Parks Canada is hiring (soon!)

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by Eddie Kennedy

After suffering from crumbling roads and dilapidated buildings for some time, it looks like there’s help on the way for our national parks and historic sites. The federal government has announced that it will invest the bulk of a $2.8 billion fund towards some much-needed infrastructure projects at Parks Canada.

During a January 20 meeting, Parks Canada provided us with an update on the coming changes to their staffing policies, as they begin the process of hiring personnel to work on these projects.

Pierre Richer de La Flèche, chief human resources officer at Parks Canada, explained how the agency plans to implement a streamlined process to facilitate hiring new employees. The agency aims to manage the hiring process at the national level.

During the meeting, Richer de La Flèche also outlined the agency’s plan to create pools of qualified candidates that will be accessible to managers across the country. These pools will be used to fill new positions and backfill for others. To select a new employee from the pools, managers would use the “right fit” approach. Parks Canada intends to provide clear guidelines and keep the processes transparent.

The agency will use a variety of methods to advertise the vacant positions, including social media. Some job opportunities may only be posted internally, while others may also be promoted externally to PCA and the public at large, depending on the level and the skills required. Managers can still hire locally, bypassing the pools, but only for determinate staffing and only by using the same statement of qualifications as the national competition.

The agency said it remains committed to its obligation to the priority placement process as it moves forward with staffing.

Parks Canada also acknowledged that many questions remain, since some plans and processes haven’t yet been finalized. For this reason, the agency intends keep us regularly informed of what is happening.

They also encouraged us to keep them informed of our members’ concerns; they understand that our ability to communicate issues early on can help them respond to concerns and provide factual information to employees. For this reason, they see great value in our capacity to shed light on our members’ concerns.

As your union’s representatives, we’ve expressed some concern about the use of pools. We’ve had issues with pools in the past, since they inject a degree of bias in the selection process. For one, it allows for the hiring process to be easily manipulated; favouritism and prejudice can lead to the best person for the job being sidestepped in favor of a different candidate.

It goes without saying that we appreciate the work that will be generated by these infrastructure projects. Like many of you, we look forward to seeing improvement in the facilities where we work – improvements that should make our workplaces better places to work. That said, we also want to ensure that our members are treated fairly by the staffing process.

Over the coming months, we will be meeting with senior management as they finish fleshing out the rest of this staffing policy. We encourage you to contact us if you have any concerns with anything related to these projects.

On our end, we will continue to keep you updated of any new developments as they relate to this topic.

In solidarity,

Eddie Kennedy

Eddie Kennedy is the National Advisor on Parks Canada for the Union of National Employees. If you’d like to reach him, you can send him an email at eddie.kennedy@une-sen.org.