Government Operations Committee on May 27th, 2019

[Matthew Shea]

You'll get no disagreement at this table around the importance of paying public servants.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

It's been one of those questions. It's a little rhetorical, obviously.

[Matthew Shea]

I mean—

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

My point is that, here is the reality, and you're talking about renewing the public service. I want to know what part of the conversation that key part of being an employer was, going forward.

I'm not asking you to solve the Phoenix pay system, obviously, but to me that would be a pretty big step prior to doing any other stuff.

[Matthew Shea]

Paying our employees is key, and it's something that is in every deputy's performance appraisal—supporting the steps being taken. For example, one of the key things being done right now is what we call HR-to-pay. It's looking at ways that we actually submit information to the pay centre to ensure that we minimize the chance of disruption of pay, minimize the chance of errors—looking at those steps we can take.

Yes, in parallel they are looking at system fixes, but there are process opportunities as well and there's accountability that's being built into individual departments. The one point I'd like to make is that you can have a situation like Phoenix, and it's something that we've very much identified in government as something we need to learn from. We often talk about the lessons of the Goss Gilroy report as it relates to other projects, as it relates to seeking innovation.

But, I think it would be unfair to characterize that the government as a whole is not being innovative and the government as a whole is still not moving forward. Looking at third parties, not us—it's easy for us to say that we're innovative or that we're trying new things—Canada was ranked in the 97th percentile for the World Bank indicator of government effectiveness. We were ranked first in its women's leaders index. As a government, many departments have been found to be top employers, whether it be for young people at the Department of Finance, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Health Canada, Stats Canada or TBS—best diversity employers.

I think there are a lot of great stories, and one of the things I would encourage members to do is read the clerk's annual report. There are a lot of wonderful stories of things that have been achieved in the public service, and I think it would be unfair to characterize the entire public service based on one specific, though very important, example.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

I bring that to your attention because one of the issues brought forward to me was students not looking to the federal government for employment because they were worried they wouldn't get paid. I think summer jobs for young people in the government.... I've worked in the community so I've interacted with public servants all my life and I certainly understand the importance of the work they do. I'm not undermining that.

What I am saying is that I feel, as a career choice, that has been eroded. Although we're doing well, I think the impact is still to come. One way I have seen it is with young people not applying, for lots of reasons—student debt and those kinds of things. You pretty well can't work all summer and not get paid.

I'm just sharing that with you.

[Matthew Shea]

I will add that I'm very passionate about this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Shea, I'm sorry. I'd love to hear your comments, but you'll have to share them at some other time because we're completely out of time on this intervention.

We'll go to Mr. Jowhari, please, for seven minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the department for coming in and providing the breadth in testimony.

There are two different themes. One is around policy and the implementation support you are giving, and I have a number of questions around clarification on the funding, the extra $13 million you have requested.

Let's start with policy. In your written submission, you talked about the youth policy. This is one of the newer policies that your department is now taking on. You talked about the vision for youth and the vision for Canada Service Corps, as well a Government of Canada youth digital gateway. Can you share with us your finding? What is the vision that is being developed? How are you helping the Prime Minister's Office in working with the youth council in trying to develop and implement this?

[Matthew Shea]

As you likely know, the Prime Minister took on the role of minister for youth in addition to being Prime Minister. The PCO, in supporting the Prime Minister, has a secretariat for youth and a deputy minister supporting the prime minister in that role. I would say, before I get to the outcome, that we have to talk about how we got there.

One of the big things that was set out was to consult youth across the country in a number of different ways. As the department, we sought out input from youth from across the country, got about 10,000 individual responses in the first stage, and then did 18 in-person sessions throughout Canada that kind of validated what we heard.

The outcome of that was a youth policy that had a number of different, very specific priority areas: leadership and impact; health and wellness; innovation; skills and learning; employment; truth and reconciliation; and environment and climate change. This culminated in the first-ever youth summit that was hosted just recently. It was an excellent success and an example of the federal government's bringing resources to bear to support the Prime Minister in this particular role to bring youth together and to discuss this.

From this, it will be the question of where we go next. A lot of that will be to come. We will report on a regular basis on the progress, and that will be progress across government, not unique to PCO. It's a theme, and we'll now turn to departments to ask what they can do on each of these themes, and we'll report back to the public on what we do.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Great.

Can you touch on the youth digital gateway? It's on page 4 of your submission.

[Matthew Shea]

I don't know that I have any details on the youth gateway itself. That's how it is.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay. We'll go to the funding then. That's easy.

In your submission, you indicated that the request this year was $13 million more. There are three areas that I'd like to probe. Can you shed a little light on the funding for PCO's secure mobile communications project?

[Matthew Shea]

Absolutely. It's largely my team who has a role in ensuring that there is secure communication capacity in the government for cabinet, for the Prime Minister and others to have—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Were there some security concerns?

[Matthew Shea]

I won't get into specific concerns. I would simply say that it's important to always be proactively monitoring the threat environment and ensuring that our technology and our processes are up to speed to combat those emerging threats. With that in mind, we've taken steps through this to increase the reliability and the reach but also the redundancy of our secure communication capacity to make sure that, as much as possible, we can reach cabinet, the Prime Minister and those in key senior leadership positions within government anywhere they are in the world and be able to have the discussions that need to happen.

You can picture events where that would be necessary. It's important that we have the capacity to do that and to continue to invest in that.

That particular project was mentioned in the fall economic update. There is also funding for the Communications Security Establishment and for Shared Services Canada. We're working together to bring that technology to bear.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Another point you highlighted was the funding decrease related to the PCO information technology modernization project, as a number of subprojects were completed in 2017. Can you help me with the fact that there is a $13-million increase and a funding decrease?

Also, were the subprojects that were completed successful?

[Matthew Shea]

Looking back at budget 2016, we had a number of items that were brought in. There was $88 million over five years for IT projects. We invested in various projects to increase our hardware and increase the core infrastructure from an IT perspective. You'll see, starting this year, that each year we'll have a little less funding. It's because we're completing the projects, so it's actually, I would suggest, a good-news story. They have been generally on time and on budget, and they work, which is the goal of our IT projects, absolutely.

There are a number of subprojects. Part of it is that in going to that agile approach to doing technology, we don't want a number of just large projects; we want bite-sized projects that we can actually finish and deliver. Information management is one that we'll continue to invest in over the coming years. We built some infrastructure. We want to continue down the path to use GCdocs, which is a government-wide standard.

To your other question—how do we go down there but then up as a budget—it's a mix of increases and decreases, as you can appreciate. The net is an increase.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I have about a minute left, and I want to get one last question in. It's about the decrease of funding related to the completion of the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls commission, as of June. Why the decrease in funding?

[Matthew Shea]

Keep in mind that we're comparing year over year, so it's just a decrease compared with what our main estimates were last year. This year our main estimates had under $7 million allocated for MMIWG because it was just those final few months of the year. Similar to last year, we anticipate that we'll reprofile some money that was unspent in previous years to augment that amount, but the intent is absolutely that everything will wrap up by the end of June. The report will be out by then. They'll wrap up their office. Then PCO will do close-out work with Library and Archives to ensure that the information management is done correctly, the offices are closed and we support the employees who are leaving.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We'll now go to five-minute rounds.

Mr. Deltell, go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Gentlemen, it's always a pleasure to see you again and meet with you. Thank you for your testimony and, most importantly, for the services you provide to Canadians.

Not surprisingly, I will ask some questions about the committee created by the government for the leaders debate during the campaign.

I want to reiterate that there is absolutely nothing personal in what I'm going to say and that you serve the government with honour and dignity.

It's important to repeat that, in our opinion, as the official opposition, this committee is null and void because it is intended to solve a problem that did not exist. The leaders' debates were not a problem. It was organized between the parties and the broadcasters, and everything was going well. We have always had good debates, both in terms of organization and substance. The government has decided to create a committee to assess the relevance of this. We think it's null and void.

Now, this committee has been formed. Again, it's nothing against you personally, but I would like you to provide an update. If I recall correctly, we talked about a budget of $5 million. I'd like to know where things stand in this regard.

[Matthew Shea]

Thank you, as always, for your question. I appreciate the way you always express your appreciation for the public service when you ask these questions.

Just as an update, when I came to this committee last year, we at PCO were temporarily managing the funding, because the actual department had not yet been created. It has now been created through supplementary estimates. That final amount of money went to them, not to PCO. For this fiscal year, they have their own main estimates. They already appeared, in fact, at another parliamentary committee. I had the chance to join Minister Gould when she went for one of the appearances there.

From a PCO perspective, our work is really just a support function right now. We have a memorandum of understanding with the debates commission to provide internal services. My team provides internal services. It's important from my perspective to highlight the fact that they had the choice of going anywhere they wanted. There was no string attached that they had to get those services through us. They made the decision, given that we've supported MMIWG and other organizations like this, that we were well positioned to help them. They're up and running. They have an office location. They've hired staff. They've set up their advisory group. Right now, as we speak, a request for proposals has been put out through PSPC to bid on the contract that will be put in place to put on the individual debates.

Beyond that, I can't really comment on the work they're doing. They're another organization. I'd be happy to comment on the support we provide them in any way you'd like.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Well, thank you for your comment, even if, as far as I'm concerned, this is totally a waste of time and a waste of money. I give all my respect to the members of this committee. A former governor general is a right honourable man. He's more than an honourable man; he's a right honourable man, by his title and by what he has done for his country, but I think this guy should have something better to do than try to find solutions to a problem that doesn't exist.

I'd like to come back to a point you made in the document you submitted. On page 4, you talk about supporting the Minister of Democratic Institutions to strengthen and protect Canada's democratic institutions. Could you give some financial items under your watch that you will have to analyze in the coming federal election?

We know that every time it comes to elections, sensitivities run high, and rightly so because we are terrible or extraordinary judges and parties. That is why we must ensure that everything is done according to the rules and, to use words from the field of justice, that there is a semblance of following the rules.

What is your role in strengthening and protecting Canada's democratic institutions for the next election and what budgets are allocated to it?