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.
4:30 p.m.
Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility
Can I answer now?
4:30 p.m.
Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility
The Minister of Labour was the lead on the back-to-work legislation. Absolutely, we worked very closely together. I am hesitant to give you a rationale, when I don't have that information in front of me, as to why we chose specific wording or a specific clause, but I can definitely get that information to you.
4:35 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
I think it would be important, particularly in light of the fact that the company is now using that section in order to deny an appropriate accumulation of personal days and vacation days to workers who are back at work.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you, Mr. Blaikie.
Minister, thank you for being here. I understand that you have other commitments.
4:35 p.m.
Minister of Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility
I do. Thank you.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Colleagues, we will suspend for two or three minutes. We ask the officials to remain seated, and we will reconvene as soon as we can.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Colleagues, we are reconvened. We will not have any opening statements, since we were provided one by the minister. We will go directly into seven-minute rounds of questions.
We will begin with Madame Mendès.
You have seven minutes, please.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to welcome you all.
We had some discussions with the minister. I would now like to go into more detail, specifically regarding Shared Services Canada.
You are requesting $94.3 million under votes 1(a) and 5(a) to address program integrity issues. I would like to ask you, if I may, to address the specifics of those integrity issues and what exactly we are talking about when we talk about integrity issues.
4:40 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
Absolutely, I'm happy to provide some detail. I may ask my colleagues to add in.
The program integrity issues that these funds are intended to deal with relate principally to software—operating systems that are going out of service in 2020. We need to replace those, plus equipment that is past its end of life and needs to be replaced, to sustain the critical service delivery to Canadians.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
4:40 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
This is across all government departments, yes.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC
We're talking about equipment from the average laptop or desktop to servers and—
4:40 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
We're not talking about the desktop level per se. This is the background infrastructure: servers and storage, networking, and security devices.
December 6th, 2018 / 4:40 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
Yes, it's software in terms of the operating systems that enable those servers to function, for example.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC
This is a lot of money. I understand that this is a kind of technology that costs a lot of money. Is this plan to be rolled out during the current fiscal year, or is it something that will roll out into the next fiscal year?
4:40 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
In broad terms, there's an infrastructure replacement program that is required over time. If you imagine that the Government of Canada's total IT infrastructure were, say, somewhere in the $4-billion to $6-billion range, given the depreciation rates of IT equipment, that figure would imply something in the neighbourhood of $750 million to $1 billion of replacement a year, just to give you a sense of scale.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC
Okay.
Does this also touch any of the technologies used by National Defence, for example, or is this strictly for other departments?
4:40 p.m.
President, Shared Services Canada
We supply technologies to the Department of National Defence, as well as to other departments, outside of the command and control necessary for military operations. The Department of National Defence continues to control that, as well as their top-secret IT infrastructure.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC
You wouldn't, then, touch that area.
Let me go to the federal pay system. That obviously is not a resolved issue, but my colleague—I think Mr. Peterson—asked before whether we are already looking at a replacement system, a new system that will eventually be brought in to replace Phoenix.
Would you have a timeline for this? Is there something in the current request for allocations? What is the timeline for the replacement system, Mr. Linklater?
4:40 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Human Resources-to-Pay Stabilization, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Thank you for the question.
Treasury Board Secretariat was allocated $16 million over two years in budget 2018 to explore options for software to replace Phoenix. The work that has been undertaken now by the chief information officer, Alex Benay, is focused on identifying, through an agile procurement process, appropriate software that could potentially handle HR management for the Government of Canada.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC
Am I to understand that we are avoiding the very descriptive RFPs? Instead, we're saying, “We need this objective. What do you have to offer us?” Is that more what we're going into?
4:40 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Human Resources-to-Pay Stabilization, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Essentially, yes.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC
That's good to know. It's a little progress compared with what we were doing before.
To go back to the pods, I think this is something that warrants congratulations for finally having a system that seems to bring resolution to many of the issues. You are telling us that the final departments to enter into the pod system will be doing so in May 2019.