The failure of the federal Phoenix Pay System has cost taxpayers $3.5 billion and the amount is still increasing. This is the highest figure that has been disclosed so far.According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the cost was reported to the Commons Government Operations committee.“In terms of the overall cost, I think the estimates are still underway,” testified Arianne Reza, deputy public works minister. “You have seen the numbers we spent.”“Last we heard, it was $2.3 billion,” said New Democrat MP Gord Johns (Courtenay-Alberni, BC). “This is eight years in. Liberals have carried forward with this outsourcing privatization scheme.”“How much has it cost us to date?” asked Johns. “The total investment in Phoenix to date is $3.5 billion,” replied Simon Page, assistant deputy public works minister.The Phoenix Pay System started in 2016 with the goal of saving money for taxpayers. It planned to combine 46 different federal payroll departments into one office in Miramichi, New Brunswick. However, in 2017, auditors found out that the new software was put into use without being tested first. This led to problems with paycheques for most of the employees.The Commons Public Accounts committee, in their 2018 report Building and Implementing the Phoenix Pay System, expressed being "appalled and angry" about how poorly the pay system was managed. This program was originally planned to save taxpayers $70 million.Assistant Deputy Minister Page mentioned that the cost so far, including ongoing software updates, has reached $3.5 billion.“That is for public servants who worked on the Phoenix Pay System, who worked on paying public servants every day,” testified Page. “That is where the vast majority of that investment has been made to date.”“It is not only fixing it,” said Page. “When I quote the number of $3.5 billion it also includes maintaining the system to continue to pay public servants on a regular basis. That total number includes both the cost of continuing to pay public servants as well as dealing with items like the backlog and continuing to improve the system.”No one was fired for what the Auditor General described as an incomprehensible failure. “I do not agree the pay system was an incomprehensible failure,” Michael Wernick, then-Secretary to Cabinet, testified at 2018 hearings of the Public Accounts committee.“I think it’s entirely comprehensible,” said Wernick. “It was avoidable. It’s repairable. And it gives us all kinds of lessons about how to build a better public service.”“How could this happen?” asked Liberal MP Alexandra Mendes (Brossard-St. Lambert, QC). “There is no single culprit or no single explanation,” replied Wernick. “The people that are looking for simplicity to say, here’s two or three people that we can blame, or here’s the explanation – my take on the pay system is it was a perfect storm, a confluence of all kinds of factors.”
