Evidence of meeting #14 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 buildings.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Public Services and Procurement Canada
These are in fact voluntary departures. The decrease will happen as a result of voluntary departures, but it will not occur at the same time as the drop in revenues.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
With regard to client satisfaction objectives, you mentioned a rate of 85%.
How did you arrive at that figure? How did the bureau measure client satisfaction to come up with this rate?
4:55 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Public Services and Procurement Canada
The 85% figure was based on the results from previous years.
At Public Services and Procurement Canada, many client service surveys are carried out and these are consolidated. The translation bureau is going to be using a new method for client satisfaction surveys. The 85% was based on previous results.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Public Services and Procurement Canada
We have come up with a dozen—
Can you take that one?
4:55 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Public Services and Procurement Canada
Yes.
We've come up with over a dozen
client satisfaction surveys for all of the services.
That includes Lisa and Kevin's group.
We have a meeting every couple of weeks where we go over the client satisfaction service surveys. Every year we update them. The idea is to be consolidating them in a more cohesive way so we can measure one service against another.
Treasury Board gave us
guidelines and directives to allow us to compare ourselves to other government departments as well. That is where we're going on that.
4:55 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Public Services and Procurement Canada
We have identified a dozen questions that are common to agencies.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
Thank you.
The translation bureau is studying crowdsourcing as a form of participatory translation.
Could you tell me a little more about this? What do you mean by this?
4:55 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Public Services and Procurement Canada
It's an experiment that involves crowdsourcing in order to increase co-operation with experts from the language industry. It's an innovative way to increase co-operation.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
So, we will find out more in the upcoming weeks and months.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
Okay. Thanks.
We have already raised the issue of social housing and federal inventories. It was said that one Canadian in four has difficulty paying for their housing and that one in eight has difficulty accessing housing that is safe and in good condition. For 10 years, the previous government neglected the social housing aspect of society.
What kind of progress has been made with regard to federal inventories, equipment and buildings that will later be converted for social housing? What's happening with this file? What are the plans for the upcoming months and years in this regard?
4:55 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Public Services and Procurement Canada
Kevin, do you want to—
4:55 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Real Property, Public Services and Procurement Canada
Absolutely.
Thank you for the question.
We have completed the inventory for our department. There is a list of 207 houses and 224 buildings. We have created a model for the other
custodians, as something that they can also contribute to, to leverage our criteria, etc., so that we can develop a Government of Canada list.
We've also assessed them by their potential for the affordable housing as well. I can give you those specific numbers if you would like, and the list that we have in place.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
After the establishment of the inventory, there is usually an action plan. It's good to do an inventory, but we want to know where we go from there. Does your action plan include a timetable in order to achieve results in terms of social housing?
5 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Real Property, Public Services and Procurement Canada
Our role is to support the other departments by establishing policies and a process for the action plan. Our mandate was to do an inventory, and we did it.
5 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Public Services and Procurement Canada
I'd like to add that we sent it to our colleagues.
5 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Real Property, Public Services and Procurement Canada
Yes.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
Thank you. I have no further questions on the matter.
How many more minutes do I have?
5 p.m.
Liberal
Raj Grewal Liberal Brampton East, ON
I have just one question.
On cybersecurity, SSC's estimates include an increase of $26.4 million to address current vulnerabilities in the government's security network.
Can you please elaborate on what's being done in the medium term to protect our information and our security.
5 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
In the main estimates, there are three main projects that this funding is targeted to: completion of the migration of the National Research Council applications and data to the new network; improving enterprise management of internal credentials, meaning who's who and what level of access they should have to networks; and the consolidation of the federal government department access to Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education, otherwise known as CANARIE, and the addition of censoring and monitoring to that network.
That's an important linkage. That's the main major network for scientists and others to use that is a high-speed network across Canada.
5 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Sorry, Mr. Grewal, we're going to have to cut it off now. We're over time already, and I have a sense that the response might take us even deeper into overtime.
Colleagues, with your permission, I think I'm going to excuse the witnesses. It will take a few minutes for them to leave and to clear the room while we go into in camera. Not only do we have a number of items on our committee business list, but we have a number of votes on the main estimates that we have to dispense with as well.
With that, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for your attendance. We do appreciate it. You are excused.
We'll suspend for about two minutes.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Colleagues, I will remind you that while we vote on the main estimates we are in public. Once we dispense with the votes, we will go in camera immediately for committee business.
We have two options here. First, I believe all of you have a list of the votes in front of you. It can be done in one of two ways: they can be voted in totality, as a package, or they can be voted individually. Either way is fine.
There is one suggestion on the government side to vote on them as a package. It would be an either up or down vote for them all, on that premise, or we can vote for them individually.