The deal is a desperately needed glimmer of hope for the government as it struggles to fix its problematic new pay system, which has faced more than 80,000 civil servants in the short term or other pay problems. The new CRA agreement is in line with these agreements, but adds negotiated wage increases to disbursements and ends the accumulation of severance claims as of October 31. The new collective agreement will come into force on November 13, 2020 and will apply from November 1, 2016 to October 31, 2021 inclusive. From the date of signature, the credit rating agency has 180 days to implement the provisions of the collective agreement, including retroactive remuneration. Details of the collective agreement are available on the PSAC UTE website. The SFA representative for the Toronto area expressed his support for the availability and participation in touchpoint meetings. He said they were useful for answering questions out of scope, especially in the question of defining senior management. He said that with the collaboration of the PSES team, he was able to proactively resolve these issues. He explained that it was important to understand the areas of success and improvement of CRAs. He explained that the CRA action plan must be relevant to the entire population.

He asked the CRA not to adopt a sectoral approach to the action plan. He explained that if the CRA focuses solely on its networks, which accounted for about 15 percent of the staff population, it will fail to account for 85 percent of employees in the action plan. He noted that while the results of this survey are another opportunity to investigate issues such as discrimination and harassment, many of these issues have not changed since 2011. He looked forward to having the means to address those issues in other forums. He also noted that there are ways to respond more quickly than in the past, as trends have been identified by past surveys. He proposed using Touch Point commissions and meetings to discuss these trends. He expects that some of these issues have already been addressed when the results are published. We thank the members of the two bargaining teams who, by working in a climate of cooperation and mutual respect, contributed to the success of this collective bargaining. CRA officials acknowledged that an agreement had been reached, but declined to comment on their content.

The articles relating to severance pay or retirement have been deleted from existing collective agreements or other licensing instruments. Consequently, voluntary termination indemnities no longer accumulate for the staff concerned on the date of entitlement indicated. . . .