Government Operations Committee on Oct. 19th, 2010

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

So yours is about the only budget in the whole civil service that's going to explode and expand. Everybody else has to freeze their budgets and spend less.

[Don Head]

We're freezing at the levels, except for those cases where we're getting additional resources as a result of new initiatives that have been approved.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

That's quite different. In fact, it's shocking. It says a lot about the government's priorities if the only place they plan to spend more money is in locking up more young Indian kids in my riding for stealing hub caps. That's pretty revealing. That's very helpful to know.

How many of the 4,000 extra jobs are new positions and how many are due to attrition?

[Don Head]

The 4,119 are all new jobs and include correctional officers, nurses, psychologists, program officers--every job needed to manage that increase in the population.

I should just add as well, because you mentioned programs and education...some of the things we're doing we have been working on for the last couple of years as part of our transformation agenda. For example, around education, specifically in the prairie region, we have just recently moved back to having full-time teachers in all our institutions in the prairie region, and we're looking at doing that across the country, for all kinds of reasons.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I'm genuinely happy to hear that. That's been a bugaboo of mine for many years.

[Don Head]

We've also embarked on implementing what we call our integrated correctional program model, which is intended to get offenders more engaged with their correctional plans much earlier in their sentences. Rather than having individuals waiting until about 150 to 250 days before becoming involved in their first program, we're getting offenders involved in programing within the first 30 days that they come within the federal system. That approach is a result of investments we've received since Budget 2008 specifically to enhance our capacity in programing areas and education.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you.

Those are all the questions I have.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

That takes us to the end of this session. I thank Madam Dumas-Sluyter and Mr. Head for their testimony.

I will suspend....

Is it something to do with this particular witness?

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am not sure if we have got to the bottom of the matter of the Correctional Service of Canada's budget freeze. Could we suggest to the subcommittee the idea of inviting the Correctional Services of Canada representatives back? Mr. Head talked about studies and budgets. I would like to go further. How can we arrange for them to appear again?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Madam Bourgeois. I don't disagree with you, but it is entirely up to the committee whether we call Mr. Head back or we call other witnesses. I hope that at the steering committee on Thursday we will actually arrive at that decision.

Meanwhile, I'm going to suspend and ask Mr. Head to leave the table.

Yes, Mr. Vincent.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, these people are probably going to come to testify again. When they do, I would like them to provide us with forecasts of their costs and the savings they propose to achieve. We have to consider that. They were talking about a salary increase of 1.5%. That will be for several years and it will keep increasing.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Vincent, the meeting is suspended. You'll have every opportunity to ask questions in the future, if in fact these witnesses come back.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I'd like to call this meeting back to order.

We have two witnesses for the second hour of this meeting: from the Privy Council Office, Mr. Ward Elcock; and from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Mr. Peter McGovern.

I'm going to ask Mr. Elcock and Mr. McGovern to speak in the order in which they're listed on the order paper.

Both of you have experience before this committee, and other committees, so I'm sure you'll know what to expect.

Mr. Elcock, I'll call on you first.

[Ward Elcock, Former Coordinator of Olympic and G8/G20 Security, Privy Council Office]

Okay, Mr. Chairman.

It's a pleasure to be here this morning to talk about my former office's role--at the moment, I am between assignments, so I don't in fact have a specific assignment--in coordinating the security budget for the G-8 and G-20 summits.

To begin, let me say a couple of words about the office's mandate in relation to G-8 and G-20 security, the related cost drivers, and finally the accountability of the Government of Canada with regard to the G-8 and G-20 security budget.

As coordinator of Olympic and G-8 and G-20 security, my mandate vis-à-vis the summits was primarily to ensure an integrated approach to security planning for the summits, to develop a comprehensive exercise program to test security planning assumptions, and to ensure that funding, planning, and operational measures were both linked and risk-based.

Based on a medium threat assessment and a review of the business cases brought forward, the Government of Canada budgeted up to $930 million for security for the two summits. That amount included a contingency reserve of about $55 million for unforeseen costs. Canada hosted two separate and independent summits in separate geographic locations, which frankly is unprecedented. The reality of the situation was that the magnitude of the endeavour required security operations, including land, air, and maritime components, and multiple security partners because of the various jurisdictions.

The more rural region of Muskoka and the limited size of the Huntsville community created requirements for infrastructure upgrades, temporary accommodation, telecommunications upgrades, and significant transportation and service costs. While rural settings are in some sense generally easier to secure, they can be more expensive as a result of higher fixed costs.

Remote sites are also unable to accommodate larger meetings such as the G-20, which is why virtually all of those meetings have been held in urban centres. Given the nature of the Huntsville site, reinforcements from out of area would not have arrived in time in the event of a major incident, and therefore numerous additional police officers and others were required to be kept in proximity to the site, which incurred considerable travel, accommodation, and overtime charges.

While the principal G-8 leaders were transported by helicopter, the inclusion of other world leaders dictated ground transportation from Toronto to Huntsville, requiring hundreds of kilometres of ground routes to be secured. Additional motorcades for G-8 leaders were needed in the event that inclement weather prevented air travel, a common occurrence in June in that part of Ontario.

Given the shortness of the hearing this morning, I'm trying to be very brief. I've offered you a brief overview of the context relating to the G-8 and G-20 summit security costs.

But before taking your questions, I should also speak to the government's commitment to accountability in terms of the security budget.

My office provided full cooperation to separate reviews by the Parliamentary Budget Office prior to the summits taking place and then to the Auditor General after the summits occurred.

I welcome the opportunity here today to provide Canadians with additional information and to respond to any questions you may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. McGovern.

[Peter McGovern, Assistant Deputy Minister, Asia and Chief Trade Commissioner, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to appear before you this morning to talk about Canada's G8 and G20 summits in June.

Hosting a meeting of the world's political leaders is a massive undertaking. Canada hosted two such meetings back to back over the course of a single weekend, as well as an international youth summit and a summit of global business leaders. To develop the final summit's agenda, we held 29 preparatory events in the first half of 2010. These 29 meetings of officials from G-8 and G-20 countries took place in different regions across Canada. Taken all together, this proved to be an undertaking of massive unprecedented proportion.

Summitry is an activity that is extraordinary to our regular government operations. It involves not only hosting, housing, and securing foreign leaders, but also the logistic and technical work in setting up all the required meetings.

Every foreign leader comes with a large group of delegates, and, while these people are responsible for their own accommodation expenses, the government still has to plan for this massive influx of foreign guests, to ensure a series of summits that unfolds seamlessly.

More than 6,000 officials and over 3,700 media applied for accreditation to the two meetings. We served more than 100,000 meals at nine different summit venues. We secured five hotels and arranged 130,000 one-way shuttle trips between summit sites. We did all this and more with a core planning staff of about 200 people, which rose to over 600 during the events.

In the context of the 29 preparatory meetings leading to the summits, I would like to explain our site selection process, the economies of scale we achieved, and the related events we hosted in support of the G-8 and G-20 summits.

In 2007 a team of public servants began evaluating sites across Canada for the 2010 G-8. The idea was to find a site fitting the Kananaskis 2002 model, which calls for a relatively secluded location.

In June 2008, the Prime Minister announced that he had chosen Huntsville's Deerhurst Resort to host the 2010 G8 summit. This choice was based on the facilities there, suitable for the retreat-like nature of the G8 summit.

Then, at the 2009 Pittsburgh summit in September, Canada announced that it would host a G20 summit on the same weekend as the G8 summit in June 2010.

Clearly, the G-20 is a much larger undertaking than the G-8, with more nations, more delegates, and broader media interest. In fact, Canada invited, in all, more than 30 delegations from countries beyond the G-8 and G-20, as alluded to by Mr. Elcock, including Malawi, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Haiti, Egypt, Colombia, Vietnam, Algeria, Spain, Nigeria, Senegal, and the Netherlands, not to mention international organizations, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, to name a few. As a result, we, the planners, faced a much greater logistical challenge.

Consequently, Muskoka's Deerhurst Resort, the G-8 venue, was simply too small to accommodate the needs of the G-20. Since both the G-8 and the G-20 were to happen on the same weekend, we, the organizers, had to find a site that would mitigate the challenges of hosting two world-class events back to back. What this meant was that the G-20 venue had to be somewhere that limited leaders' movements, minimized costs, and did not unnecessarily extend the time of the combined events, including travel. Toronto, as a result, was the clearest option.

Toronto was considered the best venue for the G-20 summit, given the sheer number of G-20 delegates and the focus on contemporary global economic issues. Toronto also offered the clear advantage of being just over 200 kilometres away from Huntsville, and both sites were close to the Lester B. Pearson International Airport.

Although the summits were held in two locations, the advantage of choosing Toronto and Huntsville as hosts was that the contracts for goods and services could serve both locations, given their relative proximity. It also meant that my office did not need to double up a request for proposals process.

These last two points underscored our overarching consideration in this summit planning, finding economies of scale where possible while accommodating two concurrent international summits, as well as the youth summit and a global summit of business leaders. By hosting these summits the weekend of June 25 to 27, the summit's management office used the same core staff, the same airport, and the same international media centre.

From December 2009 to June 2010, the Summit Management Office organized 29 preparatory meetings, including three ministerial meetings, such as the late-March foreign ministers' meeting which took place across the Ottawa River in Gatineau.

Two of these ministerial meetings were organized with very little notice. This included the Ministerial Preparatory Conference on Haiti in Montreal just a dozen days after Haiti's devastating earthquake in January. Although the Haitian earthquake was not on the agenda of either summit, DFAIT made efficient use of the Summit Management Office by tapping its planning expertise to deliver this conference on such short notice.

In addition to the increased number of preparatory meetings associated with hosting the G-20 summit, the scope of the G-8 agenda was expanded, which required additional meetings focused on the L’Aquila food security initiative and the G-8 accountability working group.

During the summits themselves, our work was comparable to a relay race. As soon as the G-8 summit ended, we immediately turned to supporting the G-20 business leaders summit, which was hosted by the Honourable John Manley of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives in Toronto in the hours before the G-20 summit began. Meanwhile, we supported the official youth summit, which started ahead of the G-8 summit and lasted through to the end of the G-20 summit.

With activities shifting from the Muskoka region to Toronto, university-led delegates observed the summit process, engaged in discussions on summit themes, and met senior officials, ministers, leaders, and other dignitaries. We welcomed more than 150 future leaders to Canada for this youth summit, a life-changing experience for all concerned.

Canada also introduced a new tool for summitry, a virtual G-20, a secure online community for G-20 sherpas and their staff to exchange documents, in part to mitigate the large number of meetings. This initiative was widely acclaimed by our G-20 counterparts. E-discussions and social media were made available to and used by media delegations and the general public on an unparalleled scale.

Conclusion. It was unprecedented in Canadian history to host not only two leader summits but also a youth summit and a summit of business leaders over the course of a single week. The key to these summit successes was our preparedness, which included the 29 preparatory meetings we hosted in the first half of the year.

Hosting just one summit constitutes an activity that is extraordinary to regular government operations, so hosting four summits, the G-8, the G-20, the international youth summit, and a summit of global business leaders, incurred extraordinary work and costs that we mitigated through economies of scale.

I should perhaps add, just as an indication of the kinds of activities that my office had to conduct, that we had a health division within my office, which provided 220 health care workers at seven 24-hour on-site emergency clinics, serving all four summits. We coordinated 61 aircraft arrivals and multiple helicopter movements between Toronto and Huntsville to make sure the leaders kept to their schedules. We did this with a core staff of one summits management office.

The planning of the G8 and G20 summits must be considered in the context of our site selection process, the economies of scale we achieved, and the related events we hosted in support of the summits.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. McGovern. Thank you, Mr. Elcock.

For eight minutes, Madam Coady.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Thank you very much. We certainly appreciate your taking the time to be here today to give us the information that is critical to Parliament and to the people of Canada.

First of all, there is a bit of a discrepancy between what was authorized by Parliament in terms of expenditures around the G-8/G-20 and what the Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated you've spent. The parliamentary authorization was $732.4 million, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer says it's around $930 million. Could you please tell me what the total cost was of the G-8/G-20 summit, including all projects, all expenditures, salaries, overtime, the whole thing? Do you have that information?

[Ward Elcock]

Mr. Chairman, I can only comment with respect to the costs associated with security. I think we're mixing up different issues here. There was an estimated cost of about $930 million, including $50 million in contingency costs, but that was a budgetary estimate. An amount was also included in estimates. The amount included in estimates is less than the estimated budget cost because EBP and accommodation costs are not included in those numbers that were in the estimates, so that number is less than $930--

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Could you give me what you have?

[Ward Elcock]

At this point we don't know what the final security costs will be. In some cases that is because the numbers haven't come in yet. For example, the province in respect of the Ontario Provincial Police and also Toronto city and Huntsville are in for some money, but they have to submit those accounts and they have to be audited before we'll know.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

We don't have the full account as yet is what you are telling me.

[Ward Elcock]

That's right.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

You just mentioned the OPP and the Toronto Police Service. Did they make operational decisions as to where money was being spent? How much was that? Do you have that information?

[Ward Elcock]

I don't know what their expenditures will ultimately be. We had a sense of what their estimated budgetary expenditures would be, but until they actually submit their costs, we won't know precisely what it was.