Government Operations Committee on June 3rd, 2024

[Heidi Kutz]

The information that has been provided and reported are the declarations of conflict of interest, which have been deposited and reviewed, where mitigation measures have been indicated and/or put into place, and employees have taken a decision whether to apply those mitigation measures or to step aside.

I wouldn't be able to advise on any reporting that resulted in any investigations by the RCMP.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Based upon this response, I'm hearing that the employees have to determine whether or not they are referring themselves to the RCMP. We have 79 individuals or corporations found to be within conflict. We don't know the dollar amount for Canadians. I would ask, please, Madame Boudreau, if your team could get this number and report it back to the committee.

The information has been reported to the public accounts committee, and we hope that they will share it with the government operations committee.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Mr. Bains, go ahead, please.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our officials for joining us today.

Madame Boudreau, congratulations on your new appointment.

My first question is to you or anybody who can answer. The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat has the fifth highest number of voted expenses in these main estimates at $9.3 billion. What rationale is there behind the spending within your department, and how is there a value-add for the Canadian taxpayer in the services delivered by TBS?

[Annie Boudreau]

Thank you for the question.

As I was mentioning during my opening remarks, all of the central votes are included under the TBS main estimates. Those votes, though, are reallocated afterwards to organizations to allow them to continue delivering programs and services. I'll give you two examples.

One of them is what we call the “operating carry forward”. At the end of the year, any organizations can carry forward 5% of their operating funding to be able to finish what they had started the previous year. It is a best practice. It was highlighted by the OAG a long time ago, and it allows them to avoid "March madness" at the end of the year in order to spend all of the money.

We have the same mechanism for the capital vote carry forward, where organizations, again, can carry forward up to 20% in the next fiscal year in order to be able to finalize projects. When it is allocated to departments, we publish a list on the website every time, and you will see the specific amount for a specific organization.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Is there an efficiency measure that's built into this process?

[Annie Boudreau]

As I was saying, we are applying 5% for the operating carry forward. That is a max of 5%. Some organizations sometimes don't have that flexibility. For those that do have the flexibility, it is 5%.

In terms of the carry forward for the capital vote, we are doing some due diligence, looking at the amount and making sure that it is reasonable. After that, we are allocating those amounts to organizations.

Those are the two examples that we have in central votes for TBS.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

My next question is about modernization of the public service. What ways is the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat working to modernize Canada's public service? How do you see the implementation of new technologies aiding in this work?

[Annie Boudreau]

Stephen.

[Stephen Burt, Chief Data Officer and Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy and Performance Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat]

The work we are doing across the board right now in modernizing the public service takes on a number of aspects. Some of it has to do with the talent that we're recruiting into the public service and making sure that we are getting the right skills inside so that we are less dependent on contractors. Some of it has to do with making sure that we are upskilling existing public servants so that they have the digital acumen they need to work across these things. Some of it is in the technology space, where we're working with Service Canada and other service delivery departments to make sure they are aligning tools and technology, as well as the skills they have, in order to modernize their services and make them available in the ways that Canadians have come to expect in the 21st century.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

On that same theme, security of information is extremely important across government. We know there have been many cyber-attacks. London Drugs is headquartered in my community of Richmond, British Columbia. They had a cyber-attack. We've seen now with Ticketmaster that 560 million people's data or information may be compromised. There are foreign state actors and other aggressors.... Can you share how new funding programs through these main estimates can work to better protect the cybersecurity regime?

[Stephen Burt]

Absolutely.

It's important to remember—and the examples you cite make the point—that every government and private sector organization out there is facing ongoing, persistent cyber threats. It's part of the world that we are living in now. We have many systems and tools in place to monitor, detect, and investigate those threats and to mitigate against the effects of them, that is, to address and neutralize them.

Importantly, on May 22—just a couple weeks ago—we released the first federal government enterprise cyber strategy. We have certainly been working in this space for a long time, but we've put a frame around it now to help drive that effort forward. There's been a certain amount of money provided in the main estimates to allow us to continue to enhance those efforts across the system.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Can you see how you're going to pinpoint what.... How is that framework going to help?

[Stephen Burt]

The framework should give us the ability to improve the cybersecurity of operations, and keep pace with the existing cyber risk landscape. We've had some enhancements to the Government of Canada's cybersecurity event management plan, which is a whole-of-government incident response plan for when these things do happen and how we roll in and determine how serious it is. Moreover, we've begun work with Shared Services Canada and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security to actually drive these things forward.

The work that we've done around defining our security policy to make sure that we build systems and reduce the vulnerabilities on the technology side will be advanced by this effort. But a lot of the money is coming in to make sure that we have the right expertise in place, both centrally and across departments.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks very much, Mr. Bains.

Mrs. Vignola.

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

Thank you very much.

Thanks to everyone for being with us today.

Ms. Boudreau, earlier you talked about service standards and what they imply. In 2022–2023, 49% of government services met service standards. That's a surprise to me because I imagine that government employees, like everyone else, want to treat others as they would wish to be treated themselves. So it's troubling to see that only 49% of services meet standards. The target is 80%, which is a giant step beyond that.

How can the government expect to achieve that objective?

[Stephen Burt]

Thank you for your question, Ms. Vignola.

The results that you cite are definitely quite poor, but it has to be said that they were achieved during the pandemic, when there were major disruptions in service delivery more or less across the government.

Like you, we aren't satisfied with these results. However, we're now seeing a return to normal service delivery levels. We also expect a return to normal results, which should approach the 80% goal. Although things may change, the initial signs we're seeing suggest that there'll be an improvement in March 2025.

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

What level was that indicator showing before the pandemic?

[Stephen Burt]

I don't have the numbers with me, but it was very close to 80%.

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

We would appreciate it if you could send them to us as soon as possible. Thank you.

I think you're beginning to get to know me a little. I analyze the budget and take notes.

I've noticed something here. On virtually every page, you can see declines in contributions to employee social benefit plans, sometimes declines of $20,000 or even much more.

What explains this kind of decline? Are you expecting layoffs?

[Annie Boudreau]

That's a good question. Perhaps it's attributable to the fact that we're normalizing the methodology we use.

Mr. Greenough may have more information on that.

[Rod Greenough, Acting Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat]

No, I don't have significantly more information. However, to clarify this, the employee benefit contributions in there are based on the employees in the departmental plans at the time of the main estimates. They obviously get updated through the year as programs get renewed and they come to the Treasury Board.

The main estimates are the starting point, but there will be additions through the year as new programs come online as well.

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

Thank you very much.

With respect to Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions, I see that grants under the regional economic growth through innovation program decreased from $265,764,476 in the 2023–2024 Main Estimates to $166,910,505 in 2024–2025, a decline of $99 million.

Just below that in the table, you can also see that contributions under the Quebec economic development program will fall by half, from $131 million to approximately $63 million.

What's the explanation for declines of that size? There were even more contributions during the pandemic, but they now represent a quarter of what they were during the pandemic. What's the explanation for that?

[Annie Boudreau]

We'll have to send you that information later, Ms. Vignola. However, if you compare last year's total estimates with the current main estimates, you'll see that there may be some significant differences because we obviously don't have the Supplementary Estimates (A), (B) and (C) yet.

So we'll conduct an analysis and send you a more comprehensive answer.