s really going to depend, because during the last conversions, there are going to be the overpayment elements to ensure that we can manage those files. In the future, once all the elements have been resolved, the amount of overpayments should drop significantly. Then that will be managed individually. I hope that answers the question, because there’s going to be a transition period during that time.

Kim Steele: Yes, absolutely! We’re going to listen to employees and experts if the system isn’t ready. Absolutely, 100%! It’s really important to me to have a system that works properly. So, we have a plan with the testing. The testing is going to be shared with our “Open Government” system. So, it’s really important to me that the system works properly. If (it does), we’ll begin rolling it out.

Alex Benay: I would add, I’m going to expand a bit... how I can I say this... I sense a lot of emotion in your question, if I may say so. And that’s normal. And it’s okay. It’s an emotional issue in the public service. We’ve already talked to approximately 3,000 individuals. We connected with around 3,000 individuals through sessions that were held in the lobbies of various federal buildings. We have online sessions where people can come and see the solution. There’s no doubt that a culture shift… things aren’t going to be done the same way in Dayforce as they’re done right now. For us, our challenge is to juggle the comments coming from people who don’t want to change versus the comments that it doesn’t work. So, of course we want to gather as much feedback as possible. That’s why we’re holding sessions like this one. Obviously, like Kim said, we’re not going to implement the system if it doesn’t work. We know the names of the people who were affected in our department. I see how hard the team is working. Nobody wants to relive the situation, perhaps PSPC most of all, in which people were sleeping under their desks to make sure that Government of Canada employees got paid over the past 10 years. And that’s not an exaggeration! It’s something that really happens. So, we’re all on the same team when it comes to that.

Alex Benay: That’s a good question. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time to go into the history of the Canadian technology sector and why we don’t have our own capacity here at home. It has to do, in part, with the fact that we have just pivoted to Buy Canadian policies, but we as the Canadian government haven’t generated any demand for Canada’s technology sector in years. So, there are only U.S. and German solutions in the field of human resources and pay. There’s not a lot of choice. So, you bring up a good point. For us, it’s one of the reasons why we want to set up our own centralized data centre. We want to verify how able we are to manage the data in a more sovereign manner. That also includes, with our Dayforce solution—I’m going to use an anglicism, my apologies—how can we use our data in an encrypted manner. So, ensuring that things are well managed from a cloud-computing standpoint to ensure that we’re the ones who maintain control of our data.

Kim Steele: In the future, for me, it’s really important that our employees be responsible for managing the system. So, we’re in the process of implementing Dayforce training for our employees. That’s essential. It’s important. Yes, right now, we’re working with private companies because they have the expertise, but as we move forward, we’re going to train our employees.

Alex Benay: So, quickly, to clarify, the training that Kim is talking about for our employees that’s being offered to the Government of Canada is the same training that Dayforce offers to consultants. It’s extremely important to make that distinction, because we’re going to be just the same as private sector consultants, and I think this is the first time Dayforce is doing that. So, kudos to them. And in terms of who’s accountable, I’m the one who’s accountable. No one else. “The buck stops with me”—sorry. It stops with me. I’m the one who’s accountable. I’m the one who’s responsible for the pay issue. And I’m very pleased with the direction we’re going in with Dayforce. It’s probably the best technology partnership that I’ve seen in my history of working in the public and private sectors around the world. But the accountability rests with me.

Alex Benay: Yes, that’s true. Actually, many demos to governments around the world, sometimes even opening pages and saying that everything is fine—that doesn’t go well. But anyway, demonstration aside. Yes, many complex scenarios are being tested. One of the reasons why we haven’t launched our pilot projects sooner is because we’ve been waiting for some—I’ll call them inputs from Dayforce, with regard to our very complex issues. We are complex. We’re not really even that complicated, but things like paying mass arrears when new collective agreements are reached, that’s not something that happens anywhere else. So, Dayforce is developing a solution for us. We go from that level of complexity to, for example, officers in Government of Canada correctional facilities who have five-minute shifts. That’s also complicated. We’re in the process of testing that. So, there are many complexities that we’re in the process of implementing, and we’re going to keep doing that. And you’re going to be able to see all the test results online, as Kim and her team do them. We’re going to be able to publish the results. So, you’re going to see everything we’re testing.