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.
11:25 a.m.
Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board
If I may, there are two parts to your question.
The first part is, we have a base operating budget. We're a small agency, and we have a base operating budget of which about 80% is salaries. We have taken a number of reductions over the years, and we've taken steps to be as efficient as we can, but the fact is that the recent collective agreement increases are higher than anticipated, and we're responsible for covering those increases this year and ongoing, as well as the retroactive impact.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Can I assume we should say that, for Canadians' safety, you need more resources, without putting words in your mouth?
11:25 a.m.
Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board
The funds that we're requesting today are to cover off the basic salaries of the FTEs we have in place.
With respect to following up on recommendations of Transport or recommendations we make to other industry or regulators, we have the resources to follow up on that. The issue for the TSB is that Transport Canada has been slow in responding to our recommendations that we've issued over a period of years, particularly on the aviation side. We are working with Transport Canada to look at all of those outstanding recommendations, to get updates on them, and hopefully to close some of those off in the future.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
What is TSB doing to help rectify this situation or change the situation with Transport Canada? You say you're working with them, but as someone who flies every week, I'm quite concerned.
11:25 a.m.
Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board
We started by highlighting this issue publicly, by adding the slow progress in addressing TSB recommendations to our 2016 watch-list. We are focusing the attention of the department, the public, and the media on the fact that these steps need to be taken.
The TSB does not have the power to enforce our recommendations. We can make, and we do make, a compelling argument for change, but after that, it's up to the regulator and the industry to take steps.
One, we have made this a public issue on our watch-list. Two, we have taken more proactive steps to work with the regulator and to work with industry to make sure that they can take steps to address these outstanding issues.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Great.
The areas you have on your watch-list are unstable approaches, runway overruns, and then risk of collisions on our runways. I think there were four last year for the risk of collision on runways just in Canada. Of those three, what's the most important we need to get Transport Canada...? They're all important, obviously, but what is your biggest concern of those three?
11:25 a.m.
Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board
They're all important. We can't say that one is more important than the other and they're often linked.
Unstable approaches can lead to an approach and landing accident. An unstable approach can contribute to a runway overrun and a runway incursion is a risk of collision on the runway. Therefore, they're all important and we're pursuing activities in all of those areas.
As well, we have multimodal issues relating to safety management regulatory oversight, as well as the slow progress in addressing our recommendations.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Great. I'll just go to PCO.
On the $32 million for information modernization, you have listed “other organizational changes”. What other organizational changes are there? Can you break them down for me, please?
11:25 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
Sure. Within the $32 million, we have the big bucket that is roughly around $29 million for IM- and IT-specific projects. We have another $1 million that helps support our e-cabinet initiative. There is another portion to help with purchase of equipment for our business continuity plan, so technology, like putting in fibre optics. The last piece is to help support our transition to the top secret network.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Is the money in the estimates a one-time thing that will address those or will we see more in the next estimates? Would we then see an ongoing cost every year for more and more money or will this get us caught up?
11:25 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
No. What we're going to see—
11:25 a.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Ms. Fox, thanks for your information, by the way.
Thanks.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
Brigitte Sansoucy NDP Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank all the witnesses.
I won't have any questions for the TBS representatives because I think it goes without saying that the existing collective agreements must be applied.
My initial questions will be for the Privy Council Office.
I will make a comment first, and it will lead to my questions. I'm a new MP. For two years, my great surprise has been seeing how much the Canadians we represent listen to and follow the public broadcast of committees. I always keep in mind the importance of understanding the information I'm given, since I have to represent the average citizen.
If I've understood your presentation, transparency and openness have cost $24.2 million. What I don't understand is that you justify the $34.3 million by saying that this money is used to update the existing information technology infrastructure and to assess the current state of innovation. Those are fine words, but they don't mean much to me. I can't put an image to words like that. It's all fine, but it doesn't reflect anything.
My first question is about the fact that the PCO provides financial and administrative support to commissions of inquiry. You supported the introduction of a computer system that was designed to analyze hundreds of thousands—that's no small amount—of videos, transcripts, electronic documents, paper documents and briefs. The findings are that this is a complex system and that the employees who will have to work on it will have to be properly trained. What support did the PCO give commissions of inquiry to ensure that employees were properly trained?
We are in the communication age, and there is a lot of information to deal with. How do you make sure this system is set up properly?
You told us that you were processing a lot of information. I would like to better understand how you are upgrading. It isn't clear to me. How do you get everyone to understand? Do you use employee training or support for commissions of inquiry, for instance?
That's a lot of jargon, and many people must have difficulty in understanding it. How do you ensure employees are properly trained to implement this system?
11:30 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
Mr. Chair, can I just get a point of clarification?
When talking about the investigation, are you talking about the commission of inquiry?
11:30 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
Okay, in the Privy Council Office we provide administrative support to the commission of inquiry. When I talk about that—and I understand your point—what I'm referring to are our financial processes, the actual payment of bills. When we talk about the information technology, it's about the computers that we provide, access to email services, shared drives, those types of things.
Human resources support is the actual creating of the letters of offer, making sure they have the right security clearance in order to be hired. It's all of that support that the PCO does. Only a small portion of the $34 million that we're talking about relates to the operations for the Privy Council, roughly $1 million. The rest that's there is to support the commission in terms of achieving it's mandate. It determines what its work plan is and how it's going to go about doing it. We help facilitate that through financial payment of bills, contracting, the processing of getting its staff on board. That's what we do within the PCO.
11:30 a.m.
NDP
Brigitte Sansoucy NDP Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
You said you asked for $34.4 million for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, but we know that this commission faces major challenges.
The interim report indicates that the deadline for recruiting staff is four months. As you just said, you have to go through the Privy Council Office process for the security screening.
As a result, once the decision to hire someone is made, it takes an average of five weeks for the security process to be completed and for the person to begin work. I think these delays are unreasonable, and that affects the work.
Will steps be taken to ensure a more efficient process, and to more quickly recruit and hire staff?
11:30 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
Mr. Chair, in terms of human resources, it doesn't take five weeks. The commission has a lot of latitude with regard to determining how to best bring people in. It has the opportunity to do a process internally. It can go out and seek people who can come and help. It's up to it to determine what the right processes are. It doesn't follow the same processes that we do within the public service to go out and hire. It doesn't have to think about merit and all of the rules that we have to follow in seeking staff. It's up to it to determine how it best goes about finding its employees.
Once it has determined its employees, that's when some of the rules we use kick in. We have to make sure the position that it's hiring them for is in line because we use our rates of remuneration. If someone is admin support in federal government and someone is admin support within the commission, we want to make sure there are comparabilities. What we seek is job descriptions, work descriptions that we can look at to ensure that, if individuals are coming in to do certain jobs, they're going to get paid at a level consistent with the public service. We do have a little bit of process. The ability to do a classification of a position is usually about 24 to 48 hours. It's not very long because the positions in the commission are not very complex, as you can find in the federal public service.
Once the commission has chosen the person, once we have a classified job, we have to do our due diligence on security clearances. We've put in place an expedited process to help support the commission. The commission can decide whether it's a reliability clearance, a secret clearance, what type of clearance is needed, and depending on the type of clearance—
11:35 a.m.
NDP
