Government Operations Committee on Nov. 17th, 2016

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Hundreds of millions of dollars.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Yes.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

It is important that we know that and that it be said. We have to be aware of these amounts.

Let's go back to Treasury Board and the requests that involve the judicial or extrajudicial aspect. There is a request for $8.9 million for out-of-court settlements. Are additional amounts often requested for this? This type of envelope recurs from one year to the next, but was this amount already planned? Briefly, what is the philosophy with regard to out-of-court settlements?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Much of this is from the White class action settlement, for RCMP personnel. The original settlement of $73 million to settle all claims was insufficient as there were additional claims subsequently, and appeals continue to come forward. So, as you've cited, there is the amount of $8.9 million for the payout of 33 new claims and appeals.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McColeman, welcome to our committee. You have five minutes, please.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here to deal with the supplementary estimates. My first question would be to dive a little deeper on the $8.9 million in supplementary (B)s for the out-of-court settlements. What ministries would these be related to?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

RCMP falls under Public Safety largely, under Minister Goodale, but also, obviously a legal issue would implicate Justice as well.

[Yaprak Baltacioglu]

But we're the employer.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

And as the employer, Treasury Board. That's the employer.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

To your colleagues who are with you, obviously, there are very variable costs year to year depending on the number of lawsuits existing out there. Is the strategy up to the ministries to determine whether they do out-of-court settlements or they go forward to court cases? Is there a consistent year-to-year amount that is allocated for these types of situations?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Yes, partly, but I know there are contingencies that the government maintains on an ongoing basis. The Prime Minister has established a cabinet committee, legal affairs committee, to help strengthen the ability to predict these, but every government maintains contingencies on an ongoing basis.

Brian may have more granular detail on it.

[Brian Pagan]

Thank you, Minister.

Specifically with respect to forecasting contingent liabilities for out-of-court settlements, the process is such that, when there is a claim against the crown, we work with the Department of Justice to determine if the claim is founded and the probability of there being a payment due.

Once we make the assessment that there's a probability of a liability due, even if we are not making the payment, the liability will be recorded in the public accounts—the public accounts were just tabled a couple of weeks ago—and in that way we reflect the total liabilities of the government.

The issue here with the White case is that there was a settlement made based on a precedent established with the Canadian Forces. Best efforts were made to identify the number of claimants, but we're dealing with members who go back as far as 1970. In this case, the additional costs are due to unanticipated members coming forward who were not part of the original claim or, in the case where we made a decision and lost on appeal, and therefore, payments are owing.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Okay, the next question would be regarding the Windsor-Detroit bridge, the Gordie Howe bridge. It was mentioned earlier in your comments, I believe, the number being $350.6 million in the supplementary (B)s to do some land acquisition.

Just in general terms, is the project on time, and is it on budget?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

The project is proceeding. As you know, this has taken a long time, and more than one government has worked on this. The importance of that Detroit crossing at Windsor is essential in terms of Canada's trade relationship with the United States.

I am told the project is within budget, but it has experienced a lot of delays due to environmental assessments, government approvals in Michigan, and legal challenges from certain stakeholders. We're moving forward on this, but there is a lot of land. I forget how many pieces of land, but it was several hundred parcels of land that needed to be acquired. My information is that about 50% of that land has been acquired, and the rest is on track, but you can imagine the complexity and the number of moving parts involved in moving that forward.

I think you'd agree the key point is that we need to move forward, and we need to ensure that we improve the ability to move people and goods across that crossing. As I say, it has been for more than one government a challenging but important project.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Madam Shanahan for five minutes, please.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Minister, and the rest of the panel, for being here with us.

I am interested in this relationship between the supplementary estimates that we are studying today and the budget process, and how it helps the quality of our review. For example, in the budget, we talked about a program for harmonizing the human resources programs across many departments, and an amount of $75 million was allocated to that. It's very similar to the Shared Services problematic, where we have different HR programs across many departments, and it's difficult to have aggregate information around that. That's interesting to me, because it was presented in the budget, but it's now in the supplementary estimates that the Treasury Board is asking for $68.1 million.

I just want to understand what would change in the reform. How can I study that amount now? How can I understand how that amount is going to be used to put that project into place? How will it change, so we can avoid the kind of problems that we are now seeing with Phoenix, which of course was a similar type of program trying to harmonize multiple platforms?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

It is essential that we modernize our ability as a central agency of government. As an employer, but also as the Treasury Board, from a financial management perspective and from an employer perspective, we play an important role in this. Right now we do not have—and we haven't had—the right IT system, on an ongoing basis, in real time, to have the kind of information we need on human resources or financial information across departments and agencies. What this will provide us with is up-to-date human resources and financial information for every department and agency in real time. It's something we have to do as part of running a modern, efficient government.

You're quite right. Any time any government of any stripe undertakes any IT project, enterprise-wide, it is a big challenge. We are monitoring on an ongoing basis the work being done to move forward on the back-office transformation. We are studying past IT transformation projects in order to learn what went well, what didn't go well, and what the lessons are from that. We are doing our utmost to get this one right.

I'll ask Yaprak to contribute to that as well.

[Yaprak Baltacioglu]

What would be different is that, first of all, we have a very strong project management office to make sure that the project is managed. The second thing is that the project has, and will have, more off-ramps. If we think that there is a risk to it, at least there will be choices for the government, and essentially for Parliament, to see where we go. The third thing is that we will on-board departments only when everybody is ready, so their systems won't be shut down. There will be almost parallel systems. You bring them on one at a time as departments get ready. We think that's the best way to approach this, because this big bang becomes tissues of connection.

I think that's what you were worried about. We are extremely sensitive to that.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Excellent.

The one thing I would want to avoid is coming back in supplementary estimates (A), (B), and (C), in future years, asking for more money for a project that should have been—

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Let me tell you, Brenda, we probably will be back in the future on this. I want to make this point now, because I want to be transparent on this.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Yes.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

There are two mistakes we don't want to make. One, we want to maintain, as Yaprak said, a parallel system, the legacy system, until this one is running well. Two, we don't want to treat this as a cost-cutting exercise. When you are doing an IT project, there may be cost savings down the road, but it's a mistake, or can be a mistake, to try to exact those savings as part of the IT transformation. It actually costs more in the beginning of an IT transformation. It may save you money down the road, and that's the objective. I've looked at a number of these over the years, and also in my previous role as Minister of Public Services and Procurement, or Public Works at the time, and it is folly, in my view, to try to get savings during an IT transformation. You have to invest more in the beginning to get it right, including maintaining parallel legacy systems.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Minister, we're going to have to cut you off there. Thank you.

Mr. McCauley, you have five minutes please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We'll go back to supplementary (B)s please. I have just a couple of quick questions.

We have $75 million for CBC, “Funding to disseminate and support world-class Canadian content and to provide Canadians with better access to programs....” Is that just a basic, straight grant when they can run with it? Is it a wish or is it actually being broken out to provide Canadians with better access? I'm not sure how we're giving Canadians better access if they don't have a TV or Internet. This money is not going to be used to buy them a TV, so how is it going to give them better access?