Evidence of meeting #8 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pco.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Michelle Doucet  Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
Karen Cahill  Executive Director, Finance and Corporate Planning Division, Privy Council Office
Liseanne Forand  President, Shared Services Canada
Benoît Long  Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Transformation, Service Strategy and Design Branch, Shared Services Canada

3:30 p.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault

Good afternoon to you all. This is our committee's eighth meeting. As in our previous meetings, we will be considering supplementary estimates (B) 2013-2014. We will also be considering the Departmental Performance Report for 2012-2013.

During our first hour, we will be hearing from two officials from the Privy Council Office, Ms. Michelle Doucet, Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, and Ms. Karen Cahill, Executive Director, Finance and Corporate Planning Division.

Thank you for coming. You have 10 minutes for your opening remarks. Committee members will then ask you questions.

Ms. Doucet, you have the floor for 10 minutes.

3:30 p.m.

Michelle Doucet Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office

Thank you and good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and committee members.

Thank you for inviting us to appear before you today.

As you know, I am accompanied by Ms. Karen Cahill, Executive Director of the Finance and Corporate Planning Division of the Corporate Services Branch, in the Privy Council Office.

My introductory comments are about the 2013-2014 supplementary estimates (B) for the Privy Council Office as well as its Departmental Performance Report for 2012-2013.

In these supplementary estimates, PCO is seeking $1.2 million for various items which I will explain.

The $1.2 million for activities related to the continued implementation of Canada's migrant smuggling prevention strategy is headed by Mr. Ward Elcock. Mr. Elcock was appointed by the Prime Minister as the special advisor on human smuggling and illegal migration on September 15, 2010, with an overall mandate to coordinate the Government of Canada's strategy and response to migrant smuggling. This strategy balances preventive efforts with strategic and diplomatic engagement and is complemented by support for capacity building. Canada's engagement with international partners directly resulted in positive outcomes. In the last two years, Canada has successfully secured cooperation in transit countries in Southeast Asia and West Africa. PCO works closely with four other federal agencies to further Canada's objectives on this important initiative. This item was approved after the preparation of the 2013-14 main estimates, which explains why the funding is sought through these supplementary estimates.

$30,000 is for the transfer of the Outstanding Achievement Award Program from the Treasury Board Secretariat to PCO, beginning in 2013-2014. The Outstanding Achievement Award Program, which started in 1966, is distinct from other awards as it is the Prime Minister's award and accords the highest expression of recognition for senior leaders in the public service of Canada. The Outstanding Achievement Award Program recognizes the sustained and outstanding performance of career public servants occupying full-time positions at the executive or deputy minister level or equivalent. The award itself is a gold pin, a work of Canadian art with a maximum value of $5,000, and a formal citation signed by the Prime Minister.

The Outstanding Achievement Award selection committee is composed of distinguished Canadians who are external to the public service and represent a cross- section of regions, backgrounds and experiences. Their mandate is to review each nomination and make recommendations to the Prime Minister. Previously, all the administrative support of the Outstanding Achievement Award Program was provided by the Treasury Board Secretariat. This included managing the call letter process, receipt of nominations, liaison and secretariat support to the selection committee, and coordination of the award ceremony.

Responsibility and resources were transferred to the senior personnel secretariat within PCO, in its role of supporting the Prime Minister and the Clerk in the management of the senior leadership of the public service. Funds are being transferred from the Treasury Board Secretariat to PCO through the supplementary estimates and there is no net new impact on the fiscal framework.

The increases in PCO's appropriations will be partially offset by a reduction of $69,121 related to measures announced in Canada's economic action plan 2013 to reduce departmental travel costs by 5%, and to boost productivity by using modern alternatives to travel. The overall reduction for the whole-of-government is in the amount of $42.7 million, and of this amount as I have indicated PCO's share represents $69,121.

This completes the explanation of PCO's 2013-14 supplementary estimates (B). I will now briefly summarize PCO's departmental performance report for the fiscal year 2012-13.

Over the course of April 1, 2012, to March 31, 2013, the Privy Council Office played a central advisory and coordinating role to support the government in furthering its objectives, pursuant to its mandate to provide professional, non-partisan advice and support to the Prime Minister and cabinet. Inside our department, PCO also implemented a number of initiatives to streamline its own business processes and enhance operational efficiency in support of the government's deficit reduction goals. PCO met its planned level of performance in support of its four organizational priorities in 2012-13, and I will take this opportunity to tell you about that work.

To support the Prime Minister in exercising his overall leadership responsibility, as l have said, PCO provided professional, non-partisan advice and support to the Prime Minister and portfolio ministers on a wide range of issues and policies, including those pertaining to social, economic, regional development, and legal matters. PCO provided advice on the constitutional principles of our system of government and the prerogative responsibilities of the Prime Minister, such as the structure and organization of government. PCO also supported the Prime Minister's engagement with world leaders, assisting with 15 visits abroad and helping to welcome 10 such leaders to Canada. It supported the Prime Minister and the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs in 50 bilateral engagements with their provincial and territorial counterparts throughout the year.

In order to focus on key policy and legislative areas and to strengthen medium-term policy planning, PCO played a central monitoring and coordination role for the government-wide implementation of Canada's economic action plan 2012, and supported the formulation of Canada's economic action plan 2013. As well, PCO supported a total of 147 cabinet and cabinet committee meetings and a total of 130 deputy minister meetings over the course of the year. PCO also coordinated an initiative with deputy minister policy committees to identify and examine medium-term policy planning issues within their respective mandates.

PCO was also able to establish the governance mechanisms necessary to coordinate and oversee the government's implementation of the Canada-U.S. Perimeter Security and Economic Competitive Action Plan. PCO coordinated and supported the process for 35 government bills that were introduced in the year, of which 24 were passed by Parliament. In addition, PCO monitored significant domestic and international developments throughout the year in order to help the government effectively manage and coordinate appropriate responses.

To support management and accountability of government, PCO provided the Prime Minister and the Clerk of the Privy Council with advice and support on public service renewal, business transformation, and the human resources management of senior leaders. We worked to find solutions that pooled the efforts and resources of departments, drive excellence and renewal, and ensure that the public service works effectively and efficiently as an enterprise.

We focused on strengthening leadership capacity in the public service within its senior ranks and helped identify succession needs. This included the appointment or movement of 32 different senior leaders at the deputy minister level. PCO led the timely development of the Clerk's Twentieth Annual Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada and also provided ongoing secretariat and analytical support to the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee on the Public Service.

PCO also supported the Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River by securing funding for its operations, as well as by providing timely administrative support and advice throughout the year.

As you know, the commission's report was issued on October 31, 2012 and the operations of the commission were then wound down.

Finally, the Privy Council Office met these challenges while effectively implementing its deficit reduction commitments. This included, among other measures, the continued development of a new library services model; the streamlining of PCO's records centres to reduce resources dedicated to managing departmental paper records in support of the ongoing transformation of the department into an e-enabled organization; the continued rationalization of informatics and technical services by decreasing the number of supported printers and applications; and the re-engineering of the intergovernmental affairs function by creating a federal-provincial-territorial relations secretariat within the plans and consultations and intergovernmental affairs branch.

As you may know, PCO's commitment to deficit reduction means that there are now fewer jobs at the Privy Council Office. To minimize the impact on people, PCO successfully managed the workforce adjustment process in a fair and transparent manner, while treating affected staff with respect and making it a key priority to support them through this process.

In closing, l would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to inform you of the initiatives related to the 2013-14 supplementary estimates (B) as well as PCO's departmental performance report for 2012-13.

We would be pleased to answer your questions.

3:40 p.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault

Thank you, Ms. Doucet.

We will now move right into questions from committee members.

Mr. Martin, you have five minutes.

3:40 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Madam Doucet. It's nice to see you again. Welcome back.

The government operations committee, of course, is the oversight committee for the PCO. This is why we invite you to give your departmental reports here, and we certainly welcome those.

In that light, though—I wear two hats, in a sense, because I also chair the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics—I have a question for you regarding your departmental review.

First, where specifically in your policies is it written that when a person leaves you destroy all the e-mails and correspondence associated with that person?

We've been hearing that it's standard protocol, and in fact PCO policy, that when a person leaves the employ of the PCO, all correspondence and e-mails are immediately destroyed. I find this in conflict with, as I say, my other role on the access to information committee, where it's in fact law to document and to retain documents of the activities of government.

Is the PCO somehow excluded from the Access to Information Act and the requirements to create documents and to retain documents?

3:45 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office

Michelle Doucet

Thank you for your question, Mr. Chair.

I can assure you that the Privy Council Office is not excluded from the Access to Information Act.

First of all, I think it is important to appreciate that, based on the non-partisan nature of the public service, departments and ministers' offices have two complementary but different sets of rules around records management.

Ministers' offices are governed by various pieces of legislation and policies and court decisions. One of the things these say is that records of ministers' offices are not subject to the Access to Information Act unless they're under the control of the department. They also say that ministers' offices have to manage their records in a certain way.

On the public service side, we also follow the rules set out in various policies and pieces of legislation that tell us what to keep and what to delete. For example—

3:45 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

But we have an Information Commissioner who adjudicates what information should be made public and what information shouldn't. She can't rule on information that's been destroyed. I don't see anywhere, even in excluded situations, or exempted situations, the right to destroy information. I don't see how it could be allowed.

Now let me focus on one thing you said. All through your departmental report, and even in your introductory documents, you make reference to the non-partisan nature of the PCO. I have never questioned or challenged that until Sunday night, at about 9:30 p.m.

Why was this information that the e-mails have been found released at 9:30 on a Sunday night instead of waiting till 8 a.m. the following morning? How can we see that as anything but partisan, in that it would be in the best interests of the Prime Minister for that information to be released while he's singing a song on stage at a fundraiser? Can you explain to me how we can believe that it's non-partisan when it's so clearly advantageous to the government that this information was rationed out to the public in such a bizarre timeline. In the process of answering, could you tell me, when did you find those e-mails exactly?

3:45 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office

Michelle Doucet

Thank you for the question.

As I was saying before, on the public service side, in fact, we do follow the laws and legislation that tell us what records to keep. Everybody has guidelines to follow. I believe that the question was, when staff leave do we have a policy of deleting all e-mails? What I should add is inferred in that is—

3:45 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Could you answer that question, then?

3:45 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office

Michelle Doucet

—subject to the application of our records management rules and guidelines, which we follow, and—

3:45 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Do you destroy the e-mails when somebody leaves, yes or no?

3:45 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office

3:45 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Do you destroy the e-mails when someone leaves the employ, yes or no?

3:45 p.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

3:45 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office

Michelle Doucet

The e-mails that—

3:45 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

She still hasn't answered.

3:45 p.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault

You have the floor, Ms. Doucet.

3:45 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office

Michelle Doucet

The only e-mails that remain are the residual e-mails that remain after the application of records management guidelines. Employees have a responsibility to go through their records, make sure they keep those of archival value, if they're public servants, and have them to be able to be accessible pursuant to the Library and Archives of Canada Act. What remains is residual and not required to be kept. We delete those e-mails because servers have a finite capacity. To keep unnecessary residual e-mails that are not required by the government would actually do damage to our servers.

I won't talk more about that because my colleagues at Shared Services Canada could probably speak more knowledgeably about that than I can.

3:45 p.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault

Thank you.

Mr. O'Connor, you have the floor.

3:45 p.m.

Conservative

Gordon O'Connor Conservative Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON

Madam Doucet, your organization, in public service terms, is relatively small, but it's the key because it's at the centre of everything. I notice that this last year you've decreased by 77 personnel, and yet you're still doing to the same work. Or are you doing different work? How do you get by with 77 fewer people?

3:45 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office

Michelle Doucet

Thank you for the question.

Some of you will know that over the past couple of years we have gone through several deficit reduction efforts.

First, in our strategic review, as all departments did in 2011, PCO did theirs then. Then in 2012 we did the same thing in the deficit reduction action plan.

Some of you are new to this committee and so you may not know that at PCO we have no programs. We are all people, so we don't have any programs to cut, and that meant we had to find efficiencies. We did that through three main themes. We did that through business transformation, where the Privy Council Office adopted new and innovative ways of doing business. We realized savings by taking advantage of technology and finding less labour-intensive ways of doing our work. Examples of that would be how we manage our cabinet document system, library services, the paper record centres. As we move to digitization, we have fewer stacks of paper records that we have to worry about.

As I said in my opening remarks, in intergovernmental affairs we also realigned our capacity to match the change in government demand. Where we used to put a lot of effort in one area, we were able to realize that actually government's priorities had shifted and we were able to realize some savings in that regard. Then, obviously, there were other discrete initiatives.

You're right. The workload has not changed, but how we do our work is different. An example of that would be how we approach intergovernmental affairs. We used to have a discrete secretariat at the Privy Council Office that was headed by a deputy minister. Then we realized that, particularly in Canada, being cognizant of federal-provincial-territorial relationships really permeates every file that we do. That's something that all analyses of the Privy Council Office should take account of. So we decided to embed that horizontally. We still kept a centre of excellence in one of our secretariats, and that's in the plans and consultations and intergovernmental affairs secretariat. They provide expert policy advice, but it is the responsibility of all program analysts now to be cognizant of federal-provincial-territorial relations. So, rather than having a whole organization dedicated to that, we have a small centre of excellence and we have made our analysts more polyvalent, if you will.

3:50 p.m.

Conservative

Gordon O'Connor Conservative Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON

Okay. I remember Mr. Elcock from a few years ago. He is equivalent, I guess, to a deputy minister responsible for human smuggling. I don't understand why human smuggling should be part of the PCO. Why isn't it part of public security or immigration, or somebody else?

3:50 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office

Michelle Doucet

One of the key roles of the Privy Council Office is to provide coordination across government, and that is the reason that Mr. Elcock is nested within the Privy Council Office and he reports to the national security advisor to the Prime Minister. In addition to his role of providing advice to the Prime Minister, he has the role for coordinating the activities of all agencies and departments in government that are concerned with national security. In Mr. Elcock's mandate, he's responsible for coordinating the government strategy in response to migrant smuggling, in particular, through engagement with governments in transit countries to promote international cooperation, adherence to international laws and norms, and with international organizations to find durable solutions. He works closely with key domestic partners to do that work and with a focus to combat migrant smuggling by sea. Then, as I stressed, he also does that with key international partners and engages in regional and international fora.

3:50 p.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault

Thank you, Mr. O'Connor, but your time is up.

Mr. Blanchette, you have the floor. You have five minutes.

3:50 p.m.

NDP

Denis Blanchette NDP Louis-Hébert, QC

Thank you to our guests for coming today.

I would like to talk about the Departmental Performance Report.

Your fourth priority is called “Strengthen PCO's internal management practices“. Among other things, you are supposed to manage safety risks and emergency risks. According to your corporate plan, in the case of a disaster, you have to be able to get right back up on your feet in order to continue functioning. In terms of computer services, this implies having continuous email backups.

I find it hard to believe that if a user destroys their emails by mistake, they have no way of retrieving them. I do not understand why you said that this no longer exists, because I firmly believe that it always did.

3:55 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office

Michelle Doucet

Thank you for the question.

I will start by picking up on my answer to the previous member's question about records management practices. To summarize what I was trying to say—I'm not sure I did that effectively—there are rules for records management. Whether you're an employee of the public service or an employee of a minister's office, you're expected to follow those rules. When you leave, you're expected to have organized your documents, so that the ones that are required to be preserved are there and set aside separately, and the ones that are not necessary can be deleted to make room in the server so that computer systems function efficiently.

Now, your question about backup is a very good question, and thank you for asking it. I particularly appreciate your linkage to disaster recovery, because the Government of Canada, in the Treasury Board guidelines, actually has a requirement that all government departments—and now with the support of Shared Services Canada, our colleagues who will be before you after me—have a backup capacity for that very purpose.

So we have a backup capacity, the purpose of which is to assist in disaster recovery, in business continuity. Different departments have that backup capacity for varying periods of time. The Privy Council Office—