Evidence of meeting #121 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.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
If that's outside your thing, if you want to move on, that's fine, if you don't have an answer.
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
I feel comfortable answering part of the question.
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
The Government of Canada is committing to do what it takes to ensure employees—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I know. Please answer the question, though. What is PCO doing specifically? What have they done? We've seen the problems getting worse. I don't want the talking points, I'm sorry.
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
PCO has two roles. There's public service leadership and then we ourselves are a department.
From a public service leadership perspective, there's a number of DM-level committees that exist.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I personally tasked the Clerk of the Privy Council to oversee. What has PCO been doing?
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
There's a DM-level committee, which meets on pay issues, that is chaired by the deputy clerk of the Privy Council. That is one of the pieces that has been done.
In addition, in the fall, the Clerk of the Privy Council wrote all deputies and asked them to articulate exactly what they were doing to support employees when it came to pay and send that back to the PCO.
The PCO posted all of that to our website as a way to highlight some of the best practices around having a pay liaison unit making sure—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
You've heard the Auditor General's report on the Phoenix issue, about how Public Service, Treasury Board, and everyone ignored the problem for quite a while before tackling it. This comes out from a year and a half ago.
Do you believe PCO was part of the group ignoring the issue that the AG has mentioned so critically, or have you been pressing, as the Prime Minister stated a year and a half ago, to get a plan together? Clearly there wasn't a plan. Clearly it was ignored. I'd like to know PCO's role.
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
Mr. Chair, repeating a little bit of what I said, PCO's role in this is to provide public sector leadership for all departments. Also to provide advice to the Prime Minister.
However, PSPC has leadership when it comes to the actual Phoenix system as well as delivering pay services to departments. Treasury Board Secretariat has leadership when it comes to—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Is the Prime Minister personally tasking PCO with it meant nothing. As you said, PSPC is responsible.
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
Mr. Chair—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
What I'm getting is...if you weren't involved in it, I just want an answer. It came up last year. The Prime Minister personally said that PCO would be responsible, would oversee it. We have the AG report—this was a year and half ago—saying there was no plan done. It was only tackled piecemeal.
What was PCO's role? Were they just helping facilitate the piecemeal part, or were they pushing for a plan to tackle it?
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
In PCO's role, PCO has provided advice to the Prime Minister and to cabinet. There's a cabinet minister level committee that meets on pay. There's a deputy minister level meeting that meets on pay.
Conservative
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
It would not be appropriate for me to comment on advice provided to the Prime Minister. I will say as CFO I would not have been involved in that level of advice.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay.
Fair enough.
Let's move on.
I want to talk about the Impact Canada Initiative. You said it's underway.
Who's to deciding these? What metrics are you using before money is rolled out? How are you deciding if it's successful or not successful?
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
So Impact Canada Initiative, we have a secretariat. The ultimate programs are under each individual department. So using some of the clean tech as an example, that's NRCan that would be....
Conservative
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
The $1.4 million is to provide a secretariat role whereby we provide advice to the departments. The results and delivery unit focuses on outcomes and measuring outcomes. They have the mandate tracker—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
That's within the departments themselves and not through PCO, or...?
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
The results and delivery unit is another secretariat within PCO that works hand in hand with the Impact Canada initiative.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay.
How were they deciding then what metrics to use, what was successful and what's just picking winners and losers?
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
Individual departments are responsible for selecting the metrics they use. We aggregate them and transparent....
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I'll just move on.
The $974,000 for the LGBTQ2+, give us a breakdown on how that is getting spent. It's $974,000 this year and it will probably be similar, you said for a three year program, for next year and the year after.
What's the breakdown for staffing, travel, etc.?