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 16^th, 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.

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 (February 2012), the PBO estimates a cost of $828 million between March and June for leave taken under code 699, inclusive of pension and other benefits. [i]  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.

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 29^th to July 5^th) contained significantly fewer departments than previous weeks and is likely incomplete.  For this reason, our expenditure estimates only cover the period from March 9^th to June 28^th.

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.

Appendix A – Hours of 699 Leave Requested

March 9^th – July 5^th*

Department	March**	April**	May**	June**	July**
Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada	635	7,437	2,779	1,323	-
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada	7,685	31,956	61,164	17,519	7,117
Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency	-	158	1,101	-	-
Canada Border Services Agency	92,643	141,154	147,551	97,608	9,209
Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions	-	336	-	-	-
Canada Revenue Agency	2,177,300	3,195,370	2,256,369	731,519	4,889
Canada School of Public Service	701	3,916	4,330	1,569	-
Canadian Heritage	1,578	40,455	33,918	13,052	818
Canadian Institutes of Health Research	-	772	1,053	827	-
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission	-	1,888	4,816	339	-
Canadian Space Agency	1,567	2,353	4,432	2,321	-
Canadian Transportation Agency	-	-	1,554	-	-
Correctional Service Canada	104,325	340,880	402,067	198,429	24,144
Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada	2,390	10,111	15,736	5,500	727
Department of Justice Canada	9,747	26,443	46,626	20,639	3,697
Elections Canada	1,175	4,175	3,173	849	-
Employment and Social Development Canada	91,979	145,954	137,484	44,267	5,489
Environment and Climate Change Canada	5,128	15,902	35,533	15,240	3,154
Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario	-	275	1,087	748	-
Global Affairs Canada	-	7,790	13,641	2,445	-
Health Canada	13,854	45,101	65,626	30,783	5,356
Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada	1,764	4,457	91,431	16,775	-
Indian Oil and Gas Canada	-	4,951	4,990	2,129	-
Infrastructure Canada	219	565	1,582	635	-
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada	4,002	6,419	6,332	2,961	507
Library and Archives Canada	239	10,926	10,255	-	-
National Defence	10,336	33,658	44,818	25,346	2,298
National Energy Board	788	2,548	3,361	1,614	-
National Research Council Canada	20,019	33,762	40,056	24,854	1,916
Natural Resources Canada	3,473	13,867	22,136	19,195	4,480
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Canada	308	437	2,033	917	-
Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages	324	1,059	1,225	784	-
Office of the Governor General's Secretary	593	1,323	-	-	-
Other***	2,269	1,766	4,510	3,508	3,423
Parks Canada	20,335	66,178	98,837	42,997	-
Parole Board of Canada	570	4,934	12,037	663	-
Privy Council Office	-	1,963	1,734	659	-
Public Health Agency of Canada	2,774	8,758	12,768	5,808	1,063
Public Prosecution Service of Canada	2,590	6,849	8,698	3,063	363
Public Safety Canada	351	1,131	3,143	1,755	167
Public Service Commission of Canada	257	6,874	10,938	5,580	169
Public Services and Procurement Canada	12,475	15,579	14,759	5,898	992
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Civilian Staff)	23,607	122,082	109,240	61,160	8,451
Shared Services Canada	3,769	9,477	16,812	10,199	2,301
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada	-	265	1,764	656	-
Statistical Survey Operations	31,127	90,005	111,974	70,985	3,766
Statistics Canada	72,701	131,043	155,082	52,668	5,754
Transport Canada	5,909	20,314	26,499	13,069	1,719
Transportation Safety Board of Canada	-	-	270	-	-
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat	7,765	14,695	18,084	9,635	582
Veterans Affairs Canada	7,645	41,486	78,969	27,332	1,974
Women and Gender Equality Canada	-	273	749	247	-
Total	2,746,918	4,680,068	4,155,125	1,596,071	104,524

 

* The data provided reflects the available information as of July 14^th, 2020 and will continue to evolve as organizations continue to input leave.

** Data was received on a weekly basis therefore March refers to March 9^th to 29^th, April refers to March 30^th to April 26^th, May refers to April 27 to May 31^st, June refers to June 1^st to June 28^th, and July refers to June 29 to July 5^th.

*** In order to respect the data privacy of employees, departments/agencies with 10 or fewer employees using 699 leave were grouped together as Other. These departments/agencies are: Military Grievances External Review Committee, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada, Canadian Human Rights Commission, Military Police Complaints Commission of Canada, Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, Copyright Board Canada, Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs Canada, Offices of the information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada, Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat, International Joint Commission, Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada, and National Film Board. The total reported under Public Safety Canada also includes data from the following 3 departments: The Correctional Investigator Canada, RCMP External Review Committee, and Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. For the same privacy reasons, some organizations in the table have a dash (-) for some months. Their number of hours was also included in “Other” for these months.

Appendix B – Count of Employees Using 699 Leave

March 9^th – July 5^th*

Department	March**	April**	May**	June**	July**
Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada	29	76	65	36	-
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada	299	566	618	369	122
Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency	-	14	23	-	-
Canada Border Services Agency	2,771	2,813	2,145	1,731	599
Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions	-	14	-	-	-
Canada Revenue Agency	36,654	34,651	29,035	16,375	193
Canada School of Public Service	42	122	97	50	-
Canadian Heritage	58	610	501	286	44
Canadian Institutes of Health Research	-	20	25	18	-
Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission	-	71	93	18	-
Canadian Space Agency	66	87	129	84	-
Canadian Transportation Agency	-	-	20	-	-
Correctional Service Canada	3,088	6,178	5,557	3,652	895
Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada	68	200	200	170	36
Department of Justice Canada	469	840	949	615	156
Elections Canada	45	80	68	43	-
Employment and Social Development Canada	3,674	3,256	2,147	1,427	316
Environment and Climate Change Canada	306	564	741	538	110
Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario	-	11	17	15	-
Global Affairs Canada	-	153	185	64	-
Health Canada	617	1,124	1,225	875	273
Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada	59	86	545	387	-
Indian Oil and Gas Canada	-	51	40	29	-
Infrastructure Canada	14	30	34	23	-
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada	188	214	116	79	28
Library and Archives Canada	15	300	255	-	-
National Defence	327	520	535	473	54
National Energy Board	68	114	115	85	-
National Research Council Canada	689	793	765	657	194
Natural Resources Canada	164	342	404	380	146
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Canada	21	27	43	34	-
Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages	15	21	23	21	-
Office of the Governor General's Secretary	18	23	-	-	-
Other***	107	57	58	71	89
Parks Canada	641	1,167	1,439	1,002	-
Parole Board of Canada	25	70	65	19	-
Privy Council Office	-	30	19	13	-
Public Health Agency of Canada	118	204	219	152	36
Public Prosecution Service of Canada	147	222	191	113	25
Public Safety Canada	14	39	61	56	12
Public Service Commission of Canada	18	196	259	181	14
Public Services and Procurement Canada	584	510	360	270	52
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Civilian Staff)	863	1,885	1,488	1,090	341
Shared Services Canada	188	318	454	306	82
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada	-	12	35	22	-
Statistical Survey Operations	1,291	1,399	1,410	1,277	308
Statistics Canada	2,251	2,368	1,911	1,192	297
Transport Canada	248	482	546	406	91
Transportation Safety Board of Canada	-	-	11	-	-
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat	293	349	339	253	54
Veterans Affairs Canada	263	892	854	624	113
Women and Gender Equality Canada	-	18	23	15	-
Total	56,815	64,189	56,457	35,596	4,680

 

* The data provided reflects the available information as of July 14^th, 2020 and will continue to evolve as organizations continue to input leave. Employee count indicates the number of employees who requested at least one type of COVID-related 699 leave since March 15^th, 2020.

** Data was received on a weekly basis therefore March refers to March 9^th to 29^th, April refers to March 30^th to April 26^th, May refers to April 27 to May 31^st, June refers to June 1^st to June 28^th, and July refers to June 29 to July 5^th.

*** In order to respect the data privacy of employees, departments/agencies with 10 or fewer employees using 699 leave were grouped together as Other. These departments/agencies are: Military Grievances External Review Committee, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada, Canadian Human Rights Commission, Military Police Complaints Commission of Canada, Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, Copyright Board Canada, Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs Canada, Offices of the information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada, Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat, International Joint Commission, Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada, and National Film Board. The total reported under Public Safety Canada also includes data from the following 3 departments: The Correctional Investigator Canada, RCMP External Review Committee, and Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. For the same privacy reasons, some organizations in the table have a dash (-) for some months. Their employee count was also included in “Other” for these months.    

 

[i] The PBO’s prior estimate only accounted for salary at and average cost of $309 per employee per day. The average cost across government inclusive of pension, benefits, and other personnel costs is $481 per employee per day. Per-department costs were used in the estimate whenever possible. The CRA has lower than average per-employee costs which decreased the overall average cost.