Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, committee members and guests. It's nice to see you this afternoon.
Let me begin by acknowledging that I'm participating from Hamilton, my hometown, which is situated on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe peoples.
With me today is the president of Shared Services Canada, Sony Perron; Patrice Nadeau, assistant deputy minister of networks and security services; and Samantha Hazen, assistant deputy minister and chief financial officer. Also with me from PSPC are my deputy minister, Paul Thompson; and Wojo Zielonka, the chief financial officer.
I'm pleased to be here with you as minister responsible for Shared Services Canada to discuss the organization's supplementary estimates (A). Shared Services Canada, or SSC, is responsible for equipping public servants with the secure and reliable information technology infrastructure they need to support government operations. The work done at SSC also ensures that we can deliver digital programs and services to Canadians that are secure, reliable and easy to use from anywhere.
To support digital government, we need a high-performing and resilient enterprise network. That means moving away from individual department networks to a modern government-wide network. Shared Services Canada is responsible for managing the security and network infrastructure for its partner departments and clients. SSC is also responsible for securing the network perimeter and managing the government's secret infrastructure—50 networks enabling digital communications for about 400,000 users nationally and internationally.
SSC operates 336 data centres, including four enterprise data centres that provide secure, reliable hosting services for Government of Canada applications and data. To ensure the safety and security of Canadians' data and the services provided by the Government of Canada, the information technology infrastructure must be safe from vulnerabilities and able to swiftly and effectively respond to cybersecurity attacks. We take cybersecurity very seriously. Cybersecurity is a shared responsibility among Shared Services Canada, the Communications Security Establishment, referred to as CSE, and the Treasury Board Secretariat.
Shared Services Canada is an integral part of the cybersecurity tripartite. On any given day the defensive cyber-system of the Canadian centre for cybersecurity, a division of CSE, can block anywhere from three billion to as many as seven billion actions targeting Government of Canada networks. When it comes to government IT solutions, our government is looking for greater flexibility, mobility and efficiency. That means developing networks that are accessible any time, anywhere, by anyone on a trusted and secure platform.
With this in mind, SSC is providing the key building blocks for the adoption of cloud computing. Moving government services and operations to cloud-based services and cross-government data centres will reduce the risk of major IT failure, as well as ensuring safe and efficient services. The improved efficiencies will save taxpayer money as well as reduce the Government of Canada's carbon footprint. When it comes to directing the traffic on the network itself, SSC is looking to use software-defined networking technology as well as artificial intelligence to get better network performance and monitoring.
To support these key network modernization activities, SSC is requesting, through supplementary estimates (A), an increase to the reference levels by $86 million for a total of $2.7 billion. SSC will invest this additional funding in information technology services so that the Government of Canada can leverage new technologies and approaches to security for continued support to existing as well as new government programs and services for Canadians.
Thank you again for the invitation to join you today. I am pleased to answer questions related to the supplementary estimates (A) for Shared Services Canada.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.