Government Operations Committee on May 1st, 2018

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Colleagues, even though it's a couple of minutes before 11 a.m., our scheduled start time, I'll convene the meeting now. I have a couple of housekeeping notes to go over with you before we begin.

We have with us today representatives from both the Public Service Commission and the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board, as per our norm, to discuss the main estimates and departmental reports. They will be with us for the first hour. In the second hour, we will have an informal meeting with a delegation from France's Senate finance committee.

However, in between those two meetings, I would like to have about a 15-minute in camera committee business discussion with you on a couple of quick items of some urgency. One is to deal with a possible trip this committee may want to take to Shared Services Canada. We need a budget for that, and the budget has to be in by Friday, so we have to deal with that. Plus, there is a draft letter that may or may not be sent on behalf of the committee.

I will be dismissing our witnesses at about five to noon today, and then the French delegation will come in at about 10 after 12, for a 50-minute discussion. In that 15 minutes, we'll try to take care of all of our committee business.

What that means, however, is that after we have our opening statements from Monsieur Borbey and Madame Fox, it will leave us approximately 40 to 45 minutes for committee business, questions, and interventions, which will mean we won't be able to get the entire rotation of questions in. But we should be able to get in the first full round of seven-minute interventions, and at least two five-minute interventions second to that.

That's how I plan to approach this, if that's all right with everyone.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Should we skip opening remarks since we're short on time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I know the opening remarks are going to be somewhat truncated for both. They're going to be very brief. We'll see where we go from there.

Mr. Borbey, if you have no opening remarks, that's fine.

Madame Fox, it's certainly up to you.

[Kathleen Fox, Chair, Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board]

They're very short.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

With that, we will commence, then.

Monsieur Borbey, do you have any remarks?

[Patrick Borbey, President, Public Service Commission]

I will just say that I have already distributed them in advance. You have them before you. If you want to save some time, I'll forgo my opening remarks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Madame Fox.

[Kathleen Fox]

Good morning.

Mr. Chair, honourable members, thank you for inviting the Transportation Safety Board of Canada to appear today.

I have two colleagues with me. Monsieur Jean Laporte is our Chief Operating Officer.

I am also accompanied by Luc Cassault, our Director General and Chief Financial Officer.

Given that the TSB appeared before this committee in November 2017, I believe that members of the committee are familiar with the TSB and its mandate. I will therefore proceed directly to the reason of our presence before this committee today — that is the 2018-19 Main Estimates and the 2018-19 Departmental Plan.

The 2018-19 main estimates show TSB appropriations of approximately $27 million and statutory contributions to employee benefits of $3 million, for a total of about $30.2 million. Compared with the previous year's main estimates, the TSB's authorities increased by about $800,000 due to adjustments for salary increases as per the collective agreements and the associated amounts for contributions to employee benefit plans.

Before moving to the departmental plan, please allow me to share a few performance highlights for the fiscal year we have just completed. I am pleased to inform you that we have made significant progress on the backlog of old investigations and we are now just about caught up. In 2017-18 we published an increased number of investigation reports compared with the previous two years while also improving the overall timeliness of our reports. Significant progress was also made on the implementation of our safety recommendations. Overall, although our performance targets were not fully achieved, clear and measurable progress was made in a number of areas. More details on our performance results will be tabled in our annual report to Parliament in June as well as our departmental results report.

Building upon the work accomplished over the past year, our 2018-19 Departmental Plan lays out our plans and priorities for the year ahead.

I would like to highlight just a few key items.

In a few weeks, we will proceed with the implementation of a number of concrete changes aimed at modernizing the way we conduct our business in light of changing expectations of Canadians. We will be rolling out a suite of new policies, revised business processes, and updated products. For instance, our new policy on occurrence classification will help us better prioritize, track, and report on transportation occurrences. For simpler and smaller occurrences, we will produce a new, short, limited-scope, factual-only report that will enable us to share safety information faster and more effectively. We will also launch a new, more user-friendly website, fully compliant with the latest Government of Canada standards, fully accessible from mobile devices, and including expanded contents.

We believe that these changes will help us make further progress towards the achievement of our performance targets. However, we won't stop there. We plan to continue our modernization initiatives, while also improving our interaction with indigenous peoples, and sustaining our efforts to provide our employees with a positive work environment.

Once again, we have an ambitious agenda, but we have a strong track record when it comes to adapting to change and getting things done.

Again, thank you for inviting us to be here today. We'd be happy to take your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you, Madam Fox and Mr. Borbey, for the economy of words both of you exhibited.

We'll start now with our seven-minute interventions with Mr. Ayoub.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all five of you for being here once again.

I'll start with you, Mr. Borbey, from the Public Service Commission.

During its appearance on November 23, the commission informed the committee that certain hiring systems were obsolete. The commission examined the possibility of creating a prototype, and, to that end, led consultations with candidates to improve and perfect this process.

Can you tell us a bit more about the progress made since then? What next steps do you have planned? What difficulties did you run into while implementing and improving this process?

[Patrick Borbey]

Thank you for your question.

We have almost finished our consultations on the design of prototypes. We started by consulting with candidates, then we consulted with hiring managers. We very recently consulted with human resources professionals. We are in the process of consolidating all the information we've received with the prototypes we designed.

We will now move on to the next step, which will consist in defining the project to renew our recruitment platform, which is used by all of the public service. We are consulting with our colleagues from the Treasury Board Secretariat to find out how to comply with the standards as we develop such a project. In the following months, we will be able to seek the necessary authorities. Then, we will see which systems are already on the market and wouldn't need to be adapted too much to our needs, which were identified during our consultations.

We are at this step. This project could be relatively time-consuming, and we want to manage it well to stay on budget.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

We are no longer in 2017, and we are well into 2018. What deadline have you set for finishing these steps?

[Patrick Borbey]

We hope that, a year from now, we will have the necessary authorities to move to the project development step and examine the systems that are already on the market.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

All right.

What difficulties do you think you will face going from the current system to the new one? What will be the benefits of the new system? Which problems will it allow you to solve?

[Patrick Borbey]

Clearly, the expectations are quite high. One of our challenges is to find to a way to meet them.

We don't only have one system that needs to be replaced. We currently have many systems that don't communicate well with each other. For example, the system that programs second-language tests is separate from the recruitment system. There is also the priority management system. The hiring managers must first check for priorities in that system. It is another separate system.

We must therefore be sure that all of these systems will not only be able to work together, but also to meet the needs of the candidates and the hiring managers. Clearly, this will be a challenge.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

At the outset, we had expressed the will to make this change—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

The fire alarm is ringing, therefore the meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I believe we have quorum, so we will reconvene. Unfortunately, because of the interruption, not the doing of anyone in this room, we will have a very truncated meeting. At this point in time I want to thank our witnesses who agreed to stick around for a little while longer.

Colleagues, my suggestion is that we will go through one complete seven-minute round of interventions, and then we will be able to dismiss our witnesses.

In terms of the committee business, some of our members will not be able to be here on Thursday, so I would like to deal with the committee business today if that's possible, and that will take about 15 minutes.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

What about the French delegation?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Either they will have to be in a very abbreviated state or we will not meet with them. That's an informal meeting. It was mainly an informal Q and A situation, and again, this is not of anyone's doing here. This situation is what it is. Let's deal first with the first part of our meeting. We've had opening statements.

Mr. Ayoub, I think we have about three minutes left on your intervention, and then we'll just continue on until we dispense with the first round.

Go ahead, please.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, everyone.

Actually, I would like to know what are the potential benefits of this change. That is what I wanted you to insist a little more on, to demonstrate to us which potential benefits will follow this implementation.

[Patrick Borbey]

With the new system we would like to see implemented in the years to come, candidates would have a much more intuitive and natural experience. It could be comparable to what is being done in major companies elsewhere.

Currently, application forms are very long, and applicants need to answer a number of questions. It is very complicated. Applicants must submit one application per desired position. We would like to make it possible for applicants to submit the requested information and subsequently have their applications considered for a number of positions. This information would be updated. Even if they do not succeed in being hired for one position, their applications could still be considered for another one, without having to go through the process again.

Furthermore, this would give hiring managers more options during the staffing process, because they would have access to a far more modern and efficient system.

These are a few of the benefits. We could also make sure that this system is accessible from coast to coast, and that it meets the highest accessibility standards. That would allow us to continue to improve the diversity of our staff.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Okay. Thank you.

I'm done with the questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

You have about a minute and a half left.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Do you want a minute?