Government Operations Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2012

[John McBain]

I would be pleased to answer. Thank you for the question.

I mentioned Workplace 2.0 in my remarks, which is about a modern approach to office accommodation. I personally hate the cube farm. We've all seen the Dilbert cartoons, and we have floors of it that were built in the seventies. Workplace 2.0 is about bringing in a different approach: much more open, more natural light, a lot fewer walls, and creating space for collaboration. As the public service renews and we hire generation X and generation Y, they love the space. It's the boomers who are sort of clinging to the walls and the cubes because that's what we grew up with. The new space is open. You can literally see window to window across a floor. I can't remember when we could see that in other space.

What I see in terms of the new recruits, new employees with the public service, is that they very much embrace it and they really enjoy the space. From that part of what we do, we see a high take-up and a high level of satisfaction.

[Geoff Munro]

I can complement that from the scientific side of what the Government of Canada does. I mentioned earlier the move of the laboratory to Hamilton. There we've actually put one of these large screens up in the entranceway of the building. It shows you the minute-by-minute energy usage of the building. It translates into personal behaviour in the building.

To answer your question specifically, the occupants are extremely proud of their ability to do their job and to do it effectively and yet contribute to that blip keeping on going down.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Ms. Weber.

[Caroline Weber]

In our consultations with other government departments, we hear a lot of enthusiasm, especially from employees. If you look at the federal sustainable development strategy, you'll see some targets in there that don't actually have a huge impact in terms of either reducing greenhouse gas emissions or other kinds of environmental footprints. Honestly, reducing our printer ratios is going to matter in terms of electronic waste, but the energy usages are probably going to be smaller.

Employees want to participate and want to have an impact. They want to do something to reduce our impact on the environment. I see a lot of enthusiasm, and we're looking for ways to create targets with which employees feel they can connect more, because greenhouse gas emissions are a bit further away from them and have more to do with the building structure, etc., than their own behaviour in the facility.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

I have one quick follow-up question.

Increased enthusiasm might equal increased productivity, and I'm wondering if that is considered in your cost analysis when you look at all of these strategies.

[Caroline Weber]

I'm quite confident that we haven't factored that in, but anyway it's an interesting thought.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

That is a very interesting point. The one thing that crosses my mind along those lines is that the indoor ambient air quality probably improves as energy efficiency improves, and therefore fewer sick days, and less feeling sluggish and lethargic, although it doesn't help some of us. That's just an aside.

John McCallum.

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

I hope productivity is higher, but as an economist, I'm glad you don't factor it in, because it's extremely difficult to quantify and would be quite contentious, I think.

There was something called the Office of Greening Government Operations, created, I believe, in 2005 in Public Works. I'm wondering if it plays a significant role in all of these processes.

[Caroline Weber]

I am responsible for the Office of Greening Government Operations. That is why I'm here today, and yes, we are the group that leads the consultation across the Government of Canada with respect to developing these goals and targets that you find within the federal sustainable development strategy. We work under the leadership of Environment Canada and the Minister of Environment to develop those new federal sustainable development strategies, targets, goals in those three-year cycles.

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

Thank you.

I'm glad it still functions well, as something created by a former government.

I wanted to just follow up a bit on what the chair said about the federal buildings initiative. He implied the take-up had been limited. Could you tell us when this began, what has happened to the scale of it, and whether you think there is potential for larger scale, or would you like to see more growth than currently exists?

[Carol Buckley]

Thank you. It's an excellent question.

The program got its initial authority in 1991, so it's been around for a while. I would say that we have the capacity. We're dealing with 11 departments right now. We certainly have the capacity to serve those departments and additional departments, and that's why, as I mentioned earlier, we are marketing this quite healthily to our departmental audiences. We would very much like to increase the take-up. I think working with the Public Works Office of Greening Government Operations and tying ourselves in as a service agency to those departments that are bound by the federal sustainable development targets is a good market for us.

I don't have it with me or in memory, but I could provide the committee, if you were interested, with the number of projects we've done per year, and you can see it's very variable. In some years, we've managed to help facilitate a much larger number of projects than other years, and it tends to sort of go up and down. With the new federal sustainable development targets, we find that it's worthwhile to work together and tie this together as a service organization there. So I hope we will have an upswing in uptake in the coming years in order to serve that need.

[Caroline Weber]

In fact, Carol, I think we could make reference to our MOU. We have agreed to work together on a number of projects, with the intent of raising the profile of some of the services that NRCan has to offer and get better uptake. Really, the use of these programs is going to be driven, as Carol has said, by our desire to use it, rather than the external provision of services. We have to find the clients inside first, so we are working together to drive a bit of that market.

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

Thank you, and I think it would be useful to have that information.

Going back to the question of public floggings for people who didn't meet the objective, I want to ask a more serious question. What's the incentive structure within the public service? How important are these targets treated by senior public servants? Hopefully, they'll hit the targets, but are there serious consequences for any department or individual if they don't hit the targets?

[Caroline Weber]

First, I would say it's early days, so we'll see as that moves forward. Deputies talk about these targets on a regular basis. A couple of times a year, our associate deputy and our deputy minister are engaging their colleagues at different fora in order to talk about what the development is, what we're worried about, what everyone might be doing. It's still early days in terms of performance, so I think it's too soon to tell, but I know that each of us takes our commitments quite seriously. Because of the public nature of reporting on this, and the reviews that we all know will come, we're quite confident that there's adequate incentive for everyone to achieve these targets.

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

I'm not sure I'd agree with “early days”. We're seven years into the program and we have eight years to go.

[Caroline Weber]

No, Mr. Chair, the federal sustainable development strategy was only tabled in October of 2010. While the baseline was chosen as 2005, to be consistent with international commitments in this area—as negotiated at Copenhagen, for example—we've worked to be consistent. But the program is really only into its second year.

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

Okay. I stand corrected. The base year is 2005, but not the point at which the exercise began.

[Caroline Weber]

Exactly.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

[Inaudible—Editor]

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

Okay.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

We're going to go to Ron Cannan.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to our witnesses.

Mr. McBain, in your opening comment you mentioned you're only looking after about 1% of the federal buildings, about 31% of the federal inventory. Who looks after the other 69%?

[John McBain]

If you look at the Treasury Board website, there is a long list of federal custodians. The top 14, as Caroline mentioned, which are part of the sustainable development strategy, cover the majority. I have a list here. It's available, as I said, on the web.

Defence has 14,900 buildings in its inventory. As you go down the list, by the time you get to department number 11, it's 1,000 buildings; with department 14, it's 335 buildings. So the number pares down very quickly.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Is there any consideration of Public Works taking on a larger role, having one overseer?

[John McBain]

Not by my initiative.