Fixes needed to government culture and Phoenix pay system

My column for the week of June 14 was about the Auditor General of Canada’s (AG) unprecedented message on the “broken government culture” and the Clerk of the Privy Council (PCO), Michael Wernick’s appearance before the Public Accounts Committee to respond.

As I said in that previous column, I would follow-up to provide readers with the AG’s reaction to the Clerk’s rejection of the report or what he called an “opinion piece.”

On June 19, appearing before the Committee, AG Michael Ferguson, as usual, maintained his professionalism and began by expressing his respect for PCO Clerk Wernick and the opinions he expressed.

Mr. Ferguson, however, stood by his assertion that the culture within the Public Service needed to change or we would have repeated “failures” such as Phoenix.

The AG said “Mr. Chair, as I understand it, the Clerk referred to my message as an opinion piece. He is correct.

The message does express my opinion that we need to find the root cause of the Phoenix project failure and other incomprehensible failures.