Government Operations Committee on Nov. 24th, 2022

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

I'm going to switch gears now. The minister mentioned the trend we're seeing after the pandemic towards more virtual working. In supplementary estimates (B), we're told that PSPC is the general manager for office space. We heard some allusions to this on Monday from Minister Fortier and from the minister today as well.

I'm wondering if you can provide for the committee more of a long-term plan on what you will do with vacant office spaces in light of the new hybrid work model. What's that looking like in terms of an evaluation of the unused space? How might your department, being responsible, determine a process to determine what will still be needed? What will be retained within the inventory of buildings and what might not be retained?

[Paul Thompson]

Thank you for the question.

This is an active area for us right now, obviously, with a very changed set of circumstances. I would note that, prior to the pandemic, we had done some work to identify some significant opportunities to really optimize our office portfolio. There were estimates that 40% of our office portfolio was surplus to our needs at that time, and you can imagine that with hybrid work layered on top of that, we have even more opportunity to shift our portfolio.

We are looking at a more aggressive strategy for consolidating our real property, with a focus on our core Crown-owned assets. We think there's an opportunity to terminate some leases for lesser-used buildings and focus on some Crown-owned and make them accessible, green and better suited to hybrid work. We think we can achieve at least a 50% reduction—not a 40% reduction—and do that over an accelerated time period. That's the essence of the strategy we're working on right now.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay. That's interesting.

Would that be like a 50% reduction in space itself or in asset portfolio, would you say?

[Paul Thompson]

I'm thinking largely about square metres, basically.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay. Do you know currently how much it costs to maintain and operate all the government buildings in the national capital region? I brought up this question on Monday, and I thought you might be able to provide more insight.

[Paul Thompson]

Yes. I think the overall building portfolio is at $2.5 billion, and about $1.1 billion of that is related to the national capital region.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

That's interesting. That's $2.5 billion total, and what was related to the NCR, please?

[Paul Thompson]

It's approximately $1.1 billion.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

That's actually less than I thought.

How do you track vacancy levels for office space in the NCR?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Please give a brief answer.

[Paul Thompson]

There is no consolidated dataset for doing that, so we rely on a range of different instruments from department to department. The departments have responsibility for the occupancy of the buildings, so we would work with individual departments, whether it's through swipe cards or other mechanisms, to track the attendance or the use of the buildings.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Kusmierczyk, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

During COVID, we had a number of companies in my riding of Windsor—Tecumseh, such as Windsor Mold and Harbour Technologies, that pivoted and provided PPE and other products to the Canadian government to keep Canadians safe. I've heard from a lot of companies that the CanadaBuys website has been very successful in many ways.

Do you see ways that CanadaBuys could still be improved? Is this pretty much the best that the website is going to get or is there room for improvement?

[Paul Thompson]

Thank you for the question.

I would say there's still lots of room for improvement. In fact, we've introduced this with a very open door for feedback from clients and users, and we want to continue to refine it.

We want to do a lot more outreach as well. We think there are a lot more than 20,000 vendors out there who ought to be registered, so we're doing active outreach and looking at continued refinement to making the client journey even easier so that they can register with greater ease.

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

Can you tell us a bit about what you're hearing from some of those stakeholder engagements? Is there an issue that keeps coming up over and over or a common theme that you hear?

[Paul Thompson]

There is a range of issues. Some are just the general digital experiences that you have on multiple clicks and navigating through multiple sites. We're dealing with those sorts of issues.

There was an ability for Canadians, generally, to look at documents that can only be seen now if you register as a vendor. That's come up as another issue. There are Canadians out there who may have wanted to view procurement documents, but now they.... That's just another example of some feedback that we've heard.

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

That's terrific, and it's wonderful to hear that this is an iterative process, an ongoing process of getting feedback and improving that website.

I'll switch gears to the greening government initiative, which is something that I'm interested in. In Windsor, we produce the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan, so I want to ask you this: Will we see more Pacificas in the federal fleet? I would like to better understand what the role of PSPC is in that process in terms of determining what types of vehicles are being procured. Is it the client department that says, “We want Chrysler Pacificas”, or do you have a hand in determining what that process looks like?

[Paul Thompson]

It's a bit of a blended process. It's the responsibility of PSPC to develop, essentially, the standing offer, and we would have qualifying vehicles on that list. It's essentially a menu of vehicles from which a client department could choose. That list is refreshed on an annual basis. I believe there was a refresh rather recently. I don't know offhand whether the vehicle you're mentioning is on it, but that's information....

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

Okay, I got you.

We've heard, for example, on the U.S. side, President Biden talk about greening their fleet, making sure all of their fleet is zero-emissions vehicles, EVs and hybrids, by a certain date. He mentioned, as well, that they would be “made in the United States” vehicles too. Is there an opportunity, for example, to have a made-in-Canada provision built into the procurement policies under the greening government initiative?

[Paul Thompson]

This is certainly an interesting area of pursuit. I would say that one of the challenges we have right now is simply the supply chain. We're having a great deal of difficulty getting anywhere close to the number of battery electric vehicles, for example, that we would procure on an annual basis. For the time being, the priority would just be to get our hands on qualifying electric vehicles. Then we can work to meet some of those broader considerations.

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

Terrific.

I'll switch gears once again to diversity procurement, which is a subject that we're going to be studying here at committee. I just want to ask you where our government has made improvements. What parts of the diversity procurement initiative have worked? I just want to ask you those questions. We'll start with those.

[Paul Thompson]

I would note three tracks of work. One is the work on outreach that we do through Procurement Assistance Canada. That team in PSPC, for example, last year did 1,700 outreaches, and about half of that number were for equity-seeking suppliers. We have a deliberate focus on the diversity side of our outreach.

The second track would be on simplification, including the e-procurement solution that I mentioned, which is much easier. We're getting very good feedback from suppliers on that, including diversity suppliers, who can self-identify on the site as a diverse supplier for the government, which helps us with identifying for contracting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Mr. Thompson.

[Paul Thompson]

Lastly—