Government Operations Committee on Feb. 25th, 2014

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Which other employers are you comparing your regime to? The President of the Treasury Board implies that ours is wildly generous and that there's widespread abuse of it and that other companies like Walmart or something don't have the same sick leave regime. What other companies did you use for your comparative study?

[Bill Matthews]

We've actually looked extensively across all industries, not just at the private sector but also in the pseudo-public sector as well. We're one of the few major employers left that actually have this regime. It's about modernizing the regime itself.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Under Shared Services Canada—and this may be a subject for our committee some day as a separate investigation, I suppose—there is $102 million in this appropriation that we're supposed to vote on for procurement of workplace technology device software. That's one hundred and two million dollars for a software contract. Every year I've sat on this committee, we've seen millions and millions of dollars going into software contracts to bring Shared Services to fruition or to make manifest this massive dream that we're going to someday save money by consolidating our Shared Services.

Who is the lucky beneficiary who got a $102-million contract for computer software?

[Bill Matthews]

This actually isn't one contract, Mr. Chair. What's happened here is that departments used to be responsible for procuring end-user device software. That's software for your computer, software like Windows, Adobe, and things like that. Shared Services Canada is now responsible for procuring those types of software across all government. So here we're just transferring the amount that was in each department's budget to do that sort of work, and we're shifting it over to Shared Services Canada so that they can actually—

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Is it more or less? Is this a savings?

[Bill Matthews]

There will be a savings attached to this. We have basically removed money from the reference levels of departments and we've given Shared Services Canada less than what we used to spend. They will negotiate on a government-wide basis and derive savings from that.

This move will also result in standardized software.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Your time is up.

[Bill Matthews]

Mr. Chair, I think Christine wants to add something.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Very well.

Ms. Walker, you have the floor.

[Christine Walker]

For this current fiscal year, there will be savings of $2.1 million as a result of this consolidation, and from April 1 ongoing, that will be $8.7 million. What's also important, as Mr. Matthews stated, is that currently each department has its own contracts with Microsoft or Adobe. The whole purpose of this is to consolidate all of the software purchasing with SSC so we can gain from economies of scale.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

My closing comment on that is that the public doesn't like Shared Services Canada. So if you're only saving $2 million, most end users are frustrated about this centralization or consolidation of Shared Services—the single window business. They don't like it at all. Maybe it's Service Canada....

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

This concludes the first part of our meeting.

Once again, thank you for being here and for your explanations on the supplementary estimates (C), and we hope to have the pleasure of seeing you again soon to discuss the main estimates.

I am going to suspend the meeting for a few minutes. Then we will come back to our agenda and choose the witnesses for a future study. This part of the meeting will be held in camera.

[The committee continued in camera.]