(Image Credit: File photo/ paNOW Staff)

By Nigel Maxwell

Federal flaws

Union says Phoenix back pay lacks transparency

Mar 26, 2026 | 3:43 PM

The union representing federal correctional officers says the federal government must maintain a high degree of transparency as it finalizes adjustments to a 10-year pay system that plagued workers.

UCCO-SACC CSN Prairie Region President Jacob Suelzle responded to remarks made this week by the Auditor General. Karen Hogan warned 233,000 federal pay transactions related to the government’s Phoenix pay system remain unresolved, affecting at least 133,000 employees.

Suelze explained while trying to go back and fix the errors to recoup potentially money owed, there’s no available audits to demonstrate money was actually owed and there’s an inherent distrust amongst members with the Phoenix system.

“Phoenix calls me up and says I owe them a certain amount of money, but they don’t tell you where, they don’t tell you why you owe you this. They just inform you they’re gonna start collecting it out of your wage,” he said.

The Phoenix pay system, introduced in 2016, centralized pay services for most federal employees. Some public servants have since faced significant delays in receiving payments, while others have been underpaid, overpaid, or not paid at all. This in turn affected their ability to provide for their families or buy gifts at Christmas.

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Suelzle explained he heard stories in the past where members tried to pay money back, but were refused because the government did not want to accept the fact errors were made.

“So here we are better than 10 years later and now they’re going back to saying ‘hey we overpaid you this amount.'”

The Phoenix system is slated to be replaced by Dayforce by March 2031. Hogan’s report stated the government estimated the replacement cost to sit above $4 billion, but preliminary estimates didn’t include costs for the transition to the new system.

Suelzle said he has not heard many details about the new system beyond that it is supposedly running in the shadow of the current system

“Our understanding is that shadow program is still running,” he said.

A former Saskatchewan Penitentiary employee who agreed to speak to paNOW on the condition of anonymity said she received a $4,000 overpayment. The woman received a payback request two days before the government’s four-year deadline for overpayment notices.

She then made all the necessary arrangements to repay the money through deductions off her pay cheques. 

“That was a few years ago and they have never taken any money back on the repayment,” she said. 

A number of complaints and requests for assistance were made to Prince Albert Member of Parliament Randy Hoback.

“It’s been a nightmare. There’s no other way to describe it,” Hoback said, adding the number of people in the public service they helped get paid, including amounts owed, holiday pay, shift differential, or even regular pay was “ridiculous.” Some, he said, hadn’t been paid for months.

Hoback also recalled stories where people didn’t want to change from a day shift to night shift because any discrepancy in the Phoenix pay system would set off delays.

Staff “didn’t want to make any changes, they didn’t want to take a new raise because they were concerned that once that was put in the system, they wouldn’t get paid for two or three weeks or in some cases up to two or three months,” he said.

On Thursday, the public servant leading the transition away from the federal government’s error-prone Phoenix pay system announced he’s stepping down because the team no longer needs him.

Alex Benay, associate deputy minister at Public Services and Procurement Canada, said in a LinkedIn post the backlog of Phoenix cases older than a year and the overall queue of complaints are at their lowest levels ever.

He said his team is now equipped to remove the “dark stain” of Phoenix from the government’s record, without him, provided it still gets support from political leadership.

In the meantime Hoback, who remains skeptical about the new system and if past mistakes can be fixed, said his staff will be ready to whoever needs help.

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 nigel.maxwell@pattisonmedia.com

 On X: @nigelmaxwell

with files from the Canadian Press