Evidence of meeting #19 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 projects.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:55 p.m.
Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Montreal Science Centre, Canada Lands Company Ltd.
I'm sorry to have used up so much time.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Steven Blaney Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
With 30 seconds, we barely have time to breathe.
I just want to reiterate, Mr. Cavis, that we would like your organization to be involved in the Chapais Farm project. With your open approach to consultation, you can play a very important role within the Lévis community. I look forward to seeing the Canada Lands Company involved in an important issue for the population of Lévis once again.
Thank you very much.
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Liberal
3:55 p.m.
NDP
Erin Weir NDP Regina—Lewvan, SK
Thanks very much for the presentations.
It seems like my colleague, Mr. Blaney, had a pretty good line of questioning going about the Montreal Science Centre. I think he focused in particular on its broader contribution to our society and its role in national policy, but I guess I would really want to get down more to brass tacks about that facility. I note that in the CLCL's corporate plan, it says that the Montreal Science Centre will “develop a plan that will enable it to be more self-sufficient and provide new attractions that will enhance revenues, while maintaining service quality.”
In what sense is the facility not considered to be self-sufficient right now?
3:55 p.m.
Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Montreal Science Centre, Canada Lands Company Ltd.
Science centres are like schools. They usually need revenue to function. We're an education centre, and we're actually very in line with the provincial government curriculum so that when schools visit, they have a reason to do so.
We're actually doing very well in terms of self-funding. It's very unusual for a science centre or a museum to make 75% of its revenue through secondary revenue and ticketing. In fact, we're really ahead of the pack. It's finding the other 25% where we need to be creative, and that's why we have the plan, and that's what we intend to do.
3:55 p.m.
NDP
Erin Weir NDP Regina—Lewvan, SK
It sounds like, in that sense, you're already fairly close to self-sufficiency. That's good news.
Can you speak at all to what attractions should be kept and what new ones might make the most sense?
3:55 p.m.
Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Montreal Science Centre, Canada Lands Company Ltd.
A museum, a science centre, or an educational institution cannot continue if they don't renew themselves and develop new exhibits for people to see, new films at the cinema, new technology to demonstrate, and new partnerships. That is key. We're in a society of information technology, and up until very recently science centres did basic science, but we also have to do basic technology because no one today can function without using a computer, or at least understanding the man/machine interface. That's where we're going and, hopefully, we'll get the support to continue in that direction.
3:55 p.m.
NDP
Erin Weir NDP Regina—Lewvan, SK
We've talked about sufficiency on an operating basis, but might these new initiatives involve any kind of capital requirements? Can you speak at all to some of the longer-term investments that might need to be made?
4 p.m.
Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Montreal Science Centre, Canada Lands Company Ltd.
Indeed, within the plan, I think we need to have a recurrent and solid source of funding for the development part, which continues to change all the time. We also follow, as I mentioned, the education program of the Province of Quebec, and this is changing also. The focus is changing all the time. We have to renew ourselves to attract the folks, and then some of them will choose a career in science and technology, which is really good for this country.
4 p.m.
NDP
Erin Weir NDP Regina—Lewvan, SK
For the Canada Lands Company more broadly, you're projecting revenue from real estate sales of about $200 million in 2017, and that's about two thirds more than the prior year.
I'm wondering if you could speak at all to what assets you're planning to sell and how you plan to raise that revenue.
4 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, Real Estate, Canada Lands Company Ltd.
What you do see in our revenues is that there are vagaries year to year and that in the core real estate side, it's dependent on where projects are in their life cycle. The sales that we have projected this coming year come from the Wateridge project, the Rockcliffe project here in Ottawa. There are sales in Chilliwack at our Rivers Edge project, the Village at Griesbach in Edmonton, the Pleasantville project in St. John's, and the Currie project in Calgary. Running through them quickly in my mind, those are the primary ones that add up to the number for this year in real estate sales.
4 p.m.
NDP
Erin Weir NDP Regina—Lewvan, SK
Does the Canada Lands Company have an appropriate amount of autonomy to make these sales from a business point of view, or is there any risk of the federal government pushing it to make more sales for overall budgetary reasons?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Lands Company Ltd.
I know I also speak for Bob when I say that we have never experienced any emphasis. We operate at arm's length and the government is not.... It's a business undertaking.
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NDP
Erin Weir NDP Regina—Lewvan, SK
Okay, excellent.
For Defence Construction Canada, we note that your number of employees has declined from I think just over 1,000 a few years ago to more like 750 today. Is that right? If so, why has there been a decline in employment?
4 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Defence Construction Canada
In our model we are also a non-appropriated entity. We operate on a fee-for-service model. We adjust our resources depending on the amount of programming we're asked to deliver. Under our corporate plan, we do project for five years out. It's not just a year-to-year adjustment but is based on the projections and the type of services we're being asked to hire, because we employ engineers, technologists, environmental scientists, a few architects, and other professions like that, and a lot of project management people. We hire resources based on the services that we're projecting to deliver.
The adjustment you referred to was a result of a downturn from what was a record high level of spending by us a couple of years ago of over $1 billion a year over two years on roughly 2,000 infrastructure projects annually, which we delivered for National Defence and our other client partners. That came down about 25% to 30%, and at the same time we were driving ever-increasing efficiencies and effectiveness in our service delivery. We had committed under the deficit reduction action plan, DRAP, requirements to bring our costs of service delivery down more than 10%. We in fact achieved a 20% reduction in costs of service delivery and did a lot of benchmarking against private sector alternatives and so on. We changed our approach to focus on higher risk, higher value activities with more manpower, which is a cost for us and the client partners, and then less focus on the lower-risk items, for example.
We transformed our whole delivery model from a prescriptive to a risk-based approach to how we focused our services. That reduction in cost to delivery meant that we could use fewer personnel in our delivery.
But just to tell you, in ending—
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Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
We have to cut you short there because we have to be mindful of other people who want to ask questions.
For the last round of seven minutes, Mr. Drouin.
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Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I have to say, Madame Payette, that I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid because of you. I'm young enough to say that here. But it's sort of in space here too as we....
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Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
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Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I have a question for Mr. Paul with regard to the mandate of DCC and how you're integrating green procurement and the greening of whatever you build. What type of policies do you have to ensure that you meet your mandate? I see you also help DND do that as well.
4:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Defence Construction Canada
Our main client partner is the ADM of infrastructure and environment, so environment is a big part of it. It represents roughly 25% of our annual business, and is growing. That includes everything from the upfront planning stage—environmental assessments, remediation plans, etc.—right through to delivery of energy performance contracts and many different types of environmental initiatives that result in greenhouse gas reductions and lowering costs of services that can create pollutants. That even results in payback to the DND, and overall reduction of those costs.
It similarly includes, under the environment, the UXO—unexploded explosive ordnance—remediation program. We do a lot of remediation, and it includes all the legacy UXO sites that the DND, as the strong environmental steward it is, has committed to delivering. We manage those projects for the DND to achieve that.
As a corporation, we have our own environmental stewardship policy for how we, DCC, approach and operate. We also support our client partners in achieving their objectives.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Looking forward, is there any new policy that you would be putting forward, as technology advances, to further green some of the buildings you are involved with?
4:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Defence Construction Canada
I will let my VP of procurement add to this, but I will tell you quickly that we are a very innovative organization. We are constantly moving the yardstick forward. I mentioned some of the things we are doing on the energy performance contracts. We are building buildings to LEED standards and other standards that DND has committed to achieving.
Mélinda, maybe I can let you add a bit to this.
4:05 p.m.
Vice-President, Procurement, Defence Construction Canada
We are also very proud to be rolling out an e-bidding system. We started rolling it out about two months ago, for the purpose of reducing paperwork and making the process more efficient for DCC. We have also moved to an electronic filing system, again, to reduce paper and be more environmentally friendly.
We are also very supportive of the use of more technology in construction—the building information modelling, for example. We participate in an industry committee whose purpose is to facilitate the use of building information modelling in construction.
We are also participating in Canadian Construction Innovations, which is also looking for how to innovate in construction and make it more efficient. Greening is part of that, as well the use of technology.