Government Operations Committee on Nov. 17th, 2022

[Rob Stewart]

Not to my knowledge.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Was Ben Chin implicated at any time?

[Rob Stewart]

Not to my knowledge.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay.

Ms. Luelo, would you be able to explain for us what a national security exemption is, please?

[Catherine Luelo]

To the best of my understanding—and I'll preface this by saying that I'm still fairly new in this role—a national security exemption allows us to step around some of the practices that are in place around procurement to move more quickly based on national security concerns, but I will confirm back in writing that this is an accurate representation.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay.

Were you made aware or was your predecessor made aware of the implication of national security exemptions in the creation of ArriveCAN?

[Catherine Luelo]

It is my understanding that ArriveCAN was...they used the national security exemption for some procurement related to accessibility, but again, I'll go back and confirm that in writing.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay.

Ms. Clarke, I want to say I'm certainly a fan of your work and of your articles. As the new shadow minister for the Treasury Board, I am very interested in value for money. I certainly share your quandary in the existing situation, which is a lack of talent within the public service and therefore the use of what are probably overpriced consulting firms in an effort to compensate for that lack of inherent information and capacity, yet at the same time the recognition of the time and investment to make the transition and, as Ms. Luelo pointed out, the lack of talent available in Canada at this time.

You referenced the United Kingdom, which my colleague Mr. Johns mentioned briefly. Can you expand a little upon their system for this transition from consulting firms to inherent capacity, infinite capacity, and what that might look like based on their model?

[Amanda Clarke]

Their model grew out of massive failure in parliamentary scrutiny, so you're on a good roll here. Basically, they have an amazing parliamentary report from, I think, 2011, called “Government and IT—'a recipe for rip-offs'”. They pretty much investigated the scandalous awarding of contracts to a small number of massive IT firms, which led to huge failures, including a massive failure of their effort to create a universal benefit system. That's really worth checking out.

From that failure.... At the time, there was a coalition government that was interested in improving public services, led by David Cameron. You saw huge investment and a lot of ministerial leadership to recruit tech talent and to evaluate the rules that make it hard to do good tech work in government.

The recipe is pretty clear. I hope we don't have to have a massive failure to get there, but I increasingly fear that we do.

It's a similar story in the U.S. The reason they moved ahead on a lot of tech reforms was that Obama's health care initiative failed on the first day because the website didn't work. This led to the creation of presidential innovation fellows and the U.S. Digital Service. Now, under the Biden administration, there's significant investment in reducing administrative burden and improving services.

We haven't seen that same kind of activity here in Canada. We have been more at the level of strategies, visions and some tech talent hiring, but we need some significant hard rules, I think. We also need to streamline some of the existing rules, so that public servants trying to do good work are enabled to do that good work.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

I certainly would be interested to hear what your definition of a “massive failure” is, but perhaps that is a conversation to be had over a strong Earl Grey tea.

Ms. Luelo, in your opinion, is the current Treasury Board Secretariat following the objective as outlined in the mandate letter to make this transition? In your opinion, how is this going so far?

[Catherine Luelo]

I believe we are moving along the path on the mandate, demonstrated by the digital talent group that is being stood up. We are making significant efforts to hire outside of government.

Typically, what is happening is that we're seeing a migration of talent around government, but not the right net new into government. There's an outreach and recruitment process that our team has executed in the last six months. There are a number of job posters. In fact, we have had some very strong external candidates, but we need to increase the volume from where we are.

I would offer one other thought. We need to stop doing so many things. If we had less work, we would be able to take the talent that we have and.... “Talent” is maybe the wrong word. There is an incredibly talented group of leaders inside government, as well as coders, developers, software engineers and network experts. There are not enough of them, based on the large agenda that governments over many years have put forward.

The reality is that we have a technical environment that is in need of attention. We need to prioritize where we're going to spend limited tech talent.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Ms. Luelo.

Thank you, Chair, for your generosity of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Mr. Housefather, you have one minute.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Did Mrs. Kusie take four of my five minutes?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

By the way, I'm going to start by saying, Ms. Clarke, that I really appreciated the document you sent. I sent it to the minister after I read it. I thought it was very well done.

Mr. Stewart, I want to come back to the national security exemption that Mrs. Kusie just raised, which I believe was awarded to you. It's the contract related to ensuring that accessibility requirements were met, as Ms. Luelo just mentioned.

It's my understanding that in March 2020, the national security exemption was invoked to exempt all elements of the procurements of goods and services required in order to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it exempted these procurements from the provisions of all of Canada's applicable trade agreements.

Is that your understanding? Did you understand that that exception applied to all goods and services, not just to ArriveCAN, in that one contract?

[Rob Stewart]

I don't know that for a fact, but I would certainly believe it to be true. In March 2020, we were trying to procure all kinds of goods and services, in particular goods such as protective equipment. We were doing it by any means possible and as quickly as we could do it.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

That's my understanding. There's a lot of discussion, and things can sound very sinister in sound bites, but when you take the time to walk through them, most of these sound bites are untrue. My understanding is that there is no issue, because that wasn't a specific issue related to only one ArriveCAN contract. It was related to the timing of that contract, when there was a general exception for all goods and services.

Can I come back to you, Mr. Stewart, because you were there? You mentioned that you briefed Minister Blair. It is normal that you would brief the minister and his chief of staff on a regular basis with respect to what was happening.

Did the minister ever offer you any political direction stating that you had to contract any specific organization?

[Rob Stewart]

No.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Was he involved in determining who any of the contracts were awarded to?

[Rob Stewart]

No.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Was any political person involved in that—his chief of staff or anybody political?

[Rob Stewart]

To the best of my knowledge, no.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you very much. Again, that dispels claims about Liberal insiders benefiting.

The $250,000 cost has been brought up multiple times in question period and, in fact, at committee the last time—that this app could have been developed for $250,000, which even the people who did the hackathon didn't say.

Ms. Luelo, I'll go to you first, and then I'll go to Ms. Clarke.

Ms. Luelo, you were not in government at the time. You came from the outside, so you were not involved in the development of ArriveCAN. Do you believe, as I asked the CIO of Public Safety last time, that ArriveCAN—meaning the initial development, the 70 or more updates required over a span of two years to make sure the app kept responding to changes in dynamics, and all the other things, such as accessibility, security, training and support—could have been done for $250,000, under any circumstances?

[Catherine Luelo]

No, that is not consistent with my experience.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Could it have been developed for $250,000?

[Catherine Luelo]

It could be developed; I don't think it could be operated. You could develop it, but if you can't run it to do the thing....