Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
With me are Monsieur Daniel Plourde, the assistant secretary and CFO, and Madame Anik Lapointe, our director of corporate services.
We welcome the opportunity to appear before your committee. Because the secretariat is very unlike other federal agencies, I would like, with your permission, Mr. Chair, to give the committee a brief outline of who we are and what we do.
We were established pursuant to an agreement at the first ministers conference in May 1973. Following that decision, an order in council was passed on November 29, 1973, to designate the secretariat a separate department for purposes of the Financial Administration Act.
Although the secretariat is a federal department, in practice it is an intergovernmental agency whose operational budget is co-funded by the provinces. Our 33 full-time employees are made up of federal, provincial, and territorial public servants.
The secretariat has the capacity to serve approximately 100 conferences per year. The secretariat reports to all governments annually. We report to Parliament through the President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada.
Our mandate is to serve federal, provincial, and territorial governments in the planning and conduct of senior-level intergovernmental conferences. Our primary objective is to relieve client departments of the numerous technical and administrative tasks associated with the planning and conduct of such conferences, thereby enabling them to concentrate on the substantive issues. We serve conferences in virtually every major sector of intergovernmental activity. Our services are available across Canada.
In addition, the secretariat is the custodian of a unique collection of federal, provincial, and territorial archives. This collection is made up of documents tabled by delegations at conferences served by the agency since its creation in 1973.
I would like to emphasize, Mr. Chair, that the secretariat does not convene conferences; we respond to decisions taken by governments to meet on national or specific issues. Decisions concerning the location of such meetings, their number in a given year, and their timing and duration are all factors beyond our control. These, however, directly affect the level of our expenditures in each fiscal year.
We are fully committed to meeting the federal government's priority of returning to a balanced budget and of transforming our service delivery model while evolving alongside the changing needs of our clients. Furthermore, we are dedicated to supporting the federal, provincial, and territorial clerks and cabinet secretaries and their efforts to modernize and transform how intergovernmental business is conducted by introducing new and efficient methods of collaboration.
Following Budget 2012, which resulted in a 10% reduction in the secretariat's annual budget over three years, we committed to supporting government initiatives to modernize and transform our services and to evolving with the changing needs of our intergovernmental clients.
In the wake of those changes, the secretariat has decided to review its organizational structure and employee workloads and responsibilities, so as to better adapt its structure to the cyclical requirements of intergovernmental conferences. That will help reduce its payroll. In addition, we are actively participating in interdepartmental committees, with the objective of studying, collaborating on and finding innovative solutions to develop shared service opportunities that affect small agencies' internal services.
We have implemented interdepartmental agreements with other agencies and departments to obtain support in areas of special expertise, such as human resources services with the shared services branch of Public Works and Government Services Canada.
Moreover, the secretariat is part of the first wave of Workplace 2.0. We are currently reviewing and replacing telephones and computer equipment to adapt to the mobility principles established by Workplace 2.0 and the vision of Shared Services Canada.
With the goal of aligning our services with the vision of the federal government and the objectives of the federal, provincial and territorial clerks and cabinet secretaries, the secretariat has undertaken a major service transformation program. Special emphasis has been placed on transforming and modernizing our delivery model through projects using new technologies, including videoconferencing and web tools.
We are pleased to announce that, as of April 1, 2013, the secretariat has the capacity to provide videoconferencing services to its federal, provincial and territorial clients. We are currently working on developing virtual conference services, which will be up and running starting in April 2014.
Our agency truly encompasses the spirit of innovation and the essence of shared services in the federal government by offering increasingly important cost efficiencies and economies of scale. In addition, we also offer the clear advantage of confidentiality, continuity, neutrality, and expertise when organizing intergovernmental meetings.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, I'm proud to say that 2013 marks our 40th anniversary. The service we provide assists governments across Canada to move towards more effective and efficient intergovernmental collaboration. Those collaborative relations are an integral part of the successful functioning of the Canadian federation. This is precisely why federal, provincial, and territorial governments have been relying on the unique expertise, experience, and professionalism of the secretariat for four decades.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.