Government Operations Committee on May 12th, 2015

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Not to ministers; I said the departments or ministries.

[Michelle Doucet]

Pardon me?

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

I understand that you don't want to talk about cabinet and ministers in cabinet. But you do provide advice to staff who are in ministries and departments.

[Michelle Doucet]

That's pursuant to our role to provide support and coordination around communications requirements, and the role is set according to the communications policy.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if CRA decides to advertise a particular tax credit, you're in a position to look at the content and give them advice as to whether or not it's useful.

[Michelle Doucet]

When I talked about the rubric of accountability, I talked about it after cabinet and Treasury Board make their decisions. Then it falls to individual departments to implement and, obviously, the expenditure of public funds by each individual department is ultimately the responsibility of the minister in charge of that department.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

But on the content, I'm just talking about the content of a particular ad.

[Michelle Doucet]

I'm not in a position to speak to the content of a particular advertisment.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

So you don't give advice to the departments and ministries with regard to the content of advertisements?

[Michelle Doucet]

The Privy Council Office provides advice on communications matters, which would include advertising matters, as to whether it complies with the government direction that was set out, and also whether that will align with what other departments are doing. So, for instance, I talked about Ebola and other public health concerns. You want to make sure that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing when government goes out to communicate so that citizens have the best possible advice and support from their government.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much. That's the time on this one.

So now we go to Ms. Young for five minutes, please.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you so much for coming and covering such a wide spectrum of very useful information.

I just wanted to ask two questions, and time is always limited, so I do apologize for that.

First, I was quite intrigued by what Mr. Butt was saying in regard to the whole standardization of standards, because we had previous witnesses here regarding this issue. Does PCO have a role in terms of speeding that process up because, clearly, some of that needs to be sped up? And how might PCO play a role in that? That's my first question.

My second question is totally different in that I was very intrigued by your central innovation hub. I wanted to set you loose a little bit to let us know what your hopes and dreams are, or what Canadians' hopes and dreams should be around our expectations around that hub.

Thank you very much.

[Michelle Doucet]

Thank you.

With respect to your first question, I don't have that information with me. But if it's the will of the committee, I'd be happy to go back and see if there's anything I could usefully provide to the committee on the question you asked.

But I have more to tell you about the innovation hub—and Karen, jump in if I miss anything. As I said, the policy context has changed as a result of the 24/7 news cycle and the rapid evolution of technology. Whereas policy used to be the purview of one or two government institutions in previous years, now it's pretty easy for everybody to be a policy expert. I have an almost 19-year-old son at home, and he provides me with his policy views on a regular basis.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

So do I.

[Michelle Doucet]

Yes.

In response to that, the clerk of the public service has made a commitment to really transform the way our policy community provides its advice and the speed at which we do that. Across the government we are seeing a number of innovation hubs arise in discrete areas. At Industry Canada, for instance, there's an innovation hub on small and medium-sized enterprises. We are locating one at PCO to take advantage of the fact that we are a central agency. And if we see work taking place across the government that has a lot of value, particularly if it can be replicated, we can reach down into that department and say, this is really good stuff and we think it should be used across the government or in other regulatory and security departments. Thus, the central nature of the innovation hub.

You can see how it has very much of a connector role in that respect. It also has a catalyst role. Again, because of the bird's eye view we have in the Privy Council Office, we can see different influences coming from different places. We can share that information in areas where policy innovation is needed. We've spoken a lot about the need to improve regulatory alignment. Well, it may be that PCO can play a catalyst role in that regard.

Then, finally, what we want to do is be a resource to all government departments in this regard. One of the interesting things about the investment we're making is that it's not a lot of money. It's a very modest footprint. It has been fitted up to the Workplace 2.0 standard, which is to say “appropriate to the use of public funds”. But anybody in the public service can go there and use the facilities. So it's very much an open space for public servants.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Would you say, then, that while the sky is not falling, the world has changed, and that this government has been fairly responsive and, I would say, fairly forward thinking? You mentioned documents like “Destination 2020”, the blueprint document, and so on that are mapping out how Canada—the bureaucracy, the government—processes, gathers, and applies the information in the new-world of technology, such as with the marine distress communications centre in Vancouver, to increase the availability and working with modern technology. In that case, it moved from a dial-in system to a smart phone system, which is much more useful and better for government—and, further down the road, systems to serve Canadians.

[Michelle Doucet]

One of the change drivers I failed to mention is, of course, demographics with regard to the aging population and what that means in terms of the need for government programs and also the composition of the public service. I talked about the work done in the public service by the previous clerk in launching Destination 2020 and in saying, look, we have this remarkable institution here: we use 200,000 people to support this wonderful country of ours. With the demographics and with the technology drivers that you just outlined, everything is changing really, really quickly. We are in some ways driving the bus while we're changing its tires.

That was really the impetus towards the energy put into Destination 2020. It's a multi-year initiative. It does focus on technology. Technology is a tricky thing, because people's expectation are really, really high, and the pressure to deliver is correspondingly high.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Ms. Young. That concludes your time.

That also concludes the amount of time we have set aside to deal with the Privy Council Office main estimates and the report on plans and priorities.

Thank you for a very thorough and comprehensive job, Madam Doucet and Ms Cahill. That was very helpful and useful to us.

We will suspend briefly while we bring forward our next witnesses.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We'll reconvene our meeting of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

We're pleased to welcome presentation, representatives from the Canada School of Public Service. I believe Ms. Danielle May-Cuconato, vice-president of corporate services and the chief financial officer, will be leading the delegation and making opening remarks.

Ms. May-Cuconato, perhaps you'd like to introduce your other colleagues. The floor is then yours to begin your opening remarks.

[Danielle May-Cuconato, Vice-President, Corporate Services, and Chief Financial Officer, Canada School of Public Service]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chair, I am pleased to appear before the committee, along with my colleagues, Jean-François Fleury, Vice-President of Learning Programs, and Geofredo Garay, Deputy Chief Financial Officer.

I would like to take a few minutes to describe the mandate and activities of the Canada School of Public Service.

The school is the central learning and training institute for federal public servants, providing training in both official languages across Canada.

In 2013-2014 we launched a strategic directions initiative, which is a comprehensive review of our learning services, performance, and business model. The review was needed to ensure that the school continued to be relevant and responsive to the learning needs of the public service in a time of significant technological change and resource pressures.

At the same time, the public service developed a vision and a plan to meet the challenges of the future, an initiative led by the Clerk of the Privy Council called Blueprint 2020. It was in this context that the government adopted a public service-wide commitment to learning to ensure the public servants are supported to do a better job today and build the skills and knowledge needed for tomorrow.

In our 22nd annual report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada, released last week, the clerk made specific mention of the importance of learning, including the school's role. She stated "To better meet learning and training needs, the Canada School of Public Service is revitalizing its curriculum, and modernizing its delivery of learning as part of the new enterprise-wide approach to learning."

Working in partnership with departments, with communities of practices and other stakeholders, the school is transforming. Our efforts are focused on designing and delivering learning that is common to all federal organizations, regardless of their mandate. For public servants, this means increased access to training on common knowledge, skills and functions. For departments and agencies, this provides a framework to support talent and performance management, and allows them to focus on their mandate-specific training needs.

At the public service level, this new approach to learning will help foster a culture of high performance and innovation, and reinforce the importance of continuous learning.

To support the new approach, the school is moving from a funding model based on appropriation and cost recovery to one that is fully funded from appropriations. Implementing this new business model and full delivery of the new common curriculum will be phased in over three years. We have just begun the second year of this transition.

At this point, I would like to provide the committee with details of the school's financial position. The school's current sources of funding are derived from appropriation, revenue generated from cost recovery—

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Madam May-Cuconato, I am sorry to interrupt you briefly, but as you notice the bells are ringing and the lights are flashing. There's a vote on a question of privilege being held in the House.

Seeing that we're only one minute away from the chamber, as a committee and with the consent of the committee we can agree to continue to meet, I would suggest, until perhaps 10 minutes before the bells stop ringing. If we have another 20 minutes we can at least hear your entire presentation and perhaps have time for one round of questioning from each side.

Do we have the consent of the committee?

[Some voices]

Agreed.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Very good.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, Madam May-Cuconato.

[Danielle May-Cuconato]

No problem.

I'll try to maybe shorten it a little bit, if I can, to provide more time for the committee.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Well, you have 20 minutes.