Government Operations Committee on May 15th, 2024

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Jowhari, please, for five minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll go back to Ms. Carruthers.

There has been a lot of talk over the last two hours about the types of professional services and the amounts. Naturally, 8,000 contracts have been highlighted over five or six years.

Can you give me some idea...? Could you classify the top three types of services that Global Affairs received, the top three services that International Trade received and the top three services that International Development received, and even what some of our consular services received, so we can put that into perspective? What types of services and what dollar value are we talking about?

[Shirley Carruthers]

First I'll clarify that the 8,000 contracts were for one particular type of contracting service. Dan can certainly provide you with some details on all of the different classes you inquired about.

[Daniel Pilon]

At a very high level, the number one expenditure at Global Affairs in contracting is for services that are in support of our mission operations. There are two categories of that. One is for things like protective services—security guards—and duty of care. The other is for management consulting services that are linked to supporting our mission infrastructure, so architects, engineers—things like that. As we renovate and build our mission network and make improvements to it, we require professional services that are qualified in geographical and legal environments across the world, so we do a lot of outsourcing for that.

For the international development portfolio, our biggest spend is on what we call our field support services. Those are professional services that assist us in delivering our development mandate across the world. A lot of times that's facilitating the use of transportation or things like office space when we need to organize events. They're support services, made in-country in foreign countries, to help us deliver our mandate. With that, we also have a strong regime of monitoring and evaluation, so we send in auditors and evaluators to monitor how successful our programs are and how we're doing on the delivery of development and international aid. These are professional services that supplement Global Affairs personnel in evaluating our programs.

The last spend, which is mostly for regular government operations, is obviously on IT consultants, management consultants, HR consultants, expert witnesses for international negotiations and so forth.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Can you give me a sense of the ratio and whether there were any changes during the period of your audit? Did you see that the same level of service needed—which you talked about—in the past is happening now or will happen in the future? What do you see as the trajectory going forward?

[Shirley Carruthers]

Something I can point to is the category that we call “services”. Back in 2017-18, we had $403 million in services, and if we think about the last fiscal year, it was $259 million. As I mentioned earlier, procurement across all of our different lines has decreased over the last five years.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Do you see the same trajectory going forward?

[Shirley Carruthers]

I would say yes. Given the recent refocusing in government spending, the budget of the department for professional services was reduced by 15%. The department is committed to reducing our spending in that area, so I expect there will be a decrease in expenditures in the next fiscal year.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Mr. Jowhari.

We're now in our final round. We'll go to Mr. Genuis and then to Mrs. Atwin, and we'll finish up with Ms. Larouche and Ms. Zarrillo.

Go ahead, please, Mr. Genuis.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm going to try to do this rapid-fire.

Will you provide the RCMP access to problematic files in relation to this audit?

[Shirley Carruthers]

Certainly.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Global Affairs has given over 8,000 contracts in the last five years. How many of those outside consultants also do work for foreign governments?

[Shirley Carruthers]

None that I'm aware of.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Do you track this information? Do you ask? We know that McKinsey has done a lot of work for the government, and, of course, they work extensively with our strategic rivals, so are you seeking this information?

[Shirley Carruthers]

I'm going to ask my colleague Dan Pilon to provide some specific details there.

[Daniel Pilon]

We do business with a lot of companies across the world. Some of them are multinational companies, so we have to assume, just in a general sense, that, yes, they do business with foreign governments. When sensitive issues arise, again, we do a security assessment, and that drives the decision in procurement as to who we do business with.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I will just point out the obvious, Mr. Pilon. Your answer explicitly contradicted the answer the assistant deputy minister gave about 30 seconds prior.

Do you track, in general, the client lists of these multinational companies so that you would be able to say for certain that the company you're doing business with does or does not do business with a strategic rival? Do you meticulously get that information or do you just make assumptions?

[Daniel Pilon]

I can confirm that we do not track the consultants' or companies' client lists.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you for that forthright though troubling response.

You weren't able to say if Minister Joly was briefed on this audit, but her office was told. Has she issued any new directives or changed any policies in response to this latest report?

[Shirley Carruthers]

As I've mentioned, the department has been very seized with the results of this audit and has been working towards implementing a number of activities in order to mitigate—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm sorry, but that's not the question.

Has Minister Joly issued new directives or changed policies in response to the report?

[Shirley Carruthers]

Perhaps it wasn't directly in response to it; however, she is very involved in the GAC transformation and a lot of the initiatives that are implemented in the GAC—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm sorry. She's very involved, but you're not sure if she's been briefed. How do I make sense of those two things?

[Shirley Carruthers]

Just to clarify, what I was saying is that she's very involved in our overall Global Affairs transformation. When I think of some of the initiatives that are in our Global Affairs transformation—