Phoenix Pay System Case Study

The federal government is the national government of Canada. It includes the Prime Minister of Canada and cabinet, the Parliament of Canada, the federal courts and more than a hundred of departments and agencies which administer the day-to-day business of government. The federal government is involved in many aspects of Canadians’ lives. “It has exclusive jurisdictions on peace, order and good government, any form of taxation, international/interprovincial trade and commerce, communications & transportation, banking and currency, foreign affairs, militia and defense, criminal law and penitentiaries, naturalization, weights, measures, copyrights, patents, first nations, “residual powers, declaratory power, disallowance and reservation, and Unemployment

These employees were paid by the 40-year-old regional pay system, and there was a big issue of overpaid generated by this pay system. In 2015, for example, 9,240 public servants were asked to repay $14.3 million they received in overpayments, according to documents released under Access to Information. So the new pay system which is named Phoenix were live on February 2016. Public Services and Procurement Canada is the federal paymaster and department responsible for Phoenix pay system. This system is the payroll software used in the Consolidation of Pay Services Project. This project combines pay services from participating departments and agencies at the Public Service Pay Centre in Miramichi, New Brunswick. Compensation advisors in departments were given the option to move to Miramichi, but most did not. Many new staff were hired and trained for the Centre. There are some organizations like CRA and CBSA that are being serviced by their own internal departmental compensation advisors instead of those in Miramichi but are still using the Phoenix

The British North America Act of 1867, formed a stronger federal government and lacking the power of provincial governments (Historica). During the period, federal government was only kept the peace, order and good government of Canada, and balance responsibilities were set to provinces such as hospitals, schools, charities, municipalities, shops, taverns, transportation within a province, onshore natural resources, and property and civil rights (Toronto).

In 1949s Britain’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, worked as Canada's highest court and limited the federal government's responsibilities. As a result, the federal parliament could not pass laws on unemployment insurance, competition, trade, and commerce or minimum wages and maximum work hours (except in federally-regulated industries, such as banking). Beside these changed, health care also faced some issues (Historica).

The price minister is the head of the federal government, who is the government’s chief speaker, main legislator, and head of Cabinet. The governor general, who assigns judges of the federal courts and advices of prime minister as well as accomplishing those duties of the prime minister. The prime minister has power to assign and fire Cabinet ministers, and hundreds of other federal government office