Government Operations Committee on Nov. 28th, 2022

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

It sounds to me like there's a huge economic leakage for Canada and Canadian workers. This is a huge concern of mine. Really, it's a disservice to taxpayers at the end of the day when there's a huge economic leakage like this taking place on their dime.

Can you speak a bit more about the efforts to unionize 1-800-O-Canada workers either through the Public Service Alliance of Canada or otherwise? Can you please provide a history of those efforts?

[Crystal Warner]

On three separate occasions, the PSAC had made efforts to unionize the workers at Quantum. We are currently working to try to unionize the workers at Gatestone.

I have a memo from 2018 that Quantum management sent out to all of its employees warning them about—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Ms. Warner, I apologize for interrupting again, but that is our time. Perhaps we can get back to that in Mr. Johns's—

[Crystal Warner]

They were mean.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

As am I, but that is still time.

We'll go to Mrs. Block for five minutes, please.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank Ms. Warner for being here today. This is an important study about outsourcing, so I appreciate hearing her perspective.

I've been on this committee for a very short time. It's been a bit of a steep learning curve, as we've had a number of issues before us. We know that money spent by the government on outside contracts in the category of professional and special services has nearly doubled since 2006 to $11.8 billion, as my colleague pointed out earlier. We also saw an increase of 116% in spending on IT consulting between 2011 and 2018, a 115% increase in spending on management consulting and a 78% increase in spending on temporary help.

We learned recently through our study of the ArriveCAN app, which you may or may not be aware of, that IT firms may charge between 15% to 30% for their service over and above the service that's being provided. I've also learned that the current government likes to use outside contractors, such as large consulting firms, which charge exorbitant fees, to give them answers that may be clear to Canadians already, such as not buying IT support from despotic regimes.

Do you have any concerns that the government is creating a shadow public service in which staffing firms—which do none of the work but are taking large cuts—are increasing the costs of the work being done and paid for?

[Crystal Warner]

In our preparation for today's meeting, we noticed that when we originally became aware of the contract with Gatestone for 1-800-O-Canada, it was at $79 million. That was when we started. We noticed just this weekend that the size of the contract has now gone to $158 million, and we don't know why it would have increased so much.

We can only assume that the government intends to expand the usage they originally intended to have. It's horrifying to us that this one contract has doubled and we were not made aware of it through any kind of labour-management consultations, nor of the intentions. We will be asking about that.

When it comes to IT, although another union—PIPSC— represents those workers primarily, I want to comment on a couple of things.

As I stated, I represent the majority of the unionized workforce at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and at the Immigration and Refugee Board. We've noticed a massive increase in the digitization and automation of the work that's being done in those departments. We have a lot of concerns about that, in particular at IRCC when it comes to the client experience and things like the inherent unconscious bias that gets built into these programs.

When we're having labour-management meetings and we're questioning why this work is being contracted out, why this work is being digitized and how artificial intelligence is getting used to do work that used to be done by our members as our bargaining agent work, we get told things like “it's going to help increase efficiencies” or “it's going to be a more efficient application process”.

When we ask them questions, it seems to us that often they don't fully understand, appreciate or grasp the scope of the type of technology they've been given, so they are forced to contract out because they don't know what they're working with or the capacity of it. That's instead of working with in-house employees who understand the programs and obligations of the Government of Canada. We're very concerned about the contracting out that's being done with these types of technologies and the impact it could have on future Canadians.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You have 20 seconds.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Okay. I'm just going to leave it there.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks, Ms. Block.

Mr. Bains, it's over to you, please, from the sunny west coast.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Warner, for joining us today and for all your advocacy for Canadian workers.

There's one thing I want to clarify. You mentioned Phoenix, Arizona. My understanding is that the Gatestone company is headquartered in North York, Ontario, and is Canadian owned. Is that accurate?

[Crystal Warner]

We've heard the same comments from ESDC, but what our research tells us is that Gatestone is a family of companies and their international headquarters are in Phoenix, Arizona. I haven't heard North York. They do have offices in Canada, but it's a family of companies that's primarily U.S.-based.

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

Okay. I'll move on.

The public service staffing process simply takes too long. It's lengthy and cumbersome and often takes six months to a year to complete. Do you agree and do you support reform? What would reform look like?

[Crystal Warner]

I agree that the current process does take too long and is overly bureaucratic. I think that on occasion, the employer has already demonstrated the ability to work within the existing system and to streamline it so that we aren't waiting six months for a process.

If the process is done right, we've seen hundreds of employees being hired in a couple of months. I think it just takes the time, the energy and the desire, frankly, to prioritize this type of work in human resources, which is often the last thing that gets considered when we see departments going through transformation.

When we talk about reforms, it's about updating the existing system, making it work better and investing resources there instead of taking the easy routes. Aside from contracting out, we saw at IRCC, for example, that 85% of staffing actions in the last year were done through unadvertised staffing. We see a lot of favouritism. We see a lot of nepotism. We see a lot of people's kids, uncles and brothers getting hired in the department instead of the employer taking the time to do a fair and transparent process.

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

Departments are required to consider internal staff before outsourcing a project. Some say that doesn't happen enough. How could those “make or buy” policies be strengthened?

[Crystal Warner]

Give more accountability to them. A lot of the time it's about the language used, like “consulting”. I had a senior manager in a department say to me, “Well, Crystal, we told you about it, so we figure that's consultation.”

Even the language that exists in the current staffing policies of the federal government allows the employer to do what they want, frankly. There's very little ability for us to challenge that in a formal way and very little formal recourse, transparency and accountability. There are very few formal mechanisms we have in representing and advocating for our members to force the employer to have more open, fair and transparent processes.

Instead, as I mentioned, in all of our departments we're seeing unadvertised staffing being done, with IRCC being at over 85% last year. Regarding considering internal staff, again, the language isn't strong enough for us to have a formal recourse.

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

IT consultants are easily the largest type of professional services the government contracts externally. Why do you think that is?

[Crystal Warner]

I'd be remiss to answer that question, because I don't represent those workers.

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

Okay.

Do I have more time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You have 40 seconds.

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

Are there training opportunities offered by your members' respective departments or within the union to improve their skills?

[Crystal Warner]

I would argue that experience with any union would give excellent skills and training to any government employee, or any worker for that matter.

Of course, what we try to talk to our members about are the principles of natural justice, which are fairness and transparency. We always say that we're federal public sector workers first, so we really uphold those values, ethics and principles.

We offer training on everything from occupational health and safety and staffing processes to the duty of fairness when it comes to these things in the federal public sector. We offer a lot of training, and we've given it to our advocates to try to find different ways to get the point across to all levels of management that they really need to do a better job in making staffing processes fair, transparent and accessible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That's our time.

We'll go to Ms. Vignola for two and a half minutes, please.