In summer 2023, the Government of Canada began processing the signed agreements from recent rounds of collective bargaining. The information on this page applies to the collective agreements between the Government of Canada and its employees in the Core Public Administration and separate agencies.
You should receive within 180 days following the signing of your collective agreement:
If your file is more complex, a compensation advisor may need to update your file manually. The timeline for more complex work is 460 days, as agreed in each collective agreement.
If you have not received your payments within 180 days, or 460 days for complex cases, and your outstanding amount owed is greater than $500, you will be paid an additional $200. This amount will be included in your final retroactive payment. This $200 payment is treated as income and is taxed, but does not count toward your pension.
Your new pay rate will be reflected on MyGCPay after the pay increase is processed. Refer to the collective agreement implementation schedule (available on the Government of Canada network only) for the processing dates. These target dates are subject to change.
Your new collective agreement will apply retroactively to the effective date of the agreement. In most cases, the collective agreements are retroactive to a date in 2021. The exact date varies according to your collective agreement and when it expired.
There is a period of time where your new rate of pay applies but you were paid at your old rate. This is called the retroactive period. It starts on the day following the expiry date of the previous collective agreement and it ends the day before your new salary takes effect in the pay system. You are owed the difference between your old and new rates of pay for the retroactive period. This amount may be paid out to you over more than one pay period.
For example, if you are in the Program and Administrative Services (PA) group, your collective agreement expired on June 20, 2021, and the new rates of pay were updated in the Pay System with an effective date of July 6, 2023. In this case, your retroactive period is from June 21, 2021 to July 5, 2023. You will be paid the difference between the new rates and the expired rates of pay which you had been paid for this period.
Once your retroactive pay is processed, you will be able to find a detailed breakdown of one or more retroactive payments you received in Phoenix (available on the Government of Canada network only) by navigating to the following menu path:
Your initial retroactive payment is automated. It is based on the information available in the pay system. After the initial retroactive payment is processed, you may see additional adjustments to the retroactive amount if for example, your promotion was processed late.
If your collective agreement has a provision for a pensionable and taxable one-time lump sum payment of $2,500, and if you are eligible, it will be reflected on a future pay stub on MyGCPay.