Government Operations Committee on May 29th, 2023

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

Maybe you could make sure that they're aware of what your plan is, because they're the most impacted. Many people are losing their homes still as a result of not being paid or now being overpaid and that money being called back.

As you know, one of the most significant procurements and proposed tax expenditures on PSPC's desk right now relates to new defence aircraft for the Royal Canadian Air Force. Many in Canadian aerospace and defence were alarmed to see that, in March, PSPC announced the government's intent to sole-source a new fleet of Canadian multi-mission aircraft from Boeing that are built in the United States. The aircraft procurement process your department is undertaking is concerning because the Canadian government should be a champion for the Canadian aerospace and defence industry, which is capable and ready to produce a next generation multi-mission aircraft built by Canadians in Canada.

Minister, why aren't you pushing for an open, transparent tender that gives Canadian companies the chance to compete?

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

I just want to be really clear that, at this point in time, we have not committed Canada to purchasing the P-8A Poseidon. The project remains in what's called “options analysis”. Having said that, the Department of Defence has told us that, at this point in time, the P-8A Poseidon is the only currently available aircraft that meets all of the Canadian multi-mission aircraft operational requirements. That's what they're telling us, but from the perspective of PSPC, we're still in what is called an options analysis.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid that's our time, Mr. Johns.

Mrs. Kusie.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here today.

What is the current status of the backlog? How many cases are there exactly, please, at this moment?

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

Do you mean Phoenix?

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

That's correct.

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

I have something here, and heaven knows if it's completely up to date.

Mr. Thompson, you probably have the numbers at your fingertips.

[Paul Thompson]

The overall queue has approximately 400,000 transactions ready to be processed, but there are different categories of workload within that. There are 177,000 cases that are beyond our normal workload that would have a financial impact, so it's a subset of that overall queue of work. As I indicated, there's significant new staffing that is coming on stream and we've seen our capacity to process pay transactions increase by about 14% in the last year.

The addition of staff is adding considerably to our ability to manage intake as well as deal with backlog reduction.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

My understanding is that you recently changed the service level agreement so that the acceptable backlog is currently different from what it was previously. Perhaps you could provide some insight on that for the committee, to explain to us the new service level agreement compared with the previous service level agreement and how that looks in terms of resolving the case backlog, please.

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

Again, I think that kind of detail is best handled by the deputy.

[Paul Thompson]

I would note that we're committed to continuing to track in a consistent fashion for clarity how old definitions work, where we do the work, and to look at new ways of examining the business in more detail. It's this idea of looking at workload beyond normal workload.

There's a monthly intake that goes up and down from time to time, but the amount of intake that we're not processing that is beyond a normal workload is where we're trying to shift the focus to. There will always be cases in the queue as part of our normal processing, so we're trying to add insights to the reporting, not diminish or change things that we've reported in the past.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Minister, have you personally met with any of the vendors? Have you met with Ceridian? Have you met with CGI or EY personally?

Okay, and why would that be the case? Why wouldn't you have met with them?

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

As far as I know, there has been no request for me to meet with them.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay, but wouldn't you want to have some interaction with them directly in terms of their ideas or concepts or visions for what the new pay system would look like, especially given the fiasco of the current system?

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

Perhaps President Perron can respond.

[Sony Perron]

The reason why there is not really a value in the minister meeting with the vendors is that the vendors are testing a solution with us that has already been designed and that they are selling to thousands of businesses across the country and also to government.

It's not about designing a tool. It's about testing the tool they have and seeing how the tool works, given the complexity of the Government of Canada. It's really an experiment, and meeting with the vendor at this point doesn't bring anything because we are not building something with them. We are testing their product.

When we have the conclusion of the tests, at that time, when it's time to move ahead and implement or not, maybe there will be value in having a minister of the Crown meet with the private sector on this, but at this time they have been selected through a competitive process. They are actually doing the work on time, on budget, with us, so there is no intervention that the minister can make on that file that will provide more information on the outcome of the testing phase.

I even told the vendor that I didn't see the value for them to meet with the minister until we have finished our work and we can report back on the results and the capacity of their tool to serve the Government of Canada well.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you. Certainly, were I the minister, I would want to have initial conversations with all the vendors to get an idea of their vision, but I can appreciate that, Mr. Perron. Thank you.

Minister, what correspondence or discussions have your officials received from union representatives about NextGen and how the project is going? Have you received any correspondence from any of the unions that you would like to share with the committee?

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

I personally have not received any, that I am aware of.

Perhaps Deputy Thompson...?

[Paul Thompson]

I'm not aware of correspondence in particular, but we have regular engagement sessions. Every four to six weeks we have a sit-down with labour leaders on the current state of pay administration. They're given updates on the NextGen project as well.

That's what I would note in terms of engagement.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

They're eager for an implementation plan.

Chair, thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Mr. Kusmierczyk, you have five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for joining us here today at OGGO. I believe this is the fifth or sixth meeting in really just the last year and change, I think. Thank you so much for coming to this committee once again and testifying.

I want to ask you a question about the Canada dental benefit. Obviously, our government is moving forward on this historic program. I know that it will have a huge impact on communities across Canada. It will have a huge impact in communities like ours in Windsor—Tecumseh. A lot of children, a lot of seniors and just a lot of residents in general simply do not have access to dental insurance. They do not have access to dental care in our community and across the country.

Can you please provide us with a bit of an update on the progress of the Canada dental benefit? I'm also curious about the role of PSPC in rolling that program out.

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

Thank you for that question.

Yes, to pick up on something you alluded to, we know that a third of Canadians do not have dental insurance, so this is an important program. As a physician, I can certainly say that oral health is a key component of overall health. I think we can all recognize that.

As PSPC, we're working very closely with Service Canada and obviously with Health Canada in terms of each of our roles in rolling out this program. Service Canada is going to be the first point of contact where people apply to potentially enrol. Health Canada is obviously putting together what needs to be covered by the third party provider. We will then be involved in actually working with the third party provider, awarding the contract and moving forward with a program that actually provides dental care for those uninsured Canadians within the financial bracket that they happen to be in.

At this point in time, initially we put out an invitation to qualify to third party providers. We had a number of people interested. We brought that down to three that actually had the ability and the proven capacity to roll out a program of this size. We are now working with the three suppliers to identify precisely what is required of them. We intend to, in fact, issue the RFP officially within the next week or so.

Our intention is to hopefully have people beginning to be able to enrol towards the end of the year, the beginning of 2024—in that kind of time frame. We're hoping we can award the contract in the fall. We've been working very closely with these three, which have passed the first invitation to qualify piece and are now in the running for the RFP.

We're getting closer. It's a big program. At the end of the day, it should reach one-third of the Canadian population. We're talking about 9.8 million individuals. It is very ambitious, but I know that the officials are working really hard to make sure it is done on time and appropriately.

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

I appreciate that update very much and that sense of urgency as well.

I was speaking with the local health unit just a couple of weeks ago, and it was saying that its wait times to provide dental care for seniors who are uninsured is literally eight months. There's a tremendous need in the community for that particular service.

I want to switch gears and go back to the tremendous announcement of the $2.5-billion Coast Guard investment.

In my region.... Obviously, Windsor-Essex is known for automotive manufacturing. We're also known for agriculture, but we happen to have a specialty shipbuilder named Hike Metal that has received $79 million on a search-and-rescue contract in 2015 and 2018, in addition to a lifeboat contract just a couple of years ago. The owner of the company, Steve Ingram, said that the NSS really revived and helped keep alive the shipbuilding industry in Canada, especially for the small shipyards and the small shipbuilders.

Can you speak about the economic impact that we're seeing on smaller communities and smaller builders? Is there a way to quantify the impact that it has had on job creation and on these small shipbuilders?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid that is our time. Perhaps you can get back to us in writing or in Mr. Bains' round.

Ms. Vignola, I'll pass the floor over to you for two and a half minutes, please.