Thank you, Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Dan Danagher. I am the assistant deputy minister of the international platform at Global Affairs Canada. My team and I are responsible for providing the infrastructure required by Canada's network of missions abroad. That includes all real property, common services and physical installations.
We are grateful for the opportunity today to provide some background on Global Affairs Canada's recent procurement of X-ray equipment for those missions.
First, we at Global Affairs are seized by the importance of keeping our employees, our information and our assets safe. We have a robust security framework that continuously monitors the threat and risk environments, and we adapt our approach as those threats and risks change. We work with our closest partners globally and exchange ideas and approaches. We learn from each other.
Our installations are often complex, including high-security zones, security zones, as well as operations and public access or reception and public zones. X-ray equipment is used in the latter and helps screening deliveries and visitors to the mission. While this equipment represents a small part of our installations, every component is important for the good functioning and safety of our missions abroad.
In mid-July PSPC awarded a standing offer worth up to $6.8 million over five years for Nuctech X-ray equipment. To date, Global Affairs has not availed itself of this arrangement and has no Nuctech equipment in its missions abroad.
In the days following the award of this standing offer, the Minister of Foreign Affairs directed me to conduct a review of how we acquired security equipment such as X-ray machines. I turned to Deloitte Canada, and they conducted an exhaustive review. Their findings are currently in draft form, but I am sufficiently satisfied with their recommendations and we've already begun to implement them.
First, Deloitte found that Global Affairs Canada followed all applicable policies. While that is reassuring, they also found that those policies asked two key questions that fundamentally influenced our approach: Would the equipment handle sensitive information or be connected to our information networks? Because this equipment is used in a public access zone and the answer to those questions was negative, the procurement proceeded through normal processing without the application of a national security exemption or higher levels of security, which my PSPC colleagues can explain should the chair or committee members be interested. I should point out here that Global Affairs Canada has in place a national security exemption for the acquisition of equipment to be used inside the more secure zones of our chanceries.
Deloitte, however, recommended that we consider that the technical specifications themselves, even for the detection equipment in the public zone, should only be accessible to companies with higher levels of security clearance. Further, they recommended that we consider that service personnel who had access to the equipment should be security-cleared. These two steps could go a long way toward future-proofing our public zones from future threats should they emerge.
We are currently working through the mechanics of implementing these recommendations. However, I can confirm today that Global Affairs Canada will not avail itself of the standing offer awarded in July 2020, and we have already begun the process with PSPC to design a new procurement strategy that will implement Deloitte's recommendations.
We thank the committee for giving us this opportunity to explain how we are continuously improving and adapting as we strive to keep our people, information and assets safe. I am pleased to take your questions. Thank you.