Government Operations Committee on May 8th, 2020

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much, Mrs. Block. We're completely out of time.

Before we go to our next intervenor, colleagues, and for the minister, if you are going to be asking your question en français, please ask the entire question for the entire six minutes en français. Minister, you can respond on the appropriate channel.

If you are going to ask the minister a question in English, please carry out the entire question and answer period in English. Minister, you can then switch to English on your channel, rather than switch back and forth. There are a few technical difficulties when we do that.

With that, I'll go to Mr. Weiler for six minutes, please.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you, Minister, and all of our witnesses, for joining our virtual committee meeting this morning.

We're all adjusting to working remotely. We're adapting and modernizing our systems to suddenly find ourselves working in a very different situation. I think we have to be very proud of how our public servants have stepped up to this challenge.

Minister, my question to you is this: How has the Treasury Board Secretariat provided flexibility to government departments so that they can respond to COVID-19 quickly and efficiently?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Minister, your microphone needs to be unmuted.

[Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you for your patience and for your guidance.

Thank you for that very good question, MP Weiler. I think you make allusion to a broad context, in which we have to both provide the benefits and services that Canadians absolutely require in this emergency situation as well as maintain the health and safety of our public servants.

By the way, we are all mindful—and you reminded us of that as well—that public servants may also go through difficult personal situations. They might need to look after children, they might have someone sick in their household or they might have their own personal health circumstances.

It's a combination of the two things. Nancy Chahwan, the chief human resources officer, is on the line as well, and she might want to add a few things, but the key word from the start was “flexibility”, because of the importance of respecting individual circumstances while ensuring that the machinery of government would operate appropriately.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

That's great.

What actions have been taken to increase the teleworking capacity across government? Have these actions yielded any success?

[Jean-Yves Duclos]

If I may, I'll turn to Nancy.

Nancy, you would be best able to provide the level of precision and usefulness that MPs would demand.

[Nancy Chahwan, Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Thank you. I apologize to the chair, the committee and the minister for the technical difficulties this morning.

We have been able, through collaboration with Shared Services Canada my colleague Francis Bilodeau, who is at this meeting, and with others, to maximize productivity for the public service, even in these very exceptional times.

Essentially, we were able to augment the technical capacity to make sure that employees who were abiding by public health instructions and staying at home whenever it was possible were the same time able to conduct the critical business of government, and even more than that.

I should mention that we still have some employees showing up at the workplace when it is absolutely necessary to do so. We also have a great contingent of employees who are teleworking without necessarily needing constant access to the network. This is how we were able to redistribute the work and make sure that our employees—the vast majority of public servants across the country—are still contributing to the work.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

That's great. It's been amazing to see the productivity of our public servants quickly adjusting to something of this magnitude.

During these difficult times, it is essential that Canadians have access to the mental health supports they need. I'm curious. What actions has the Treasury Board taken to ensure there are mental health supports for our federal employees?

[Nancy Chahwan]

Minister, would you like me to respond to that?

[Jean-Yves Duclos]

Yes, please, Nancy.

[Nancy Chahwan]

Thank you, and thank you for the question.

It has been said that mental health is actually the second silent pandemic behind COVID-19. We have been extremely attentive from the get-go. The Treasury Board Secretariat has developed a tool kit that addresses several aspects of mental health for workers, including a very specific focus for front-line managers who have been asked to connect with the workers to make sure the essential work is continuing and the expectations are understood, but also that they are attentive to the accommodation needed for the individual situations of our employees working from home.

That tool kit is on our website. It is accessible to other employers too, and it's been used tens of thousands of times.

We also have made sure that we have reached out with webcasts. Just this week, we had a webcast, and 6,000 people accessed it to talk about how to cope with the current situation. This is not just about self-care. It's also about the care of our teams. It also gives tools, very practical tools, that allow managers to learn how to manage a team remotely. This has been a significant opportunity for us to learn about that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Madame Vignola.

You have six minutes.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Good morning.

I am trying to be proactive and cover all the bases.

How many of the 288,000 public service employees are currently teleworking? It can be a percentage.

[Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you, Mrs. Vignola.

I will give you a broad idea. The majority of employees are working from home. Ms. Chahwan will be able to give you the exact percentage across the Treasury Board, if it's available. Let me remind you that the Treasury Board Secretariat gives guidelines and advice, but it does not make decisions in the departments concerned. As a result, the information is often per department.

I would also like to add that 58% of the 300,000 employees reporting to the Treasury Board Secretariat are located outside the nation's capital. Those employees have often been able to use telework techniques, even before the crisis.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

All right.

Approximately what percentage of employees are working from home?

[Jean-Yves Duclos]

Ms. Chahwan, do we have that percentage?

[Nancy Chahwan]

Mr. Bilodeau, could you give us an idea of remote network connections?

[Francis Bilodeau, Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Yes, certainly. However, the number of remote connections does not necessarily equate to the number of people who are at work. That said, on a daily basis, there are approximately 150,000 simultaneous connections to the secure network access system. Again, this is not an exact figure, because a number of public servants work outside peak hours. This indicates that more public servants are working remotely, given that a number of public servants have been instructed to try to work off-peak hours to ensure that the networks do not get overloaded.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

I assume that many of these employees must have received teleworking equipment, such as a computer, and so on.

First, how much has it cost to date to provide public servants with the equipment they need to work from home?

Second, once they are back in the office, what are we going to do with all that equipment?

[Jean-Yves Duclos]

Mr. Bilodeau, do you have any specifics about the costs?

[Francis Bilodeau]

I don't have the exact numbers. Minister Murray will appear before the committee with officials from Shared Services Canada in a few weeks, I believe. They will be able to give you some numbers and more details.

Please note that a number of public servants already had tablets to be able to telework. However, we have certainly seen a rapid increase in the use of networks and in the number of specialized tablets allowing for communications that require a much higher level of protection.

[Jean-Yves Duclos]

I would like to add that, not only has this capacity increased extraordinarily fast, but we also expect it to be useful after the crisis, when work habits will be different.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Yes, the crisis is causing a lot of changes. Some time ago, the GCcoworking initiative on shared workspaces was launched.

First of all, was it very popular?

Next, what lessons were learned from it?

Have you thought of expanding it over the next few months or years so that more people can take part?

[Jean-Yves Duclos]

That is a very good question. I will let Mr. Bilodeau answer it.

[Francis Bilodeau]

I believe the measure the member brought up is more within the purview of the comptroller general. Perhaps Ms. Owens could talk about workspaces.

As far as telework is concerned, I believe we have seen a big increase in telework capacity. This practice already exists in many organizations outside of government. We are seeing an increased capacity for telework that the government should consider as COVID-19 measures begin to be relaxed and we see a return to the workplace.