Government Operations Committee on March 7th, 2017

[Serge Dupont]

As I mentioned in my remarks, PCO provides the direction, the coordination of action in the Government of Canada writ large. The responsibility for Phoenix resides clearly with the department of public services.

The Prime Minister indicated—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Was that just for show? It sounds as though you're saying you really don't do anything.

[Serge Dupont]

No. There remains a primary oversight responsibility for the Clerk of the Privy Council, as head of the public service, to take this matter seriously and to ensure that it is fixed. All the resources are being applied to addressing the very real challenge that Phoenix has posed to the public service and to public servants.

That, of course, has meant ensuring that we are bolstering the resources of the procurement department to manage this pressure through additional centres, that we are focusing on ensuring that individuals are paid accurately, that we are addressing the backlog that was identified, and so forth.

In short, what the clerk is ensuring is that through regular meetings between himself and the deputy minister and through the action of the Privy Council, we are satisfying ourselves that all efforts are being made to resolve this issue as quickly and as effectively as possible.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I want to get to democratic reform. That money has been spent. There was $3.3 million for supporting engagement. That money has been spent, correct?

[Serge Dupont]

That is correct.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The MyDemocracy.ca was rather amusingly mocked lightly in the paper, etc. Did we go out to bid on that? Was that a sole-source contract?

[Serge Dupont]

The process that was used was a sole-source contract, but under what is called the advance contract award notice. There's a public notice to all suppliers that the PCO intends to award a contract to a pre-identified supplier believed to be the only one capable of performing the work—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm sorry, Mr. Dupont. I'm short on time. It was just a quick question.

Who made the decision to choose that company? It had been insinuated that they had been linked either to the current government or to the provincial Liberal government. I'm curious, because you said that was the only company capable of doing this.

[Serge Dupont]

Vox Pop Labs was identified as a company that was able to do this. No other companies were known at the time to offer the same service. However, a notification was—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Who would have made that decision, please? It sounds very strange, in this day and age, that this company, which has been widely mocked for what they put out, was the only one in Canada known to be able to do a simple survey.

[Serge Dupont]

Ultimately, this is a process that was run by the Privy Council Office. As I indicated to you, the notification was provided, so that any other party who thought they were able to provide the service could have come forward and offered their services. At the end of the day, again, this was managed by Public Services and Procurement Canada in compliance with Treasury Board policies on contracts and on procurement.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay, it was Public Works.

What happened to all the data that was collected from this? What happened with that data? Is it sitting somewhere in Shared Services? Was it destroyed?

[Serge Dupont]

No. A public report, the summary of the exercise, was published on January 24. It's on the website for democratic reform. There is a summary report that all members, and, of course, any member of the Canadian public can go and consult.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I don't mean the results, but IP numbers.... I'm sure we drop cookies into everything. Is all that information stored somewhere? Was it retained to be used for data mining for future stuff?

[Serge Dupont]

I'm not sure where or how. We could certainly find out where all the individual kinds of answers may be residing, but the summary report was made public and is readily available for consultation. In total, over 360,000 Canadians participated in the survey.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm going to switch over to Shared Services quickly.

You mentioned the DND project on Carling Avenue. It's nice to see it's finally happening. We know there have been a lot of issues with Shared Services. It's a huge project and much bigger than I think anyone really expected.

Did the DND project in any way interfere with Shared Services' ability to get the other work done, such as the email transformation or moving over the data centres? Was it just a bridge too far or one project too many?

[Graham Barr]

Just as a point of clarification, is the member referring to our project to expand and modernize the Borden data centre on the DND base?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

You mentioned DND and Carling.

[Graham Barr]

Oh, the Carling campus.... No. The Carling campus was not one project too many for Shared Services Canada.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay.

I was going to ask you to update us on the email transformation, but I only have about 30 seconds, so I'll just say I'm very happy that your service scores are going up again. They were up the last time you were here, so very good. We'll get back to data centres and email transformation in the next round.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Yes. There will be another round, of course.

Mr. Weir, you have seven minutes.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thank you.

Mr. Dupont, it's understandable that the Privy Council Office would have started spending to consult on electoral reform, given that the government was elected on a solemn promise that 2015 would be the last election conducted under the first-past-the-post system. Of course, the government recently announced that it was not going to keep that promise and that there won't be any electoral reform, so I want to clarify whether the full $3.8 million mentioned in your opening remarks was spent before the government made that announcement.

[Serge Dupont]

The short answer would be yes. The amounts were spent to support town halls. They were meant to support the MyDemocracy.ca exercise, and of course to pay for Vox Pop Labs. All of those monies were expended.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Given that the government revealed after those activities that it had no intention of changing the voting system, would you consider those to have been misspent funds?

[Serge Dupont]

I think expenditures that are undertaken to consult Canadians on such a very serious matter as electoral reform certainly would be broadly considered to be well spent. Then a decision is taken by the political process in a democratic system, and as public servants we of course respect that decision.