New Economic Increases for Executives
(Amended July 14, 2023)
New economic increases for executives have been approved!
APEX would like to begin by thanking senior leadership at the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer – Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS-OCHRO) and Privy Council Office for their proactive approach in addressing executive compensation. Executives, through the APEX advocacy role, have voiced their concerns with lengthy delays in compensation decisions and it is heartening to see that the government has listened and understands the importance and value of executives in the public service.
The approved adjustments apply to the following occupational groups within the core public administration:
- the Executive (EX) occupational group;
- civilian member executives of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police;
- employees of the Defence Scientific Service sub-group (DS levels 7A, 7B and 8);
- unrepresented employees in the Programme Administration – Negotiation, Mediation and Conciliation Officer sub-group, sector 4 (PM-MCO-04 level); and,
- non-specialist officers of the Canadian Armed Forces in the ranks of Colonel, Brigadier-General, Major-General and Lieutenant-General.
These adjustments also apply to eligible Governor in Council appointees, including deputy ministers, chief executive officers of Crown corporations, heads and members of administrative tribunals, agencies, boards and commissions and certain part-time individuals.
Rates of Increase
The following increases to executive pay are aligned with those recently negotiated through collective bargaining:
- April 1, 2022: 4.75% (3.5% economic increase and 1.25% wage adjustment);
- April 1, 2023: 3.5% (3.0% economic increase and 0.5% pay line adjustment); and
- April 1, 2024: 2.25% (2.0% economic increase and 0.25% wage adjustment).
The allocation for the same enhancements for senior leaders in separate agencies and appropriations-dependent Crown corporations was also approved.
APEX is grateful for TBS-OCHRO’s leadership in this matter and is pleased to see this decision on economic increases come before the completion of the full bargaining cycle. We continue to advocate for a process where executive compensation is dealt with separately and independently of represented groups, while addressing any inversion or excessive compression. This is a first step towards a new process that will be fair, transparent, independent, and timely in setting executive compensation.
Terms and Conditions of Employment
Along with economic increases, come three amendments to terms and conditions of employment:
- The addition of a leave for Traditional Indigenous Practices, allowing employees who self-declare as Indigenous, subject to operational requirements, to get up to five days of leave to engage in traditional Indigenous practices (up to two days with pay, and three without pay).
- A broader definition of family for provisions in Leave for Care of Family, Leave with Pay for Family-Related Responsibilities, and Bereavement Leave.
- Changing the maximum vacation leave carry over to 262.5 hours and reducing the additional carry-over leave due to exceptional circumstances to a maximum of four weeks. These provisions were in place temporarily, as part of the lifting of the moratorium on mandatory leave cash-out.
Policy Changes
Changes are also being made to the policy requirements related to the management of EX-04 and EX-05 positions in organizations.
- Deputy heads are no longer required to seek Treasury Board approval to make changes to the number of EX-04 and EX-05 positions in their organization. Classification activities must continue to be consistent with policy requirements.
- Heads of HR get additional responsibilities with respect to EX classification, including ensuring an internal process is in place to manage the resolution of disagreements in EX classification decisions.
- Changes also reinforces OCHRO’s responsibilities with respect to the oversight and monitoring of classification for positions in the EX group.
Clarification on the Implementation of the 2018-2021 Economic Increases
Several of you wrote to seek clarification on the implementation of the 2018-2021 economic increases for executives. We reached out to Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) which provided the following information with respect to executives who work / have worked for organizations served by the Public Service Pay Centre.
As previously mentioned, the order of priority for retroactive payments, is as follows:
- Active executives
- Executives who have left the public service (retired executives)
- Employees who were acting executives during the period covered by the economic increases
The groups were established at the start of the implementation project. Therefore, those who were permanently appointed recently might still be part of the third group, despite being active executives.
The commitment for completion of the implementation for that round of economic increases for all three groups remains March 31, 2024.
Transfer Caseload
We also asked PSPC about the transfer of pay files between organizations. They indicated that the Pay Centre continues to prioritize the processing of transfer cases. PSPC acknowledged that there is currently a backlog of transfer cases impacting processing times. They continue to hire and onboard new employees to address this work and to expand the pay processing skillset of their existing workforce. They shared that the Pay Centre has manually closed almost 23,000 transfer cases between July 2022 and June 2023, over 1400 of which were for executives. They expect to have increased capacity to process the transfer backlog this fall.
What’s Next
We will share information about the implementation of the 2022-2024 economic increases as it becomes available. In the meantime, you will find below the latest information of the 2018-2021 economic increases, with completion rates as of June 19, 2023. As usual, the information that follows relates to executives who work / have worked for organizations served by the Public Service Pay Centre.
- 49%of active executives have now received a retroactive payment.
- While active executives remain the priority, a small percentage of executives who have left the public service and acting executives may receive their retroactive salary due to various reasons, such as a transfer to a non-Pay Centre organization.
- Over the last few weeks, there has been a higher number of terminated accounts processed. There are two contributing factors for the recent increase:
- Departments that have an MOU in place have completed the majority of their active accounts and have now shifted focus to terminated executives.
- The EX Team has run various terminated accounts through an internal automated process for testing.
For retired executives with pensionable service beyond March 2018, any information pertaining to their adjusted salaries will be forwarded to the Pension Centre once their file has been processed by the Pay Centre.
Please note that the Pay Centre has a team dedicated to the processing of executives’ pay files. The work related to new collective bargaining agreements is not anticipated to have an impact on the processing of economic increases for executives.
We will provide updates until the implementation for both periods have been completed, as we continue to advocate for a better process to establish economic increases for executives.
