Government Operations Committee on April 25th, 2013

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Last year, I asked a representative of the Business Transformation and Renewal Secretariat what kind of results could be expected in the secretariat's case. At that time, I was told that it may be a bit too soon to speculate, since the activities were just beginning.

Has an initial report on those activities been produced? Can we see it?

[Filipe Dinis, Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Business Transformation and Renewal Secretariat , Privy Council Office]

Thank you for the question.

I will begin by letting the committee know that

the secretariat has a responsibility. One of its mandates is to provide policy and secretariat support to the priorities and Planning Sub-Committee on Government Administration. Over the last seven months or so, the committee has met approximately 13 times. The result of those deliberations was seen in the recent budget announcement wherein certain decisions were reflected in terms of efficiencies and cost savings.

I'll flag a few of them that were as a result of the deliberations of the committee, and in particular the reduction in travel costs across government, the increased use of video conferencing to enable that reduction to occur, and decisions around the centralized procurement of end-user devices.

There was also a targeted review—

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

If I may, I would like to add a quick comment. It is common sense to use videoconferencing and rationalize expenditures. Did you go beyond that for the millions that have already been invested?

[Filipe Dinis]

Yes, all our actions have resulted in savings of about $618 million over five years.

Those concrete decisions—for example, the travel reduction was approximately $43 million per year in reduced travel costs—will be enabled and facilitated by an increase in vehicles like video conferencing, telepresence, etc., so there are concrete actions that will be taken to effect those savings.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Mr. Dinis, I have to stop you there. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Blanchette.

For the Conservatives, Kelly Block.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to welcome you to the committee as well. It's always good to get the testimony of individuals from the Privy Council.

My question will focus on the report on plans and priorities.

I note in your report on page 6 that you talk about other risks to PCO operations. You highlight the fact that, as announced in Canada's economic action plan, part of the government's agenda is to refocus government and its programs, and that in order to support this objective you will undertake several deficit reduction measures, including reviewing business processes across the department to achieve administrative efficiencies and redefining internal service levels accordingly. You go on to highlight a number of other things you will do.

In a previous appearance you talked about implementing deficit reduction measures, so could you tell us how that has impacted on PCO employees? Do you have any updates you could give us in that regard?

[Michelle Doucet]

I'd be pleased to do that. Perhaps I'll start with the impact on the Privy Council Office's workforce.

In my appearances before you in 2012 and 2013, I tried to keep you up to date as we were going through the WFA process. I was careful to caveat my responses with “this is ongoing” and “this is a snapshot in time”. The last time I was here, I talked about some of the best practices we used to try to support our employees during that process. I'll talk about those a little bit again.

We are now at a point, one year into it, when I can give you I think quite a clear snapshot of what workforce adjustment has meant to us at the Privy Council Office. Of course our budget is mostly people, employees, so that's where we felt the greatest impact of our deficit reduction measures.

We began this last April. We told 141 employees in total that their jobs might be affected. That was over the course of the past year. Of those 141 affected employees, 79 of them received opting letters, or were offered career transition measures. This represents about 9.3% of the Privy Council Office's indeterminate population of public servants. Of those who received the opting letters—i.e., we're eliminating your job, and you now have the following options to choose from, with four months to make a decision—all but seven employees were either placed or left the government.

The remaining seven employees now have a legal surplus priority status with the Public Service Commission. They're being supported, on an employee-by-employee basis, by our human resources staff to find continued employment in the public service, because that's what they said they want to do. By October of this calendar year, all of those folks will either have been placed or will have left the public service.

As I said, we had a number of best practices. We had a special committee, with bargaining agents, to keep them up to date every two weeks. I chaired that committee and met with them. We also had an ADM-level champion to help folks—those who said “Look, I'd like to stay”—find jobs.

Finally, we had a plan for every person who got an opting letter on how we would support them. There was a plan for every employee.

I think, as a result of that, we were able to support folks well and keep conflict to a minimum. We only had three public service staffing tribunal complaints, all of which were resolved successfully through informal conflict resolution before they went to tribunal.

That's the people aspect of what it meant.

I believe there was another aspect to your question.

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

No, I think it was really about getting an update on how it impacted your employees.

[Michelle Doucet]

The last thing I would say, then, is that the numbers I have given you might shift a little bit, but minimally now. We're actually a little bit ahead of schedule, because folks who got the opting letters made decisions quickly. Many of them made decisions to take one of the options and to leave the government, or were able to find a job.

So we're ahead of schedule in terms of the impact on people, and we're now at a place where we're able to start to take stock and move forward.

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

Okay.

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Kelly. I'm afraid your time is up. Five minutes go very quickly.

Next, for the Liberals, we have John McCallum.

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

Thank you.

I'd like to thank you all for being here.

To Mr. McArdle, your job is to arrange intergovernmental conferences. To my knowledge, in the last seven or eight years there has not been one formal first ministers conference.

I know there are others, but I would imagine that first ministers conferences require more effort and planning. Does this mean you've had a fairly dramatic reduction in your workload over the last...well, since the arrival of this government?

[André McArdle]

There has been a reduction in the number of conferences we've been serving. If we look, for instance, at 2005-06, that year we did 115. This coming fiscal year we're predicting about 70-odd conferences. But it's not necessarily due to.... There are circumstances that go beyond the policy of the federal government that have an impact on meetings. For instance, two years ago there were seven provincial elections, and obviously when that happens there is less intergovernmental activity.

We still do first minister-level conferences, but they're at the provincial-territorial level. We do the western premiers' conference, and we do the conference when the New England governors meet with the eastern Canadian premiers.

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

Thank you.

My next question is about the Business Transformation and Renewal Secretariat. I believe this is a relatively new addition to PCO. Does it fall under “Program Activity 1.3: Public service leadership and direction”?

[Filipe Dinis]

Mr. Chair, it is indeed a new organization. It was established in September of 2012.

The responsibilities fall under three different PAA structures, the first one being that the government's agenda and decision-making are supported and implemented. The second PAA structure it falls under is cabinet committees' advice and support, and the third one is public service leadership and direction. So there is a distribution among those three.

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

Thank you.

I notice that the public service leadership and direction budget has been cut in half, more or less, from $4.5 million to $2.4 million, or something like that. If at least a part of this transformation and renewal was added to that budget, that would mean an even bigger cut for the rest of the people.

I'd like to know, first of all, what is the budget of the Business Transformation and Renewal Secretariat? And what was cut to achieve that reduction, which looks as if it's at least 50%?

[Filipe Dinis]

Mr. Chair, I have a two-part response.

First, the budget for the 2013-14 time period is $3.8 million.

The second part of the response is the fact that the whole budget for the public service renewal component was reflected in the third PA structure I referenced—public service leadership and direction. At the time, in 2012-13, because it precluded the creation in the main estimates, it was all reflected under that third PA structure. It precluded the creation of the organization, which came about in September.

As a result of the creation of the Business Transformation and Renewal Secretariat, there was a redistribution of the budget that previously was reflected in only one of the PA structures. So in essence there wasn't necessarily a reduction or a cut to the public service renewal envelope per se; it was redistributed among the other three.

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

I don't understand. The budget of public service leadership and direction was $4.6 million in 2011-12 and now it's $2.4 million, so a reduction of $2.2 million, almost half.

My question is, what was cut?

[Marc Bélisle]

In part, the million dollars for public service renewal was moved. There is $1 million that came out of PA 1.3, and that was moved to either PA 1.1 or 1.2. So out of that $2 million you're talking about, there is $1 million that is just for that.

On top of that, in our budget 2012 savings there was an initiative called the Canada-Australia exchange program, which was eliminated. That program was over $500,000, and it was all in PA 1.3. There were some further little cuts in those areas.

But the bulk of the reduction is the move of the PA, because of the new structure of the BTRS, and the Canada-Australia program. Those are the two biggest elements of reduction for PA 1.3.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

John, I'm afraid your time is up.

Thank you.

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

Okay.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Next, for the Conservatives, Bernard Trottier.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you for coming in this morning.

I'm looking at the report on plans and priorities. We're in the business of supply today; we want to approve some estimates for the 2013-14 fiscal year, but I find that the report on plans and priorities is a more useful document if we're trying to ask strategic questions, in a sense. We can view three years back and three years forward.

Looking at the total reductions in Privy Council Office spending, we see 2010-11 at $160 million and a steady trend going up to 2015-16 at $119 million; these are nominal dollars, too. It's a pretty significant trend.

The lion's share of those reductions across that six-year period is really internal services, item 1.5, where I see spending going from $55.7 million in 2010-11 all the way down to $37.9 million in 2015-16. I want to understand something about the internal services. To what extent are some of those expenditures migrating to Shared Services Canada, for example? Does that mean there'll be some increase in expenses somewhere else within the overall function of government?

[Michelle Doucet]

Let me first of all define what internal services means to the Privy Council Office, and as the ADM for corporate services branch, I'm uniquely placed to do that. It includes finance, planning, HR, IT, information management...I'll just stop at information management for a bit, because at the Privy Council Office that includes all of the correspondence to support the Prime Minister, the portfolio ministers, and the department itself. Then it includes all of the record keeping, including the cabinet document system—information management. It includes the administration division, so it's in charge of the 16 buildings in which we are located, contracts, mail room, and of course access to information and privacy. Those are internal services, all of those areas that fall under my purview, plus at the Privy Council Office it includes legal services and security operations, which report up through other structures.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

If I could interrupt, these look like terrific numbers, by the way, for the Privy Council Office when it comes to expenditure management. I just want to get a sense of whether these are true bottom-line savings or if the costs are appearing somewhere else, in somebody else's estimate.