‘A BAG OF DOG POOP’
Parks Canada employee Shanna MacDonald, with a newborn son and her husband’s employment reduced to part-time, went without pay for six months, thanks to the Phoenix fiasco.
Two years after the Phoenix pay system was rolled out, Canada’s public servants are still being affected by overpayments, underpayments and other errors. In a series of stories this week, the Citizen tells the stories of those affected by the pay system debacle.
All this to say, Mr. Trudeau, I know that Phoenix was a bag of dog poop that the former government left on your doorstep, and I know that a number of high ranking bureaucrats recommended going ahead and implementing the system, lighting that damn bag on fire. And in trying to put the fire out, well, the poop went everywhere. But you need to clean it up. I’m never getting that time back. My finances are in the toilet. Now fix it. Last year, all I asked for Christmas was to be paid. That didn’t work out so well, so I’m asking again. Let me have a merry Christmas. Let me enjoy the lights dancing on my little monkey’s face. Let me enjoy these toddling days before the terrible twos. Let me have my life back.
— An excerpt from a letter from Shanna MacDonald to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Dec. 6, 2017.
Shanna MacDonald and her husband Jeff ’s finances were already stretched by the time their son, Sullivan, was born on Oct. 18, 2016. Her pregnancy nine months earlier was the result of an expensive in vitro fertilization, and coincided with the couple having to replace the roof of their Bedford, N.S., home. At about the same time, a downturn in business at the engineering firm where Jeff works saw him switched from full- to parttime. Shanna, meanwhile, developed a rare complication, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, that hospitalized her for a week and added 40 pounds of water to her small frame. “It felt in a way that my body was telling me I wasn’t meant to be a mother,” she recalls.
After her release from the hospital, she began hearing some of the stories her colleagues were experiencing with the Phoenix pay system. “Oh, great,” she thought. “So if I’m successful in carrying this pregnancy to term, I’m not necessarily going to be well-placed once I come out of it.”
She didn’t have to wait nearly that long.
A senior negotiator with Parks Canada in Halifax, MacDonald was part of the department’s second wave to join Phoenix, in April 2016. She’d been in an acting position, paid at a PM6 level, since 2010, following two other acting assignments. Her position was set to expire at the end of March, however, requiring a renewal of her acting letter to continue at the PM6 level. That didn’t happen in the Phoenix pay system, and so MacDonald’s salary reverted to the PM5 amount she had last been paid in 2008 — about $25,000 less.
Working on a major high-priority project, she criss-crossed the country, holding public consultations, until the 36th week of her pregnancy, the latest Air Canada will allow pregnant women to fly. Throughout, she tried to resolve her pay issues through the Phoenix pay centre in Miramichi, N.B.
“I phone this number, then that number. You can’t get through, and when you finally do get through, you get a person that has no idea what you’re talking about and no authority. They tell you to fill out a form. You fill out the form. They say somebody will get back to you. Nobody does. You start the whole process again. It was frustrating and very stressful.”
The couple cut back as much as they could on expenses and relied on assistance from Jeff ’s family, who dipped into their own retirement savings to help. She replied to a form letter from her bank indicating she’d been pre-approved for a line of credit, although it was later pointed out that she probably wouldn’t have been approved based on the salary she was being paid. Still, she recalls, they had a safety net.
She went on maternity leave a week before Sullivan’s birth and, as if on cue, the paycheques stopped arriving. Resolved to rectify matters before anxiety and depression took hold, she started going to her local EI office and “camping out” at the office of her MP, House of Commons Speaker Geoff Regan. She wrote letters.
And then she discovered that nothing she had so far done to fix her pay issues had even been attached to her file. Her record of employment, required by law to be submitted to EI within five days of a change in pay, was nowhere to be found.
“You think about all the laws that are in place, and the laws were being broken. They hadn’t submitted my pay to EI to even start the process. There was nothing in Phoenix. Nothing about my acting pay not being in the system.
“And when I’m at the EI office and talking to the person across from me and trying to explain this issue, I know that they ’re working very hard to try to get it rectified, and I know from talking to him that he’s only being paid 25 per cent of his wage, because the Phoenix system has screwed up his pay as well.
“I was completely boggled that this was still happening, with the government putting forward timelines and targets, only to watch them be eclipsed.”
Shanna also describes an unexpected trickle-down Phoenix effect. Because her work project was still a priority when she went on maternity leave, the department tried to backfill her position using an assistant negotiator. “They got an amazing candidate to do it,” she says, “but she never got paid, so she eventually had to go back to her (previous) position. That was a real shame, but there was nothing we could do.”
Shanna didn’t qualify for an emergency loan prior to her maternity leave because she was still being paid, even if it was at the lower rate. And she didn’t qualify for an emergency loan once on mat leave, because it was considered leave without pay. Frustrated, she wrote letters — to her MP, to Public Works Minister Carla Qualtrough, to Catherine McKenna, the minister responsible for Parks Canada, and to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
McKenna’s office intervened, and in February 2017, Shanna received a small loan through Parks Canada. Two months later, in April, she received her maternity leave back pay, albeit at the lower PM5 level. It was her first paycheque in six months.
“The first six months of my maternity leave with my son were incredibly stressful,” she recalls. “I was crying all the time, trying to figure out how we were going to make ends meet, robbing Peter to pay Paul. Payments were bouncing; we had NSFs left, right and centre, things like our car payments. I tried to always have money for the mortgage, through the line of credit.
“I haven’t gone in to check it but I wonder what the status of our credit is now that we’ve missed payments. You know, like cellphone bills — you let it go a couple of months and then you make the minimum payment. Lots and lots of minimum payments. All our credit cards are maxed out, the line of credit was maxed out.
“So instead of being able to enjoy that time with my son, it was a lot of time being on the phone trying to figure things out, crying to various companies, saying, ‘It’s going to be late.’ And they just want their money. The person you’re speaking to has tons of empathy — they understand the situation and they want to be able to do something, but…”
Her pay continued at the PM5 rate after returning from leave in October. Her acting position was finally added to Phoenix and reflected in her paycheques in February of this year. She is still owed her maternity top-up and all of her acting pay back to April 2016, an estimated $40,000, and is worried about how this will affect her taxes next year. Additionally, Parks Canada has been without a collective agreement since April 2014, and she’s concerned about what might happen to any back pay from that once it hits the Phoenix paywall.
She expects the PM6 top-up from her non-maternity-leave pay to show up any week now, but the timing of the arrival of her matleave top-up remains a complete mystery. She’s hoping to see it before Sullivan reaches college age. “I understand that is very expensive,” she jokes.
Still, she knows she’s still among the lucky ones. “I really, really like what I do. I really believe in what I do, and I like who I work for.
“Given my work and what I do, and the amount of time I have spent in Indigenous communities around the country, I know that my story is really not that one of hard luck. There are a lot of people who have suffered a lot worse than being paid at a PM5 level. And so I had hesitated in telling my story because there are a lot of people who are obviously a lot worse off than I am. But this whole thing has dragged on for so long, and it shouldn’t be happening.”
Dear Ms. MacDonald:
On behalf of the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, I would like to acknowledge receipt of your correspondence regarding the Phoenix pay system.
I would first like to express my sincere regret that your concern about this serious issue is related to your personal experience. Please allow me to express my sympathy for the difficult circumstances that your family has endured. It is very encouraging to hear that, at the very least, Sullivan is healthy and happy.
That being said, I recognize why you have written to the Prime Minister and asked for assistance; however, I hope you will understand that he is unable to personally intervene or provide you with direct assistance with this matter.
As you may know, the issue you raise falls within the responsibilities of the Honourable Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Public Services and Procurement. I have therefore taken the liberty of forwarding a copy of your correspondence to Minister Qualtrough for her information and consideration.
I regret that this office cannot help you in the way you had perhaps hoped, but I wish you and your family well in resolving your situation.
Thank you for writing to the Prime Minister. Sincerely,
T. Jolicoeur
Executive Correspondence Officer for the Prime Minister’s Office — The reply Shanna MacDonald received from the Prime Minister’s Office on Dec. 8, 2017. She has yet to hear from Qualtrough.
Instead of being able to enjoy that time with my son, it was a lot of time being on the phone trying to figure things out, crying to various companies …
(A spokesperson for Public Services, which is responsible for Phoenix, said privacy legislation prevents the department from discussing details of the employment and pay of individual federal government employees.)