Bagnall: Grinding through Phoenix Pay backlog could take 2.5 more years, latest data suggests

If you throw enough money and people at a problem, sometimes you make a little progress. This is the central message in the latest data published by the federal government’s Phoenix Pay system.
As of July 25, there were 316,000 transactions in line for processing at the government’s main pay center in Miramichi, N.B., according to Public Services and Procurement Canada, the department in charge of fixing the mess. Not only was this a net decline of 18,000 from June 27, the end of the