Government Operations Committee on March 27th, 2023

[June Winger]

I would expect that the way our members would be able to assist with the cultural shift work would be in being able to speak from their experiences of exactly what the challenges are from their perspective and the consequences to some of the actions that are considered as recommendations moving forward.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

I absolutely agree that you need all voices at the table. I've certainly lived that throughout my career. With your understanding of the complexity of the shifts and changes that need to happen in DND, who else do you see would need to be at that table to really get a robust understanding of the depth and the extent of the challenges and then the plan moving forward so that it truly becomes one that transforms the department?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Majid Jowhari]

Please make it a very quick response. Thank you.

[June Winger]

I think a whole host of partners need to be there. It's not just one single group, for certain.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Majid Jowhari]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to our next two-and-a-half-minute round.

Madam Vignola, the floor is yours for two and a half minutes.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Winger, the Department of Defence has reportedly awarded McKinsey numerous contracts to improve its technologies and enhance its readiness, among other things. McKinsey also reportedly provided advice to U.S. defence and information technology companies, raising questions about possible conflicts of interest. This advice was provided and information was gathered, not only in the United States, but elsewhere as well.

Are you concerned that McKinsey will use data collected in other countries to provide advice to Canada and that they will use Canada's data to advise other countries, including countries that may not be allies of Canada?

[June Winger]

Certainly I have concerns on bias.

Earlier they spoke about how these weren't state secrets that were being shared, but we know that state secrets don't need to be shared for opposition forces to create failures. Just look at something like the January 6 insurrection, right? No state secrets were probably shared at that time, but you can do enough to impact the government by managing how the government operates. I think this is part of the concern that we have.

I can think about the U.K. ammunition back in the nineties. They used to make their own ammunition. Then they decided as a cost saving that they would get rid of that and contract that out. They laid off all the employees. They sold all the equipment. They sold the land that the equipment was on. They ended up getting their ammunition from an international dealer. Then, when they were going into the Gulf War, they couldn't get their ammunition. The country that the company was from wouldn't allow the sale of it because they were trying to protect the Saudis.

There's a challenge that we see when companies end up having different affiliations and this impacts the end results.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Majid Jowhari]

Thank you. That was exactly two and a half minutes.

The next two and a half minutes go to MP Johns.

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

Ms. Winger, I want to give you the opportunity to speak a little bit about the history of the challenges you and your members are facing regarding staffing vacancies, cuts and outsourcing. Can you tell us a little bit about what these problems would look like under this government, and under the previous one as well?

[June Winger]

We have a great deal of challenges when it comes to vacancies.

Certainly National Defence is not unlike any other department. They have a salary wage envelope that they draw the monies from to pay for their public servants and they have an operations and management budget that they use to pay for all their contractors and so forth.

Since the 2012 reduction, our numbers of public servants and our salary wage envelope have been insufficient—definitely insufficient—to support the work that the military members so dearly need. When we do that, we end up not being able to staff the positions properly.

I'll give another firefighter example, but I want to be very clear that these aren't limited to just firefighters. I think everybody understands what a firefighter does and how they work, so I like to use them as an example.

The National Defence fire marshal's office does compliance reviews on all of their halls about every five years. For the last three reviews—so 15 years—National Defence has outlined that their fire hall in Dundurn, Saskatchewan, is under-manned, yet when we ask the department when they are going to staff it, we hear about the different budgetary concerns that they have.

These are basic jobs—firefighters. They're putting $4.6 billion into outsourcing, but they can't hire another five firefighters, who their own leadership tells them they need to hire. They're breaking their own rules. They do things like this.

At defence research, we do many trials, and we used to have machinists and welders and all sorts of tradesmen who were available to assist us in that, because we're doing new, innovative work. We need to use tools that have never been used before, have never been invented. That's part of our work. When we are in a trial and we want a certain widget, we can't just ask the machinist or the welder or whoever is at work to do it; we have to go to town and see if we can find somebody who's willing to drop everything and make it. In the meantime, the trial just sits there. All the people who have travelled from across the world are all sitting there twiddling their thumbs waiting for the widget to get built, when before we had it—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Majid Jowhari]

Thank you, Madam Winger.

I'm sorry. I keep interrupting you, but we are making lots of allowances to make sure that you finish your thoughts. Thank you for representing your employees and your members very well.

The next five minutes goes to Madam Block.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I join my colleagues in welcoming you here, Ms. Winger. I think it's important that we hear from you on this issue from the perspective of the union that you are representing.

I don't know if you outlined in your opening comments all of the different skill sets or professions that you represent. I just quickly went to the website and saw that UNDE is actually one of the largest components of PSAC. Your members cover a wide range of occupations, and I'm going to list them: labourers, firefighters, ship crews, various skilled trades, administrative services, cleaning services, food services, technologists, technicians, linguistics, computer programmers, logistics specialists, engineers, medical administrators, mathematicians, librarians, financial analysts, recreation sports specialists, retail clerks.... The list goes on. That's a huge number of services that you represent.

I want to ask you a question in regard to something that we heard from the president of the Treasury Board. We heard from her that the percentage of government expenditures for professional services has remained relatively consistent with the size of the public service. In other words, their contracting out for services remains the same with the size of the public service.

Do you agree with that statement? Do you believe that the proportion of outsourced labour is relatively the same as the public service, or is it outpacing the size of our public servants?

[June Winger]

I think it's much higher than it needs to be. We could have the work done by public servants who are just as well trained and who are even more experienced and even more aware of the needs of the department, and we could be managing it so much better than by just going to the contracting piece.

I think that we have a challenge in that most of our management are military members and, while they are excellent in their responsibilities to the CAF, I've never met a military member who enlisted because they wanted to manage public servants.

As a result of that, it's very easy to move towards a contracting-out position as opposed to trying to build up the workload and having to manage.

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

Thank you.

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, which represents IT workers at National Defence, did an analysis of 194 National Defence tenders between January 2018 and September 2020, and what was noted was that there were 151 grievances filed for outsourced work. The reasons for contracting out that were given were that there was no skill set in-house, that there were recruitment and retention issues and that the federal staffing process was lengthy and complex.

Maybe you've touched on some of that already, but I guess my question to you would be this: Has your union filed any grievances related to outsourcing?

[June Winger]

We have not filed any grievances because we weren't able to get the Treasury Board to agree to allow us to bring that language into our collective agreement, as it is with PIPSC's collective agreement.

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

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Majid Jowhari]

Thank you.

The last round goes to MP Bains. MP Bains, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Madame Winger, for joining us today, and thank you for your service.

The audit of the procurement ombudsman recommended that due diligence be strengthened, which the department agreed to. Do you believe that this will rectify future compliance issues in the administrative process?

[June Winger]

It will depend on how they do that, right? We have a large number of contracts at National Defence, but when we filed our access to information request to be able to review the reports on whether the work was completed correctly, or at all, we weren't able to find those. National Defence told us that we had to go to the public works department. We went to public works, and public works told us that the reports are held by the contractor, so the compliance reports aren't even something we can review. Unless they're going to make significant changes to allow for that, I can't see much changing. I can't see any motivation to change it.

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

Public access to government information is essential to our democracy, as you've mentioned. The DND audit indicated a need to ensure compliance with proactive disclosure and to provide access to information correctly and promptly.

Does the department's management action plan toward improving proactive disclosure of contracts indicate a step in the right direction at all?

[June Winger]

Again, I'll believe it when I see it. I see lots of reports being written on behalf of National Defence and by National Defence, and the problem isn't not having the right ideas or having the reports written; the problem is having them actioned and doing something with them.

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

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

[June Winger]

Can I ask you to repeat the question, please?

[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, and I think we've heard from you today as well about that. How could those make-or-buy policies be strengthened?

[June Winger]

Our previous deputy minister, Jody Thomas, had indicated that she was no longer going to allow a free rein among local management in determining what public service work would be contracted out. She said essentially, from my perspective, that she wanted a business case demonstrating the need for and the value in contracting out, and that otherwise the default would remain within the public service.

We had this written in minutes. We passed this along. We raised it at every local union-management meeting that we could, but still management was not inclined towards it. They may put forward new rules and they may put forward obligations, but until there's an actual negative consequence for not following those rules, not much is going to change at all. That can go for nearly everything within National Defence.

Sometimes if the carrot approach doesn't work, you need the stick, but I think that sometimes, although we find that they're willing to use the stick with our members, it's not being used so much with management with respect to their own rules.