Government Operations Committee on June 16th, 2021

[Jean-Yves Duclos]

Mr. Chair, I'm not sure I'm able to [Technical difficulty—Editor] the question—

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

You're certainly not answering appropriately. You're right. Thank you for acknowledging that.

[Jean-Yves Duclos]

—that Ms. Harder is asking because I think she needs and deserves a correct answer, but it's a bit hard to provide one while being interrupted so quickly. I can try perhaps to switch to Mr. Ermuth, who would know the details around procurement or at least be able to refer Ms. Harder to the appropriate channels and information points.

[Roger Ermuth]

Mr. Chair, in terms of procurement strategy and what was purchased in PPE, especially during the early days of the pandemic and so on, I would defer to our colleagues at PSPC in terms of what the rationale was there.

In terms of the social procurement, obviously a lot of work is going on and obviously a lot more work still needs to be done. There has been, in terms of the Nunavut agreement, some work done up north, some really big steps up north. Ongoing work with Indigenous Services Canada, PSPC and indigenous reference groups is going on to look at how we can move this forward.

Finally, I would note that the recently released Treasury Board directive on the management of procurement has also re-emphasized or refocused procurement planning to look at market access and allow socio-economic priorities.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Ermuth.

Let me just describe what happened here.

Minister Duclos started out with brag points at the very beginning, as if his government has done this phenomenal job with regard to indigenous relations. Then when he was asked for a proof point, he wasn't actually able to deliver it. Instead, he had to defer to Mr. Ermuth, who of course is a bureaucrat within the department.

Now, Mr. Ermuth did his best to answer that question, but still not sufficiently, because at the end of the day there is a mandate letter that was written that asks this government, asks Minister Anand , who represents the procurement process, to procure a minimum of 5% of all contracts through indigenous-led businesses. The Liberals have failed. They have not [Technical difficulty—Editor]. Minister Duclos is not able to answer my question, which further proves that they have failed.

It's sad. It's absolutely sad.

Meanwhile, a sole-source contract was given to China for the acquisition of PPE, but Mr. Duclos would like Canadians to believe that somehow that sole-source contract with China benefited indigenous-led businesses.

It's laughable. It's a disgrace.

I'm done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Ms. Harder.

We will now go to Mr. Weiler for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair, and welcome, Minister Duclos, to OGGO once again.

Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us today to answer questions as well.

Minister, you mentioned green procurement in your last answer, so I want to pick up on that. I saw an article recently that referenced a large bridge in Vancouver that's sourcing imported steel from China, which is obviously high-emitting because of coal power use, whereas if we could have sourced it domestically, it would have involved much lower emissions because of our 83% clean grid in Canada. The province didn't value the carbon content but rather just the bottom-line costs.

Of course, sourcing domestically would have a benefit in supporting the local natural resource sector and good-paying jobs.

I know the Treasury Board, through the greening government program, is seeking to reduce the embodied carbon of building materials by 30% by 2025. I'm also hearing often from local governments in my riding that they're looking at how they can do things like this.

I was hoping you could share with the committee how you plan on accomplishing this target and what potential changes to criteria and procurement decision-making might be able to feed into it.

[Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you, Patrick. We're very proud and privileged to have you around the group. In just a few words, you summarized both the environmental value of green procurement and its significant economic benefits as well.

We are at the start of an incredibly important revolution from economic, environmental and social perspectives. What we are currently seeing across the world, both in financial and in economic terms, is something that will transform our economy and will make the Canadian economy and Canadian industries in many cases more competitive than they were before.

As you suggested, we took into account the impact on the environment of our economic and procurement activities. This is particularly important in the context of our relationship with the new American administration, which is focused so much on connecting the environment and the economy. I've personally had several meetings with the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality at the White House. She and her team have been extremely clear that we should be working jointly together, in part to reduce the temptations of protectionism south of the border and to build stronger supply chains along steel, along aluminum, along the production of cars and other goods requiring increasingly clean and green input and processes.

We are extremely well positioned, as you have suggested, to use procurement in part from Canada. We procure $18 billion every year in goods and services. In the United States, they procure close to $600 billion of goods and services. You can see how important it is to work with them. The White House and our government have included 23 other governments. We had meetings a few weeks ago. If we add other governments, we are in the trillions of dollars of green procurement over the next years.

It's really a revolution, and I'm glad that you're interested in that personally, Patrick. Obviously our government is going to be key in being part of driving that revolution in the years to come.

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

Thank you.

I want to continue on that area. I saw the news a couple of months ago about the agreement with the U.S. and I was hoping we could get into some of the specifics of what that would look like.

How do you factor that into procurement? As you mentioned, $18 billion in procurement is a huge amount. How do we effectively measure the cost and the value of embodied carbon when we're doing that? What are some of the different criteria angles we're considering?

[Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you again, Patrick, for that question.

We have both a greening government centre and a greening government strategy. The greening government strategy is part of the renewed and enhanced climate strategy that we announced in December. It's obviously complementary to the many other policies and investments we're conducting. It's part of a big exercise.

Within the secretariat, we are currently developing with the scientific community the measures and the procedures that we must use, as you said, to value, monitor and eventually enforce the green supply characteristics we want to see as we go along that revolution.

We have a lot of work, however, first to define and then to measure, monitor and eventually influence and even enforce the ways in which we want to procure goods and services in the future.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

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

We've now come to the end of the minister's time here. We want to thank the minister for coming.

We are about to continue, but before we do that I believe we have one witness who hasn't had a chance to do a sound check.

Mr. Clerk, if we can do a quick sound check for that witness, then we can proceed.

[The Clerk]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm prepared to do that now.

Hello, Mr. Greenough. Welcome to the meeting.

Could I ask you to speak briefly into your microphone, please?

[Rod Greenough, Executive Director, Expenditure Strategies and Estimates, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Hello. I do apologize for wasting everyone's time with my late sound check due to my problems logging in to the meeting. It took the classic “restart the computer twice”, and then everything worked just fine.

Here I am, a little late, but in for the time.

[The Clerk]

Thank you very much, Mr. Greenough.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. You may continue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you for that.

We will now start our second hour. Our first round is for six minutes each.

We will start with Mr. McCauley for six minutes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Purves, can we go back to the questions I was trying to ask of the minister earlier about the Treasury Board approval process for the $650 million?

You have it written right in your summary that it's for funding to be “used to purchase, store, deploy, operate...mobile health units”. It's gone through the process. How much of that is going toward SNC-Lavalin and for what purpose, if they're not being used and aren't requested by anyone?

[Glenn Purves]

Thanks very much.

It's an item that was actually in the estimates last year. It's a re-profiled amount. In other words, the authority expired at the end of the period. It is coming back for the purchase of those items.

Mr. McCauley, it's a great question. I don't have details specifically on how much went to SNC-Lavalin. We would have to follow up with the department on that.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Who from the Treasury Board would have sat at the table when this went through the process? Someone surely would have said, “Well, wait a moment; no one wants these. Why do we need another $651 million?”

Is that not the process for Treasury Board to challenge some of these spending requests?

[Glenn Purves]

Re-profile decisions are made from the Minister of Finance. In terms of consideration of being in the estimates, there are Treasury Board authorities that are established. As it pertains to the specific question about that initiative, a lot of that's under cabinet confidence.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay.

I want to go back again to the horizontal line, the $30 million to support regional air transportation. Can we be guaranteed that none of this money is going to Air Canada to eventually maybe make its way into their C-suite pockets?

[Glenn Purves]

Let me just explain to you—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We're being asked to approve this money, but we don't seem to know what it's for.

[Glenn Purves]

I do have details on what it's for. I can walk you through that really quickly.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Just how much of that is going to airlines—of the $30 million—and is it going to Air Canada?

[Glenn Purves]

They are contributions to municipalities, provinces and territories, non-profit organizations, businesses and indigenous organizations—