Evidence of meeting #158 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 system.
A video is available from Parliament.
Chief Financial Officer, Shared Services Canada
Again, the per-FTE charge covers everything that an employee requires from SSC to perform his work, in terms of a computer, phone, etc.
President, Shared Services Canada
If I may.... For example, a new employee comes in and needs a new workstation spot. That requires new cabling, a new phone line, and those kinds of expenditures. Every time there's a move, that could also entail a refit for the IT technology. That's covered by this $700 per employee.
Scarborough—Agincourt, Lib.
Okay. Thank you.
With three new enterprise data centres, in terms of the security and service risks, I'm wondering how they're going to avoid the fate of the 160 closed-down legacy data centres. What safeguards will be there to guard privacy and security, and do you have enough funds allocated for safeguarding that?
President, Shared Services Canada
The government has made significant investments in cybersecurity and IT security since 2016. The funds allocated to the enterprise data centres are very much intended to better secure the data and the functioning of the IT systems in them.
To start with, in terms of the physical layout of these data centres, they are physically protected, segregated in a way that the old data centres were not. They are not, for example, incorporated in commercial buildings. Because of this, as well, they have dedicated power supplies, dedicated heating and cooling, and dedicated telephone lines and communication lines. All of this builds redundancy into these enterprise data centres.
As the minister said, another feature they have is built-in redundancy, so if there is a failure of a power supply system, they have two or three more generators to pick up the need to run for a long period of time.
In terms of IT security, it is built in by design, following the Treasury Board policies around security. Furthermore, there are all of the technical controls that we receive from security agencies. These are modern, state-of-the-art data centres that will protect the data of Canadians.
Scarborough—Agincourt, Lib.
Following up on the first round of questioning regarding the federal contaminated sites, how many contaminated sites does PSPC have responsibility for? How has this number evolved over the last 10 years?
Marty Muldoon Chief Financial Officer, Finance and Administration Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I don't have the number of sites with me, but we'd be happy to provide that.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I can add, if I could. The funding here is for two sites associated with the Alaska Highway. It's moving funds from last year into this year for the two projects in that area. The Alaska Highway is one of the major federal contaminated sites, and PSPC is working on its remediation.
Chief Financial Officer, Finance and Administration Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services
If I may, I was able to find some information relevant to your question. You may be well aware that the federal contaminated sites action plan has been going through multiple phases. This is the third phase of the funding. Under this particular phase, we're managing 46 different sites through the remediation process.
The segment that Mr. Vandergrift just walked us through was that there are two fairly significant contamination areas along the Alaska Highway. We were to have dealt with them by now. The action you're seeing here in these supplementary estimates is to move the funding through the delays—because the season is so short along the northern reaches—and forward it to this year and next year to deal with those two sites. I hope that answers your question.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you very much.
Mr. McCauley, we have you for five minutes, please.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Thank you.
Mr. Linklater, we discussed this in an earlier meeting. I think there's a kind of Treasury Board direction not to go after people who have been Phoenixed for overpay until this is made whole. I'm still getting a lot of calls at my constituency office about this happening, about PSPC asking people for money and withholding money for overpay when they still haven't had their T4s fixed from two years ago. Is that just an oversight, or has the policy changed? Do you know?
Associate Deputy Minister, Human Resources-to-Pay Stabilization, Department of Public Works and Government Services
The policy hasn't changed, so if there are issues in constituency offices that you're experiencing, I would invite you to provide a list of those individuals to me. We'll look into those cases.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Great.
I want to get back to the gentleman in regard to the purchase of those three tugboats/icebreakers. Again, 15 years ago, they were worth $60 million. We're paying $858 million. You said it was the Coast Guard that wanted to buy them instead of leasing them.
Is it common to give the Coast Guard the ability to overrule such decisions or to give them the final say on that? What oversight went into this? We could have leased them, as was originally planned. We could have leased them for probably less than $10 million a year for the three years that it would take to build brand new ones, and for less than the $600 million we're spending on 15- to 18-year-old ones.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Defence and Marine Procurement, Acquisitions Program, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Every time a decision like this is made, there is a business case that is done by the navy and the Department of National Defence, if it's about navy capability, or by the Coast Guard. What goes into these business cases is obviously the costs that are available on the open market, but there are also third party reviews done of these to look at different ways parametrically for—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Will you be able to make that business case public, to us or to taxpayers?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Defence and Marine Procurement, Acquisitions Program, Department of Public Works and Government Services
This would have to be asked of the Coast Guard. Again, those are some of the decisions that are made for these kinds of capabilities.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay. Let me just skip to my next question.
In 2016, the government announced that for the combat frigates we were going to go to an existing off-the-shelf design, and of course we haven't. What changed? When did we make the official change to allow paper designs like the T-26 to submit a bid?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Defence and Marine Procurement, Acquisitions Program, Department of Public Works and Government Services
As I said earlier, we have selected a preferred bidder as part of the consultation process—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I know that, and I don't have a lot of time. When did we change the policy? It was announced by CANSEC: an off-the-shelf design to save money and time. Now we're going to a paper design, which is going to take longer and be more expensive.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Defence and Marine Procurement, Acquisitions Program, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Fundamentally, the requirements of the navy were established, and the procurement process was built on meeting those requirements. I think it's fair to say that any warship or Canadian surface combatant we select will require some sort of work done to it. There was—
Conservative
Assistant Deputy Minister, Defence and Marine Procurement, Acquisitions Program, Department of Public Works and Government Services
There was a threshold established for the level of maturity the design would have to have to be deemed acceptable, and that was established early on, as you said, in 2016.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Right, but in 2016 we said “off-the-shelf design”, and T-26 is not. I'm asking when we decided to move away from that. Was it when the navy said that an off-the-shelf design was not going to be satisfactory and they needed to expand it?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Defence and Marine Procurement, Acquisitions Program, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Again, this is procurement that's still in process. We have not landed yet on the final decision. We are in negotiations with our preferred bidders. I need to make a caveat before I talk further about it.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Sorry, I have a couple of other questions. I'll be out of time.
When are we going to see updated costing on the frigates? If we do go with the T-26.... Because of the added weight—it's about 1,200 tonnes more displacement than original guesstimates for the other two competing bids—that's going to add about 13% to 15% to the cost, plus the quarter billion a month in delay.
I don't see you being ready to start in 2021. When are we going to see updated costing? You said the navy is working on it. When will we see public costing?
Conservative