Last week, Treasury Board recommended the end of publicly reporting costs of the Phoenix pay system disaster. Workers and the public deserve to know the full cost of Phoenix — the government shouldn’t close the books while workers are still living with the consequences. 

An internal memo released showed that Treasury Board acknowledged that this decision “may be perceived as a reduction in transparency or accountability” yet recommended going forward with the change anyway. 

This is exactly what hiding the cost of Phoenix will do: leave the public and workers in the dark on how much money the government is still spending to clean up the Phoenix mess.  

Phoenix is still costing workers and the public 

Over ten years after the disastrous launch of the Phoenix pay system, tens of thousands of federal public service workers are still dealing with the consequences. The government has already spent over $5 billion on the fallout of Phoenix, PSAC members have yet to even receive damages for the impacts that occurred after 2020, and there has yet to be a full public inquiry to highlight the entire cost. By ending reporting, the public may never know how much of their taxpayer dollars will be spent or the true scope of the impact. 

Phoenix has already damaged workers’ trust in the federal government as an employer. Ending public cost reporting would only deepen that loss of trust, especially with the launch of the new human resources and pay system, Dayforce. With a new system on the horizon, this would be the worst time possible to bury the lessons from one of the greatest administrative failures in the federal government’s history. 

Although Treasury Board may want it to, sweeping these costs under the rug won’t make them go away. The federal government needs to continue collecting and releasing this data for them to be held accountable for the ongoing work on Phoenix, and to ensure a successful transition to a new system. 

PSAC has written to Michael Sabia, Clerk of the Privy Council, calling on Treasury Board to change course and commit to continuing annual public reporting on Phoenix.