Government Operations Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2011

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Well, that's ridiculous, but anyways, thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mike. That concludes your time.

Mathieu, it's your turn.

It's Ève...?

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

I didn't speak in the first hour, so it's back to me.

My question is about the request for $900,000 in funding intended to support the coordination of the government communications strategy as part of Canada's Economic Action Plan.

Given the gradual reduction in Canada's Economic Action Plan, how do you intend to spend this money?

[Bill Pentney]

That's a good question. It's true that the first stage of Canada's Economic Action Plan, so the response to the economic crisis, is wrapping up.

But the last budget, the one for 2011, continues to allow certain measures. And the government has announced a series of measures aimed at economic recovery. This is an integrated communications plan that includes a continued effort to keep Canadians informed, through a website, mainly. It also contains other integrated communications exercises that will inform Canadians about the benefits provided in the budget. This is not just the first step.

It is true that the first stage of the economic action plan is winding down. A number of aspects of the website and other communication activities related to that stimulus part of the economic action plan are coming to an end.

The government's budget, which is the next phase of the economic action plan, announced a series of measures. There has been a series of advertising and other outreach and communications activities related to informing Canadians of those measures. That's what the coordination activity today relates to.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

The Privy Council Office has reduced its spending by $1.1 million, though the target was $2 million. I am referring to the sixth item you talked about. So the Privy Council Office is the organization with the worst performance in reducing its expenses. By comparison, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada has reached 75% of its budget cutting objective.

Why did you not manage to reach your objective? How do you propose to do so in the next financial year?

[Marc Bélisle]

If I am not mistaken, you are talking about the amount of $1.1 million for the strategic review.

We have put major budget cutting initiatives in place. We have three years to get the plan working: this year and the two subsequent years. We have started making changes that involve significant amounts of money. Those changes cannot come about overnight. Planning for them and implementing them will require some time.

Bill Pentney is leading one of those initiatives, in the area of communications. He may wish to talk about that initiative, which is one of our largest.

[Bill Pentney]

We have tried to modernize our means of communication by maximizing the use of resources.

I'll give you a couple of examples of the kinds of things we've undertaken so far.

I know that the House of Commons provides members with a daily press clipping service; I think it's called Quorum. The Privy Council Office is now providing to all of our employees, every morning, an electronic press clipping service, so we no longer photocopy press clippings or cut and paste press clippings. Through that process, we've saved a considerable amount of resources.

We've also consolidated a number of subscriptions to eliminate any duplication or overlap, and we've gone to eliminating newspaper subscriptions. We're using an online press service, something called Library PressDisplay. I shouldn't be advertising for it, but.... Every morning you can look up the front pages of about 1,000 daily newspapers, if you so choose, through a subscription that we're providing.

We're also looking at how we can modernize our approach to media monitoring so as to reduce costs and still provide a quality of service that the Prime Minister, other ministers, and senior officials in the Privy Council Office require. That's a fairly significant modernization effort. It will take several years to implement it in full.

Through that process, we will be able to reduce our expenditures in a number of areas. We're finding that through some of the modernization we're actually expanding our services. Rather than the 60 or 70 people who are getting the press clippings now, all PCO employees will have access to the electronic press clippings that we provide. In a sense, we think we're providing a better service and a more general service. It is a pretty significant transformation exercise. That's just one of several exercises under way in the context of the strategic review.

[Marc Bélisle]

Another of our initiatives involves combining our library services with those in other departments. That initiative is another one that is now underway.

Changes like that do not happen overnight. It takes a certain amount of time to put them in place, even to find partners to help us move forward with them. Unfortunately, some of them take time to get rolling.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mr. Bélisle.

Your time has expired, Ève. Thank you.

For the Conservatives, Scott Armstrong.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you.

Thank you for being here today.

I think one of the most successful programs you have run is Canada's economic action plan--the promotional campaign for that, the signs and projects showing Canadians how taxpayers' money was used effectively to combat the recession--and really, the results of that program have been spectacular with Canada's economic performance so far.

Recently you've announced a large procurement, probably the largest military procurement in the history of the country, the shipbuilding procurement, and where I'm from on the east coast, this is probably one of the greatest opportunities we have to create jobs, to train people, and to keep people home who had to go out west previously for employment.

Is there any consideration by PCO in regard to employing a similar type of program to help educate the people on what training they can get and what is going to be offered by the federal government, and how we're going to work directly with the province and the winning contractor, the Irving shipyards--we could also do it in B.C.--to make sure that the people who live on the Atlantic coast and the people who live across the country get as much benefit from that program as they can get? Is there any consideration of that?

[Bill Pentney]

I'll take that question as well, Mr. Chair.

There is a continual examination of the ways in which Canadians can be informed of the benefits and services that are available to them, now through the budget, and through exercises like the national shipbuilding strategy. As that unfolds, I think it reflects the modern world of communications. The government is no longer in the business of issuing a press release once a day or whatever. There's a much more active ongoing communication effort with Canadians and a two-way communication effort with Canadians.

I won't speak for the shipbuilding strategy but I would say that to the extent that the economic action plan website continues to receive on average about 3,000 unique visitors every day right now, there's an indication that Canadians continue to look to the Web for access to benefits and services. To the extent that there can be a degree of commonality, we found as well that the common look and feel associated with the economic action plan signage, advertising websites, and otherwise has increased Canadians' recall rate and just the basic understanding that this is a federal program and they can go and look for more benefits.

That common look and feel is an element that has proven to be very successful and that relates in part to the branding work that we're doing now to try to find out whether there are ways of simply continuing to reinforce for Canadians that there are benefits that are available to them.

So the shipbuilding strategy, as it unfolds, will be part of a wider communication effort to try to make sure that Canadians both understand the benefits that are available to them and have practical ways that drive them to a website or direct them to other ways of getting government information so they can learn how to get access to those benefits that interest them.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I appreciate that. We look forward to that.

On the human smuggling issue, it's more of a horizontal issue. What is PCO's role in the horizontal issue of human smuggling?

[Marc Bélisle]

As you know, Mr. Elcock is the special adviser to the national security adviser to the Prime Minister. This initiative encompasses a lot of departments: RCMP, DFAIT, the Canada Border Services Agency, and National Defence, just to mention a few. When you have such a horizontal display of an initiative, you need somebody to coordinate all these efforts to maximize the mission you're trying to accomplish. That's one of Mr. Elcock's roles.

Another of his roles is to engage with the southeast Asian countries to foster cooperation from some of these countries and to educate and train them to help us combat human smuggling. Mr. Elcock travels a lot and goes to these areas to get that cooperation. He attends international fora where human smuggling is being discussed, along with ways to combat the problem, and he's also looking at ways to change our legislation or these types of things to make it easier to process any illegal human smuggling that would occur here.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

So basically he has a leadership role and coordinates all the other departments and agencies that are involved. It's basically a strategy that involves many people. It's great that we have some coordination at the top level so the right hand knows what the left hand is doing.

[Marc Bélisle]

That's exactly right.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

You're right on time there. Thank you.

Next, Liberal John McCallum is here.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to our witnesses.

This is a bit rude of me, but I have a TV commitment in about two minutes, so what I'd like to do is ask a few questions and then rudely leave, probably before you give all the answers. But then I can read your answers in the transcripts.

I have questions in two areas, first on the expenditure of $1.1 million in the Public Appointments Commission Secretariat. To my knowledge, that was brought into being by the Federal Accountability Act five years ago or so but has never been staffed. I don't understand why we're spending $1.1 million on something that doesn't seem to be functioning, unless I have something wrong there.

My second set of questions is about another $1.1 million, and this is in the strategic review savings for PCO. My first question on this is that you seem to be saying on page 117 that you saved that $1.1 million, but then you're putting it back into other areas of PCO and effectively spending what you saved, which didn't seem to be the purpose of the exercise. Secondly, I think you were due in the budget to find $2 million of savings, so are you going to find the extra $900,000? Finally, are we going to receive information in some detail on what programs or functions have been eliminated or cut to achieve these savings?

Those are my questions. I regret that I have to leave. My apologies.

[Marc Bélisle]

I'll start with the first one, your question on PACS. We always budget $1 million or close to $1 million every year; however, $1.1 million is not being spent. Only about $300,000 is being spent, because the secretariat is there to be able to support a commissioner when the government decides to appoint one. At this point, they're working to be ready to support when a nomination comes. That money is being asked for, but we're not spending $1 million; rather, it's around $300,000 for the secretariat.

The second question was on strategic review. We have a lot of different $1.1 million references. The $1.1 million request in our strategic review, versus the millions we're asking for all these other initiatives, is really completely separate. We really did do a strategic review, identified the areas that we needed to address, and made some reductions to find efficiencies--and even the transformation activities, such as Mr. Pentney just mentioned. That exercise has been done.

However, there have been other activities that the PCO needs to support, and it needs the funding to be able to support them--such as human smuggling, which is housed in PCO. We need that money to be able to continue to do that activity. They are completely different items, because we have different roles and different responsibilities.

There was also a question on the difference between the $2 million and the $1.1 million for strategic review. It's basically because ministers' offices were subject to a cut of about $1.7 million prior to the strategic review. Therefore, when the strategic review exercise was being done, we had some discussions with the Treasury Board Secretariat to say that we already had cuts for the ministers' offices, so we were able to receive a credit of $0.9 million, from the $2 million to the $1.1 million, in order to not have double cuts in those areas. Because there was already a cut to ministers' offices, and the PCO supports several ministers.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

John still has almost one minute left, so maybe I'll ask a question that he would probably have asked.

Further to the Public Appointments Commission Secretariat, I know that it's a relatively small amount of money, but how do they spend $300,000 when they don't exist? There is no Public Appointments Commission or commissioner.

[Marc Bélisle]

It's basically the secretariat. It's a couple of employees.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

What do they do?

[Marc Bélisle]

Again, they're preparing...they're working on—

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

They're waiting for Godot.

[Marc Bélisle]

They're doing all the preliminary work, preparing a code.... I think they're working on a code for when appointments are being made--