Evidence of meeting #48 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was contracts.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Sean Boots  Senior Policy Adviser, Canadian Digital Service, Treasury Board Secretariat
Amanda Clarke  Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University, As an Individual
Jennifer Carr  President, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
Jordan McAuley  Data Analyst, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada

5:05 p.m.

NDP

Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC

Ms. Kusie asked you an excellent question about making sure the government is actually paying market rates for consultants. You talked about “plus markup” for these services.

When you say “markup”, that's profit. Is that correct?

5:05 p.m.

President, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada

Jennifer Carr

It is.

What I could say is that we have been talking about IT contracts here, but I also represent federal nurses. They are seeing an overreliance on agencies where they are getting three and a half times the amount of a public servant, have flexibility, do not go into dangerous situations, are being paid bonuses to work on Christmas Eve and other kinds of incentives. If the government would just invest in proper compensation and recognition, we wouldn't have to rely on outside staff to fill these jobs.

5:05 p.m.

NDP

Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC

Do you have any idea of the markup of these percentages that companies are getting, or how much is flowing to CEOs who are profiting? There's a markup on top of the markup for some of these consultants to use subcontractors.

Can you speak about how that morale impacts your workers?

5:05 p.m.

President, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada

Jennifer Carr

I can definitely talk about the morale. When you have a professional—in this case, I'll use nurses, who are fully licensed—watching an agency paramedic come in, who doesn't have any licensing but makes three times the amount they do.... Where do you go? There's the capacity to absorb that your employer really doesn't care about your work, and it's more about having a body in there and not the role an individual plays.

Now, for the markups and stuff, I'm not sure.

Jordan, have we looked at any of those? Is that anything that's available in the public disclosures?

5:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley

You'll have to provide a short answer, please.

5:05 p.m.

Data Analyst, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada

Jordan McAuley

No problem. That is really easy. The answer is no. There's no indication of that. We've tried to track down that information.

5:05 p.m.

NDP

Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC

I have a very quick question. You talked about the shadow public service. We have Dominic Barton coming on Wednesday. I guess he's a former minister of the shadow public service.

Are there any other former ministers or CEOs you'd like to see this committee bring in for questioning?

5:05 p.m.

President, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada

Jennifer Carr

There aren't any that I can think of. I'm sorry.

5:05 p.m.

NDP

Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC

Thanks.

5:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley

We're going to have to finish there.

Thank you, Mr. Johns.

It's over to you, Mrs. Block, please.

5:05 p.m.

Conservative

Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Taking a look at the time, I have just one quick question for our witnesses.

Thank you for coming today. You provided us with some reports, and in those reports you raised concerns about insufficient efforts with regard to staffing. Do you have concerns that, due to the ongoing contracts and the ongoing sole-sourcing, certain positions are not being filled, so it's a rather vicious cycle?

5:05 p.m.

President, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada

Jennifer Carr

It is definitely a vicious cycle. It feeds on itself. If we don't invest in-house, we see federal public servants who leave to become a contractor or leave the federal public service, so it starts that whole cycle again.

While our studies are on IT right now, it is the nurses.... Nurses are walking away from working for Indigenous Services Canada or Correctional Service Canada to work for the agency counterparts, make the money that they should be making right now as federal public servants and get the respect they deserve for the profession they are in.

5:05 p.m.

Conservative

Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK

Thank you.

5:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley

Thank you.

Mr. Bains, it's over to you, please, for five minutes.

January 30th, 2023 / 5:05 p.m.

Liberal

Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Carr and Mr. McAuley, for joining us today and for everything you do for the public service.

In your view, do parliamentarians and the public have enough access to contracting information to make informed decisions about the suitability, scope and value proposition of tenders?

5:05 p.m.

President, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada

Jennifer Carr

I'm going to put that off to Jordan. I believe the answer is, no, there is not a lot, but he's my data guy.

Go ahead, Jordan.

5:05 p.m.

Data Analyst, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada

Jordan McAuley

Certainly for the general public, it's not particularly accessible. The information is on the government's open data portal. You download that. It's a massive, really messy dataset. I think there is a tool so that you can look at individual contracts, but it's difficult to navigate if you don't know what you're looking for.

The information contained in the disclosed data is very lacking sometimes. There are not a lot of details. You don't know what a lot of contracts are for. You can look up the procurement ID of the contract to get more information, but it's difficult, especially for someone in the general public, to try to navigate it.

5:10 p.m.

Liberal

Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC

What can be improved? What should the federal government routinely make public?

5:10 p.m.

Data Analyst, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada

Jordan McAuley

They could maybe have tighter standards on the data releases. I think they are getting better. As the individual in the last meeting pointed to, since 2017, the data certainly has been improving, but a clearer description of what the contract is for...sometimes those fields are filled out optionally. They typically include their broad category, but you can't drill down further than knowing it's an IT consulting contract in some cases. You don't know that it's for providing x or y service.

We don't know how many consultants are hired within a consulting contract. That's something we'd be really interested in looking at, because a $10-million, $20-million or $100-million IT consulting contract will go to a large firm. We don't know how many consultants that got us. We don't know how much those consultants were paid. We don't know if the contract was subcontracted.

All of those things would be really interesting to see.

5:10 p.m.

Liberal

Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC

Just something you alluded to.... I mean, we've heard a lot about IT, and it's clear that the focus is on a lot of IT workers. I think we also realize that there's a narrow pool of people with this skill set who are available, and we've talked a lot about salaries. If now, say, a government comes in and increases the salaries, and then there's a competition for this same pool of IT people and private firms, again, that will increase salaries. Does that not compound the problem? What are some things we could do there?

5:10 p.m.

President, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada

Jennifer Carr

It's very hard for us to see sometimes how much they are actually paying their IT workers. When you're talking about multinational corporations, we're not sure that even the workers they have are being paid a similar wage, especially if they're not Canadian workers. The other thing is that we don't know what the markup is in terms of the contracts. It's very hard for us to understand the full scope.

What we do know is that repeated, I would call, microaggressions against the employees: not being able to be paid, not being able to work in their field of expertise, not being able to upskill.... This is not a static job. It's not something that stays. You need to be up on the new technologies, and you have to know what you're doing. If the government won't invest in that, then you are not able to provide the best service on behalf of Canadians.

5:10 p.m.

Liberal

Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC

Thank you.

Those are all the questions I have for today. Thank you very much.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley

Thanks, Mr. Bains.

Ms. Vignola, you have two and a half minutes, please.

I'll keep both of you to exactly two and a half minutes.

5:10 p.m.

Bloc

Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Carr, I have a comment to make before I ask my question.

So far, the answer I am hearing most often with regard to contracts is “I don’t know.” That, in my opinion, is the problem: nobody knows anything.

Among all your members, how many of them earn $1,500 per hour, including benefits?

5:10 p.m.

President, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada

Jennifer Carr

I don't know if I can answer that question, but I can certainly get that to you after the fact. The average worker is not making that much.