Evidence of meeting #109 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pco.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:35 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
Right now, it takes about three weeks to do security clearance.
11:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
You can continue next time.
Ms. Shanahan, you have seven minutes, please.
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to welcome my colleague Ms. Sansoucy to the committee.
I am on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. We have just received the tabling of the Auditor General's reports. Here we have the chance to talk about the issues.
I want to make a small reference to the report we saw this week. The Auditor General has commented that we still tend not to think of the citizen, and my colleague made reference to this. Not only are people interested in what's going on here, but ultimately they are receiving the services. They are why we are here.
One of the tools I find very interesting in providing better programs and services to Canadians is the gender-based analysis plus.
I would like to start with questions for the Privy Council Office.
Could you please talk to us about the challenge function and how that works with producing better policies, programs, and services for citizens?
11:35 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
Mr. Chair, one of the important roles that we play in PCO is that challenge function and if you think about all the central agencies that would exist in government like the Public Service Commission, the Privy Council Office, Treasury Board Secretariat, PSPC, the Department of Public Works and Government Services, the role that PCO plays is really fundamentally in the role of policy, legislation, and administrative processes.
Every time a department is looking to move into a new policy area, a new administrative area, a legislation area, we have PCO specialists, PCO analysts, who look at each and every one of those requests and do the challenge function with the department associated with it.
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Forgive me for interrupting, but do you feel that there's...because there's doing a thing, bringing it into the development process and there's making it a priority. Has there been a change there that we can anticipate will make it? The Auditor General was very adamant that we're not there yet in providing client-centred, citizen-centred service delivery.
Can you talk a little bit about that? Is there something that's changed in how you do that challenge function? Do you get people a little riled up there?
11:35 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
In terms of how we do it, we really focus on what's coming forward on the mandate commitments that the government has identified. What PCO really does is support the Prime Minister and the functioning of the cabinet. It's looking at how we structure our agenda to make sure that the priorities of governments move through the system the way they're intended to, working with our various departments.
In terms of the client-centred focus, again, I mentioned the innovation hub. One of the things that their function is is to think about how we sort of change our behaviours to look more at how clients want to get served, what they want to do, and how we can help facilitate that. That's what we're seeing.
The other thing in terms of our challenge function and what budget 2016 provided us with resources for was our results in delivery unit. That really starts to focus again on the results we are trying to achieve, if we are in the process of achieving them, and really keeping track of that. I think those are some of the big fundamental switches that we've had within the PCO in terms of moving forward, in terms of making sure that we actually achieve the priorities that we set out to do.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Brenda Shanahan Liberal Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC
Thank you for that, and we look forward to hearing more about it.
Now switch to who is going to actually do this. Public service renewal is under way.
Mr. Borbey, can you talk to us about some of the.... Congratulations, by the way, on cutting down that application time. I certainly heard that from students who I dealt with, and I do have a McGill student.... I think we might have a few McGill students shadowing us today. They have an added interest in how we're going about hiring and developing the public servants of today and tomorrow.
11:40 a.m.
President, Public Service Commission
That's a pretty wide question in terms of our mandate.
November 23rd, 2017 / 11:40 a.m.
Liberal
11:40 a.m.
President, Public Service Commission
Obviously, recruitment is our daily bread. We think and dream and sleep recruitment. We're always constantly looking at ways that we can do a better job in terms of reaching Canadians, reaching the talent where it is, wherever it may be in the country, and ensuring that, within the public service itself, managers are as open as possible to finding talent across the country, including in some cases sometimes, not very far, just looking at people like veterans who are available on the priority list. We've made some progress over the last little while. Now we've placed about 477 veterans with the new entitlement, but again, sometimes the answers to the recruitment needs are very close by and very evident and are people who have already served this country.
Other answers involve tapping into pools that we've not necessarily tapped into before and, of course, students and graduates and young people who have a lot to contribute have to be a priority. Our systems are too focused on internal replacement. Managers are constantly chasing after.... When Sally is retiring, we're looking for the best person within the unit to replace Sally instead of maybe thinking about whether to restructure the unit and look to the post-secondary recruitment pool that we've established and bring some people in. Then invest in nurturing, mentoring, supporting, learning and development basically to build the public service of the future.
If we don't change our approach, we're going to find ourselves in a crisis in a few years because we know that retirements are happening. They're happening now. They're going to be coming. We haven't sufficiently recruited from outside to be able deal with that replacement. We have a fantastic public service that's supported by men and women from across the country. As they leave, we need to make sure that we have the replacements. That's why student programs, revamping our post-secondary recruitment, making it a lot more attractive, sometimes jazzing up our advertisements so that we don't look as bureaucratic as we may be; those are things that we want to do.
On diversity, again, the more we open to the outside, we find that automatically we get more diverse applicants. The people are out there. The pools are out there. We just have to open the doors.
I could go on.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
I sense that but we'll have to cut it off there.
Mr. McCauley, you have five minutes, please.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Thanks.
Ms. Fox, thanks for your information.
I just want to get back to the second incident with Air Canada recently. I think it was in San Francisco that they were waved off six times but they still went ahead and landed.
Is your organization part of any investigation into that? Could you tell me again about the near-collision investigation? It doesn't show that on your website as being TSB that is doing an investigation on that.
11:40 a.m.
Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board
Just to be clear, there were two occurrences involving Air Canada in San Francisco. For the first one, which was the approach over the...the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is the agency conducting the investigation. It's not an ongoing TSB investigation; however, we do assist in the investigation.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
That's why I'm asking about the assistance, because you don't have a post on your website saying that you're assisting or anything. Is that because you're just assisting?
11:45 a.m.
Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board
That's correct.
We often assist on foreign investigations involving Canadian-registered aircraft and Canadian-manufactured aircraft.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Will the results be on the website when the U.S. have finished theirs?
11:45 a.m.
Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board will publish their report when they're finished, and it will be available on the NTSB website.
11:45 a.m.
Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board
We don't normally publish their reports on our website, no.
With respect to the second event, we are not investigating it. Perhaps I spoke too quickly earlier on—
11:45 a.m.
Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board
We don't investigate accidents in other countries unless we're requested to do so by that state. We can assist through the ICAO accredited representative program.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
The act does allow you to investigate though, does it not?
