Evidence of meeting #28 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was certification.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Pablo Sobrino  Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Acquisitions Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Desmond Gray  Acting Director General, Services and Specialized Acquisitions Management Sector, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Gordon O'Connor  Carleton—Mississippi Mills, CPC

8:45 a.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault

Order, please. We will begin the 28th meeting of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

Today, we are beginning our study on the programs and activities of the Canadian General Standards Board.

Joining us at the first meeting of this study are two representatives of the Department of Public Works and Government Services, Mr. Sobrino and Mr. Gray. They will have an opportunity to make a presentation. Afterwards, the committee members will be able to put questions to them.

I will first give the floor to Mr. Sobrino and Mr. Gray. I want to thank them for joining us this morning to tell us about the Canadian General Standards Board.

Go ahead.

8:45 a.m.

Pablo Sobrino Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Acquisitions Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning. I am pleased to appear before you today to discuss the Canadian General Standards Board, or CGSB, and how it engages Canadians in developing standards and providing conformity assessment services to meet the national interest.

With me is Desmond Gray, the senior executive responsible for the Canadian General Standards Board, or CGSB, one of the organizations under his direction, within the Acquisitions Branch of Public Works and Government Services Canada.

CGSB was created 80 years ago this year in 1934 to develop specifications and standards in support of government purchasing. It is the only federal organization with a mandate to provide standards and certification services. These services are provided in support of Canada's federal procurement, health, safety, trade, socio-economic, regulatory, and environmental interests.

CGSB develops standards in response to clear needs identified by Canadian stakeholders, such as government departments, industry, and consumers.

The Canadian General Standards Board does not itself write the standards, but rather manages a process to bring together the groups and organizations that have the knowledge of and interest in the standards, including manufacturers and users.

To do this, CGSB leverages a network of over 4,000 people, including technical experts, consumers, industry, academics, regulators, and others, who volunteer their time and expertise to develop standards and keep them current. This work also supports Canadian innovation and the Canadian economy.

Part of CGSB's role is to ensure that no one interest dominates the standards writing process. It does this by establishing an appropriate balance of members on technical standards development committees. In addition, the standards development process is open, fair, and transparent, to ensure various interests, including the Canadian public, have a voice, and that all views are considered and addressed.

CGSB has developed and manages over 300 standards in a wide range of areas. These include: petroleum, the CGSB standard for aviation fuel provides requirements for the composition, additives, testing, and inspection of fuel; protective clothing, for example, the CGSB standard for protection of firefighters' bodies against adverse effects during wild land fires; organic agriculture, which defines general principles and permitted substances, so that products that are certified to this standard can be labelled organic; construction, such as radon mitigation and glass. These construction standards are referenced in the National Building Code, which is the model code used by provincial-territorial building codes.

Recently, a new standard was developed for research ethics boards, which are required in Health Canada regulations for approval of clinical trials. The standard provides research ethics boards in Canada with a common platform for their governance, membership, operations, ethics review processes and quality management. CGSB was also recently approached to develop a standard for psychiatric service dogs. These dogs may be used to assist people with post-traumatic stress disorder, for instance.

The Canadian General Standards Board also offers a certification service when there is a need for a third-party, independent verification process to ensure that the products and services meet specific requirements. Certification allows suppliers to demonstrate that their products and services have been tested and meet the quality and performance characteristics the standard requires, providing assurance to buyers that the products and services will perform as expected.

Let me give you another example. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans designates private sector observers to monitor fisheries activities, such as the type and number of fish being caught and retained.

In 2012, Fisheries and Oceans asked CGSB to develop a program to certify that the companies employing these observers have the proper quality management systems in place, such as training programs. As part of the certification requirements, CGSB evaluates these companies every year and conducts on-site audits every three years. This provides confidence in the information that DFO relies on in supporting sustainable fisheries.

The Canadian General Standards Board also offers certification services to both the public and private sectors based on the International Organization for Standardization, ISO, standards for quality and environmental management. CGSB developed these programs in the early 1990s to meet the emerging market demand for ISO certification in Canada. As the private sector has since developed the capacity to meet this demand, CGSB is now refocusing its programs to support federal government requirements for this certification.

CGSB also partners with the Treasury Board Secretariat to certify personnel for the federal government procurement and materiel management community. This program certifies public servants delivering procurement and materiel management services with respect to clearly defined procurement requirements. That has been recently launched.

Internationally, Canada participates in agreements to recognize other countries' standards and certification systems and likewise to ensure Canadian standards and product certifications are recognized and accepted elsewhere, without the need for costly retesting. These agreements help provide Canadian businesses with access to global markets without additional administrative burden, delays, and costs. The Standards Council of Canada coordinates the national standards system and represents Canada internationally.

The Canadian General Standards Board and other Canadian standard development organizations—such as the Bureau de normalization du Québec, Canadian Standards Association and Underwriters Laboratories of Canada—participate in and contribute to this international work on behalf of Canada.

While CGSB typically works to harmonize its standards with international or North American standards, it also ensures that needs related to our country's unique climate, geography, and technological infrastructure are reflected in Canadian standards. For example, the standards being developed for radon mitigation need to consider Arctic-type extreme temperature conditions, Canadian soil geology characterized by high uranium content, unique geological formations, and Canadian building and construction work practices.

CGSB's work is carried out by a team of some 35 employees within PWGSC's Acquisitions Branch. CGSB's services are considered optional under the Treasury Board Common Services Policy, and the board derives approximately 80% of its budget from the recovery of costs from those who use its services.

Over the last 80 years, the CGSB has been a crucial forum for collaboration among Canadian stakeholders, helping develop standards that are supported and able to be implemented by industry.

To summarize, CGSB standards are often referenced in regulation, which helps minimize technical barriers to trade, as standards consider existing international requirements and are written in performance-based language, rather than vendor-specific.

CGSB standards allow Canadian industry to share knowledge and best practices, to foster innovation, and to be more competitive internationally. CGSB standards support government procurement by defining requirements in a consistent and efficient manner for goods that government needs to buy. CGSB standards and certification support federal government departments in protecting the health, safety, and welfare of workers and the public, in protecting our environment and in supporting the Canadian economy.

We trust this overview of the Canadian General Standards Board's programs and activities provides you with an understanding of the value of standardization for Canadians.

I would be happy to answer any of your questions.

Thank you very much.

8:55 a.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault

Thank you for your presentation.

We will now move on to members' questions, starting with you, Mr. Martin. You have five minutes.

8:55 a.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Sobrino, for the presentation. I guess you understand that the reason we've asked you to come here today is to explain some of the operations of the General Standards Board. It seems to those of us around this table that it's an organization that's been flying under the radar with very little scrutiny or oversight by any parliamentary committee for possibly many years—maybe ever.

I suppose, to put all of our cards on the table, there was a concern that there may be a duplication going on here, that this work may be being done effectively elsewhere by the Canadian Standards Association or whoever else manages these things. I guess your job here today will be to defend why the Government of Canada needs their own standards oversight organization.

I was interested to hear about the broad range of things the standards board is involved in. The designation of what can be labelled organic produce is something of great interest to Canadians, more and more. As they go to the grocery store and look to buy organic produce, can they really trust the label when it says this? If that's the type of thing the organization is involved with, then it seems to me, given the budget we're seeing, we're getting a real bargain. If we have 30 people looking for the best interests of Canadian consumers for a total price, after cost recovery, of $1.2 million.... That hardly makes up staff.

I notice that the budget is roughly $3 million, but the net cost is only $1.2 million. Where does the cost recovery come from? What kind of fees do you charge for this service—to the private sector, I imagine?

8:55 a.m.

Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Acquisitions Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services

Pablo Sobrino

On the fees, I'll ask my colleague to look for that information.

The cost recovery is done from those who ask us to develop a standard, for instance. Back in the 2010 evaluation of the program, we had already instituted cost recovery, but they asked us to move to a full cost recovery organization. Most of the standards organizations are full cost recovery. They're driven by the fact that there's a particular interest across industry or by a regulator to institute a standard. We ask them to...under the common service policy we have, we recover costs that way.

The majority of our work, since about 2010, has been really refocused on government requirements. There are government departments who require standards for either regulatory purposes or for their particular mandates who ask us to come in and do those standards. Industry will approach us as well in areas where standards are just not viable in terms of the amount of investment to develop those standards. We're often asked to participate in doing that. So we tend to pick up those standards.

I think one of the important things, just to go back to one of the observations in your preamble, is that we have seven recognized standards organizations in Canada. One of the things we work on is to not duplicate the development of standards. We work with other standards organizations to try not to do the same work that others have done. It's costly and it takes a lot of time. Fundamentally, because standards organizations are accredited, they all follow the same process to arrive at the standards. There's no reason to suspect that another standards organization's standards aren't up to quality.

I will take another example—fuel, for instance. The interest that the federal government has on having a fuel standard is that we need fuel for aircraft that the government operates, for example; that fuel is specific to the needs of those kinds of aircraft. Those standards are set so that they can operate in the north in cold-weather environments, in high-humidity environments, and those kinds of things. Because we have to procure that fuel, we want to have a baseline where you then can actually go through a procurement that's not specifying a fuel but saying, “This is the fuel that has to perform to meet our requirements”. That's true of many of the standards we're facing.

On the cost recovery, Desmond has some information.

9 a.m.

Desmond Gray Acting Director General, Services and Specialized Acquisitions Management Sector, Department of Public Works and Government Services

Yes, I can provide a bit more detail.

Basically, the work we do is really divided into two broad streams. One is actually the development of standards and maintaining standards, and then the certification activities that take place after.

It's an interesting comment you make about the value, because if you think about it, we have 4,000 Canadians contributing their time at really no cost to CGSB or the Government of Canada. So they participate and they come from all sectors, from industy, they come from the private sector, from consumer associations. They're academics and they participate in the committee work to develop these standards.

The only time we actually spend money in this area is for consumer groups when they have a challenge to provide funds for the travel, to make sure there's equity in the process and that all Canadian interests are represented in a balanced form. That's a very important part. But by and large, it's a very cost-effective model.

We don't charge any fees, in that sense, for the standards but we do get revenues from government departments because we're always based on the.... We don't simply develop a standard because we have an idea. It's at the request of some entity where there's a demonstrable need for some solution. For example, the Department of Transport may come forward and say it needs a solution, say, for fuel or for life jackets. Then we put together a balanced committee and seek funding, usually from one of these government entities, to help support this work. This is how it's done right across all of the major standards-writing organizations in this country.

Once we have the standard developed, of course, we then run a certification process where one is required, where there's a demonstrable need for a certification program. For example, I think if you talked to most standards organizations in Canada, they would say to you, be blunt about it. There's no money in writing a standard. Where the revenue stream comes in is in certification. For example, if you go into a home and you see the CSA mark on a light bulb, CSA receives a payment from the manufacturer every time that certification mark is put on a product, so that produces a revenue stream.

But for CGSB, because we're not in the private sector, we're focused on public interest in that sense, so we focus on.... We do have some certification programs. But we also do the ISO 9000 and ISO 14000. Again, we charge a fee to companies and to public sector entities that are being audited to that program, but at a very cost-effective model. So we're not, obviously, a for-profit entity, we're simply trying to recover our costs.

9 a.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault

Thank you, Mr. Martin. Your time is up.

Mr. O'Connor, the floor now belongs to you for five minutes.

9 a.m.

Gordon O'Connor Carleton—Mississippi Mills, CPC

Good morning.

Mr. Sobrino, I think somewhere in your talk you said you don't set standards, then later on you set standards. I have to know whether you're not setting standards or you're setting standards. The other thing is that I would think that just about every practical thing in the universe has a standard, and there's a bunch of six or seven standards organizations in Canada. Fuel has to have standards. Cars have to have standards. Flags have to have standards. Pins have to have standards. It goes on and on.

What are you doing to the other people's standards? Are you just saying this is the standard?

9 a.m.

Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Acquisitions Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services

Pablo Sobrino

To be clear, we run the process that allows a standard to be established, so we don't set standards per se. What happens is someone comes in with a need. We pull together the committee to ensure that the technical committee can develop the standard. The committee is the one that develops the standard, but we'll facilitate the public comment period, all that. Then once that's done, the standard is established. It's then established under CGSB, so we put our name to it because it has followed the process to arrive at the standard.

So we have standards but we don't set them. We set them through the technical committees that are made up of all the interests that want to set the standards. That's why there's that confusion of we do and we don't. Those standards are then vetted through the Standards Council of Canada, which ensures that it's .... They accredit us for the system we run to set those standards.

In terms of everything has a standard.... In fact, we are the owners of the standard for the national flag of Canada. When I arrived in my job, one of the first things they showed me was the actual standard for the flag, which is an interesting piece. But standards are set everywhere for many things.

One thing though is that standards for certain things do come to an end. If we don't need those objects, they are no longer of interest to us, or another standards organization has begun to use that or modernize that standard, we'll drop them. We had about 1,000 standards back in 2008-09. We went through a rationalization process and we're now responsible for a little over 300 standards, which we continue to maintain.

Every standard has to be maintained and updated. We do it on a five-year cycle. We have to make sure that those standards are relevant to the Government of Canada, as opposed to things that we might have done in the past that have since moved into the private sector and are now available through private sector or the other standards organizations.

9:05 a.m.

Carleton—Mississippi Mills, CPC

Gordon O'Connor

In my previous life I got involved with standards. I was managing large numbers of buildings and we had ISO 9000 and ISO 14000. You're referring to them here. ISO, in fact, means international standards and they're set by somebody else, so what do you do in this?

9:05 a.m.

Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Acquisitions Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services

Pablo Sobrino

We do the certification process. So you'll come to me, an organization will come to our organization and request to be certified under that standard. That's part of the certification side of what we do. We don't write the ISO 9000 standard, but we go and accredit or certify that an organization meets that standard.

9:05 a.m.

Acting Director General, Services and Specialized Acquisitions Management Sector, Department of Public Works and Government Services

Desmond Gray

I can add a little to that.

That's a good question. Of course, you're absolutely right. ISO is like the United Nations. It's sort of the global level of standards. It's like a world body. It's in Geneva. It has about 20,000 standards globally. Canada participates in ISO along with 163 other countries. So you're right; there's a global structure for this.

ISO introduced the ISO 9000 quality management system standard in the early 1990s. I don't how many of you will remember that. The reason that became so significant in the marketplace at the time was that, in the early 1990s, the European community announced it would give preference to those in public procurement, in terms of their bid process, who demonstrated they met a demonstrable quality management system. The only one they recognized was ISO 9000. It just so happened. So there was an awful lot of take-up in Europe in terms of that standard, and then of course internationally companies that wanted to go into the European market had to move quickly to demonstrate they could achieve that certification.

We began this process in the 1990s to meet this demand in Canada, because the Canadian government recognized there was an urgent need to supply this service to Canadian companies, and the private sector simply had not ramped up yet to do it. We began to certify companies, private sector companies, that they had a demonstrable quality management system that met the 20 different components of the ISO standards.

So we'd go in to a manufacturing process.... I was an auditor. I'm a certified auditor. We would go in and review the books. We'd look at their processes. We'd review the manufacturing process. We'd look at their records. We'd interview their people to make sure they had a quality management system that met the standard and they were actually using it in an effective and demonstrable way to produce the correct products. That's what we've done.

Since then, the private sector has expanded hugely. In fact, now many national Canadian organizations do this. QMI is a big one in Canada, part of CSA. Also there are many international groups, such as BSI. The British are here, the Irish are here, and the Germans. It's a global community now that provides the support to business.

At CGSB, of course, our job is not to duplicate what is in the private sector. We do not compete with the private sector. So as that service has come to fruition, we have now refocused our energies on providing those services to public sector organizations.

9:10 a.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault

Thank you for your questions and answers.

Ms. Crowder, you have five minutes.

9:10 a.m.

NDP

Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming before committee.

I have a couple of questions. I was interested to note in your presentation the standards being developed for radon mitigation, particularly with regard to the Arctic extreme temperature conditions. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that.

I'm the aboriginal affairs critic for the NDP, and of course, housing and issues around radon mitigation in the north are of particular interest. Could you say some more about that program and whether there are others who are doing that kind of oversight around standards with regard to extreme temperature?

9:10 a.m.

Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Acquisitions Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services

Pablo Sobrino

Certainly.

In February 2013 Health Canada approached us to prepare a national standard for radon mitigation in residential buildings. It was part of the implementation of a Canadian strategy designed to refocus efforts to encourage indoor radon testing and the reduction of indoor radon levels. Health Canada's guidance document is called, “Reducing Radon Levels in Existing Homes: A Canadian Guide for Professional Contractors”, and this will serve as the core document that is going to help us develop this standard.

As you correctly pointed out, the differences in our climate and geography—and I mentioned this in my opening remarks—is that the mitigation standards and practices that come from the ASTM, the standards organization in the U.S., can't always be applied in situations where mitigation is an option to control the health risk from indoor radon exposure.

So we're working on developing two national standards. One is for radon control options in new low-rise residential buildings, and one will be for radon mitigation options for existing low-rise residential dwellings—what you have to do to retrofit, for instance.

Our objective is going to be to provide the requirements, the specifications, guidelines, and characteristics that can be used consistently to ensure that materials, products, processes, and services used in radon mitigation of low-rise residential homes are fit for their purpose. So we want to make sure that what people put into radon mitigation will actually work.

Our objective is to also harmonize technical specifications of products and services with the goal to make the industry and services related to radon mitigation more efficient, and to provide organizations and radon mitigation professionals in the industry a tool to ensure that product and services are consistent.

It's also about how they do it. It's not only what they use, but how they apply it, how they do it. Then we'll be following up with conformity, which is to ensure that the products and services meet the standards that are set, so that'll be the other side of our activity.

This is all with Health Canada. The complexity here, of course, is that radon is a very difficult gas to detect, so there's a big technical challenge in terms of that. We have academics participating, of course, the industry, the contractors, as well as health professionals.

So the standards' work will take the better part of two years to develop as we go back and forth with these discussions and they are quite open discussions. The technical committee is composed of all these participants and everybody puts their issues on the table. The goal is to have a standard so that the materials used for radon gas mitigation and how you apply it are understood and meet a standard that's going to be effective.

9:10 a.m.

NDP

Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC

To be clear, will that standard take in our unique geography and temperature?

9:10 a.m.

Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Acquisitions Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services

Pablo Sobrino

Absolutely. The U.S. standard doesn't work, so that's why we're moving to a standard that's more adapted to our situation.

9:10 a.m.

NDP

Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC

Well, I know we've had some experiences, for example, with housing that's been built in the north that hasn't been built to accommodate the types of living conditions there. Of course, the life span of the housing is inadequate and there are already severe housing shortages. So this seems like an important initiative that does recognize those unique circumstances.

I take it from what you're saying that this is a good example of levering in those partnerships, academics, and low-building associations and whatnot. That gives you very much a value-added product.

9:15 a.m.

Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Acquisitions Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services

Pablo Sobrino

Absolutely. It's precisely that. It's a difficult problem. How do you bring everybody together to the table? It's a recognized issue. It's just that no one knows how to solve it, so what the standards organization is doing is trying to bring everyone together to do that.

9:15 a.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault

Thank you.

9:15 a.m.

NDP

Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC

Oh, I'm done? Thank you.

9:15 a.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault

I now yield the floor to Ms. Ablonczy.

9:15 a.m.

Conservative

Diane Ablonczy Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Standards are good, but I think as MPs, one of the things we deal with fairly regularly is when standards are breached. This is particularly true in the building industry. For example, leaky condos come to mind and there never seems to be anybody's desk where the buck stops.

We have all these standards and when standards are breached, the owner of the product, the very sad owner of the product, has no one to go to. So I'm curious if that's where enforcement comes in your regime.

9:15 a.m.

Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Acquisitions Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services

Pablo Sobrino

First of all, we do not do enforcement. I'll take the example of building codes. We provide a number of standards that are used in the National Building Code, which is hosted by the National Research Council—the actual building code—and the provinces and municipalities use that as their source document for their building codes.

So, for instance, on buildings, the enforcement is at the municipal—

9:15 a.m.

Conservative

Diane Ablonczy Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Yes, I understand that.

What you're really saying is that your organization has no role to play in enforcement of standards or penalization where standards are breached. I guess my question is, is that something you've talked about? At some point, consumers and the public need to know that standards mean something and that they're going to be enforced. You're coordinating internationally with standards. Have you talked about whether there is any move toward your coordinating enforcement of these standards nationally?