Government Operations Committee on March 4th, 2022

[Simon Page]

Mr. Chair, I'm really sorry, but I had a breakage in audio. I wonder if I could get someone to repeat the question, please.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Yes.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Yes, definitely.

I won't go into the big preamble with my song and dance, but I'll just say that back in 2010 it was announced that the government of the day would be purchasing 65 F-35s, and the cost, plus ancillary costs, was going to be about $16 billion. I just want you to give us an update on how many you're looking at, potentially, and what the estimated costs are now, 10 or 12 years later.

[Simon Page]

The requirement we have from our client, in this case the Department of National Defence, is for 88 aircraft under this project. The current budget is up to $19 billion.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Is there a delivery date on those? I know you have to make a decision, but what would be the estimated delivery date?

[Simon Page]

We are tracking some delivery dates. They're only estimated delivery dates now, because the project is in definition, as mentioned before by my deputy. The project remains in a very active procurement process. This procurement process is progressing well. We are still working very hard to be in contract in 2022.

We have some delivery dates, initial delivery dates. Acknowledging that we don't have a signed contract and that the project is not in implementation, we are tracking some delivery dates of 2025 or 2026.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Okay.

Maybe this is also a question for you, maybe not. This is a question on the ground-based air defence procurement. Given what's happened in the last little while, is there an opportunity to move up those purchases? Where does that sit, given the current status in the world today?

[Simon Page]

The specific GBAD, ground-based air defence, project in DND remains in the later stage of option analysis, moving to definition. When it moves from option analysis to definition, we will be involved with the contract. At the moment, PSPC does not have a contract for the GBAD project or GBAD requirements.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thanks very much.

This question is for Mr. Perron. On ArriveCAN, is there a cost that you can report to taxpayers? How much has the ArriveCAN app cost, all in, for Canadian taxpayers?

[Sony Perron]

I doubt we would have this in our records. We had a role in creating the conditions to implement the application.

Sam, do we have this? No.

Unfortunately, no.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

What about a ballpark?

[Sony Perron]

No, because the project was led by CBSA, the border agency. We were there to support them to launch the application. Probably the project cost will be contained within CBSA expenditures.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Okay, fair enough.

On ITHR, obviously all over North America it's very difficult to recruit people in all the different IT careers. I'm guessing you guys are having the same problem. How many people are you short today? Are you short any people today? How do you compete against all the largest tech companies in the world?

[Sony Perron]

This is an excellent question. In fact, this is one of the challenges. Digital became the norm. Everything we do is digital, so now there is a premium in trying to find people who have the qualifications and expertise.

We have been lucky, with SSC being a large employer, that we can still attract. We are growing the workforce on the IT side, but it requires a lot of energy. We have to compete with the rest in the private sector. Even employers who were not hiring IT in the past are there now.

If you look at our numbers, we are growing the public service. We are still quite dependent on some consulting firms, some external resources, temporarily, because at the same time as we are growing the organization, more demand is coming to us from projects from the client departments.

Sam, how much is our revenue this year, in terms of revenues coming from the departments?

[Samantha Hazen]

Thank you for the question.

SSC is anticipating revenue just shy of $1 billion this fiscal year.

[Sony Perron]

This means that in terms of demand, we need to staff and equip ourselves to respond. Sometimes when projects come in, we have to rely on temporary services, but the objective when we have permanent demand is always to privilege increasing our staff. This is what we are doing right now.

In terms of IT positions, this will continue to be a challenge. We are training a lot of people internally. We are recruiting junior officers, doing the development internally and offering them a career path within SSC. If you're an IT person working at Shared Services Canada, it is exciting. This is probably one of the biggest IT shops in the country. These are the biggest data centres. We have an element to attract talent.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to our last questioner.

Mr. Jowhari, you have five minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll be staying on that topic, on attracting talent.

In his response to my question about the future of work, Mr. Thompson talked about moving to a hybrid model. One of the key topics that became quite apparent in the early part of the hybrid model was the security and especially the cybersecurity.

Mr. Perron, what role is SSC playing in that, especially given the current global climate around cybersecurity? How are we attracting the talent? How closely are we working with other departments? This is not going to be only a Shared Services issue.

I would appreciate your insight on this.

[Sony Perron]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This question is critical. Cybersecurity is a team sport and it's an ongoing effort. We are never done when it comes to cybersecurity.

In the Government of Canada, three entities work really closely to ensure the protection of the Government of Canada network and environment. Shared Services Canada operates and maintains the network infrastructure. The Communications Security Establishment does the vigilance out there with intelligence. They look at the threats and alert us when something needs to be taken care of. The chief information officer at the Treasury Board Secretariat owns the strategic policy direction and will also lead our response process when there is a successful attempt to attack the Government of Canada network. We work together.

At Shared Services Canada, our main focus is to keep the infrastructure current. We talk about patching and making sure that we are in sync with the industry providers for equipment, so we know what the latest threat is. We update. We take preventive measures.

When there is an incident and we are alerted by the Communications Security Establishment that we have to elevate our vigilance because there is a threat, we take measures there. When there is an incident, we need to be ready to respond. First, we isolate the threat, block it. Sometimes we disable some functions until we can re-enable them. Then we deal with the remediation, if there is a device or a portion of the network that has been infected.

We work really closely with the Communications Security Establishment and the Centre for Cyber Security. They will perform the intelligence analysis of all the artifacts we can provide them, and they tell us what the state of the situation is.

As I said, it's really a team sport, but it is really well organized and structured. So far, so good. We are working as a team.

You mentioned the situation right now. We have the highest vigilance because of all the threats. I think some of my colleagues may have appeared in front of this committee telling you that we have billions of attempts to poke the system at all doors all the time here. A lot of this is blocked automatically, but we have to keep the system current to make sure this continues to work.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

I have only about a minute left. I'd like to come back to you, Mr. Perron.

This is regarding IT equipment purchased for the whole of government. Have there been any changes over the last while in the direction and the source of those types of IT purchases?

[Sony Perron]

No. For Shared Services Canada to operate, of course, we procure for ourselves to be able to deliver the services. We also have the procurement function for IT procurement. Client departments will come to us and we do most of their IT procurement for them. The expenditure related to this procurement will appear in their books, though. We will do the procurement on their behalf, but they will receive the invoice. We are the gate for a lot of the IT procurement.

We work with PSPC because there are some situations where it's not only IT procurement. We have a good collaborative relationship. We often provide expertise on PSPC procurement to make sure we benefit from the right information before we undertake important procurement—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I apologize for interrupting. I have 30 seconds left.

Mr. Thompson, in our previous studies we talked about shifting to a lot of small businesses within Canada to be able to empower them when it comes to IT services. Have there been any changes, or do you have any update on that?

I will close on that one.

Thank you.

[Paul Thompson]

Getting more access for small and medium-sized companies is a big part of our procurement agenda. I mentioned the e-procurement solution, and that will be particularly important. You can imagine a company in the digital space that is small and wants to interact with government, so we're optimistic that our e-procurement solution will make it easier for small businesses in every area, including the IT space, to access procurement opportunities.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you very much, Mr. Jowhari.

With that, we have come to the end of our questions.

I would like to thank all the witnesses from PSPC and from Shared Services for being here today. It's so nice to see you here. This is our second meeting in a row where we have people here, and that's great to see. Hopefully soon we'll have everyone here, besides having this hybrid format.

On behalf of the committee, I'd like to express our hopes that the minister has a speedy recovery and that we are able to have her here sometime soon in the future.

Just so committee members are aware, we have now heard from the President of the Treasury Board, and we have not heard from the minister of PSPC, but the order of reference for the committee to study supplementary estimates (C), 2021-22 will expire on Monday, March 21. The committee can, if it wants, vote on the estimates now.

In all, there would be seven votes in the supplementary estimates (C), 2021-22. Unless anyone objects, I will seek the unanimous consent of the committee to group these votes together for a decision.

Is there unanimous consent to proceed in this way?