After more than a year of federal government employees being under paid, over paid, or simply not paid at all, Banff-Airdrie Conservative MP Blake Richards wonders is the Phoenix Pay System fiasco will ever come to an end.

In the latest edition of the "Richards Report" he says it's completely unacceptable that the fiasco is still unresolved.  Richards says the situation has been going on for well over a year and the Liberals don't seem to be any closer to a solution.  In the meantime, many employees are on the verge of losing their homes, being forced to postpone education and going into debt in order to make ends meet.

Richards says the government's latest move to form a committee to get to the bottom of the problem isn't enough.  "They're just now saying, well we'll set up a committee and we'll study this.  That isn't going to do a lot of good for the people who are in trouble and are suffering."

According to Richards, many public servants in his riding of Banff-Airdrie have been affected by the Phoenix debacle, including many in Banff National Park where visitors will be pouring in this year because of free admissions for Canada's 150th birtday.  

"That's obviously the biggest chunk of federal workers we have in our area, but it's not just confined there.  We obviously have federal workers in other parts of the riding, whether it be Airdrie or Cochrane or elsewhere.  We're hearing dozens of workers from our riding that are telling us they're having challenges.  They're obviously turning to their member of parliament for help and we've been able to help some people, but we're finding that they're even ignoring our attempts to get information.  Not only is this unacceptable but it's getting worse every day. 

Richards says first the government forced implementation of the Phoenix system despite warnings that it wasn't ready and now they're dragging their feet while thousands of employees struggle to make ends meet.  

At one point in time, 80,000 of the approximately 300,000 public servants that work for the government were affected by the pay problems.  As of mid January around 8,000 files remained backlogged.

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