Government Operations Committee on June 8th, 2017

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I know all these ministers personally and I know what they're working on. They are working extremely hard and their responsibilities are across government to drive important priorities around the advancement of women, or to support Canadians with disabilities, or advance priorities that we take very strongly as a government.

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

Okay.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

The one point you said, respectfully, that they don't have as much work as other ministers, I wouldn't—

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

Well, they don't have a ministry, that's for sure.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

They have significant priorities that they are responsible for driving across every department and agency.

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

Let's say we agree with what you said, that they do an important job, and of course it's true.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Sure.

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

Why didn't you take it seriously as soon as you were elected as a government and put forward Bill C-24? Now, after two years, you are still repeating the same scenario of going on another route. You're supposed to go through the law...and not through the votes. Why are you still, two years after your election, going down the wrong avenue?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you.

I'm going to ask Brian to respond.

[Brian Pagan]

Thank you, Mr. Clarke.

I agree that there is some confusion and I think some misconceptions about the purpose of the vote wording and how it interacts with legislation before the House.

The concept is very simple. There was a point of order raised in the House about this vote wording. The Speaker ruled, in fact, that the vote wording and the authorities are entirely appropriate and in keeping with parliamentary practice.

By the estimates process, Parliament is approving specific wording, what departments can and can't do with the monies provided to them. One thing they can do is pay salaries to ministers and to ministers of state with or without portfolio. The reason for this is because the supply cycle, when we introduce estimates to the House, is fixed, but the way in which the prime minister, he or she, arranges the ministry, is not fixed. A prime minister can make changes to his or her ministry at any time, and if they do that, obviously the prime minister would need the ability to pay that minister his or her salary.

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

Is the supplementary treatment included in vote 30a?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Clarke, unfortunately we're out of time. I know you want to have an exchange, but perhaps Mr. McCauley can take that up when it's his turn later in this round.

Mr. Whalen, five minutes, please.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

We can get back with some answers on that as well and have a further conversation.

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

Thank you, Mr. Brison, and thank you for coming to us for a record 19 times now. That's good. You're going to be like the Wayne Gretzky of the government operations and estimates committee.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

You've never seen me play hockey.

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

I'm interested in the oceans protection plan and the $209 million that's been allocated in supplementary estimates (A).

I'd like to get a sense of how this money is being broken up across departments, how the activities are being broken up across departments, and since the overall oceans protection plan is a $1.5-billion initiative, whether other funds have been allocated already through other departmental spending initiatives. Or are we expecting to see more funding announced in supplementary estimates (B) and (C) in relation to the oceans protection plan?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

The initiatives are being carried out and the oceans protection plan is being implemented through Fisheries, Transport Canada, the Canadian Coast Guard, Environment, Climate Change, and Natural Resources. It's a horizontal initiative across a broad range of government departments and agencies, and over several years.

You can appreciate this, coming from Newfoundland and Labrador, or me from Nova Scotia, or any.... It's essential from an ecological and an environmental perspective, but also from an ocean industry perspective. I would commend to you, I think it was last week, The Economist did an excellent piece on global ocean sciences and the state of oceans. Oceans are under threat right now, and the economic opportunities of strong conservation and ecological policies resulting from that are significant.

in addition to the oceans protection plan, as a government we're investing significantly in ocean sciences. The future opportunities for Canada around ocean sciences are immense. We are looking forward to implementing these investments. Marine trade currently employs about 250,000 Canadians, but we believe broadly that the economic opportunities in sustainable ocean management give Canada a great opportunity to lead on this. So our investments are significant. They will help create a lot of economic opportunities for us in the future, while we preserve the ocean environment.

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

Thank you.

With respect to the back office transformation initiative, about $25 million is being dedicated to that in supplementary estimates (A). Obviously this committee has provided some recommendations in the past about making sure we're not booking our savings before we achieve them, with respect to IT transformation. Of course legacy back office systems will need to be maintained.

With respect to this process, can you give us some assurance that the legacy systems or the current systems in use will be appropriately maintained with regard to the back office transformation initiative, and some sense about the types of overall savings, if any, government might expect to see in the future?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

First, it's too early to.... I don't want to make the same mistake that I was critical of earlier. We don't want to be booking savings until we've had the successful implementation of a new system. These investments currently are important. There may be savings in the future, but we're not going to book those savings pre-emptively. We need to get it right.

Back office transformation will help give us a better line of sight into both the financial situation of each department and agency and the human resource status throughout the government. This is important. When wholly implemented over 10 to 12 years, the new system will give us in real time better, consistent reporting of annual spending across government.

We're working on a broader digital transformation of government, and at some point in the future I'd like to have that conversation. Sometime we could get together informally as a group and talk about digital transformation, which I think all governments are taking more seriously now, given the rapidity of change in technology and the expectation that Canadians have of better digital services. It's quite exciting and important work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McCauley.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I just want to get back to the estimates process. I want to give you a quote from the PBO. He states that the secretariat is moving further away from its goal in 2017-18, rather than closer to it, raising significant questions of whether the government's proposal to delay the main estimates would result in meaningful alignment with the budget. He says, “Unless the Government is able to present a clear plan to reform its internal management processes,...[it's] unlikely that delaying the release of the main estimates by eight weeks will provide full alignment with the budget.”

We've also seen, from the PBO and TBS officials, that it's taking six to seven months to get the money through treasury, and sometimes as long as 18 months. Concerning that, how are we going to get to alignment? What specific reforms are you going to be undertaking to shrink that huge gap? It seems we're putting the cart before the horse and wanting to change the Standing Orders and the dates that the estimates are tabled, when we're still waiting six, seven, 18 months to get out the door. What is the plan to get that shrunk before we start changing the Standing Orders? Can we get a commitment that we're not going to change the Standing Orders without unanimous consent of all parties, before we actually have that plan and that progress being made?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Kelly, as I've said previously here, I don't underestimate the amount of work this takes in terms of better integration of the budget and estimates process, and the work among individual departments and the Department of Finance and the Treasury Board.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Can you present us with a plan on how you will shrink that gap?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

There's been significant progress made. Last year is an example of that. I believe very strongly that next year—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

This year you're going the other way. Last year was a marginal increase over the year before. It wasn't this huge jump like you're saying. It was a marginal increase. Now you're going backwards. The numbers don't lie. You're going backwards. You want a plan before you change the Standing Orders.