OTTAWA — With no fix in sight for the troubled Phoenix pay system, the opposition New Democrats are calling on the federal government to compensate and formally apologize to workers who are struggling with pay problems.
The demands coincide with the second anniversary this week of the launch of the troubled electronic compensation system.
NDP finance critic Peter Julian says it's outrageous that, after two years in which civil servants have been underpaid, overpaid or not paid at all, the government still doesn't have a solution.
Julian says an apology in the House of Commons wouldn't bring back the cars and homes that some public servants have lost after not being paid.
But he nonetheless believes it's important that the government formally declare that its employees have endured something that should never have happened.
The Phoenix pay system was meant to centralize and streamline pay systems across several dozen government departments and agencies since being brought online in February 2016.
Instead, it has resulted in endless headaches for civil servants, both working and retired.
As of late January this year, the backlog of problem files created by Phoenix had reached 633,000 cases; cost estimates for dealing with the errors now range from $1 billion to as high as $5 billion.
