In the lead-up to the development of the annual federal budget, the House of Commons Finance Committee invites recommendations from interested parties and individuals. PSAC made the following recommendations for the 2019 budget.

Phoenix

• More money to fix the problems the Phoenix pay system has caused.

The funding in the 2018 budget was insufficient to ensure correct and on-time pay and to compensate for damages.

Precarious work

• Reduce, and eventually eliminate, the use of temporary help agency workers and other types of external contract personnel in the public service. 
• Explore the creation of an auxiliary worker pool fulling within the federal public service. This was tried by PSPC in 1976-79 but cancelled despite favourable results.

Precarious work is detrimental to economic growth but it is becoming increasingly common. In the federal public service, 15.3% of employees are either term, casual or students, not including temporary help agency workers.

Public private partnerships (P3s) 

• Cancel current procurement processes for P3s and reissue them as only design-build requests, with public sector workers providing the operation and maintenance of the facilities.
• Develop a process to terminate contracts for other existing P3s and return them wholly to the public service to operate and maintain.

Privatization and P3s are more expensive, carry a higher risk and are not in the public interest. Many governments are moving away from them because they do not result in cost savings.

Child care

• Increase federal child care funding by $1 billion annually until a 1% of GDP benchmark is met; ensure funding goes to public and not-for-profit providers to reduce fees; provide conditional federal transfers to the provinces.

In order to provide the type of child care system that will actually advance gender equality, help parents and yield economic returns, the federal government needs to replace its multi-year allocation plan with one to build a universal, affordable, high quality, inclusive system for all children and families in Canada.