Government Operations Committee on June 8th, 2017

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Weir.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Brison, you mentioned that you spent 17 of your 20 years in Parliament on the opposition side, so I want to begin by congratulating you on your keen sense of when your political party is close to forming government, and your ability to quickly change parties to avoid that fate.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I feel as though you might be getting rusty, though, because you stayed with the Liberal Party through the last election, and here you are before us.

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

That's a curious argument coming from a New Democrat.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

But we've been even more successful on the opposition side.

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

I was elected in a caucus of 20 as a Progressive Conservative, with Jean Charest as my leader at that time, and I was in the corner where you are. I was up where Elizabeth May sits. Every time I was on camera, you could see the translator behind me. Then when I joined the Liberals, that was the week of the merger with the Canadian Alliance Party in December 2003. I, of course, came over to the government side, and became a minister after 2004. Then we were defeated and I was up in the corner by the Speaker. Then we were defeated worse in 2008, and we moved down—

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

As scintillating as this—

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

—and in 2011.... So I'm the only member of Parliament who has—

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

—I do want to ask you a little bit about the estimates.

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

But I want to tell you, I have sat in every row in the House of Commons, and there's no bad seat in the House of Commons, I can tell you.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

The implementation of new collective agreements and the hiring of summer students increased the number of problems with the Phoenix pay system in May. Now, it strikes me that the renegotiation of collective agreements and the hiring of summer students are imminently foreseeable events, so I'm wondering if you can provide some assurance that the government is going to better prepare for those events in future.

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

Well, whenever there's a transaction or a change, it creates a burden on the pay system. We are working very hard to anticipate those and to apply resources. As you know, there has been a recent outreach to public servants across the Government of Canada, as well as to former public servants, to increase the number of people who are actually physically working on the system. That's important.

We've also invested in—

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I'd like to pick up on that. When you appeared before our committee on May 18, I asked you a whole series of questions about the cost of fixing Phoenix, and you seemed quite hesitant to answer them. I think we now know why. On May 24 your government announced an additional $142 million, among other things, to hire more people to help fix Phoenix.

In light of that, I would just like to recap the total costs of this boondoggle. My sense is that the initial implementation of Phoenix cost $300 million. In terms of fixing it, we had the $50 million to keep satellite offices open. We had the $70 million a year that is being left with departments for three years, so that's another $210 million, as well as the $142 million that you announced recently. That's about $400 million to fix Phoenix. Are those numbers correct, and do you anticipate that's going to be the final tally, or will there be significant additional costs to Phoenix?

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

The initial cost was $309.5 million. In terms of responding to some of the issues around the implementation and the quite public challenges faced in the implementation, there was $50 million for additional support from IBM, more resources to manage our complaints centre, additional training and support to departments and agencies to set up and maintain satellite offices, and $142 million in 2017-18. That's to increase capacity to maintain the satellite offices, implement a new case management tool, and to better support employees.

Treasury Board has announced that the $70 million that the previous government expected in cost savings is being left in the departments to focus on fixing this.

I have to tell you this has been—

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

You've cited the same numbers I have.

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

Yes.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Would you agree that the total we're talking about is $400 million so far to fix Phoenix?

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

If you look at the initial costs and the additional resources we've committed, you are looking at significant investments. You've referenced parliamentary secretary MacKinnon's recent announcement of $142 million.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Yes.

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

So $116 million of that over five years is for pay operations.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

I'm wondering, Mr. Brison, if you could confirm that we're understanding the total of those figures correctly.

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

It would be in the ballpark of what you're describing.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Do you see that $400 million as being a final total, or do you anticipate significant additional expenditures on fixing Phoenix?

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

We will fix Phoenix and make the investments necessary to fix Phoenix. I can tell you that, from a project management perspective, it's a mistake—and I'm not going to be partisan on this—for governments or any organization to try to cut costs during a complex enterprise-wide IT transformation.

There may be cost savings down the road once you've successfully implemented an IT transformation, but do not try to exact those savings during the transformation. That was a part of the problem.