Government Operations Committee on Nov. 16th, 2020

[Bill Matthews]

Phoenix continues to progress, and the queue is going down. The last numbers we have—and my colleague Stephanie will correct me if I'm out of date—are that we have about 110,000 transactions with a financial impact above the normal workload. There will always be a group of transactions waiting to be processed, as the federal government is a big employer. The total number of actual transactions waiting is about 281,000.

I'll just pause and ask Stephanie if I have that correct, or if she wants to add anything.

[Stephanie Kirkland, Assistant Deputy Minister, Pay Administration Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services]

Bill, you have it exactly right.

I would also add, if I may, that we're seeing tremendous progress in some of our service standards as well. We're at 74% in meeting our service standards overall, an improvement of over 57%. In our high-priority files in disability and parental, we're over 99%. Those are key metrics for us as well.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you.

I know that pay pods were often used to sort of cut the timeline within departments.

From hearing the numbers, this has been an effective strategy.

[Bill Matthews]

Yes, Mr. Chair, pay pods have been very effective, and we continue to add new approaches to further reduce the backlog.

The latest thing that the department has done is to add some additional functionality to help with retroactive payments. For those of you who have been around the table for a while, retroactive payments are something that Phoenix initially had a very hard time dealing with. It required a lot of manual intervention. We have increasingly been able to make greater use of IT to process retroactive payments. We very recently put in an upgrade to that retroactive pay functionality to further enhance our ability to deal with that. That's a key part of the ongoing strategy to eliminate the backlog.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Great. Thank you all.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Are you finished? You still have two more minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'm having issues. I can't hear. I'm getting a slow Internet connection.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Mr. Drouin, we'll go to the next speaker, and if we have time, I'll give you two minutes at the end—if your connection gets better.

Ms. Vignola, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

On page 58 of the Departmental Plan 2020-21, the main source of PSPC's revenue is the federal accommodation and infrastructure program.

I don't know who I should be addressing. So seize the opportunity.

What do these revenues currently represent in the budget? That's my first question.

Is this an increase or a decrease in revenue over last year?

What would explain this increase or decrease?

[Bill Matthews]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will start and then I will turn to Chief Financial Officer Wojciech to add some additional detail.

PSPC has a very broad range of funding sources, funds voted by Parliament, as well as funds and cost recoveries that we get from other departments. I believe historically the percentage of funds we have that are cost recovered or generated by fees is about 40% of our total spend.

I'll turn to Wojciech to further elaborate.

[Wojciech Zielonka, Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Finance and Administration Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services]

Thank you, Deputy.

I think that's approximately right in terms of the historical trend, and we can confirm that exact number. Most of the revenues that we derive are essentially from other departments. It is for the services that we provide, including things like accommodations, procurement, translation, and other similar services.

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

I was talking about the federal accommodation and infrastructure program as a source of revenue.

[Bill Matthews]

Could I ask you, Mr. Chair, to show the document that the member is referring to? I want to make sure she is referring to the right department before we take this further.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

There's no way to show that.

Madame Vignola, can you—?

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

It's from the Library of Parliament briefing notes, Mr. Matthews.

I'm trying to find the exact page.

[Bill Matthews]

Mr. Chair, maybe in the interest of time, I can suggest that the clerk follow up with us with the question, and perhaps we could provide a detailed answer after the meeting in writing, if that works.

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

Thank you.

I'll continue with another question.

In the Main Estimates 2020-21, PSPC is requesting a little over $1.5 billion under vote 5. Most of the main estimates requested are under “Property and Infrastructure”.

What accounts for the 55% increase in this expenditure over the Main Estimates 2019-20?

What exactly are the property and infrastructure in question here?

[Bill Matthews]

The vote 5 funds for PSPC are a critical part of our funding because they're not just for office buildings. Vote 5 is capital money, so it relates to all of the infrastructure. People tend to think of office buildings and it's certainly—

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

Excuse me.

I don't have interpretation anymore.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Do you have it back now, Ms. Vignola?

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

Yes, thank you.

[Bill Matthews]

We can try again.

Is it working?

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

Yes, Mr. Matthews. I apologize.

[Bill Matthews]

Vote 5 is capital funding for PSPC. Obviously we maintain the office buildings for the Government of Canada, but there is also infrastructure—bridges, dams and things of that nature, and even Parliament Hill—so you have a lot of money in the capital vote. It is the biggest part of our budget.

When you compare this year's main estimates to last year's, it's not exactly a fair comparison because the year before was a bit of a special year in that they added a special budget implementation vote, so that skews the comparison a little bit.

In fact—and Wojo, please jump in—we're pretty much in line with last year in terms of vote 5 with some adjustments, because we are increasing activity on the West Memorial Building to get ready for the Supreme Court to move in there as its temporary home. We have reduced some funding on the parliamentary precinct because we've completed some major projects there.

Those are the two real highlights I'd stress.

Wojo, is there anything further you want to add?

[Wojciech Zielonka]

I would maybe just add that if you look at it as an apples-to-apples comparison, in 2019-20 it was about $1.278 billion, and in 2020-21 it's $1.587 billion. There is an increase and that increase is primarily in the predictable capital funding line. That is to cover a number of ongoing initiatives that we have on the capital front.