Government Operations Committee on May 15th, 2007

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

So you see some possible cost-effective savings that could be reinvested back into obviously feeding the next progression of change.

[Steven Poole]

Absolutely, and I would say that's exactly the way we're trying to unfold at this point.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

This committee dealt, as did public accounts, I suppose some could say, in a most intensive way with accrual accounting. We've had a number of our witnesses before, obviously, who demonstrated that there will be some difficulties within, once again, everything from the IT sector to the accounting structure when we move to accrual accounting, whether it's the purchasing of systems, etc.

Are you aware of whether Public Works had any dealings with Treasury Board regarding implementation or possible implementation, at some point, of accrual accounting into your processes?

[Steven Poole]

Madam Chair, I'll try to answer the question as best as I understand it.

I think you might be referring to what I would call the corporate administration shared services initiative that is run out of the Treasury Board Secretariat, which focuses on the finance and HR domains. That's specifically to get at all the software programs that exist in departments to do finances. There's an initiative there to bring that together.

That's not run by Public Works. My responsibility, my accountability, is enabling that project. We have signed the memorandum of understanding with that project to provide the IT infrastructure that will enable them to accomplish their goals.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you very kindly. I appreciate the clarification. It is helpful to be reassured a little that you're on it, rather than simply waiting until we have a dilemma on our hands.

We're also dealing with a demographic trend with the concerns of the baby boomers, and everything like this. As you move forward with your own staffing, do you anticipate any difficulties with having qualified, capable people to work within your own department, from your perspective?

[Daphne Meredith]

I think that is a challenge for us. It's a challenge for other departments in the Government of Canada. I think it's also a challenge for businesses operating in the private sector. In our business we hit the shortages that others are hitting. For example, information management, information technology--that's an area of scarcity right now. We do tend to react to that by hiring from outside government as much as we can. In fact, Steven himself had private sector experience before we managed to attract him to our department.

One of the areas that are perhaps less well known is translation, where we anticipate needing for our Translation Bureau something in the order of 1,000 translators coming in over a multi-year period, when in fact only 400 will be graduating from university. That is a very high skill. You would appreciate it probably in Parliament, as well, in getting the nuance right, and having the training to do so is important. That's one area where we're really trying to work not only with universities and colleges, but even at the high school level, to generate interest in pursuing a career in translation.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Madam Nash.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon to all of our witnesses this afternoon. Thank you for coming to our committee.

I would like to go back to the real estate section. I have three areas I'd like to ask you about. The first one is on page 11 of the estimates. There is a chart that shows projected savings...over $5 billion from real estate, to the tune of $1 billion. How much of that $1 billion is expected to come from real estate sales?

[Daphne Meredith]

I would say none of that is expected to come from the sales of real estate. This is generated from internal to government management initiatives that economize on our management processes. I think those are described in the sections above that.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

At this point, would you say the savings are on track, where you'd expect them to be, for 2007-08?

[Daphne Meredith]

Yes, they are.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Is it about $470 million in savings?

[Daphne Meredith]

To date, yes, we are on track relative to 2005-06, as well as last year and the coming year.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

This is through the better delivery of services and the better use of property. I see part of your plan is to reduce the space per employee, and maybe this is already taking place. Is it something that's already been initiated?

[Daphne Meredith]

That's right. We're now managing to a standard of 18 square metres per employee, as opposed to the previous 21.4 square metres.

We're gradually changing this, and we're not doing it in one fell swoop. As groups need to retrofit space or move into new space, we're taking them to the new standard. We're actually finding it's a sensitive issue to deal with people's office space.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

I have this image of Dilberts being squeezed into smaller cubbies, but I'm sure it's not the plan.

[Daphne Meredith]

It's going quite well. Employees are accepting it. We are making up for smaller spaces, in some respects, with nicer furniture that fits the spaces. It's going well, and it is achieving the cost savings.

Frankly, now that we're moving to a standardized space of smaller office sizes, and the key is that they're standardized, it allows us the flexibility to move people in government at a much lower cost than previously, when space was more tailored to individual demands. We're finding it achieves economies in areas that we didn't fully anticipate before.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Out of curiosity, in the old standard, where did the numbers come from? How did you benchmark the new standard? Is it an international standard or did somebody decide people needed less space? How did this become established?

[Daphne Meredith]

That goes to a deeper layer than my knowledge.

I'll ask Tim McGrath, who is the head of our real property branch, to come to the table.

[Tim McGrath, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Real Property Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The old standard came from a previous Treasury Board policy known as chapter 120, which was near and dear to the hearts of many public servants.

In the mid-1990s, when Public Works promulgated the accommodation management framework, we developed standards based on the functional programming of the space itself or the needs of each of the client departments. We put it in place in the late 1990s and, during that period of time, started to implement the standards throughout.

When government started to rapidly increase in the early 2000s, we started to take a lot of space that already existed. To save money, we moved into existing space and lost control of the utilization target. Back in 2004, we decided to re-emphasize the space standards, and as space came up for renewal, we introduced the new standard.

The new standard has been in place. Actually, it's not a new standard; it's a standard that's been in place since the mid-1990s. But we've been putting more rigour into the application of it.

We've been very successful at moving the standard from 21.4 square metres to the previous amount of utilization of 19.8. It's been significant. When you think of it, 1.6 metres doesn't sound like a lot. But when you house 241,000 public servants, it translates into a lot of space savings.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

What's been the reaction of those public servants?

[Tim McGrath]

It has actually been very good.

First of all, one of the things we found was that by taking down the walls, we improved the indoor air quality. People will remember that Les Terrasses de la Chaudière had been known as a sick building. By taking down walls, we were able to increase the air flow.

But a lot of it now has to do with the types of configurations for more pods and team workspace. It's been very successful for us.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Great. Thank you.

Madam Chair, do I have a few more minutes?

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Yes, you do.