John Ivison: OTTAWA — The Phoenix pay system debacle was quite rightly called “an international embarrassment” by a Senate report five years ago. Most Canadians probably assume the failures that resulted in pay problems for 80 per cent of the federal government’s 300,000 public servants have been resolved.
But that is not the case. In fact, things are getting worse.
Sources tell the Post that Public Services and Procurement Canada, the department responsible for Phoenix, has asked for an extra $500 million to “stabilize” the problem in the face of a rising backlog of cases. Last year, government expenditure on Phoenix was $713.7 million across all departments, according to Treasury Board’s departmental results report. In 2019, the Parliamentary Budget Office estimated the cost of correcting Phoenix’s data problems at $2.6 billion. That now looks like an underestimate.
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