Government Operations Committee on March 10th, 2021

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Kitchen (Souris—Moose Mountain, CPC)), Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

I call this meeting to order. I welcome you to the 20th meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

This committee is meeting today from 4:58 p.m., eastern standard time. We're to hear from the President of the Treasury Board and officials on the supplementary estimates 2020-21.

Unfortunately, as we just heard, the minister is unable to attend for reasons that are beyond his control. We will proceed along those lines.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind all participants to this meeting that screenshots or taking photos of your screen is not permitted. To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.

Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like a regular committee meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen to use the floor, English or French audio. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name.

When you are ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your microphone. When you are not speaking, your microphone should be on mute. To raise a point of order during the meeting, committee members should ensure their microphone is unmuted and say “point of order” to clearly get the chair's attention.

In order to ensure social distancing in the committee room, if you need to speak privately with the clerk or analysts during the meeting, please email them through the committee email address. For those people who are participating in the committee room, please note that masks are required unless seated and when physical distancing is possible.

With the little bit of a change that we've had, we have all received the speaking notes in advance, so I would like to put forward a motion to accept those speaking notes, and then we would transition to discussions with the other witnesses.

The motion I'm proposing is that the speaking notes presented by the President of the Treasury Board be taken as read and appended to the evidence of today's meeting. Do I have consent to do that?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Kitchen (Souris—Moose Mountain, CPC)), Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

[See appendix—Remarks by the Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you.

With that done, we will proceed. We have with us a number of analysts today.

I think we have all five at this point, do we not, Mr. Clerk?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Paul Cardegna]

Yes, we do, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

We have Mr. Ermuth, Ms. Cahill, Mr. Purves, Ms. Yalkin and Mr. Greenough.

I'm assuming you weren't expecting to have to do a presentation, so I think we'll go straight into questioning, if that's okay.

Do I see a hand up that you'd like to make an opening announcement?

Mr. Purves, I see your hand up.

[Glenn Purves, Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Mr. Chair, that's perfectly fine. We can go right into questioning.

Just to give everyone a sense of who we all are, we cover many different parts of Treasury Board Secretariat. I cover expenditure management. Ms. Cahill is the CFO. Roger Ermuth covers the comptroller general's office. Mr. Yalkin is from the office of the chief human resources officer, and Ms. Read is from the chief information officer's branch.

With that, we're ready to go.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

With that, we will go to the first round of questions from Mr. Paul-Hus.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Minister Duclos.

I hope that your health is better. I'm glad to have you with us.

First, I want to go back to the questions that we asked you on November 20. We wanted to know whether an impact analysis on official languages had been conducted for the WE Charity. At the time, your answer was rather evasive. I don't think that you knew much about the matter.

By now, we should be able to know whether the analysis was done.

[Roger Ermuth, Assistant Comptroller General, Financial Management Sector, Office of the Comptroller General, Treasury Board Secretariat]

In terms of the question regarding WE Charity, there was no French annex that would normally be done for that program. The reason was that it did not come through as a full-blown Treasury Board submission. The initial program that would have come through would have had an official languages assessment. What actually came through and what was decided was that the minister had the authority to make the changes to the program that allowed for the contribution agreement that was eventually signed with WE Charity.

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

Okay.

I just realized that the minister isn't here. Thank you, Mr. Ermuth, for answering for him.

Normally, Public Services and Procurement Canada must obtain the Treasury Board's assessment for all defence procurement, when the value exceeds the minister's approval authority.

Has this assessment been conducted for combat ships?

[Roger Ermuth]

Did they seek the appropriate authorization? To my knowledge, and this is where I think the department of public services—

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

I'll ask my question more clearly.

Normally, defence procurement that exceeds the minister's limits must go through the Treasury Board.

Have you assessed the ship contract?

[Roger Ermuth]

Anything that would have gone beyond the minister's authority would have come in through Treasury Board. In terms of the combat ships, there have been multiple times where those have come through, and in terms of the office of the comptroller general, we would have looked at them to ensure there was policy compliance with the responsible policies.

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

Thank you, Mr. Ermuth.

Mr. Chair, I would ask that the Treasury Board's assessment report on the combat ship contract be submitted.

In the votes that we're being asked to approve, we learned that the Public Health Agency is requesting $2.5 billion for the purchase of vaccines, including advance purchase agreements.

Is this amount entirely devoted to the purchase of the required vaccines or is it devoted to all the agreements negotiated for the hundreds of millions of vaccines?

Can any of you give me the details of that amount?

[Glenn Purves]

Thank you for the question.

To be clear, that $2.5 billion, which was originally in our statutory forecast, has migrated over to be on a voted basis, and the total amount that we're looking at is about $9.2 billion.

Of that $9.2 billion, about $8 billion is for bilateral purchase agreements pertaining to the vaccines for COVID-19, $1 billion is for strategic international partnerships, and then about $200 million is for treatments and therapeutics, such as the drug remdesivir and so forth.

That $2.5 billion effectively completes the $9.2 billion envelope that exists in the system.

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

The amount adds up. So the $8 billion for bilateral agreements goes to the seven companies that entered into agreements. One thing isn't clear. Are we paying for the vaccines that were licensed and distributed, or are we paying for the vaccines that were reserved?

[Glenn Purves]

It's advance purchase agreements. As the vaccines come in and the payments go out, it's to ensure that the payments are fulfilled.

In terms of details about specifically the seven you're talking about and the breakdown of that $8 billion, that's a question that the Public Health Agency of Canada would be better placed to answer.

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

Can you tell me whether the $8 billion approved by the Treasury Board includes what was reserved or what we'll receive, regardless of whether it's a Pfizer, Moderna or other vaccine?

Does this amount cover what we need to vaccinate Canadians, or will an additional batch be distributed abroad afterwards?

[Glenn Purves]

My understanding is that funds to deal with supplementary vaccinations have been transferred to Global Affairs Canada for their programming.

I believe that the $8 billion is to cover all of the vaccines. Having said that, I think the Public Health Agency of Canada would be able to provide a better line of sight on that answer, and we'd be very pleased to get back to the committee with a precise response to Mr. Paul-Hus's question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Purves. If you would do that for us, we would appreciate it.

Mr. Paul-Hus, thank you for your questions.

We will now go to Mr. Kusmierczyk for six minutes.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you very much for filling in.

In the 2019-20 departmental results for TBS, it is outlined, “By the end of 2019–20, the government’s overall reduction in greenhouse gas emissions was 34.6% below 2005 levels”.

Can you give us examples of how the government is reducing greenhouse gas emissions in its operations?

[Glenn Purves]

Ms. Cahill will be pleased to answer that question.

[Karen Cahill, Assistant Secretary and Chief Financial Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.

The government is doing many projects with a number of government departments to reduce its GHG emissions. Two good examples in these estimates are projects that we're doing with Health Canada and Fisheries and Oceans.

First of all, with Health Canada, the project is to have a site for virtual inspections that will replace the in-person inspections. If this is successful, this project amongst others will help us reduce our GHGs.

There are a number of different projects happening, and the funding from the central fund for greening government serves to that effect.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you for that response.

Is the Department of Fisheries project similar to the Department of Health project? Is it about introducing more virtual opportunities?

[Karen Cahill]

No, this one is more of an infrastructure project. It is to make changes to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography sea-water heating. What they are doing is installing a sea-water-source geothermal heat pump system at the Bedford Institute. This will reduce natural gas use and GHG emissions.

This is the majority of the funding in these estimates.