Government Operations Committee on Nov. 30th, 2020

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Minister. I will ask representatives of another department.

In your opening statement, you spoke about programs that were put in place quickly in response to the COVID-19 crisis. But this was accompanied in June by the inconvenient fact that the personal information of 5,500 people with a Canada Revenue Agency account had been compromised. Later, we learned that this was 11,200 accounts, some of which were accessible by means of a GCKey, a system that affects 30 departments, and other portals.

We even learned that these figures had quadrupled. According to information that we obtained, almost 50,000 Canadians had their personal information stolen when they were using government sites.

Can you confirm how many people in Canada were victims of identity theft as a result of using programs related to COVID-19 ?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

First, I'll say that we have a core responsibility to protect Canadians' information, and I take that very seriously. The government GCKey platform itself was not compromised, but like any large organization, the government's systems are constantly under attack using illegally acquired information and log-ins. We're committed to always responding, and I would like Marc to be able to talk more specifically about the numbers and what—

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

All right, I will let Mr. Brouillard answer.

I want to know whether 50,000 Canadians were victims of identity theft.

[Marc Brouillard]

I can explain the situation to some extent.

The numbers changed as we conducted our investigation. According to the most recent reported figures, there were 9,300 GCKey accounts. This system is part of the identity program for more than 24 departments. The problem occurred more specifically at the CRA, which uses a different system. Of the 14 million CRA accounts, suspicious activities were identified in 48,500 accounts, which were then suspended.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Do you know the source of the thefts? Were they external or internal?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Monsieur Paul-Hus.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I'd like an answer in writing stating where the attacks came from, if possible.

Thank you.

[Marc Brouillard]

I can't answer that. It's under investigation by the RCMP.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

[Technical difficulty—Editor] for five minutes.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Is that me, Mr. Chair? Sorry, I didn't catch that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Sorry. We have Mr. MacKinnon for five minutes.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We're going to try to return to forward-looking matters, Minister.

Last week, in the second hour of the meeting after you had left, we examined your mandate letter with Mr. Glover. The letter says that you would be conducting Shared Services Canada renewal work with a view to coming up with a common IT infrastructure for the Government of Canada.

Can you update us on this important work? Mr. Glover alluded to plan 3.0. Can you give us a general update on progress being made with this crucial work?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you very much.

I must say it has been very essential work as we suddenly had to pivot from people working in their offices to working from home.

At the same time, SSC continues to work to transform the fundamental IT and digital aspects of the Government of Canada to modern enterprise standards. There are a number of things that are all happening simultaneously. One key part of the transformation is the shift to the cloud. We now have a cloud-first policy as part of our agenda. Throughout COVID, we've seen more departments shift to the cloud, and we're keeping up with that. All but the most secret information can actually go into the cloud. That gives us the speed and agility to respond more quickly, so that's an important part of our program.

As I mentioned earlier to a different member, this secure cloud enablement in defence spending in supplementary estimates (B) is to make sure that the connections to the cloud are secure and that anything coming at us is identified and neutralized.

Another aspect is secure, remote work capacity. That doubled, literally in a matter of weeks, which enabled Microsoft Teams—a secure suite of tools for public servants that we were planning to roll out over a couple of years—to essentially be rolled out in weeks to 40 departments, including 187,000 public servants who suddenly had access to these more modern tools.

We increased teleconference capacity threefold. Wi-Fi calling was activated for 183,000 mobile accounts. Webex services doubled to 40,000 accounts—that's secure video conferencing—and 15,000 new computers were provided to public servants at the tax department and Service Canada so that they could serve people remotely.

This was an incredible mobilization and a credit to SSC for doing that.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

That is indeed impressive.

Last week, Mr. Glover Indicated that he didn't want poor or obsolete applications to be imported into new environments like cloud services or our data centres.

Can you describe the work you're doing with your fellow ministers and public servants in other departments to encourage them to upgrade their applications?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

This is a critical part of modernizing. This is where the chief information officer branch works very closely with SSC.

SSC is providing the new enterprise data centre with hosting and managing the procurement of cloud services. Not all of these applications, as you mentioned, are suitable to go into cloud. Someone mentioned to me about the images that if an application is old and challenged, then it would be like moving your house; moving your garbage can, full of garbage, with your furniture; and then unpacking it into the garbage can in the new house.

That's pretty graphic, but we are now doing inventory on every application and giving it one of four ratings. It either is good to move to cloud now or it needs to be updated and upgraded. That's the service and maintenance that is a deficit from decades of inattention—

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Minister, and thank you, Mr. MacKinnon.

We will now go to Ms. Vignola for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

We were speaking about systems obsolescence . At some point, we were even afraid that the systems would no longer meet demand and fail completely.

Demand was very high during the pandemic. Was this fear generalized?

How did the federal government upgrade systems during the pandemic to make sure that there wouldn't be a major breakdown in all departments?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

In terms of applications, as I was saying, there are four categories. You're talking about the category of applications that really need to be put aside and not go into the cloud. We have stabilization mechanisms to make sure there is a fail-safe so that, should there be a crash, that data will not be lost and the service will not be interrupted. That is part of what we're doing.

The other thing is that there are modernization initiatives for some of the older and very critical applications that are used to serve Canadians. What's happening now is that we are taking an enterprise approach, a digital approach, to these modernizations. In the past government might have spent two years planning a modernization and five years doing the work on a very complex application, and then find out at the end, when you flip the switch, whether it works or not.

We're not doing it that way anymore. We're doing it based on digital principles. There is much closer work with the people who will be using the application. There are small pieces where there are pilots. There is checking: Does that work? If so, we go to the next piece: Does that work? By the time we're ready to use the new application, it has been tried and we know it will work. It's a whole different style of updating that we are applying to our large application modernizations.

Mr. Brouillard may have more detail to offer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Minister.

Ms. Vignola, thank you for your questions.

We will now go to Mr. Green for two and half minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Shared Services Canada is requesting $84 million under votes 1b and 5b for enabling digital services to Canadians. What digital services would be provided with this funding?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I'd like to ask the chief financial officer to answer that question, when it gets down to that granular detail.

[Samantha Hazen, Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Chief Financial Officer Branch, Shared Services Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

SSC is indeed asking for new funding of $84 million for enabling digital services to Canadians. This funding is for our information technology refresh program. This program looks to continue the cyclical refresh and upgrade of tangible assets. It serves to mitigate the risk of service interruptions due to failing IT equipment and ensure the ongoing sustainability and integrity of existing IT infrastructure critical to the management of departmental programs and the provision of digital services to Canadians.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That sounds great.

Specifically, is there specificity in the investments as it relates to which departments are getting which capital assets, and what their useful expected life cycle would be?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Again, I will turn that over to the department officials.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes. The question was directed there, your Honourable Minister.