Government Operations Committee on March 7th, 2017

[Serge Dupont]

The Privy Council Office has no budget to undertake such expenditures in an ad hoc way, and so it is a decision of the government to grant an additional amount to the PCO. Of course this must then be approved by committees and by Parliament.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

So the government asked you to take these initiatives because the minister had no budget to do so.

[Serge Dupont]

The government makes the decision to conduct these activities. Afterwards, PCO must inform the government that it does not have the necessary amounts to fund these expenses, and afterwards steps are taken to go and get the necessary funding.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

It seems there are two initiatives: the engagement of Canadians in 17 meetings in which 2,000 Canadians took part, and then the creation of an engagement application. All of this cost $3.3 million.

How was money allocated to those two initiatives, what were the percentages? Was it fifty-fifty? Do you have the details? Out of the $3.3 million total, how much was used to engage Canadians during the 17 town hall meetings, and how much was used to create the mobile app?

[Serge Dupont]

As I mentioned, the Privy Council Office spent $400,000 to support various expenditures related to the general consultations.

In addition, we paid $369,000 for all the work related to the online tool, which includes the report.

We also spent $1.9 million to invite Canadians to take part in this exercise by sending an invitation to their homes in Canada.

And then there were staff-related expenses. All of these efforts were supported by 4.5 FTEs and cost $700,000 altogether.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

We had to pay $1.9 million to invite 2,000 Canadians to take part in 17 town hall meetings.

[Serge Dupont]

No, this isn't about those 2,000 Canadians; it was to direct Canadians toward the MyDemocracy.ca website.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

There were 360,000 people who used MyDemocracy.ca. What percentage of the Canadian population does that represent?

[Serge Dupont]

You can do the math as well as I can. The government wanted each Canadian to be aware of this undertaking and to be able to take part in the exercise if they wanted to.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Only 1% of Canadians wanted to take part in the exercise. Do you think this was a success? Earlier you said that this had been a success.

If I manage to reach only 1% of my fellow citizens, it's a disaster.

[Serge Dupont]

The important thing is to give all Canadian men and women the opportunity to take part. It is then up to them to decide what they will do and how they wish to express themselves. There may be other ways of expressing an opinion aside from the survey or the exercise.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

The survey clearly showed that this initiative was of interest to 1% of Canadians. Consequently, 99% of Canadians had no real interest in democratic reform, if one goes by that survey which was supported by the government and paid for by Canadians for the purpose of finding out if they wanted to answer. This result shows that this was of no interest to Canadians.

[Serge Dupont]

Mr. Chair, conclusions are being drawn and it is difficult for me to respond because they are somewhat political.

I am simply saying that an invitation was sent to all Canadians using these means. Canadians made their decisions and then the political system makes the decisions it has to make to conclude the exercise.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

I'll just reinforce some of the comments I made earlier with Mr. Weir.

Mr. Dupont is quite correct in saying their role is not in the political realm. It's strictly for the bureaucracy to support the political activities. The decisions made politically, of course, go to the government, not to PCO.

We'll now go to Madam Ratansi for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you all for coming, and thank you for taking questions that were of a political nature as well.

I have an interesting question for you. It is from the media of February 24, 2017, Mr. Dupont. It was headed “Trudeau's Privy Council Office budget the highest in a decade”.

As an accountant, I like to put context to it. I don't like comparing apples to pears; I compare apples to apples. Could you provide a context? First, has there been a 20% increase? Second, have there been different activities between different governments, and why is the budget for the PCO high?

[Serge Dupont]

As I indicated earlier, I don't have the exact percentage increase, but as reported in the media, there is a substantial increase between the main estimates for 2017-18 and 2016-17. That is because, quite clearly, the Privy Council Office has been asked by this Prime Minister and this government to take on additional functions that, in part, go to additional roles that the Prime Minister himself has decided to take on, for example, as Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs and Youth.

It's not only to take on the role but also to step up the role. For example, in terms of intergovernmental affairs, there have been three first ministers meetings in a span of one year, whereas there hadn't been first ministers meetings for some period.

To bolster the appointment process to boards, commissions, crown corporations, and so forth, all appointments, both full-time and part-time, are now done through a competitive process with an open invitation to Canadians to apply.

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

Then earlier it wasn't an open process?

[Serge Dupont]

For some it was, but for, say, part-time positions to be a member of a board of a corporation, the responsible minister could simply submit the names of candidates and they would then be vetted by the federal cabinet.

Now everything is done through an open, competitive, and merit-based system. That means additional resources in the Privy Council Office. The results and delivery unit are additional resources in the Privy Council Office to track more systematically how different departments are going about aligning their activities, not just with inputs but with actual outputs. What are the outcomes for Canadians? How do you define those? How do you report on those? Where are you going to get the data, and so forth? That's a discipline that PCO is now applying across the system.

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

With the Prime Minister telling every department and every minister to take that gender lens to look at whether programs benefit both men and women, is that going to require additional resources?

[Serge Dupont]

That has not required additional resources in the Privy Council Office. This is the work that all the different departments have to do. As they bring forward proposals, be they memoranda to cabinet or Treasury Board submissions, all of the proposals being brought to cabinet must include a gender-based analysis to determine whether the policy will fairly or appropriately affect gender and other characteristics of the population.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Barr, does SSC have a strategic plan that is fluid?

There is a reason I am going for this one. You have to have a strategic plan when you are making all these transformation projects.

[Graham Barr]

We do have a plan. We call it the transformation plan. It's the plan to consolidate and modernize the government's IT infrastructure. If by “fluid” the member is asking whether it is agile and it adapts to changes in technology as well as inputs we get from various stakeholders, certainly it is. As I mentioned in response to another question, we've undertaken a pretty intense, broad-based set of consultations and we received a lot of input that we are adjusting our plan to accommodate.

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

I'll ask later. My time is up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We will go to Mr. McCauley for five minutes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Barr, you answered very well on the email transformation. Another one of the three big projects was the data servers. Can you update us as to where we are with moving from 800 little data servers everywhere down to, I think it was, seven main ones?