Evidence of meeting #174 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 pco.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
It's the same with the reprisals. We don't have an proper whistle-blower act. Again, what are we doing throughout the public service to protect those who need to come forward and who are very clearly afraid of reprisal?
4:10 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Privy Council Office
I think a number of consecutive governments have put in place more agents of Parliament that give tools to public servants to come forward and make disclosure. As you know, there is a disclosure—
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
The fear is increasing, though. We're going backwards on this issue.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
I'm afraid we're going to have to cut the conversation off at that.
I'll now go to Madam Mendès, for five minutes please.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd love to continue on that on a totally other tangent, but I have some questions on the mandate letters.
I'm very curious because we are approaching the end of this government's mandate. I do see that there was an objective of 70% of mandate letter commitments to be fulfilled. If you could possibly give us an overall idea of where we are with the mandate letter commitments, I would appreciate that.
4:15 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Impact and innovation Unit, Privy Council Office
As you know, there are 432 publicly available mandate letter commitments that are posted on the PCO tracking site to give you a sort of high-level overview of where we are tracking on all of that. You can find that on our website.
From a completed or met standpoint, we have 161 mandate letter commitments completed or met. We have approximately 250 or so where progress is being made on track and four mandate letter commitments that are no longer being pursued.
As you may be aware, the mandate letter tracker is updated on a quarterly basis. The stats I just gave you were from late March. We're planning on another update for June very shortly.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC
Do you think that, realistically speaking, we can expect to have that 70% attained by October?
4:15 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Impact and innovation Unit, Privy Council Office
The rationale behind the target that was set was to ensure that we had a high level of ambition.
As you're well aware, this idea of publicly disclosing all mandate letter commitments was the first time the federal government has ever seen that. I think there was an equal level of ambition in ensuring that the government work towards the greatest number of mandate letter commitments completed by the end of this current mandate.
As you can also imagine, there are a number of mandate letter commitments within the context of ongoing work where there's no end to them. This is ongoing business. The categorization of 70% will obviously include those that are completed within mandate, but also looking at those that are still on track, even at the end of this current mandate.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC
That brings me to the point. As you've just mentioned, there are some issues in the mandate letters that will be ongoing for many years. If nothing else, our relationship with the indigenous peoples is not something that we're going to resolve by September 30. It is ongoing and will be ongoing. It's not the only one; there are quite a few of those.
Is there a way to eventually have more continuing follow-up at PCO? There are things that you'll never achieve at 100%. It won't be realized. Is there a way of showing what has been done and what has been achieved, beyond being on track? Is there a way to do that?
4:15 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Impact and innovation Unit, Privy Council Office
That's really the philosophy behind the concept of results and delivery; it is looking at how governments track the original policy ideas all the way through implementation. Through the mandate letter tracker, the idea is that on a quarterly or so basis, the government is very publicly communicating where that policy implementation is at.
I think we have seen great value in tracking a number of those mandate letter commitments, and communicating the fact that—as we're equally pointing out—for a number of these large policy issues, realistically these things will take time; they will take years to implement. What's really important is that we continually publicly communicate the progress against what those commitments are.
From a public standpoint, that's what the mandate letter tracker is pointing to. You will also see that track into basically every department's departmental plan; it is equally tracking the mandate letter commitments through a departmental standpoint. PCO is the aggregate of all of that work.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC
Would that apply to Mr. McCauley's previous question?
He was pointing out that we're going backwards in certain aspects of accountability, and even the wellness of the public service in general.
Is it that we're going back or that we know more?
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
That's a great question, but unfortunately we don't have the time for it again. We have to work out the timing a little better here.
Our final three-minute intervention will go to Madam Benson.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Sheri Benson NDP Saskatoon West, SK
I have three minutes. That's really hard.
I want to make two comments about innovation and the ability of communities to work together with the government. I'm really hoping that part of what you move forward with is changing the culture within the public sector to be able to partner more authentically....
In particular, I have two technology companies in my riding, Noodlecake and Smart Call. Their struggle with working with the government is that an old-fashioned procurement process doesn't work if you're wanting to sit down together to actually solve a problem. When you're working with companies—and it's not just technology companies, it's organizations that are at the leading edge of solving social programs—you need to be sitting together to figure out the parameters first. What I often find is that the government has a solution, but they don't know what the problem is. That's why it ends up being difficult to make that leap and actually do better.
The other thing is that often governments don't know how things work on the ground. Often when you're dealing with the public service, you have the rules repeated to you of how it's supposed to work. What they're trying to do is to give feedback on the fact that they know what we want to do, and they're telling us that on the ground, it doesn't roll out that way.
I guess my point is that it's not all about hardware and software; it's about people and relationships.
4:20 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Impact and innovation Unit, Privy Council Office
I think what you've highlighted is basically at the core of what we're trying to institutionalize under the Impact Canada initiative, which is true codification of that co-design, co-development process, and taking a multisectoral approach.
I'll give you a perfect example of the meld of technology and social issues, and this is the government's response to Canada's opioid crisis. There are a number of planks that the government is rolling out to help stem deaths by opioid overdose. One of those is the development of a new technology for people who consume drugs, to ensure they are aware that what they're consuming is not laced with fentanyl or carfentanil.
You're right. In a traditional approach, government would basically put out the specs for what it thinks the right technology is and then procure whatever it is, irrespective of whether it's the right approach or not.
4:20 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Impact and innovation Unit, Privy Council Office
What we've done under the Impact Canada initiative is to launch an opioid drug-checking technology challenge. We put out the high-level goals, which are, can you develop a piece of technology that meets this criteria in terms of easy-to-use, low-cost, reusable...all of that? We put it out there to the communities, both domestic and international, to come up with that approach.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Mr. Shea, Mr. Ghali, Mr. Hammond, thank you all for being here once again. Your attendance at these meetings is always very much appreciated, and thank you again for your testimony.
As always, should you have any other answers that you wish to provide—since we were cut off a couple times—or any suggestions or recommendations, please get the answers or those recommendations and suggestions to our clerk as quickly as possible.
Colleagues, I'm going to suspend now to go in camera.
I have just a couple of minutes of committee business—an update for this committee—before we get into the draft report.
[Proceedings continue in camera]