Government Operations Committee on Nov. 25th, 2020

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you.

I'll ask Paul Glover to answer that.

[Paul Glover]

I will ask the CFO, Sam Hazen, for a quick answer.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question.

SSC is requesting new funding of $123.9 million in these main estimates, as opposed to last fiscal year. I don't believe that's the number that you referenced, but that's the total amount of new funding that we are requesting in these main estimates.

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

Okay, but what will the operating expenses be used for, concretely?

[Samantha Hazen]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question.

The majority of the funding in the main estimates that is new for Shared Services Canada will go towards the workload migration and cloud architecture programs.

There's new funding totalling $90.2 million. These programs support the government's priority of enabling the digital delivery of services to Canadians, the modernization of the government's IT infrastructure, and specifically moving applications from at-risk data centres to modern hosting solutions, as we were just discussing.

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

All right.

What will the capital expenditures requested be used for specifically?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I'm having a hard time hearing the translation, Mr. Chair. I'm asking if the interpreter could speak a little louder.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Ms. Vignola, could you repeat your question, please?

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

What will the capital expenditure requested be used for specifically?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I'll turn to Ms. Hazen for that, please.

[Samantha Hazen]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question.

I had some difficulty with my connection.

[Paul Glover]

I heard the question.

I can answer that.

That is a phenomenon we continue to see. We're storing more and we're using the networks more for video and voice, plus all of the applications.

It is for infrastructure. That will be to replace end-of-life gear or to put network switching gear, storage, servers and those sorts of investments in infrastructure into the data centres and the network. It breaks down into two categories, which are replacing those things that are end-of-life so they don't break and fail on us, and installing new to support the growth that is occurring.

As to the question of why we are seeing an increase in expenditures, it is because the unit costs go down every year with IT—that's Moore's Law—but the volumes go up faster than the price comes down. We're using the networks more and we're using the technology more. The unit cost goes down, but the utilization goes up, which means we need more gear and more capacity.

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

Thank you.

I note in the main estimates a decrease of $44 million for cybersecurity and IT security. I'd like to understand why this reduction decrease has been included. All the experts agree that in the current situation related to COVID-19, cyberattacks have increased.

How do you explain this reduction in cybersecurity budgets?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I will say that this government has made cybersecurity a huge priority, which is why half a billion dollars was allocated in 2018, and that was used to stand up the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. A huge amount of that work was done over the next two years.

Paul, if you have a more detailed answer to Madame Vignola's question, I'll put it over to you.

[Paul Glover]

Thank you, Minister, and I'll also turn to Sam.

The short answer is that some of that is time-limited projects. They were specific projects that we were doing for a specific period of time. But overall, Mr. Chair, the member is right. Security is a growing issue, a growing area of importance, and it is an area we continue to invest more in. This is a phenomenon on the main estimates and the supplementaries, and projects that were time-limited, time-bound.

[Samantha Hazen]

If I may add to that, indeed, it's a timing issue. As you heard in the opening remarks, in supplementary estimates (B) there's additional funding being requested for Shared Services Canada for the secure cloud enablement and defence project, and that funding is not included in our main estimates.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Ms. Vignola, you have five seconds. Do you have a five-second question?

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

Sadly, that's not the case. So I will wait for the next round.

Thank you for your answers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Mr. Green, you have six minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I just want to recognize that the minister has been in service to the House of Commons for over 10 years and has spent time within the Treasury Board. There is certainly a wealth of experience brought on to this portfolio. I'm wondering, through you, Mr. Chair, in the lead-up to this, what work, either in her current role or in her past roles as parliamentary secretary, had been considered as worst-case scenario events as it relates to digital services.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Green, I have to confess that I'm not clear about the question.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I think it's safe to say that COVID and shifting our entire public service to a digital format presented an anomaly that you couldn't have predicted. I would assume that is possibly the case. I'm wondering, in the lead-up, what kind of planning or contingencies had your department undertaken in 2018-19 that would have been in preparation for what you would have considered as the worst-case scenarios?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

This is a department that is there to serve the public servants right across the government, and the key is having information technology that can allow them to serve the public as quickly and effectively as possible, and also allow us to continue improving and modernizing how we do that.

Redundancy is always built into the systems to be able to respond to unexpected events. Certainly, in cybersecurity, in network bandwidth, there's always an understanding that there will be things that happen that we didn't predict, but I can't say that I went into these jobs with a vision of what might be a worst-case scenario—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Has there ever been any discussion about a lights-out scenario, a situation where there would be either a significant digital cyber-threat or, in the age of hackers, a hostage-taking of our back end?

I say that on the backdrop from some of my other work in committee, where it was revealed that some of our systems are still using DOS. I want to recognize the antiquity of some of our technology, and I want you to comment on some of the vulnerabilities that might still remain.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Yes, the information technology landscape of the Government of Canada has come a very long way in just a few years with the billions of dollars our government has invested. The Auditor General had been flagging that for probably a decade and it had not received the investment it needed.