Government Operations Committee on March 25th, 2014

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I'm very proud of my role in expenditure reduction in a way that is sensible for Canadians, in making sure that their core public services are still maintained.

A lot of what we've done is consolidated in the back office operations of government. As you are probably aware, we had a system where each department and agency had a payroll and a human resources department as well as an IT services department. What we have found is that there are ways to consolidate that without impacting on the front office operations of government. We continue to do that.

My committee was able to find about $5.2 billion in savings annually through the deficit reduction action plan. That's a real component of why we are going to be back into surplus a few months from now. I have a committee that is continuing to look for better ways to deliver excellent government services at a more accountable cost. Once those decisions are made, they'll be rolled into the budgets as well.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

One of the changes you've instituted is Shared Services Canada, where every department shares computer IT services. I know that's a bit of a hobby of yours, an area of your expertise.

Can you tell us how this is going? The past changes to IT, as you know, have had a pretty bumpy road. In your view, how is this unfolding?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Sure. I'll give you the short story version.

We took about 40% of the workforce involved in IT and put it into Shared Services Canada. When we did that, the deficit reduction program immediately took 10% of that consolidated budget and took it out as part of the draft savings so we achieved savings immediately. Now they're working on their work plan. The first thing out of the gate was our e-mail services in government, where we went from a hundred different suppliers to one. That, I think, is a consolidation. We're looking at our data centres. We have several hundred data centres. We want to get to half a dozen or a dozen data centres rather than 300 data centres. These are the kinds of things they continue to work on moving towards looking at the thousands of applications that are found on your average government desk top, and to start to consolidate that as well. It's an ongoing exercise. They continue to report to Treasury Board. The RPPs continue to describe how Shared Services Canada is meeting its aspirations.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you for that.

One of the areas that is not discretionary or statutory is payments under OAS. As you and I and all of us know, Canada's population is rapidly aging. In fact in the next 15 years, that aging of Canada's population will increase exponentially.

How is the government planning to cover the fairly significantly increased costs of payments and supports for older Canadians when the numbers will be massive?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I think this is an important whole-of-government challenge, Madam Ablonczy. Part of what we're trying to do in terms of realigning how government delivers services is to, as I put it, ensure that we have the ability, with the right political decisions, to have balanced budgets for a generation.

As I say, we've found ways to deliver between $5 billion and $6 billion in ongoing savings annually. We continue to find ways to realign our expenditure on human resources to make it consistent with other public sector as well as private sector norms. Part of that was booked in budget 2014 as we looked at certain benefits.

These are the kinds of things that I think will make the provision of benefits sustainable in the future, but more aligned with reality.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

Mr. Ravignat, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I actually want to build on something that Madam Ablonczy asked you, because there's a contradiction between what you told her and what's in the plans and priorities document about back office transformation.

In fact, this is one of the key risks identified:

...the complexity and pace of the transformation agenda may exceed departments’ and the Secretariat’s capacity to drive standardization and consolidation of the back office.

Yet in 2012, you said that 70% of savings would come from this exercise.

How can you ensure its successful implementation when it's clearly identified as a fundamental risk?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Let me just say in the first instance that just because it's a risk doesn't mean that we ignore the risk and that the risk is going to happen. We identify risks. That's our responsibility in the RPPs. But we have put in place measures to mitigate or eliminate the risk.

Secretary.

[Yaprak Baltacioglu]

The risk in the report on plans and priorities of the Treasury Board Secretariat refers to human resource and finance back office operations. What the minister was talking about earlier was the information technology—e-mail, data centres, and networks—that went to Shared Services Canada.

The risk that we identified there is absolutely justified; because we are a very large organization, we are running on many financial systems, many human resource systems. But worst of all, we believe that not everybody in the government does the same thing in terms of a process, so we are reforming the process. The human resource system is actually being standardized across the government. I think this year we will have that in place. Finance is a couple of years behind that, but that will get there.

Then we have on board all of these departments—

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Madam.

Minister, are you still confident that 70% of savings can be had by this plan?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I think by and large that's an accurate number. I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Okay.

I'd like to ask you a question about CSEC. CSEC got rapped on its knuckles and caught red-handed spying on Canadians at the border, yet they got rewarded with an 80% increase in their spending. You'd think you would have liked to give them a slap on the wrist.

How much of this 80%, this $829 million, will go to spying on Canadians?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Actually, I think the great majority of it is for the new building they're going into, a state-of-the-art building to protect the security of Canadians against the bad guys. That's how I would answer that question.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

And the bad guys are Canadians as well?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

No, the bad guys are mostly foreign terrorist organizations intent on the destruction of our way of life.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

AECL: why do we keep throwing money at this? Years ago we decided to get out of the business. Why are we still in it and rewarding these guys, who are clearly not picking up the slack?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

We are restructuring all of AECL's operations. As you know, we divested certain operations and other operations are in the process of transformation, but permit me to be ecumenical and agree with the honourable member that there have been decades' worth of bad decision-making. We're finally cleaning up the mess and we'll be in a much better position in the years going forward.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

On the Public Service Labour Relations Act, evidently you have decided to do away with the board—

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

With the board?

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Yes. That is, the Public Service Labour Relations Board.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

It's a merger actually with the other—

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Yes, you call it a merger. It could be called elimination.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

It still will be making decisions.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

The service has been abolished, right?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

I wouldn't characterize it that way, sir.