Government Operations Committee on Nov. 27th, 2023

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

Yes. Obviously, we're hearing from people who haven't been paid for work they've done. Then, we hear about people who were overpaid. The government is going after them.

When are you going to prioritize paying the people who actually worked? Then you can go after the people who have been overpaid. That seems to be the ethical, right thing to do.

[Arianne Reza]

I'll add that most of the FTEs are working on making sure payroll is met and that people are getting paid accurately and on time.

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

When is this going to be fixed, and what resources will be needed to make sure everybody gets paid and this gets fixed? How much is it going to cost us? We're at $3.5 billion.

[Arianne Reza]

I'm going to answer your last question after the previous question about the ratio of staff working on hardship cases in the backlog versus overpayment.

More than double are working for folks who need hardship pay, and for the backlog. We have now tried to deprioritize the overpayment piece and put our focus on the individual employees who are in that backlog and hardship....

In terms of overall cost, I think the estimates are still under way. You've seen the numbers we've spent. We're looking at.... I don't know.

Scott, do you have anything you want to add from a NextGen perspective, as it cuts away from Phoenix?

[Scott Jones, President, Shared Services Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Shared Services Canada was responsible for examining NextGen human resources. That was our examination of commercially available solutions to eventually, possibly, replace.... The project has concluded. The information has been shared with the associate deputy minister responsible for the next steps.

The report concluded three things. Number one, a commercial solution is viable. Number two, it would require the Government of Canada to change some of its processes around pay. Number three, the commercial solution would need certain customization to accommodate Government of Canada pay, but it is a viable solution.

Thank you.

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

PSPC is asking for $7.3 million “to provide supplies for the health system”.

The government asked Canadian SMEs to invest millions into retooling and starting to manufacture PPE. The government still hasn't procured any PPE from Canadian small businesses. Now, our understanding is that the government is still relying entirely on foreign PPE.

How much of the $7.3 million is for personal protective equipment? How much of it will be put into the domestic industry, or will this promise remain broken?

[Arianne Reza]

The $7.3 million is for the highly specialized storage cost of the mobile health units we purchased during the pandemic. We give them out to provinces, territories and municipalities if they have use for them. Because they're such highly technical mobile units, they require a fee to be looked after.

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

Where is the commitment on the domestic side?

[Arianne Reza]

Thank you.

I think that question is better for ISED officials, who are looking at domestic preparedness.

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

Is it not Public Services and Procurement? Are you not supporting them?

[Arianne Reza]

We would be doing any of the contracting as required, but they're the client. They set the funding, direction and requirements.

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

Is there no one here who can answer that question?

[Michael Mills]

Mr. Chair, during the pandemic—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid that is our time, Mr. Mills.

We're now into our final round. We're going to Mr. Genuis.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Reza, the minister was very keen to pass the floor to you when I was trying to ask him questions. I'd like to hear your take on the answer he was not giving. Can you at least shed some light on the question I was trying to get to?

Let me frame it a bit: I'm trying to understand what your department does. You're the department responsible for procurement. In this highly publicized, contentious case—the procurement of the ArriveCAN app—we heard from other officials that your department was.... CBSA brought them a solution and they signed off on it.

My expectation is that your department has some role, in terms of understanding the decision-making process, looking at value for money and trying to understand what is and is not an appropriate procurement. However, in the very troubling case of the ArriveCAN procurement, the response we're getting from your officials and minister is that it's somebody else's problem.

Is it somebody else's problem, or should your department have had something to say about, or do with, that decision?

[Arianne Reza]

Thank you very much for your question. I genuinely appreciate being able to circle back to it.

I want to be clear that I'm speaking to you as the deputy, but I was the assistant deputy minister at the time these contracts were being let.

It's really important to understand that during the first few years of the pandemic, PSPC awarded 20 new contracts to CBSA for pandemic response. There were 20 contracts. Those contracts were not ArriveCAN-specific: they were IT consulting-specific and software licensing.

As for who authorized those contracts, they were authorized at various levels depending on the dollar value. None needed the authority of the minister or the deputy minister, and two needed my authority as the ADM. I think these are the two that are of interest to the committee.

More specifically on those 20 contracts that we awarded on behalf of CBSA, I authorized two of them as the ADM of procurement, the two that went to GC Strategies based on a recommendation of the procurement team, the officers who you saw who testified a couple of weeks ago. The two I authorized—this is important for the committee, and there are forms on this—were for IT assistance to help the Public Health Agency, Health Canada and CBSA integrate multiple data sources on a real-time basis.

The second contract was for professional services to provide digital support to CBSA across a variety of low-touch, no-touch initiatives that they needed for their operations.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm sorry, ma'am, I will come back to you, but I want to direct your response a little bit.

In the process of authorizing these two contracts, what is your role and the role of your department? Are you looking at it and saying, “This is value for money or not”? Are you asking why we are hiring these two guys who work out of a basement instead of a larger firm or going directly...? Are you asking those questions?

The way this has been framed for us by some people on your side is, “It was brought to us by CBSA, so we agreed”.

What role are you playing in analyzing the content of the decision?

[Arianne Reza]

I'm scared I'm going to run out of time, so I'm going to go relatively quickly.

In normal circumstances, there are two parties to procurement in the Government of Canada. There's a contracting authority that looks at the procurement strategy, plays a challenge function and takes over various elements of it. Fundamentally, at PSPC, that's competition. We let the market set it. We look at competition, values and ethics. We look at various elements.

On the client side, in this case CBSA, their requirement is to show up with a funded requisition with the sign-off to say, “We have a need for this work, and we have a source of funds to cover it. It is within our legislation. It is within our regulatory requirement, and it is within our mandatory mandate.”

From there, in normal times, when we're not in a pandemic, we'll look at the competitive tool. In this particular instance, they came with GC Strategies for IT staff augmentation. ArriveCAN didn't exist. They said, “We need help keeping our borders open, keeping cargo moving and keeping people safe.” We looked at the fact that GC Strategies was a pre-qualified firm, that there were no sanctions against them, that they had the security clearance, that they had no vendor—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm sorry; I have 10 seconds left. Maybe the chair will let you respond to this last bit.

You said you have a role in providing, in normal times at least, a challenge function. Given everything that clearly is problematic, given how obviously dishonest Kristian Firth is and was in his testimony before this committee, are you looking back and saying, “We didn't really do our job sufficiently here”, or are you looking back and saying,“It was fine; there were no problems”.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'll need it in writing, and I'm going to remind everyone now that this committee has passed a motion that anything that we have asked for in writing like this has to be provided within three weeks, which is why I bring up the other reports.

Please make sure that everything's back within three weeks to avoid being called back, thanks.

We're now with Mr. Bains for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to be giving my time to Mr. Sousa.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, guys for coming out. I appreciate it.

Deputy, further to the discussion, we're trying to grapple with the decision as to how we outsource.

There have already been some recommendations made by the opposition and others around the table about why we have a middleman. Why is it necessary for the Government of Canada to go out and source contracts to provide work? Why don't we just hire, and why don't we just do the work? Why isn't PSPC the middleman? Why are we not going out and looking for the subcontractors as opposed to a contractor?

Can you provide some clarity to our committee on this issue?

[Arianne Reza]

Thank you very much.

PSPC manages about $25 billion of procurement a year on behalf of the Government of Canada. With some of the commodities, like the one we are talking about here—which is IT—staff augmentation or outsourcing, the government needs technical skill sets, so we look at them from two different angles.

In the government, the various departments that have a need for them will look to say, “Do they have the IT bench strength? Can they attract the people in?” That's the first part of the triage. When they don't have access to that and when there is an immediate pressing need, like there was during the pandemic...or any of our IT systems.... I'm sure the committee is well aware that our IT systems are over 50 years of age, so the need gets more and more pressing.

We go through what we would consider a broker in this case. It's almost akin to when you have a general contractor at home when you do your renovations. That general contractor or broker brings you a certain skill set. They bring you the licensed plumber and the licensed electrician. They bring them together at the same time and they carry the liability.

When I hire a general contractor, just like when Canada does, they take on the insurance liability and the payroll, and they bring together the skill sets that we need in a timely fashion.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Can you share with the committee the inputs that became ArriveCAN? Can you assemble for this committee what ArriveCAN became and how it developed?

[Arianne Reza]

Those questions are best placed with the CBSA. I'll give you the procurement lens as I understand it.

As I noted before, during the first two years of the pandemic, PSPC awarded 20 contracts. Those contracts are for professional services and software licensing. They don't speak to ArriveCAN for the most part. They really look at biometrics, so we provided bench strength support to the CBSA when it needed to have technical skills that could do real-time data analysis and provide application services.

What we did was use our expertise where we had pre-qualified methods of supply to be able to go and find suppliers that had the pre-qualifications, had no vendor performance checks against them and had capacity to find the IT services that were required, needed and used to develop measures for border operations.

I'll just pause here.

Is there something you could add?