Key figure in Phoenix public service pay transition says he's leaving the team

Alex Benay, Associate Deputy Minister at Public Services and Procurement Canada, speaks about the work to standardize and simplify HR and pay practices across the public service, during a news conference at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa, on Tuesday, July 9, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA — The public servant leading the transition away from the federal government’s error-prone Phoenix pay system says he’s stepping down because the team no longer needs him.

Alex Benay, associate deputy minister at Public Services and Procurement Canada, says 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 says 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.

Ottawa is transitioning to the Dayforce pay system from Phoenix, which centralized pay services for most federal employees a decade ago but left many public servants facing delayed or incorrect payments.

Benay’s exit comes days after Canada’s auditor general said Ottawa is running out of time to clear the Phoenix backlog to avoid carrying those problems into Dayforce.

The auditor general said in a report on Monday the government had only made “limited progress” on eliminating a backlog of pay transactions that affected at least 133,000 employees as of Sept. 30, 2025.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2026.

With files from Catherine Morrison

Craig Lord, The Canadian Press