Update: Cost of New Federal Leave for COVID-19
On July 24, 2020 the PBO reported on costs incurred from the Government’s policy of allowing employees to use pay code 699 paid leave for other reasons. Guidance from the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) allows for employees to request 699 leave for a variety of reasons including being sick with COVID-19, having to quarantine, not being able to access the technology they need to complete their work, and having to care for dependents.
Our original cost estimate included data up to the end of May 2020. The Government subsequently shared data for June, as well as a breakdown of monthly leave by department through information request IR0504 (July 2020). The PBO has requested updated monthly data and will continue to monitor personnel expenditures as part of its mandate to provide independent and non-partisan analysis to Parliament.
The Government has now provided us with monthly data from March to June for 72 of the 88 federal public service organizations governed by the Financial Administration Act Schedules I, IV and V. These 72 organizations represent 88% (265,817) of federal public servants. For all weeks the number of hours used was revised from the previous data provided. All revisions were upward except for the week of March 16th, where reported hours decreased by 103. It is still unclear why some federal organizations are unable to provide data.
Consistent with our prior findings, use of 699 leave continues to decrease (Figure 1-1). As can be seen, after reaching a peak of 1.57 million hours in the week ending April 5, the number of weekly hours of leave has decreased by 84% to 254 thousand hours in the last week of June.
Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada
PBO calculations
Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada
PBO calculations
The Treasury Board was unable to provide actual personnel expenditures for the survey period. Using 2018-2019 personnel expenditure data provided through information request IR0074, the PBO estimates a cost of $828 million between March and June for leave taken under code 699, inclusive of pension and other benefits. [^1] This includes PBO’s extrapolation of costs for the departments for which no data are available.
The calculations shown in Table 1-1 represent a 71% increase from our previous estimate due to the additional months and the inclusion of pension and benefit costs.
As previously reported, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is responsible for most of the 699 leave. Table 1-2 shows the five organizations with the highest hours used per month and their respective percent of total hours. The CRA continues to account for a decreasing share of hours used, from 79% in March to 46% in June. Most departments reported their total highest hours in either April or May, and all but 9 of the departments reported fewer hours used in June than in April.
Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada
PBO calculations
Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada
PBO calculations
Considerations
As noted above, the data received for this update contained revisions from our original reporting. TBS has informed the PBO that departments report data at irregular intervals, and they expect leave usage will fluctuate, until all organizations have caught up with their data entry of leave transactions. Notably, data for the first week of July (June 29th to July 5th) contained significantly fewer departments than previous weeks and is likely incomplete. For this reason, our expenditure estimates only cover the period from March 9th to June 28th.
There are two scenarios where leave may be reported under a different period than it is taken. First, if an employee takes leave across two or more months the leave will be captured based on the month of the end date. Second, if an employee submits multiple periods of leave in one transaction the leave will be captured as occurring on one date. Because of these data quality issues, there are instances where the amount of leave used per-employee cannot be reconciled by the estimated work hours for the period on a per-department level. The PBO was not informed of this before publishing our initial report.
The PBO also requested, but did not receive, information on the type of leave being taken (leave for technology reasons, sick leave, family leave, etc.) for departments other than the CRA (which has already provided this information). TBS specified that only two of the 88 departments and agencies currently have the system capabilities to provide a breakdown of the authorized reasons for extending “Other Paid Leave”.
Finally, as previously indicated (notably in media interviews), the number of hours claimed under leave code 699 is almost certainly an underestimation of the loss of work hours due to the pandemic. As stated in our July report, the Canada Revenue Agency was able to continue many of its core operations despite claiming by far the most hours of 699 leave. This is due to a strong culture of monitoring time spent on specific activities. It is therefore highly likely that other federal organizations not completing core operating functions like meeting legislated timelines for access to information requests are severely under-reporting the extent of hours of work lost due to the pandemic.