Government Operations Committee on May 18th, 2017

[Brian Pagan]

There are two parts to your request. There was money that was presented for parliamentary approval last fiscal year in the supplementary estimates (B). The number in my head is about $50 million to PSPC. We can go back to PSPC and have them break that out by personnel, IT,—

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I'm more interested in the other $90 million.

[Brian Pagan]

For the future, my understanding is that it's not in the main estimates yet and will be presented to Parliament, probably through the supplementary estimates (B). The minister alluded to the ministerial committee that is developing plans to bring back extra compensation advisers and make investments in training and systems.

Those plans are being finalized and will be presented in the supplementary (B)s. We will provide a breakdown by personnel, by training, and by IT investments once that's available.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

If the process isn't really finalized in terms of adding things up, where did this figure of $140 million come from? Is it just multiplying the savings of $70 million per year by two?

[Brian Pagan]

Mr. Weir, I'm not familiar with the number of $140 million that's being referenced. My understanding is that the discussions are ongoing.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

It's the number the government put forward when it announced this task force on Phoenix.

[Brian Pagan]

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the number. What I can provide to you is a breakdown of the funds that have already been advanced and the funds that will be presented to Parliament, broken out by those areas.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I appreciate that. I would like to stick with the Treasury Board and specifically its role as the employer of federal workers. I want to ask in particular about Bill C-7, which tries to give members of the RCMP the ability to unionize and bargain collectively.

Our Parliament passed that bill quite a long time ago, and indeed the Senate came back with amendments in June. I'm wondering why it took the government 11 months to come up with a response to those amendments.

[Brian Pagan]

That's really a policy question rather than a program one, and I can't speak to that. Discussions have been ongoing at the cabinet level, and I understand announcements were made last week in terms of the government's intention to proceed, but I can't speak to policy.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Okay. No problem.

On infrastructure, a major component of that was funding for public transit. It's been divided up between provinces on the basis of 70% existing ridership versus 30% population.

That certainly gives a lot of money to the large metropolitan centres that already have well-developed transit systems, but it doesn't provide much money to smaller centres that are trying to improve their transit systems. For example, Saskatchewan comprises about 3.2% of Canada's population, but our province is only going to get about 1.6% of federal transit funding. I'm wondering if you could give us a sense of the rationale for this formula of 70% ridership versus only 30% population, given that most federal transfers are just disbursed on an equal per-capita basis.

[Brian Pagan]

Again, Mr. Weir, that was a policy decision of the government. In terms of the criteria and application, I would have to direct you to Infrastructure Canada.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you, Mr. Weir.

We go for the last round to Mr. Whalen, for seven minutes.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Mr. Borbey, we heard about conflicting views on what happened with Phoenix, but one of the underlying questions we still have is around what would motivate managerial civil servants to dismiss employees who are involved with the pay, such as in that October 17, 2015, layoff of a large number of people involved in employee pay. What sort of motivations might exist in the managerial compensation regime that might have encouraged that behaviour, which turned out to be a bad behaviour? Do you have any suspicions, or are you aware what the motivation might have been?

[Patrick Borbey]

Madam Chair, this is not a question I'm able to answer. I don't have insights or information that I can share with the committee. I can only say that as a manger in the public service I certainly took responsibility for the failure. We all have a responsibility to pay our employees fairly, on time, and accurately.

In my former department, we immediately took action when we started hearing about cases where there were underpayments or overpayments, and worked with our finance folks and our HR folks to ensure that we dealt with the most difficult cases as quickly as possible. I think that all departments took that responsibility, to be able to react and deal with as many cases as possible.

That's all I can say in terms of my experience with Phoenix.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Where you involved with any of the layoffs of the pay advisers in that period during the run-up to the 2015 election and the few months following?

[Patrick Borbey]

No.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Pagan, I miss your jersey. It was good. It seems with your stubble that you started a playoff beard, and then maybe after game five against the Rangers you shaved it off. Then they won, so you started to grow it again. I'm glad to see that it's not a bandwagon problem here.

I want to follow up on some of my questions to Minister Brison when he was here, in terms of the risks that were identified in the department. The slow pace of implementation of the secretariat's goals, an insufficient capacity for delivery of government-wide initiatives, and limited IT capacity were three of the risks highlighted on page 8 of the departmental plan.

With respect to the insufficient capacity for delivery of government-wide initiatives, could you speak to us about how Treasury Board, within the estimates, is allocating more funds for government-wide initiatives to address this risk?

[Brian Pagan]

In developing departmental plans, which accompany the main estimates and are intended to support committee review of our spending requests of Parliament, the idea is to break out our targets by area of responsibility, and then, as you referenced here, identify any risks that may come to bear in terms of achieving these objectives.

These are not necessarily real in the sense that they're going to happen. They're forecasts of what could be impediments or challenges in achieving our objectives. The idea is not necessarily to allocate money through the estimates to deal with those risks. It's to have an awareness and to make sure that there are plans in place to mitigate risks, be it by training, redeploying or reassigning staff to allow a program to deliver its objectives, or having disaster recovery plans in place so that if a system goes down or a building is closed public servants have access to the tools or a work site.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Pagan, with all their new activities, is the department sufficiently financed, through the appropriations that are being asked for, to engage in these additional activities?

If we go to TBS InfoBase, will we be able to see a project and a line item for disaster recovery planning?

[Brian Pagan]

In the presentation of a program or a proposal to the Minister of Finance for budget funding, and then to the Treasury Board for approval and presentation in the estimates, a department will address or identify the risks to the project and will explain to Treasury Board ministers their plans to mitigate those risks. That is part of the planning process, the contingencies that are built into the budgets provided, approved by Treasury Board, and included here in the estimates process.

If your question is whether we have sufficient funding, those questions have been asked at the Minister of Finance level by Treasury Board ministers. They are included in the plans presented here for parliamentary approval.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

There is a notion that we have a lot of new information now available online. The minister said that he would like to make a presentation to us on how all the new plans and priorities, and the online information go together. My understanding is that he's not available in the morning of June 13 to do that, so I have a motion to table before the committee:

That, notwithstanding the motion adopted on Thursday, May 11, 2017, the meetings on Tuesday, June 13, 2017, and Thursday, June 15, 2017, be dedicated to the consideration of the changes to the Government of Canada’s Communications Policy as it pertains to government advertising, including the consideration of the policy, procedures and the role of Advertising Standards Canada.

This is just the notice of motion. We can consider it when it comes up next for business.

I believe that should be the end of my time.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have one minute.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

I have time for a quick question.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

If you don't want to use it, that's okay too.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

No, no, Madam Chair.

With respect to the IT service, what's Treasury Board's role in interfacing with Shared Services Canada to deliver on the strategic plan that was tabled in October, the strategic plan for IT services from 2016 to 2020? What's the interface there and what's the oversight?