Government Operations Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you for clarifying that.

Mr. Martin, this is not a debate, but a point of order.

I certainly cannot guess the point of order. For my own information, I would like the member to start by telling me the nature of the point of order and to then explain it. Committee members are perfectly within their right to raise a point of order. If the point of order is in fact not one, I will say so and move on.

The point of order in this case had to do with the relevance of the member's comments to the agenda topic. Mr. Martin had five minutes to discuss supplementary estimates (B) and the practices governing ministerial accountability to the committee with respect to supplementary estimates. He can use his five minutes as he chooses, provided that his comments are relevant to the agenda topic. And that seems to be the case. If he chooses not to ask any questions during his five minutes, that is his right. I can't force him to ask questions if his comments are relevant to the topic on the agenda.

Everything he has said in the 2 minutes and 47 seconds he's had so far is relevant to the topic in hand. So I will let him continue for the remainder of his time.

Mr. Martin, you have two-and-a-half minutes left.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Okay, well thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think it is, and I would have debated in the same point of order the point I would make, which is that I can't imagine anything more relevant for the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates to discuss and to reflect on than our obligation to make a thorough and robust examination of the estimates, be they the supplementary or the main estimates, as per the recommendations of the report from this very committee which was tabled last year, and of which 15 out of 17 recommendations the government agreed upon, including the ability of the committee to call the witnesses necessary, including the minister.

We have hundreds of millions of dollars flying by this committee with a cursory examination and no comment from the government. This is what I mean about ministerial accountability. The minister has to come before Parliament to ask permission to spend money just as the Auditor General appears before the public accounts committee to examine how that money was spent. The minister has to come before that spending takes place to get our permission. That is a very fundamental cornerstone of our parliamentary democracy and it's being flagrantly dismissed as an inconvenience by this government. For a member here to try to say that it was unanimous that we all agreed that it was okay for only officials to appear to explain hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of spending is an absolute falsehood. I won't use the word “lie” but it's a misrepresentation of what took place. We insisted—we demanded—and we fought tooth and nail to get the minister here.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

I have to stop you there, because we have a point of order. I hope it is, in fact, one.

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

I'd like to remind my honourable colleague that he really shouldn't be discussing the proceedings of what happened during an in camera meeting. That would be a violation of the rules of the committee. I will mention there is that breaking of a confidence of a discussion that might have happened in an in camera meeting, but there's the outcome of the meeting which we can certainly discuss, and the outcome of the meeting was that the members agreed to invite officials to discuss the supplementary estimates (B).

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Mr. Trottier.

The rules governing our ability to discuss what was said during an in camera meeting are indeed quite clear. The line was almost crossed twice. I am fully aware of the rules and will do everything in my power to ensure they are not broken. I don't think the member crossed the line in this case; he is simply close to it.

In any case, your time is up, Mr. Martin.

I will now turn the floor over to Mr. Maguire for five minutes.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just noted in your comments, Ms. Tromp, that we were looking at the Shared Services Canada planning and managing the IT infrastructure of the government with a view to creating savings and efficiencies and eliminating duplication, and I appreciate that. Could you elaborate on some of the areas where they are eliminating duplication?

[Elizabeth Tromp]

Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Chair, and I'm going to ask Peter Bruce to talk to you about some of those transformation issues.

[Peter Bruce]

Thank you very much for the question.

Mr. Chair, we have essentially been given the mandate initially in three areas, e-mail, data centres and telecommunications, and then subsequently in the workplace technologies or the end-user device space. Some of the savings and economies that we've realized are in all three of those areas.

I'll start with telecommunications. Certainly, by consolidating the acquisition of telecommunications services for the Government of Canada we achieved a scale that got us discounts that were beyond what any individual department could achieve previously and that resulted in some savings. We've also taken an initiative to remove unused lines. When we had this big picture of what was being done across all of government, we actually found that there had been telephone lines, legacy centrex services, that had been in place for a long time. People had been provided with a mobile telephone device and the centrex lines were no longer in use or no longer needed. We're trying to move more and more public servants, wherever possible and wherever it makes sense, to a single device. It can be one of these or a land line depending on which one is needed, but we anticipate about $28 million a year in savings just in that one specific measure.

On the consolidation of data centres, we've been able to close 10 data centres already. We're on track to close about 50 legacy data centres this year. By establishing three new enterprise data centres, which are all ready now to start taking the application workload of the Government of Canada, we are able to shift workload out of legacy data centres that were running old equipment in an old space that was already deteriorating and that were not as reliable nor as efficient in its operation. We're also getting economies there.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you.

Mr. Mongeau, I believe you said, in response to one of the questions just asked, that we have a 55% rental of buildings as opposed to 45%. Could you explain that to me?

[Pierre-Marc Mongeau]

Yes. Thank you.

The figures are approximate. We always try to maintain a balance between what we lease and what we own. Being the owner gives us considerable flexibility. That flexibility increases when we use the private sector for our various rentals and leases all over the country. We make every effort to maintain that balance.

We also make every effort to maintain a balance between the number of employees we have working in Ottawa, on the one hand, and in Gatineau, on the other. That is another percentage we keep an eye on. About 75% of the workforce is in Ottawa and 25% is in the Gatineau area. We are able to closely monitor where we stand financially and, above all, where our portfolio stands using a number of measures and performance indicators.

The figure you mentioned, Mr. Maguire, varies slightly from year to year, but we always strive for the same proportion. And that also maximizes our flexibility when new programs are put in place or major moves need to be carried out.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

Mr. Maguire, you have 15 seconds left if you'd like to ask a very quick question.

I will now hand the floor over to Mr. Byrne for five minutes.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to follow up on the parliamentary precinct. That which is all around you is sometimes most noticeable, or least noticeable. I know that parliamentarians have been given very extensive briefings on this in the past, and we appreciate that information. However, perhaps you could provide the committee—just using some economy of language here, trying to keep this as basic as possible—with a refresher of when the parliamentary rehabilitation project first started, when it will end, how much it will cost, the average cost per year, and other details like that. I'd like to refresh my own memory.

[Nancy Chahwan]

Mr. Chair, the long-term vison and plan, or LTVP as we know it today, was redefined in 2010 to allow for rolling programs of five years of work. I can say that since its inception, we have invested $1.4 billion in the rehabilitation of our parliamentary buildings.

The government has approved another $1.6 billion for the continuation of the phases of work that have been approved. Those include mainly the West Block rehabilitation, the East Block work that has already started, the Sir John A. Macdonald Building south of Wellington, as well as the building at 180 Wellington. We have basically six major capital projects. Aside from those I just mentioned, I would add the Government Conference Centre, to be used as an interim accommodation space for the Senate while we rehabilitate Centre Block, and the visitor welcome centre.

As for the end, it's really by project. This is a long-term vision, so we are doing very intricate sequencing of the work, including interim space, so that we can vacate the buildings we need to get to and rehabilitate them before the building systems become critical, in risk of critical failure.

I can give you a few end dates. We are very happy to say that the Sir John A. Macdonald Building will be the next one to come online, in 2015. We expect to have finished the building at 180 Wellington, including 70 parliamentary office units and committee rooms in 2016. In 2017 we'll see the reopening of the West Block, including the interim chamber. In 2018 we will deliver on the Government Conference Centre rehabilitation.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Going beyond the five-year increments, has there been any valuation or estimation? If you were to complete the entire project and have everything totally done, how many years would it take and what would be the cost?

[Nancy Chahwan]

Mr. Chair, answering this would be speculation on my part at this point, the reason being that the complexity of the work means that we have a significant component of the activity that is a planning component, and that allows us to look at all the pieces of it. Going to five-year programs of work allows us to get more precision in terms of what the requirements are, the requirements of our parliamentary partners, and how we can best answer them.

We are addressing the most urgent work. For example, Centre Block, the building we're in right now, is expected to be in critical risk of failure for the building systems in 2019, so everything we are doing right now and the sequencing of the work that is being completed gradually is to allow us to empty Centre Block before that date. The planning for Centre Block is under way, but I don't have any precision right now as to how much it would cost.

It's the same thing for the East Block. We are going ahead with the most urgent work for the 1867 wing, but we know that there is more work that will be required for the building systems and for the interior walls. That will only happen after we finish the work on the Centre Block, because we have studies that show that the building systems can be sustained until 2030.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Why would there be—

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

You have just a few seconds left, Mr. Byrne.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

No, that's fine. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Mr. Hillyer, you have five minutes.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

You mentioned critical failure of building systems. What does that mean?

[Nancy Chahwan]

I know those words are kind of scary, but they're really true. I can give you the example of what happened with the West Block. Two weeks after we vacated the West Block, there was a significant break of water pipes and there was significant flooding. That means that if the building had not been vacated for its rehabilitation, we would have had to shut down operations with no advance notice. That would have significantly hindered the operations of the government.

The way we can estimate or qualify the risk of failure of the building systems is by having regular building condition reports. We hire third parties to come and assess the state of our systems. I'm talking electrical, mechanical, water pipes, everything. That infrastructure for the Centre Block is indeed at critical risk of failure as of 2019, but right now, with the activity sequencing and with the progress of the work on time and on budget, it means that we should be able to vacate Centre Block and move everybody into the interim spaces on time before we get to that critical date.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

You mentioned that the Senate was going to be moving to East Block. What's the timing for the House of Commons chamber? When is it going to be vacated? Where is it going to go?

[Nancy Chahwan]

Thank you for that question.

If I may, the Senate will be moving to the Government Conference Centre on Rideau and the interim chamber will be located in that building. As for the House of Commons, the interim chamber will be located in the West Block in the infill. We are currently excavating the infill and we are currently tendering for the roof structure that will cover that infill, and that will be the site of the interim House of Commons chamber.

[Jim Hillyer, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

When do you expect that to happen?

[Nancy Chahwan]

All the work for the West Block will be done in 2017. This is when we expect the interim chamber to be delivered to the House of Commons.