Government Operations Committee on May 27th, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Colleagues, good morning. I want to welcome Mr. Shea.

I welcome you and your officials back to our committee.

Colleagues, we have done this before, and I would ask your advice on this.

If we want to try to get in as many questions as possible, and if Mr. Shea is amenable to this, we could dispense with the opening statement, copies of which you all have in front of you, and go straight into questions. That would be great. If you agree, I would ask that the speaking notes presented by Matthew Shea be taken as read and appended to the evidence of today's meeting.

Are we all in agreement with that?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

[See appendix—Remarks by Matthew Shea]

Thank you for that. That way I hope we'll be able to get in more questions, and I'm sure that all of you have many to ask. We will start our seven-minute round of questioning with Madame Ratansi.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you for being here. I was looking at the department plans, and one of the responsibilities that PCO has is to keep our elections secure and safe.

I have been out and about in my riding, and I've heard a lot of comments from people who say they are getting information that, in their opinion, is probably false or is trying to interfere with their thinking process, and that there are websites, etc. that are providing that.

Can you advise us on strategies that the PCO may be working on with the Minister of Democratic Institutions, or initiatives that the PCO itself has taken to keep our electoral processes safe and secure?

[Matthew Shea, Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office]

Absolutely, as a government we would take this very seriously. Election safety and security is one of the top priorities of the government and certainly of the Privy Council Office. We have a leadership role in a government-wide approach and in advice to the Prime Minister and cabinet on items related to national security.

On this particular item, there is a multifaceted approach that is really based around citizen preparedness, improving organizational readiness within government, combatting foreign interference and expecting social media platforms to act. At a very high level, this involves things like the cyber safe campaign that's being carried out by the government right now, and updates to cyber-threats to the Canadian democracy.

CSE recently released a report, which I'd be happy to talk to you about in more detail if you'd like. There's also an incident protocol that has been put in place to ensure that, if there is a threat to the security of the election, there is a process in place to inform the parties and the public.

I think one of the themes that you'll hear again and again from the government is the importance of understanding where information comes from, so there's also work being done with social media platforms to ensure that they understand they have a role to play in making sure that information is accurate.

I'll close by saying that citizens have a role as well. If you do think something is untrue, I think that flagging that is certainly worthwhile. You should question where information comes from and verify that the sources that you're using are authentic. That's something that certainly, as a government, we'll try to educate the electorate on.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Education is important because with the advent of social media, people are just getting such a plethora of information, and they do not know what is false or true.

Facebook went before the committee that is looking at data, and they were quite adamant that they will not really meet Canada's requirements. I'm trying to figure out if you have any suggestions of what we can do.

[Matthew Shea]

I can't comment further on individual companies and what they should do, other than to say that PCO and the Minister of Democratic Institutions have met with social media companies and have made clear the steps that we would like them to take in order to support a safe election.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

If they don't follow any advice or instructions or our recommendations, how are we going to ensure that the public knows about it and is safe?

There is push-back somewhere. Do we have a campaign?

[Matthew Shea]

I would go back to the fact that we do have a process in place. The heart of the process is that there is a committee—with the clerk; the national security adviser; and DMs of Justice, Public Safety, and Global Affairs—that would meet if there are any cyber-interference or threats to the election. They would deem whether it was appropriate in certain cases—and they would be rare cases—to actually go to the public and say that we have a credible threat, and there would be information. They would of course brief Elections Canada, and they would brief the political parties as well.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I'm going to ask you to comment on something the Clerk of the Privy Council said.

The Privy Council wants to ensure that the economic and social policies encourage innovation. In a theme of innovation to the public service, he stated he was not willing to endorse large-scale innovation because it is disruptive, but...a responsible type of innovation.

I think, Mr. Ghali, you are in the innovation area. Could you expound on what your thoughts are?

[Rodney Ghali, Assistant Secretary, Impact and innovation Unit, Privy Council Office]

We look at the role of the public service as stewards of public funds with a responsibility to ensure that the policies and programs that the government puts in place are done in a way that is diligent and respectful of the responsibilities that we have. When we think about the enterprise of innovation across any social, economic or environmental policy area, I think what we need to realize is that this concept of innovation is a discipline. It follows rigorous methodologies and is underpinned with responsible implementation. Innovation within the public sector needs to be taken very seriously. It has to be structured and follow a plan. In my unit, we follow this idea of being cautious, as the clerk put it in his speech last week, in particular as we implement our partnership approach through the Impact Canada initiative, because we want to ensure that as we learn to test out new approaches, and policy or programmatic methodologies, we do this in a way that is very thoughtful and engages all sectors of society. I think that's a message that we all should heed appropriately and follow quite closely.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

What are some of the challenges you are facing in your environment, where you are trying to innovate, maybe slowly, but steadily? What are some of the opportunities?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

If you can compose your answer in about 30 seconds or less, I would appreciate it.

[Rodney Ghali]

Absolutely.

I think you're aptly putting it. There's a feeling that it's both ripe for opportunities and fraught with challenges. Of course, if we think about the government enterprise of over 250,000 employees across every single domain that we can think about, trying to ensure that we do this in a thoughtful way, with partners both inside and outside government...collaboratively co-designing and co-creating with all sectors of society, that's where the opportunity is: to ensure that we always put the citizen first. The challenge, of course, is basically the flip side of that.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. McCauley, you have seven minutes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Gentlemen, welcome back.

Mr. Shea, I like that tie.

In your departmental plan, it says that PCO is involved in the ongoing renewal of the public service. Can you briefly explain what PCO's role is in that?

[Rodney Ghali]

Sure, I can field that question.

There's a secretariat within the Privy Council Office called the public sector renewal secretariat. It's a group of colleagues who are implementing what is called “Beyond2020”. It's the latest renewal efforts within the public service, looking at building on what previous clerks have set up in terms of ongoing transformation of the public service to ensure it provides the leadership that's needed.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Have you and those folks been following our committee examination of hiring into the public service? For example, there's the fact that it takes 200 days to get someone into the public service.

[Rodney Ghali]

I can't speak on behalf of my colleagues. I'm certainly aware of the committee examination in terms of hiring practices within the public service.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks.

On page 7 of the departmental plan, you mentioned that it has undergone changes, so the current results indicators are not compatible with previous years. I'm just curious as to who advised your office to change the way they measure the results. I have to ask you what the value of having it is if we're not able to measure results.

[Michael Hammond, Executive Director and Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Finance, Planning and Administration Directorate, Privy Council Office]

Chair, I can answer that question.

Essentially, we went through the process of updating our departmental results framework, and it took effect in 2018-19. Some of the indicators we had previously were not necessarily reflective of the new structure that was presented as part of the DRF.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

But you have the information from previous years, do you not?

[Michael Hammond]

Yes, absolutely. They just don't necessarily align one to one between the results indicators that we have now in place versus the ones that were under the program alignment architecture.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm just going to follow up with the departmental plans.

On page 7, it says, “Improve results for Canadians by supporting departments to innovate and experiment with outcomes-based approaches”. Again, how are we measuring our outcomes? When I look at your departmental plans, I see the plan is to increase year over year. They're not actually setting targets. In one part you say you have “outcomes-based”, but you're not setting actual targets to achieve, apart from just increasing. Anywhere in the private world, whether it's a corner lemonade stand or a large bank, you would have real targets and not just “We're going to increase.” I'm just wondering why we say this, but they're not actually showing in the departmental plans.