Government Operations Committee on Feb. 6th, 2023

[Paul Thompson]

If the question is about who is the delegated authority, as Ms. Royds—

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

No. I'm asking who the person is who was in Ms. Royds' position when the contracts were signed, please.

[Paul Thompson]

I would have to check the records. That was before my time in the position, but as I said, there would be different delegations—

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Would it be the current associate deputy minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada, Ms. Reza? Would she possibly have been the individual who signed those contracts?

[Paul Thompson]

I don't have in front of me which delegated authority would have been used. It could have been that position or a different position.

Again, we'd have to check the records on that.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

My understanding is that historically, the individual in Ms. Royds' position signs these contracts. Prior to Ms. Royds' being in this position, it was Ms. Reza, who, of course, is now in another position.

Perhaps I'll conclude my time, Minister, by asking when you will provide the findings of your study to the committee.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Certainly it will be at the earliest possible moment.

I want to emphasize that we're just as anxious as, I think, members of this committee are to look at what has been occurring within the department, and if there's room for improvement, to get those recommendations in front of this committee as soon as we can.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Ms. Kusie asked several questions that you promised to get back to us on. The clerk will follow up. I imagine that will be the same for the rest of the afternoon. Thanks very much.

Next is Mr. Jowhari for six minutes, please.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, welcome to our committee. I want to quickly acknowledge that you are one of the very first ministers who voluntarily offered a date of last week to join us, but we had some conflict around the availability of the witnesses on that day. I want to quickly acknowledge that and thank you.

Minister, when you had that conversation with the Prime Minister—you said you were going to get back to us on the date—and Minister Fortier, what was the ask? What was the scope of the work that Minister Fortier's department was going to do or the minister was going to do, and what was the scope of work that your department was going to do?

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you. I think that is an important question.

The Treasury Board Secretariat essentially puts forward the policies under which the government decides the usage of professional consulting services. In other words, it determines when we should use consulting services to address issues and for what types of policy issues.

PSPC is much more focused, essentially, on the mechanics. That's how we award contracts, the type of due diligence that is done and the processes that are used. You've heard references to national standing offers. We've heard “supply arrangements”. These are all complex ways to keep the government going. In other words, there are a number of consultants who are used on an ongoing basis by PSPC under certain structures.

We want to ensure.... This committee is, I'm sure, interested in the fact that we are actually adhering to those processes that have been established and that in fact there is no interference at any level in the qualification and pre-qualification of candidates. All of the various standing offers that we have are done in accordance with the processes that have been established.

Of course, we're going to look at those processes, especially through the procurement ombudsman, to see if there is anything possibly missing and if there is anything that can be improved.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Would it be fair for me to say that TBS develops the policies and the guidelines, and then those policies and guidelines pass to various departments? As they pass to PSPC, you look at whether the contract that's been requested to be issued followed those steps, whether it fitted the requirements.

In a sense, of the 24 contracts that we are talking about, how many of those 24 at PSPC were the agent of the contract, rather than the administrator of the contract?

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

I'll turn to the deputy for that detail. Thank you.

[Paul Thompson]

Thank you for the question.

To clarify, are you asking in how many contracts PSPC was the client department and user of the services?

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Yes.

[Paul Thompson]

That was one of the 24. It was one of the competitive contracts. There was also a small, non-competitive contract worth less than $25,000—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

It was one contract. Can you tell me what the value was of that one contract in which PSPC was what I would call the agent of the contract?

[Paul Thompson]

Thank you for that question.

The one contract, the larger one that I mentioned, was $29.6 million, and it was for services to support our pay centre operations.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay. Are you in a position to talk about the scope of that? Naturally, your department would be the one that defined the scope as well as the criteria.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Again, it was I believe very much in terms of the training and onboarding of personnel to ensure that our pay centre, the Phoenix system, as we obviously call it, was being accelerated. In fact, it was called the accelerator project.

I'll turn to the deputy for more detail.

[Paul Thompson]

Thank you, Minister.

The project really was looking at the human resources side of the pay centre. It was looking at how we train our staff, how we onboard them onto the team, how we deploy the staff and how we look at the work and different levels of complexity and assign staff to those different types of work. It has led to a significant improvement in the productivity of the pay centre.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Was it a new project that was introduced or was it a project that the government had been engaging in?

[Paul Thompson]

That was a new project that was introduced, and it's completing almost as we speak. That contract expires at the end of March, and all the recommendations that came out of that analysis have been implemented.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Naturally, someone within the department or the minister had the authorization to sign that contract, which is fine.

On the other 23 contracts, since you're not the agent of the contractor, Minister, did you have any direct interaction with McKinsey or did any members of your staff or department have any direct contact with McKinsey to advocate for the project or sign this project or...?

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Mr. Jowhari, absolutely not: The minister's office is not involved in any way in awarding these contracts.