PHOENIX UNDER FIRE
Coroner’s report cites pay system
Linda Deschâtelets’s death by suicide might have been prevented if the flawed Phoenix pay system hadn’t led her to emotional and financial ruin, a Quebec coroner has found.
Deschâtelets died in December of 2017, at age 52. At the time she was struggling with chronic pain and massive mortgage payments.
The fear of losing her home weighed heavily on her. In her final text message to one of her sons she said she had run out of energy and wanted to die before she lost her house in Val-des-Monts.
But Deschâtelets might have lived, says a report from coroner Pascale Boulay, if her employer, the Canada Revenue Agency, had shown a little empathy.
“During the final months before her death, she experienced serious financial troubles linked to the federal government’s pay system, Phoenix, which cut off her pay in a significant way, making her fear she would lose her house,” said Boulay’s report.
“A thorough analysis of this case strongly suggests that this death could have been avoided if a search for a solution to the current financial, psychological and medical situation had been made.”
Boulay found “no indication that management sought to meet Ms. Deschâtelets to offer her options. In addition, the lack of prompt followup in the processing of requests for information indicates a distressing lack of empathy for an employee who is experiencing real financial insecurity.”
Pay records “show that she was living through serious financial problems and that she received irregular payments since the beginning of October 2017,” the coroner wrote.
As well, “her numerous online applications using the form for a compensation problem, in which she expresses her fear of not being able to make her mortgage payments and says that she wants a detailed statement of account, remain unanswered.”
On top of that, she had chronic back pain and sciatica and had been missing work. She was scheduled to get an ergonomically designed work area, but this change was never made even though she waited for months.
Money troubles kept getting worse. She ran out of paid sick leave, and her department sent her an email to explain she had automatically been docked pay for taking sick days. “In this same email, she was also advised that in the event that she missed additional days, other amounts would be deducted. No further followup with her was done,” the coroner wrote.
That email came eight days before her death.
She was already deep in debt. Her credit rating was very low. And on top of everything else, she had taken out a consumer loan in 2015 to cover her mortgage payments, and the loan agreement specified that she would default on the loan if she missed a single payment. So when Phoenix problems arose, she had nowhere to turn for money.
Deschâtelets was also taking cocaine but this did not alter the fact that she genuinely risked losing her home over her financial problems, the coroner wrote: “Given the circumstances, it is highly likely that Ms. Deschâtelets felt trapped” and ended her life “because of her belief that she would lose the house anyway. It was only a matter of time.”
The situation is “even more sad” because CRA still had advisers on site who dealt with Phoenix issues, and could meet with employees instead of making them deal with the pay centre in New Brunswick, Boulay wrote. “The federal government does a lot of promotion of workplace wellness. Surprisingly, these wellness measures are silent on the subject of financial insecurity at work,” Boulay wrote.
In a statement to the Citizen on Thursday evening, the CRA said it was “deeply saddened by the death of any valued member of our community and we again wish to offer our sincere condolences to Ms. Deschâtelets’ family and loved ones.
“We are carefully reviewing the coroner’s investigation report, and the recommendations made in it, and we will review our processes and approach accordingly.”
The National Standard of Canada on Psychological Safety in the Workplace, developed by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, is only voluntary for the federal government. Boulay wrote that following it “would allow for serious reflection on how to do human resources and compensation services in the federal government.”
National PSAC president Chris Aylward said the case illustrates the mental toll of Phoenix, which still has a backlog of 228,000 employees with wrong paycheques. “We fully agree with what this coroner is recommending, in making it mandatory for the federal departments to follow the Canadian standard for psychological safety in the workplace,” Aylward said.
“It highlights, unfortunately, the stress and the mental fatigue that our members have gone through and continue to go through because of Phoenix.”