Government Operations Committee on Nov. 16th, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Colleagues, we have quorum. Not all of our members are here, but we do have quorum, so, out of respect for our witness, I would like to commence the meeting.

Mr. Smith, welcome to our committee. Thank you for your appearance here today.

The process we follow is fairly simple. We ask you for a brief opening statement. Thank you for the one you have provided me, and, I think, other members of the committee. Following that there will be a series of questions by members of our committee, starting with the government side, going to the opposition side, and we will continue until questions have been exhausted.

With that brief opening, once again, thank you, and please proceed with your opening statement.

[Wayne Smith, Former Chief Statistician of Canada, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I have a very brief opening statement just to establish what I might be able to contribute to the work of the committee.

On August 3, 2016, as chief statistician of Canada, I wrote to the Prime Minister to inform him of three major concerns that I had regarding the impact of Shared Services Canada on Statistics Canada, concerns I had been unable to adequately address, in my view, through my not inconsiderable efforts up to that point. The first concern was that, as it is constituted, Shared Services Canada represented a major and unacceptable intrusion on the independence of Statistics Canada. Independence is essential to the credibility of a national statistical office. I reminded the Prime Minister that the government had made a commitment to reinforce the independence of Statistics Canada during its mandate.

My second concern was that the arrangement with Shared Services Canada imposed on Statistics Canada was inconsistent with the confidentiality guarantees given by the Statistics Act to persons and organizations providing information to Statistics Canada for statistical purposes. Either the legislation needed to change or the arrangement needed to be brought into line with the legislation.

My third concern was that dependence on Shared Services Canada was hobbling Statistics Canada in its day-to-day operations, reducing effectiveness, increasing costs, and creating unacceptable levels of risk to the delivery of Statistics Canada's programs. I advised the Prime Minister that if I was not able to materially address these issues before September 17, 2016, I would resign as chief statistician of Canada in order to call public attention to this deteriorating situation. It was a situation that, in my opinion, was undermining the effectiveness of a key institution in Canada's democratic process.

No material improvement either was promised or occurred before September 17, and my resignation therefore became effective. Since that day, while I'm told there have been some short-term improvements in Shared Services Canada's support to Statistics Canada, I believe that all three underlying issues remain unresolved, and I continue to advocate for these issues to be addressed.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much, Mr. Smith.

Mr. Whalen, you have seven minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for coming today, Mr. Smith. It was our hope that we would have some other individuals here with us today to balance viewpoints, but thank you for coming. At a future point in time, we'll have an opportunity to hear from management at SSC and perhaps your successors.

Given that there's been a consultation process, or our committee had asked SSC to go back and do some additional work and consultations, did you participate in the additional consultations that happened with the development of a new strategic plan for SSC after May of this year?

[Wayne Smith]

I was not, as I recall, directly involved in the consultations, no.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Did you have an opportunity? Were you asked?

[Wayne Smith]

No, I don't recall being asked.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

When we think about some of the things we've talked about with SSC in terms of managing the different projects, I fail to see how it affects the independence. Maybe you could let me know a little more how using the shared technology infrastructure that all the rest of government has to use has affected Statistics Canada. The rest of government doesn't complain about its independence being impacted by using the roads of government or any other aspect of the technology of government.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Members, I believe the bells are ringing.

Mr. Smith, my apologies. We'll have to interrupt the proceedings for now while we proceed to the House for a vote.

Sir, we have a two-hour block of time in front of us. Are you available for that period of time?

[Wayne Smith]

I'm at your disposal for that full time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Once again, we will have a vote shortly, and hopefully that will be the end of the votes. We're not sure about that, but we will be back. We will reconvene.

We will suspend until the votes are completed.

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

Mr. Chair, is it a half-hour bell? This is a half-hour bell, isn't it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Yes, but it's been our practice that when bells start—

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

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

All right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Seeing that we have a quorum, committee members, I would like to reconvene the meeting and also advise you, since I was in similar situations as parliamentary secretary to the government House leader for nine years, that I suspect we'll be hearing bells again in about eight to ten minutes.

Mr. Whalen, you had a question.

Mr. Smith, I believe you heard the question. If you are prepared to respond, we'll try to get through as much of this as we can.

[Wayne Smith]

The question was in what way is Statistics Canada unique, and how does independence have an impact on whether Statistics Canada should or should not be part of the Shared Services Canada initiative?

The notion of independence for national statistics offices is established internationally. I think it is well known and well accepted in Canada. Clearly, the government accepts it, because the government has made a commitment not only to maintain but also to reinforce in law the independence of Statistics Canada.

But that argument does not apply to any.... If you think of the 43 current partner departments of Shared Services Canada, no one is arguing that any of those other organizations have a claim to independence in the sense that it applies to Statistics Canada. However, there are other institutions in the federal universe that, in fact, do have that claim. Agents of Parliament are a particularly good example, because, in some sense, they play a watchdog role, in the same way Statistics Canada does, with respect to the activities of the government and its performance. In those cases, those institutions were left out of Shared Services Canada from the beginning. One case, where the issues of independence and confidentiality come into play, that was not left out was the Federal Court system. When that was pointed out by the court system, the Federal Court system was removed from the initiative by the current government.

The notion that this initiative is inconsistent with independence is well established, and the fact that Statistics Canada is the sole institution that remains on the list of organizations that are involved in Shared Services Canada when it has a claim to independence is relatively easy to argue.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you very much, Mr. Smith.

Before we broke, I asked about opportunities to consult and provide your views to Canada Post—sorry, Shared Services Canada—on their status and their strategic plan. You'll have to forgive me; we've been doing a lot of work on that other agency. It was my understanding that there was an opportunity to work...that Statistics Canada and Shared Services Canada had set up a type of war room in the month of May in order to work out differences between them and to try to find resolutions to their problems, including issues related to independence and to the adequacy of the technical information and the adequacy of the assets to provide the service.

[Wayne Smith]

A group was set up. It was specifically not to deal with those strategic issues. They were set aside. It was to deal with immediate operational crises, essentially, to find solutions that would allow, for example, the census to go forward and meet its full commitments and that would allow Statistics Canada to deal with the workloads it was facing, because we were literally running out of capacity. It was very focused on resolving short-term problems. It was not at all strategically focused, and it was not attempting to resolve the issues of independence or protection of confidential data. It was really focused on day-to-day operational issues.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Were those meetings successful, in your opinion? Were they able to deliver on the timelines of StatsCan and Shared Services Canada to meet the goals of the census?

[Wayne Smith]

Absolutely not. Well, the census was generally a success, but there was one major project in which we had made commitments to improve the web service of Statistics Canada in time for the 2016 census. Because of repeated failures to deliver in a timely way on the infrastructure needed for that program, we ultimately had to go to a plan B in order to disseminate the census results, because we wouldn't have had the time to properly develop and test the system in the meantime. At that meeting, commitments were made about the delivery; they weren't met. Other commitments were made about delivery of additional capacity we needed to operate. When I asked about it the last time, my chief information officer said that not only did we not have a date for delivery, we also did not have a date for when we were going to get a date. Some of the stuff may have been delivered in the wake of my departure, but certainly at the time I left, it was seriously behind, and we were very concerned about the consequences.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McCauley, take seven minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you for joining us, Mr. Smith. We apologize for the interruption.

You mentioned that you sent a letter or held a conversation with the Prime Minister saying you'd like this or you would have to resign.

Can you briefly walk me through what exactly that was? Was it a letter? Was it a conversation?

[Wayne Smith]

It was a letter. It was written and sent at the beginning of August.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Did you outline your specific concerns at that time?