Government Operations Committee on June 10th, 2022

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

This is not my responsibility. This is not my file. It's more the responsibility of the President of the Treasury Board.

In terms of—

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

I'm sorry, Minister. There are thousands of people who do fall under your department. I want to ensure that you're going to ensure that those employees are going to be able to pay their bills, given the increase in inflation.

Do you believe public servants deserve wage increases that account for the rising cost of living?

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Employees deserve to be paid fairly. I've been an advocate for workers my entire life. They have opportunities to negotiate collective agreements where the terms of the contracts are made clear, and they can advocate for increases in those negotiations. I am a strong believer that workers should be paid fairly for the work that they do.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

How much time do I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

You have five seconds.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Thank you, Minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

We'll now go to Mr. Lobb for five minutes.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

I'll note Gord Johns had five seconds to mention dry docks and he missed out on that opportunity, so maybe at the next meeting.

My first question for the minister is really in regard to block two on Wellington Street. I wonder if she'd be open to answering a question on that today.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Sure. I did not prepare for that for today, but of course, MP Lobb, go ahead and present your question.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

The other day my staff and I stopped at the Senate on Sparks Street. We were looking around. The thing that we need more clarification on in Parliament is with regard to the announcement that says there will be an increase in the number of office spaces by 150 offices. I would have thought we already have enough offices for our area. You did mention residents and housing, and I'm not talking about MPs, but just the need for housing in this area.

How do you justify all those increased offices, when it seems to me we have plenty with Wellington, Valour, East Block, West Block and on and on. I am just curious if you could answer that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Minister, I appreciate it, and thank you very much for offering to answer that. If you feel comfortable answering that question, by all means, we would greatly appreciate it. If not, we will move forward.

Thank you.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I'll do my best. As I said, I'm not prepared for this specific appearance, but I'm happy to respond.

First and foremost, what I would say is that the planning of this is part of the long-term vision and plan for the parliamentary and judicial precincts. There is a lot of engagement with senators as well.

I know that my officials could comment and give more specifics with respect to the details of that, but I can tell you that there were many in-depth discussions with respect to how we can best use this space in the most efficient manner. There were high asks in terms of the space that would be used, but it was as a result of those discussions that final decisions were made, and I know many discussions took place.

I know that my official would be able to expand a little bit on that in more depth. That official is not with us today, but I would be happy to have him respond.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Fair enough. That's good. Thank you.

In regard to cloud computing versus data centres and just on cloud computing right now, is it a fair and open competition for hosting?

I have a lot of meetings with different suppliers and vendors who feel that it's skewed towards Microsoft. I wonder if there's anything you can clear up on that front. I have a lot of meetings that occur in my office because they're feeling that it's biased towards Microsoft.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

What I would say in response to that, MP Lobb, is that we always, wherever possible, want to have competitive processes in place. We know that when we can have competitive processes in place, we are going to get the best value because of the competition. That's what competition breeds. It breeds bidders to bring in the best price they can because they know they're competing for the job.

I would say that there are some instances where we are not able to do that. For example, with the systems we have, there isn't compatibility in order to allow that. That, I think, I will turn over to my officials, because you have given specifics. They could respond to the specifics that you've cited.

[Sony Perron]

Mr. Chair, we have a brokering service at Shared Services Canada that qualified eight cloud service providers based on their ability to meet security requirements. They were qualified back in 2018. When a department needs to access cloud services for protection of new workloads, the eight have to compete as soon as the department passes over a certain threshold. Some activities will consume, over time, a lot of space and costs, so they have to go through a competitive process among the vendors that have qualified.

You mentioned Microsoft. We have other vendors such as IBM, Salesforce and ThinkOn that are on this.

You're right, MP Lobb, though, that right now among all the vendors, Microsoft is the one that has received the most demand so far, but this is, for most of it, as a result of a competition among the qualified vendors.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Lobb.

We'll now go to Mr. Kusmierczyk for five minutes.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for your excellent testimony here today, and thank you so much for being part of the OGGO committee.

Minister, as was mentioned previously, the question of the workplace and the future of work really is at top of mind for many businesses and governments. It's top of mind for communities across Canada. It really is across the globe as well. How the federal public service here in Canada will respond to these challenges is, of course, equally of interest.

There are some operational needs that have to be addressed and met. However, the future of work as a hybrid of in office and from home.... We know that this is the likely reality we are facing, the new reality today. Can you provide insights into how the Government of Canada's network bandwidth will handle this surge of large numbers of public servants returning to their physical offices?

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you for that, MP Kusmierczyk.

Work is ongoing, also, with respect to ensuring that the space is used efficiently, such as for shared space.

I think you're speaking more about the technological piece. SSC is working with its partners to implement the technology and network upgrades needed so that their return to workplace strategies will be effective and will work very well. Based on the department's prioritization of buildings, SSC is making significant upgrades to 35 government networks and boardrooms to enable employees to collaborate from work sites with their remote colleagues, as well as support the bandwidth-intensive video conferencing tools like Microsoft Teams.

This work is ongoing. We want to be preparing for the future and ensuring that, as more workers come back to work, those supports are there so they can get the work done. We want to do it in a way that provides the technological support that is needed.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you very much for that response, Minister.

Of course, during the pandemic, a wave of federal public servants migrated from in-person work to remote work, while at the same time keeping the work of government moving forward. This was really a Herculean task that was undertaken.

I know that it was incredibly important for residents in my riding of Windsor—Tecumseh to know that, even though this migration happened, the services were still being offered and the programs that were being undertaken were still functioning as normal. Again, this was an incredible task. I just wanted to compliment all the folks at SSC for that incredible work.

Can you outline for us, in short, how SSC supported those public servants who were working remotely throughout the pandemic?

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Yes, thanks for that question.

I totally agree with you. It goes back to the comment I made previously. I think the work that was undertaken overnight in order to provide the supports necessary so that the government could continue with its work and employees could continue working remotely was just absolutely fantastic. A tireless work effort was made on behalf of SSC, and I join you in congratulating and thanking them for turning that around so quickly.

Shared Services Canada provided the Government of Canada with a partner for the support needed to enable effective and seamless remote work, so that we could continue serving Canadians. We know there was a lot at stake there. If the work stopped, Canadians would be impacted across this country and it would be difficult.

To enable virtual work, SSC quickly implemented major upgrades to the enterprise network, government-wide Internet and network security, and has continued to provide improved collaboration tools such as Microsoft 365. They continue to monitor this. They are constantly monitoring the situation to determine what they're going to need because they don't want to be reactive. They want to be proactive.

Again, I thank them for the work that they have done in this regard.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Chair, how much time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

You have one second. There goes the bell.

We'll now go to Mrs. Vignola for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Minister, I will ask you for a written response to the following question.

On page 2-27 of Supplementary Estimates (A) 2022-2023, there’s a request for $18,798,000 to support the investigation under the Emergencies Act. It’s under the Privy Council Office heading. There’s a request for over $7 million to support emergency preparedness management and enhance departmental capabilities.

Personally, I think that $19 million to support the inquiry is a lot of money. It doesn’t include the inquiry’s costs.

Here’s my first question: what actions would this funding support?

Secondly, there’s a request for $7 million to support emergency preparedness management and improve departmental capacity. We are not even talking about preparedness itself, or even about emergency management and response, but about actions taken to ensure that it's well managed, and even made possible. We’re talking about $7 million, even though we do not even have the start of an initial emergency response. I think that’s a lot of money.

What does this support include? Why does it cost $7 million?

When we talk about improving departmental capacity, what capacity are we talking about? Which department is it? How much of the $7 million is going towards improving departmental capacity? What is it about departmental capacity that needs improvement? How much money can improve that capacity?

I'm wondering about amounts that don’t seem to lead to any kind of action.

Thank you.

[Filomena Tassi, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'm happy to have my team provide written responses to MP Vignola to that after this appearance.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Minister.

I appreciate your providing the written responses. You have 30 seconds if you would like to add to that.