Government Operations Committee on May 4th, 2017

[Kami Ramcharan]

We did not stop any of our other activities within our department in terms of funding that. What we do in terms of good financial management is make sure that we don't ask for money we don't need, so we had enough in terms of what didn't get spent in our department that we could be able to fund the requirements for the missing and murdered.

The other complexity was working with them to develop the plan to make sure we understand what they wanted to achieve last year and for this year and the subsequent year in terms of their activities, and to make sure that they were comfortable with what they were proposing. When we took our request to Treasury Board, which we did last year, it was to make sure that we got funding for this upcoming year for them.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Not to belabour the point, but my sense is that with the funding that you had left over, you could have chosen to use it for any number of initiatives. On some of them, you decided to put forward specific requests in the estimates. For some reason, you chose this one to receive the leftover funds. Is there any particular reason for that or did it just work out that way?

[Kami Ramcharan]

Thank you very much.

We did not stop doing any of the work that we had intended to do last year in order to do that, but just in the way plans happen, you expect that you're going to spend, for example, at the beginning of the year, $10 million on an initiative. Sometimes you're very good at being able to spend that. Sometimes things happen in terms of your procurement being delayed or your staffing getting delayed, and you don't spend that much money. In terms of looking at the overall activities within the department, we were able to say, yes, we can fund the missing and murdered for the given year, given the fact that the project we were currently doing didn't fully use the funds we had provided for it.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay.

Go ahead, Ms. Maheu.

[Chantal Maheu]

Just to add to that, the inquiry was launched in September. Maybe we could have guessed at how much we were going to spend, but that would have meant coming here with estimates that had not been worked through with the commission itself. Because they serve at arm's length and they are deciding on their work plan, we need to work with them to be clear about the cost needs, the funding that's needed.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay. It just seems to be something that's a relatively high priority for the government, so the way it's being funded is interesting.

I also want to ask about the funding in the main estimates for the youth secretariat. Would this secretariat be permanently part of PCO? Would it operate more independently?

[Chantal Maheu]

At this point, the secretariat is within PCO and will remain so as long as the Prime Minister is the minister responsible for youth. The funding has been sought with that perspective: to support the Prime Minister in that role. If a different minister were responsible for youth, you could envision that the funding would be associated elsewhere.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

If the Prime Minister decided that the minister of youth wasn't performing very well and decided to allocate that portfolio to someone else in a cabinet shuffle, would it be possible for that secretariat to operate as an independent entity or to be combined with another department?

[Chantal Maheu]

I won't comment on his performance or how he is going to assess his performance—

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Chantal Maheu]

—but funding will go to support the functions.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay. I'm curious about the possibility of this secretariat operating separately from the PCO if the cabinet were organized in a different way.

[Chantal Maheu]

Any change in the ministry and cabinet can lead to changes in funding, but at this point it's pure speculation.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay, but it's being structured in such a way that it could operate outside of PCO. It's not being set up on the premise that the Prime Minister will always be the minister of youth?

[Chantal Maheu]

Well, no. No, the funding is there to support the current function, and that's how the funding was sought.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Thank you.

I want to ask the School of Public Service about online courses. It seems that there's been a large increase in uptake across Canada, but it seems that there has been less use of online learning by public servants working outside of Canada, which is a bit counterintuitive. I wondered if you could you perhaps shed some light on this trend.

[Wilma Vreeswijk]

Actually, I will be able to answer the question asked by the previous member at the same time. GCcampus, the interactive platform, is accessible globally and within Canada. There is a 9% increase in take-up for missions abroad. That is a significant level of increase. I guess I would say that we see this as promising. We don't see it as an issue.

It's important to note, too, that the school provides the common learning platform that's required for all public servants, but individual departments provide mandate-specific training. Global Affairs and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship provide mandate-specific training. To get a complete picture, you need to put those together.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Is it true, though, that the 9% increase for public servants outside of Canada is quite a bit less than the increase among public servants within Canada?

[Wilma Vreeswijk]

I don't have that comparison. I think we consider that significant in both areas.

Did you want to comment on that, Jean-François?

[Jean-François Fleury, Vice-President, Learning Programs Branch, Canada School of Public Service]

Yes. I would just add that the platform is quite new and there's an awareness lag the further you are from Ottawa. I think this is a positive increase. We're working with GAC on the awareness of this platform. That increase is a positive step, but there is work to do to ensure that international awareness of this particular platform continues to increase.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We go now for a seven-minute round to Ms. Shanahan.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here this morning.

I must say that I joined this committee last year during the estimates. Being from a banking background, I was very perplexed as to why we were talking about estimates on items that had been decided after the estimates were made and about having to come back for supplements. As a banker, that would have been a red flag for me, but apparently it's the system we have. It's a system that I think needs changing going forward, and not only to make your work easier. When I hear that we have to make wild guesses, this is not exactly reassuring.

In the intervening period, we've had a chance to hear about how the estimates and budgeting process has been revised in other jurisdictions, notably in Australia and elsewhere. The idea is that governments have projects, they have ambitions, and they have a platform that they want to realize, and the public service is there to do all the necessary grunt work to get the cost estimates and to see if we have the revenues and so on in order to make it happen. That would be the logical way for things to happen. We're not there yet, but we hope to be there.

I do like the main estimates document that gives us, in a very succinct way, the raison d'être for the Privy Council Office, for example. The raison d'être states:

The mandate of the Privy Council Office...is to serve Canada and Canadians by providing professional, non-partisan advice and support to the Prime Minister, the ministers within the Prime Minister's portfolio and Cabinet.

It's the Prime Minister who's responsible for this organization; hence, what the Prime Minister requests you to do, you must carry out to the best of your ability.

This does not come from just anywhere. It's not plucked from the sky. It has to do with the platform, programs, and policies that the Prime Minister has come into office with. That's where we see in the highlights exactly what the projects were. You gave a very good summary of them: the creation of a new youth secretariat, supporting an open, transparent, and merit-based Governor in Council appointment process, the senator appointment process, and so on.

I just wanted to put on the record that we're not talking about spending that just happens randomly, that grows here and shrinks there, and then it's “Oh, what happened there?” We could do it better, yes, but it is based on a set of priorities. That's what we're talking about here today: the gaps we see. We can't possibly know what priorities are going to be before they've been enunciated, yet we have to estimate the costs anyway, right?

Let's talk about the Governor in Council appointments. This is something I've seen in one of my other committees—public accounts—where this was this huge.... The process had been starved. There was a huge number of vacancies, but I'm encouraged that there have been improvements made.

Can you talk to me a bit, Madam Maheu, about what actual changes were made to the appointment process and how much the PCO expects to spend on these changes going forward?

[Chantal Maheu]

Thank you very much for the question.

The government announced a new approach to ensure open and transparent merit-based selection processes for GIC appointments, with greater access for Canadians. The new approach now applies to more than 1,500 positions, including heads, vice-chairs, members of agencies and boards, chairpersons, chief executives, and agents and officers of Parliament. All in all, it's a tripling of the appointments that are done, using a competitive process.

Funding has been sought to help support this. We came through supplementary estimates (B) in 2016-17 to seek some funding, and in the main estimates—if you compare it to the last mains—we're seeking $700,000 to support that. It is mostly for staff, for salary purposes, and some minor O and M in terms of the postings. The positions are all posted now on the public website. The process is working with the key departments in terms of identifying candidates and going through selections on a merit basis, and open....

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

Thank you for that, because I want to be clear too: we're not talking about just staffing and putting people in positions like it's a perk.

One of the Auditor General's most scathing reports was on how the Canada Pension Plan disability program application and approval processes had been delayed in some cases for up to two or three years for people making disability claims, because there was nobody sitting on the tribunal who could hear the claim. That's called “starving the pipeline” and it's something that you can't switch overnight. You definitely have to put the resources there ahead of time to make sure you have those people in place going forward.

I probably don't have much time left, Mr. Chair, do I?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Erin Weir]

You have about a minute.