Senior execs overseeing troubled pay system could still get bonuses

Senior executives who helped launch the federal government’s problem-plagued civil service pay system could still collect bonuses once a review of what went wrong with the system is complete, the deputy minister responsible said Wednesday. Opposition MPs called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to apologize for the debacle after Marie Lemay acknowledged some lower-level Public Services and Procurement Canada executives received performance pay last year, even though thousands of government workers weren’t properly paid. Documents tabled this week in the House of Commons show the department paid 340 executives nearly $5 million in bonuses and performance pay over the past fiscal year. In response to a question from Conservative MP Kelly McCauley, Liberal parliamentary secretary Steve MacKinnon told the House that $4,827,913 was paid out to executives in the department, with most of them receiving payments in December.

That amount did not include general wage increases that had already been scheduled to come into effect Jan. 1. The average payment amount was $14,199.74 between April 1, 2015, to March 31, 2016, according to MacKinnon. McCauley said he was “disgusted’’ by the revelation. “I don’t believe the money should be paid out for anyone remotely part of the Phoenix system. End of story.’’

But only a handful of the executives – as many as 10 _ would have been working on Phoenix, Lemay said as she defended the raises.