Government Operations Committee on May 27th, 2019

[Matthew Shea]

Our role is supporting Minister Gould. We have a deputy minister who supports both Minister Gould and also Minister Chagger, as leader of the House.

I don't have a specific budget for Minister Gould's support from PCO. I can tell you that the total cost of her minister's office, which is publicly disclosed, is around $1.3 million.

We have PCO support, which is not a large amount of support, that helps her from the perspective of machinery of government from the national security and intelligence adviser area. A lot of the work they do is bringing together stakeholders and people from other departments, so it's hard to quantify the exact amount being spent on protecting democracy. There are certain campaigns, like “get cyber safe”, that have very specific budgets assigned by their individual departments. But PCO doesn't have an election security budget per se.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Drouin, you have five minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here.

I will follow up on the questions my colleague Mr. McCauley asked about how we can innovate in the public service. You said you were reviewing some of the programs. The words “red tape” are often used. Mr. Benay said that we want a public service that is in the 21st century, and we want to innovate in this direction.

Is there anyone internally who is looking into that? Are there barriers to the adoption of new technologies in the public service? I don't need to list the technological problems that have occurred.

We seem to be adopting agile procurement and agile projects. That's one thing the government has been pushing.

Are any barriers impacting the capacity of the government to adapt to new technologies and to innovate with Canadians at the same time?

[Rodney Ghali]

As you can imagine, there's this constant tension within the public service around the idea of innovation, ensuring that, obviously, the public service remains stable and strong during its delivery of all the statutory programs it's responsible for. At the same time, we see that constant push from the citizenry to ensure we continue to remain relevant to its needs.

Without a doubt, there is a concerted effort and focus within the public service to look at the rules structure we have in place to ensure it is allowing for the appropriate uptake of new technologies and new approaches. That was mentioned earlier in terms of outcomes-based approaches.

We have the deputy ministers task force on public sector innovation. Over 20 deputy ministers are a part of that committee. Attached to it is a multidisciplinary team of public servants that works horizontally across all the departments and agencies to help address the issues and speak to them. It's been looking at a couple of key areas of focus over the last year in more efficient HR practices, the adoption of new technologies like AI and blockchain; and then also importantly, the use of discretionary spending in grants and contributions to assure they are being used in the most efficient and effective ways.

Part of all that work is looking at all the rules-based frameworks to ensure on the one hand that the government is remaining an accountable steward of public funds, and on the other hand, ensure that as new technologies are coming to fruition within society, the government is taking up those approaches responsibly.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I'm looking at the youth policy and how we're communicating with youth. Obviously, if we cannot speak to not only youth, but also the millennials, we're going to lose them. Whether it's through a variety of services or.... I don't have to tell you about the Auditor General's reports about hanging up calls or not being able to respond to Canadians.

Is somebody also looking at that? I see that as a threat from government because if we cannot communicate properly with our millennial citizens, then how are they going to communicate with their own government? They will see that as a failure, from our perspective, to communicate with them.

[Rodney Ghali]

It's a really important question. I think the public service engaging Canadians where they are versus where we are is a question that even my team directly within PCO is looking at very closely.

As I look at the work that we are doing under the auspices of the Impact Canada initiative, I see that it is a programmatic approach that is looking at establishing new partnership models where government, non-profits and the private sector can work more collaboratively together. It is taking a citizen-centred approach that very much thinks about all sectors of society. It is thinking about millennials in particular—there are a few projects that we're working on—and understanding what is the best way to engage them.

You're right. There has been a traditional approach of government to just push out messaging and not necessarily be receptive to the communication that comes back. When we think about the concept of outcomes-based approaches, the issue of engagement is core to that, and the issue of co-designing and co-development is core to that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McCauley, you have five minutes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I want to go back to the departmental plans.

In one of the items, the goal is to ensure that employees get the training that they need to do their jobs, but there's no tangible target set for that. I bring this issue up because someone was talking about Phoenix earlier. For two whole years, the government did not actually enforce or have people do training. When it finally got around to it, it didn't make it mandatory, and then the program was widely panned as a very poor training program.

Considering issues like this, why would we not set an actual target for training instead of “improve over last year”? I'm not saying that you wrote this, but I'm curious about why we would not set targets within the department.

[Matthew Shea]

It's difficult to pick a target that would be a one-size-fits-all target for a department. The types of training that we need in the intelligence area, for example.... We actually have a school for intelligence analysts that is housed at PCO and supports a number of different departments.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I know, but we have a way to measure it, so why would we not set a target? We saw the Phoenix debacle, and many of the people on this committee sat and listened in on how two years later we hadn't done the training. Again, why do we not set a target to hold people responsible to ensure that important things like this actually get done?

[Matthew Shea]

Again, training is a broad category. The training that you need in one job—health and safety—could be different from the training that is needed for another job. There are certain types of training that are mandatory. For example, at PCO, health and safety training is mandatory. There are other types of training that are job-specific. What our intelligence analysts need is different from what our policy analysts need—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm going to move on, Mr. Shea.

With regard to the public service employee survey, there are rather alarming numbers in there. We see that the number of people experiencing harassment is going up. Discrimination is going up. Trust of the system is dropping significantly. I'm just wondering what PCO is doing to address these numbers.

I'll give you an idea. With regard to discrimination, there was an increase in the number of people who experienced discrimination but didn't report it. The number of people who didn't report it because they were afraid of the process has gone up. The number of those who didn't report because they were afraid of reprisals has gone up. The number of those who didn't report it because they didn't believe that it would make a difference has gone up.

Across the spectrum, it's getting worse and worse. What is PCO's plan to address these?

[Matthew Shea]

There are a couple of things that I would point out. One is that, just looking at the numbers themselves, year over year the harassment number actually went down in government, not up.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

It went to 49% from 48% for this year.

[Matthew Shea]

It went from 18% in 2017 to 15% in—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm sorry. Harassment is 27%, up from 25%, for those who experienced it but didn't report it. Thirty per cent who didn't report it were afraid of the process; that's up from 26%. Forty-seven per cent who didn't report it were afraid of reprisals, and that's up from 45% in 2017.

[Matthew Shea]

Mr. McCauley, I do want to make clear that there's an absolute number, which is “were you harassed in the last year?” That number is down. Within that there are sub-questions.

When you say 47%, that's 47% of the 15%. That's not discounted. It's just to clarify that it's not 47% of public servants who are being harassed.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What is the PCO doing to address these rather alarming increases?

[Matthew Shea]

There are two portions of this. One of them would be at the PCO itself. We actually have spent a lot of time talking about PSES results on a branch-by-branch basis.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm thinking of the general public service.

[Matthew Shea]

For the general public service, a safe work space policy has come out and every department has been asked to.... There are five different sections to that particular policy.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Is there direction from the PCO to the departments?

[Matthew Shea]

There is direction.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Have they put a plan together that's going to come back to the PCO for approval for addressing this issue?

[Matthew Shea]

I'd have to clarify whether it comes for approval, but it is being reported back from departments. Departments are expected to actually put more data together and to report in a very public way on discrimination on a number of different things. It's about not just reducing discrimination and harassment, but creating a healthy and safe workplace.