The federal government plans to transfer thousands of RCMP civilian employees to Canada’s public service in May 2020 when it expects problems plaguing the Phoenix pay system will be fixed.

Acting RCMP Commissioner Daniel Dubeau notified civilian employees Friday about the transfer, which was scheduled for last April but put on hold because of the escalating Phoenix pay crisis.

When the 4,000 civilians move to the public service on May 21, 2020, they will no longer be members of the RCMP.

Dubeau said the date gives the government “a reasonable amount of time” for Public Services and Procurement Canada, the federal pay master, to stabilize Phoenix and handle the migration of 4,000 new employees and their pay records. The RCMP has its own pay system.

PSPC has avoided setting a target for fixing Phoenix since it miserably missed its first self-imposed deadline in October 2016. PSPC Minister Carla Qualtrough has said she hopes the system will be stabilized by the end of the year so the 2020 transfer date leaves plenty of wiggle room.

The federal budget gave PSPC more than $431 million towards stabilizing Phoenix and another $16 million to Treasury Board to start the search for a new system to replace Phoenix. That new system is years down the road.

For the transfer, Dubeau said PSPC have promised to have a dedicated team of compensation advisors at its pay centre to handle the transfer of files; establish service level agreements with the RCMP; and increase support for RCMP transactions moving to Phoenix.

“The RCMP, PSPC and Treasury Board Secretariat will continue to monitor the situation to ensure civilian members are migrated seamlessly,” Dubeau said in his memo to employees.

But none of these assurances appease civilian staffers who oppose becoming public servants and were relieved the Phoenix crisis gave them more time to stay put.

Civilian staffers are sworn members of the RCMP and consider themselves part of the force, not bureaucrats.

The force’s 29,190 employees include 3,900 civilians and 6,670 public servants. Under the RCMP act, civilian members are sworn members of the force, just like gun-carrying police officers — except they are not peace officers.

Civilian members, many of whom are specialists in law enforcement, remain at the RCMP — but once they’re ‘deemed’, they will be paid like public servants and governed by the same rules, legislation and human resource policies as the rest of the bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, federal unions who want to represent civilian members are awaiting decisions from the Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board on their applications to unionize them. If approved, the RCMP civilians will become dues-paying union members before being transferred to the public service in 2020.

In preparation for the move, the government and the RCMP have “pay-matched” the jobs of civilian members with those of the unionized public service who do the same or similar work.

The only exception was telecom operators and the intercept, or wiretap, monitors. These employees could not be directly pay-matched with public servants belonging to a union, so they became a target of a union drive by Canadian Union of Public Employees. They have since voted to join CUPE making them the first sworn members of Canada’s national police force to unionize.

Many touted that union drive as a dry run for the unionization of the force, set in motion by a Supreme Court of Canada decision that gave the RCMP the right to unionize.