(Ottawa) The federal government is accelerating the transition to a new payroll system to definitively end the use of Phoenix. The numerous problems caused by its implementation in 2016 ended up costing taxpayers billions of dollars. The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), which represents 240,000 employees, fears further failures.
“We are very, very worried,” says Yvon Barrière, the regional executive vice-president for Quebec of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. “We would not like to have another Phoenix payroll system. »
The union would have preferred that the government continue to test two software programs in parallel, Dayforce and Workforce, in order to choose the one that works best. Such a system must take into account the particularities of the 105 collective agreements in the public service.
The government, which is already testing the Dayforce software, allocated 135 million in 2024-2025 in its latest budget to “improve the human resources and pay systems of the public service, including continued work on a possible payroll solution new generation”, a sign that he wants to speed up the work.
Yvon Barrière argues that Dayforce was tested in small departments like Canadian Heritage where employees have a stable schedule, from 8 a.m. to 4 a.m. Monday to Friday, which is not the time of all civil servants.
“It has not been tested on more complex salary transaction systems,” he explains. I am thinking of our members of the Coast Guard or the Correctional Service who work atypical and unconventional schedules. »
He also believes that the government should correct outstanding payroll errors before migrating to a new system. According to the government dashboard, 425,000 pay transactions remained to be settled at the end of April, of which 213,000 have been pending for a year.
The Pay Services Center manages the remuneration of nearly 250,000 public servants spread across 48 departments and agencies.