Government Operations Committee on Nov. 21st, 2016

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

You said that it was to strengthen certain infrastructures, like the youth council, intergovernmental meetings between provincial premiers, and so on.

Are there any new infrastructures that you haven't named? If that is the case, I would like to hear you talk about them.

[Serge Dupont]

I have given other examples. There were appointments of the Governor in Council, the Results and Delivery Unit, democratic reform and departmental correspondence. So those are administrative issues, but I think that, overall, I have referred to the main elements.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

Is the official name really the “Prime Minister's Youth Council”? Is that what it's called?

[Serge Dupont]

I believe so, yes.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

It's housed in the same building as the Prime Minister's office.

[Serge Dupont]

No, the Youth Council was appointed following nominations. Actually, 16,000 youths expressed their interest in being involved in the conversation about the Government of Canada's major priorities. Fifteen youths have been appointed to the council.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Where do these young people meet?

[Serge Dupont]

So far, they have met once in Ottawa, in September. We cover their travel and hospitality costs. The Privy Council Office has a small secretariat to support all of the processes.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I understand. Thank you.

What is the budget allocated to the secretariat so far?

[Serge Dupont]

The budget is $1.7 million for about eight people. It supports the council and the development of a youth services initiative, which the government wants to put forward.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I fully understand. Thank you.

Let's talk about additional infrastructures needed for meetings between provincial premiers. I think the idea came from Mr. Charest in Quebec. The first meeting was held in 2003 or 2004, under Paul Martin. It might be difficult to answer my question, but do you know if, at the time, during the first meetings, 15 additional people were needed to run that type of intergovernmental meeting? Was that the case under Paul Martin? Were there any cuts under Prime Minister Stephen Harper? What led to the need for these people now?

[Serge Dupont]

I spoke about five people, not 15. Mr. Charest started the Council of the Federation, which meets once or twice a year. It's the provinces without the federal government.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I see. That makes my question completely irrelevant.

I'll move on.

My next question is for the representatives of the Public Service Commission. Legislation favoured the hiring of veterans. In the last year, I was the official opposition critic for veterans. I'm not anymore—I have another responsibility—but I found that hiring veterans wasn't a significant success. Do you know why this is exactly? Why are we not seeing the effects of this legislation?

[Gerry Thom]

Thank you for the question.

The act came into force on July 1, 2015. To put things in context, we had to make some changes to the priority system so that we could manage new applications efficiently. As I recall, we hired 90 to 95 veterans last year.

The annual report will be released soon. I can't give you all the details, but there are close to 150 appointments for the fiscal year that has just ended.

It's also interesting to note—and I verified this in the last few days—that we have about the same number of appointments for the first seven months of this fiscal year. So it's going fairly well. The important thing is that everyone is aware that we must make an extra effort, especially in terms of information and communication with the various departments. That's what the deputy ministers are doing now, and they are trying to raise as much awareness as possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

[Gerry Thom]

Thank you.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Drouin, you have five minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I want to continue on with what Mr. Grewal was speaking about.

You mentioned that the results and delivery unit hired 15 people, I believe, since last year. You started speaking about the metrics, and I heard you mentioning internal metrics. I'm trying to understand how that's going to have an impact on the third-party organizations that we fund.

For instance, a few years ago I remember the government of the day announced $100 million for the Canada accelerator and incubator program. That money was dolled out to universities, but we found out that Canada still fell behind in terms of the innovation scale.

I know that's a hard thing to measure, but is there a sincere effort being made to try to measure those metrics, and ask our third-party organizations to actually make a hard difference?

[Serge Dupont]

I appreciate the question.

As I mentioned, there has always been and will continue to be an effort to measure the results of individual programs. There are efforts to build that from the outset, particularly when funds are paid out to third-party organizations through the contribution agreements, to try to set out what results are expected and how they'll be measured and tracked, and so forth, their evaluation of programs ex post.

What is perhaps a bit different, as I mentioned, with the results and delivery unit is that there is an effort on the part of the government to say, on the innovation file, writ large, there will be a number of different initiatives to try to track the results on the overall priority, and then, of course, to go back and be informed by the program results at a more segmented level, but to be able to report broadly to Canadians on how the government is moving the needle on innovation, on infrastructure, and on other major priorities. That's perhaps one of the differences here. I was trying to do it on a bit of a more macro level, but the challenge is doing it meaningfully in a way where the government is confident that it actually has the levers to move that needle, trying to measure it appropriately, and then communicating that to Canadians.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Great. Thank you.

On the PSC, we've talked about Destination 2020. That was released in 2014 and a number of cross-government initiatives were brought forward. I asked your colleague, Ms. Donoghue, the last time, about the impact on hiring millennials. I just want to understand what steps the organization has taken in order to attract more millennials to the Government of Canada. I know this is a priority for Treasury Board, so I'm trying to get a better understanding of whether anything has changed.

[Gerry Thom]

Thank you for the question.

As far as Destination 2020 is concerned, or the Blueprint 2020 plan, I think Ms. Donoghue probably talked about the new direction in staffing, the initiative that we put in place last year. Now we're in phase two of the new direction in staffing. What we are doing is really looking at our recruitment programs, when we go outside, looking at our system, as we've mentioned, trying to make the system easier and more user-friendly. We are doing some user experience with Canadians to make sure that we can meet their needs.

We're working with all departments, and obviously with the employer, Treasury Board, to try to come up with new programs to focus on millennials specifically.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Is there an effort being made to measure where millennials are working within the departments? I hear this constantly on the ground and I haven't seen the real numbers, but young people working in IT will be told, “Oh, well, you guys will do social media.” I know they are qualified for more than just doing social media. I'm trying to get a better understanding so that when I speak to these people I can say, no, there are a lot of millennials working their way up.

Is there a leadership program for them and whatnot?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Thom, give a brief answer, please.

[Gerry Thom]

Yes.

We have quite a bit of data, but it's not as detailed as knowing where they actually work in each department. With effort, we could get that from all the departments and from the employers.

There are quite a few. I don't have the statistics. It's in the annual report, but there are quite a few young people, millennials, getting hired and staying in the public service. We sometimes think they are not coming in, or whatever, or they're leaving, but that's not necessarily the case. It's not as bad as we think.