Evidence of meeting #16 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chairman.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, we do.
Liberal
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
That's a good question. They do research that is more related to our investigation functions and to issues that come up through the legislative process. These issues are more related to our immediate role, because that is necessary for us to operate.
The research program, called the contributions program, allows people to research things that are very far from our immediate work, but that will eventually be useful. For example, if we move to legislation on RFIDs, radio frequency identification devices—I'm just picking that example out of the air—this would be helpful for policy-makers to understand the implication.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
I presume those would fall under your rubric of providing information and outreach to the Canadian people about privacy issues?
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Yes, exactly.
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Thank you.
Not to beat this to death, because I don't blame you for having to outsource so much of this work, but I want to speak to the broader policy here. I've done a bit of math, and if your average civil servant is, say, making $15,000 a year...or $50,000 a year—
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
They need better representation if they're making $15,000, but say it's $50,000 plus 18% benefits, which would be roughly $60,000 a year. But with so many of these contracts at $25,000, this would buy you about five months of full-time work for a full-time civil servant. Do you think you're getting five months' worth of work for these?
My feeling is that Ottawa is just full of these contractors, because they cut a third of the civil service. During the Liberal era, a third of the civil service was gone, but the workload didn't shrink. So now we're contracting out to all these people, sometimes at $1,500 a day, and $1,200 to $1,500 a day is not unusual.
Do you think you're getting five months' full-time work from the many consulting jobs, such as Claude Beaulé or the Nicholson Associates one? We don't even know what it's for, but....
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Well, Claude Beaulé, I can tell you, is a computer specialist—
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
I see. I'm not as interested or concerned with the technical ones, because they kept in-house anyway. Do you think it's good value to be contracting all this work out, or would you rather have the in-house, full-time staff to be able to complete this work?
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Mr. Chairman, in an ideal world, I would rather have full-time, in-house staff to do all of that, but the reality now in the hiring zone in Ottawa and the public service is that it's very hard to get people for certain categories of work—notably investigators and people who know about information technology and information rights. Of course, Bill C-2's projected coming into force has only heightened that.
We are competing with many organizations, some of which are bigger and can offer the same jobs, which we want to staff, at a higher classification level. Unless we want to lie down on our mandate and not do this work, we fall back on trying to get the service through that.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Otherwise we would lack salary dollars. It's very unfortunate; I'm the first to deplore it. Certainly some of those are for investigation contracts. We deplore this, but otherwise we would say, well, we don't have full-time employees, so we can't do it.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Some of these guys can bill out better than lawyers. A thousand bucks a day means you're getting a couple hundred dollars an hour. I don't think it's a good use of our money.
I will ask one more specific question. I think in Mr. Tilson's example, just by playing pin the tail on the donkey, he arrived at $24,717 for Nicholson Associates. I know he picked that at random, but I found two more at the exact same price, to the penny —$24,717—further down on the same page, to Serva Inc. and Copem Consulting, and they're all under the code 0491. Can you tell me how that coincidence would occur? It's so close to $25,000, the magic figure, but to the penny, it seems unusual.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
It's deliberate. As you can see from the pattern, we try to see how much work we can get in an efficient way if we have a known specialist. For example, as you probably know, there are often retired civil servants who have held responsible jobs—
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
They take the package and then they come right back to the government.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
—whose track record is known. They are reliable, they're known, and they'll deliver the goods.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Yes, for $1,500 a day instead of $150.
Can you tell me what code 0491, Serva Inc., Copem Consulting, and Nicholson Associates, is for?
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Serva Inc. is a human resources code, so this may have to do with job classification or it may have to do with writing all of the policies that we didn't have in that organization, for example. Maybe it was setting out procedures for dealing with employees. We had many serious problems in our human resources management, so that may be to help.
Again, human resources people are very scarce in Ottawa. They're as scarce as hen's teeth, honestly. Apparently the Public Service Commission can't hire enough human resources specialists, so we're all looking for these same people. It's a real problem.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
It's a lot more lucrative to be a human resources consultant than it is to be a human resources employee, I guess.
Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
A generation is retiring. I believe Maria Barrados has spoken of this publically.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Tom Wappel
I'll stop you there, because I do want to give everybody an opportunity.
Did you want a specific written answer to those three contracts, Mr. Martin, what the code means, or anything? Are you all right with the answer?
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
I'll say yes. I'm not going to stay up at night worrying about it. I just find it odd. It's such a coincidence to be the exact same dollar figure, to the penny.
