Government Operations Committee on March 22nd, 2023

[Arianne Reza]

There are none that I know of, but we can come back with a more formal answer.

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

Okay. That would be great.

I guess my concern is that it's a conflict of interest if consultants are developing staffing plans and then their job is to create jobs for themselves. I just really believe, and I want to make it clear, especially with you here, that letting consultants develop more and more of this work for themselves needs to stop.

I guess my question to you is this: Do you not believe, in your really important role—and I want to thank you for the work that all of you do, especially through COVID—as public service personnel with the inside knowledge, loyalty and service, that you have would be better suited to develop all staffing plans for departments?

[Arianne Reza]

I can only speak to the processes in terms of the integrated planning that every department does with their HR staffing and their financial levels. There's a whole series of complex processing.

I think Wojo wanted to add to this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Answer briefly, please.

[Wojo Zielonka]

Thank you.

From what I've seen from PSPC, in our department as CFO, and the things I see across our desks, I've never seen anything come across that would suggest that, to what—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Is that even for DND?

[Wojo Zielonka]

I can't comment about DND. I can comment about PSPC.

In the case of PSPC, when we do have consultants, they're there for very specific expertise. In terms of staffing and suggesting that we staff certain roles through consultants, that has not been something that I've seen in my role as CFO.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Witnesses, before we dismiss you, there were a lot of questions put forward and a lot of promises to get back either in writing, reports or other forms, to the committee. Rather than forcing us to chase you down, I hope that you will take a look at the blues afterwards and get back to us on all these items.

Thank you for joining us today. I appreciate it.

Colleagues, very quickly, we've put aside a few minutes for committee business.

On Monday I am away. I will be attending the funeral for our lost officers in Edmonton. Mr. Jowhari will be filling in. We have one hour that's just one witness. I suspect it will be one hour at the very most for McKinsey. We have the person from the library coming in to advise us on legislative procedure, which we moved back. Then we're also going to get into finalizing the Governor General travel study. We've done all the line by line. We just have to go through the recommendations. I understand that a few people have been talking, so I hope you have pared them down or gotten rid of some of the duplicate ones.

We've discussed GC Strategies and also the McKinsey documents a lot—how we're going to treat them, what's going to be public and what's going to be non-public. It's all rather complicated. Our clerk has graciously decided to do a bit of a deep dive into some of the procedures that we have to follow with the documents. She will be briefing us next Wednesday—we'll put aside some time—on the different options of all the various documents, as well as update us, I think, on the 91,000 pages that we've received so far.

Thank you very much. Mr. Jowhari. Thanks for covering for me on Monday. I appreciate it.

Thanks for this needed research on how we have to handle these documents.

Mrs. Block.

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

That's probably a great segue into a motion that I would like to introduce for this committee to consider. I'll read it for you. I think I have it in French and I'll give you both the English and the French versions.

I move:

That the analysts and the clerk be directed to prepare a brief report to the House outlining the material facts regarding the status of the documents ordered by the committee, in particular the degree of redactions, in relation to its study on Federal Government Consulting Contracts Awarded to McKinsey & Company, and that the draft report be considered by the committee in public.

I'm just going to give this to you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I assume this is in response to the various issues we've encountered with redacted documents sent to us in violation, for lack of a better word, of the OGGO motion and order?

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

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I believe this report would outline the facts in regard to the documents we've received as a result of the reproduction order. Once we've heard the facts, the committee would then decide our next steps and perhaps provide some direction to you, given the level of frustration that many of us have felt in regard to receiving documents that are redacted.

I would submit that the committee's decision to request these documents was made in public and the committee's ongoing frustration over the redactions has been very public. That is why at the end of the motion we included that the discussion and the next steps should be in public as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Does anyone have an issue?

Are you comfortable with this? Does this include updating us on who's done what or who's provided what?

[A voice]

That's my understanding.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Okay.

Go ahead, Mr. Housefather.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think I'm going to have amendments to propose, but first I want to better understand the framework here.

This proposes that “the analysts and the clerk be directed to prepare a brief report to the House”. Why would we be preparing a report to the House? I have no problem preparing a report to the committee, understanding exactly what the status is of all of the different documents and seeing where there's a problem, and then, if the committee understands that there's a problem, sending something perhaps to the House.

If Mrs. Block would be agreeable, instead of sending the report to “the House”, I would like to say instead that the analysts and clerk be directed to prepare a brief report to “the committee” outlining the material facts and status of the documents, so that we know what's actually happening. I had thought, at least in my crazy view, that everybody had now agreed to provide unredacted documents, so I'd like to understand which departments are not agreeing or what their status is.

I also don't agree with the part that says, “the draft report be considered by the committee in public”. I think, as usual, we should get the report and we should discuss it.

If Mrs. Block would agree to those two things, I think that would make me satisfied. I do think we should know, and then we could decide, based on what we know.

Again, I leave that to my friend. If that's okay, I would propose those two amendments, which would basically change “a brief report to the House” to “a brief report to the committee” and would take out “that the draft report be considered by the committee in public”.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

If you could narrow down your question, just briefly, I think the clerk can walk us through....

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I didn't view it as a question. It was more for Mrs. Block on whether she would agree to those being friendly amendments.

Maybe I wasn't speaking clearly enough for Aimée to hear me. In line one, instead of saying “a brief report to the House”, I'm proposing “a brief report to the committee”. I'm replacing the word “House” with “committee”. Then, in line four, I'm proposing that we delete the words after “Company”. As usual, I think reports should be considered by the committee in private first.

Those are the two things that I would propose, because I think that might create a consensus and make it palatable to everybody.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Do you want to explain to the committee...?

I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mrs. Block.

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

Before the clerk begins, I would just let the committee members know that my office did work with the clerk on the wording of this, trying to understand the process, given the frustration that the committee has felt with various departments not following our directive to provide us with unredacted documents.

I'll now turn it over to the clerk to provide us with her answer.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Aimée Belmore]

Thank you.

I pulled the wording for this from previous motions, actually from previous OGGO motions, in order to report concerns of privilege to the House. In reading it, I would understand that to be, in the same way that a study motion is adopted, with so many meetings, that the committee report its findings to the House.

Now, when it said that we report the findings to the House, the draft report is always prepared by the analysts. It is always reviewed by members of the committee. They decide whether or not to adopt the report and whether or not to present the report to the House. That is a series of motions. It would sort of be the same process for this report. It's just a slightly shorter type of report.

That being said, if the committee decides that it prefers the language a different way, it would certainly accomplish the same goals.

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

Therefore, it's being consistent with other motions that have come forward in this regard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'll go to Mr. Kusmierczyk and then Mr. Johns.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just wanted to ask Mrs. Block if she could explain these two parts—“outlining the material facts regarding the status of the documents” and “the degree of redactions”. I'm just trying to make sure that the clerk has proper instructions.

What does that mean, “outlining the material facts regarding the status of the documents”?

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

I think it would be—

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

Excuse me: It's also “the degree of redactions”.

What are we asking the clerk to provide?