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Ottawa Citizen

Quebec court approves Phoenix pay system settlement

The federal government will begin settlement payments for non-unionized and casual public servants affected by the Phoenix pay system failures. Article content Article content On April 15, the Superior Court of Quebec approved the settlement of a class action lawsuit launched on behalf of the workers who suffered hardship due to pay issues with the system. The settlement will pay $350 to workers affected between 2016-17 and $175 for the preceding three years. The maximum an eligible worker can receive is $875. Article content Article content The federal government settled the class action lawsuit late last year. Article content Article content Ezmie Bouchard, who worked at Passport Canada in 2016, was the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, which was launched in 2017. Bouchard claimed that she received $4,800 less than what she should have because of mistakes on her pay cheques. The lawsuit said she was then overpaid and had to repay $1,000 to the government. Article content Unionized employees were excluded from the authorized judgment, and were subject to a separate agreement between the federal government and their unions. In 2020, Canada's largest public service union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, reached an agreement that gave 140,000 workers $2,5000 in compensation each. Article content Nine years into the debacle, the work to clear a massive backlog of pay issues is ongoing. As of March 26, the Phoenix backlog had 349,000 transactions remaining to be processed. Article content The cost of Phoenix's failure has been ballooning. Since 2017, the government has spent at least $3.5 billion on the Phoenix pay system. Article content Article content The government has spent more than $150 million since 2018 looking into a platform to replace Phoenix. A February 2024 report found that Dayforce was being considered as a 'viable option' for the next HR and pay system. Article content Article content A decision on whether the federal government will move to Dayforce was delayed until after the election. The federal government had said it would make a decision on whether to adopt Dayforce in March, but that timeline was disrupted by the caretaker convention that is activated during an election. Article content