Government Operations Committee on March 12th, 2026

[Arianne Reza]

In terms of the budget controls we have, as you indicated, we're here on supplementary estimates (C). The main estimates are tabled for parliamentarians to vote on. Things come up during the year and adjustments need to be made. The supplementary estimates are a kind of traditional process in which we can present the wrap-up of what needs to be adjusted.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

What I find really interesting is that you wouldn't know ahead of time what your ad campaigns would be. You regularly come asking for additional spending beyond what was originally planned. I find it really tough for Canadians who are paying millions of dollars for advertising that teaches them how to stay on budget while the government continues to run deficits and increase spending. Maybe you can see that Canadians find it ironic that government is spending their tax dollars advertising the importance of budgeting.

[Arianne Reza]

Again, on advertising, it's run in a very structured way, as my colleague indicated earlier. For example, at PSPC we spent $210,000 all year on advertising. The $17 million, if needed, is what the government has access to for an unplanned advertising campaign. The money that doesn't get spent goes back to the fiscal framework.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I have a quick question. Do you have a right to refuse ad dollars when you're over budget, or is it more of a rubber-stamp in your office?

[Arianne Reza]

I would just like to say that there's no rubber-stamping in the office of the deputy. I have been to this committee many times. Rubber-stamping is dangerous. We have—

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

If you don't mind, I just want to finish up. The Liberal government is asking Parliament for another $17 million in advertising, including campaigns that promote tools like mortgage calculators and household budget planners to help Canadians manage their finances. Canadians are struggling with affordability today because of this government's reckless overspending. With higher taxes, rising debt and years of inflation that have driven up the cost of groceries, housing and everyday life, families are already budgeting. They do it every week at the grocery store and every month when the mortgage payment comes due. They're making difficult choices because life has become so unaffordable.

Now the same government that helped create the affordability crisis wants to spend millions of taxpayer dollars advertising lessons on budgeting to the very Canadians it has put under financial pressure. Canadians don't need advertising campaigns telling them how to survive hard times. They need a government that stops making life unaffordable in the first place.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

We will go to Ms. Rochefort, and then we will have a quick vote on the supplementary estimates (C).

Ms. Rochefort.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I was delighted to learn today about how you are reaching out to communities and to municipalities through the Canada Post modernization project. I find that to be a very positive step forward. We've heard from mayors in some of our meetings that this is going on. I find that very important.

I was also delighted by my colleague's line of questioning on red tape and to learn about the progress that's being made. It's a continuous process, but other countries are coming to us. They view us as a best practice when it comes to some of the reductions in red tape. I want to thank you for those comments.

I want to pursue a little bit more the comments from Shared Services. I found them very interesting. I'd like to understand more about the ongoing consolidation of some of the data centres throughout the country. Can you elaborate on what's occurring there?

[Scott Jones]

Absolutely. Thank you for the question.

One of the goals when Shared Services was created, in 2011, was to consolidate the government's IT footprint. Over time, the number went from about 500 data centres to about 700. We're now down to fewer than 200 legacy data centres remaining, with four modern enterprise data centres that have been built for government use.

In addition, we're working closely with the private sector to identify opportunities to build something that is not just for government. It can be for our level of government or for provincial and territorial or other governments as well to meet some of the security requirements. This is part of the necessary modernization. Ms. Reza referred in her opening remarks to the transfer of funds back. As we free up space, it returns to our colleagues at PSPC for repurposing for other uses in government, or for reducing electrical consumption.

The modern data centres we've deployed are eco-friendly. They run very clean. I think they are LEED silver, at minimum, in terms of environmental sustainability, but they are also a modern enterprise way of running IT distributed in a number of locations. This has helped us both modernize the Government of Canada's footprint and reduce our costs, because if you are maintaining up to 900 small ones across the country, you get efficiencies by consolidating and bringing things together.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Are the 200 distributed across the country?

[Scott Jones]

They are. They're small data centres, a big term for what could be a computer room in a closet, not really suitable for some of the technology that's running in there. As a department, you have to fit in a certain space; that's what was happening before. With the creation of this, we now have full enterprise grade where there's redundancy, power redundancy, infrastructure, generators and proper cooling space. It gives us an important piece of physical stability for running government operations.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

We have secure data centres across our country.

[Scott Jones]

We do. We have four enterprise-grade secure data centres.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

I'm interested in understanding more about the security information and event management solution. Can you describe that further?

[Scott Jones]

Absolutely. This is the tool that is used by cybersecurity analysts to analyze events wherever they happen across the vast Government of Canada network. We support over 5,000 locations where Government of Canada users work. That means a distributed connectivity network. All those events get consolidated here so that our analysts can look at it: Are we seeing events? Are we seeing things happening in our infrastructure? Are we seeing a little thing over here and also over there? In cyber, a lot of times you have to put together small things. This lets us bring those small things together, use data analytics and say there is something here we need to investigate. That's something we do with the Communications Security Establishment. It is a very complex environment.

In addition, it also now lets us manage that information and look back in time: Did something happen? When did it happen? What was the impact on the Government of Canada? Cyber is an environment that is evolving incredibly fast, in terms of the use of AI against us in cyber technology. A lot of actors out there are interested in what the Government of Canada does. This is part of making sure we're able to continuously upgrade those defences, along with our partners at CSE.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

How would you describe Canada's expertise in this domain compared with other countries?

[Scott Jones]

I was head of the Canadian centre for cybersecurity in my former job, so I'm going to say that our expertise is right up there. Honestly, I'm incredibly proud of what we've built in terms of the defence of the Government of Canada. The creation of Shared Services Canada let us consolidate and bring great network defences in place. The Communications Security Establishment, with its innovation, layers on top of what we do commercially. It lets us protect government information and citizens' information that we're entrusted with by running that through the different layers.

You can never be complacent in cyber. Unfortunately, it's one of those domains where our adversaries get a vote. Our adversaries are making a significant amount of investment, so we need to continually adapt and change how we do cyber.

[Pauline Rochefort, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you. That's it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much, everyone.

PSPC, it's wonderful to have you back.

To Shared Services, Scott and Scott's team, thank you very much.

Before you go, very quickly, Mr. Jones, you mentioned in your opening statement the number of cyber-attacks we're experiencing. How many are there per day?

[Scott Jones]

I will make sure I get the exact number and—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Perhaps you can get back to us. I'm interested to know whether you're tracking where those are coming from.

[Scott Jones]

We typically don't track where they come from. Wherever they come from, we have to defend against them, so our goal is defence—stopping them.

We do make sure this information is available to the security intelligence community in order to inform them, as part of the government's attribution framework.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

They are mostly state-sponsored, I assume.

[Scott Jones]

It depends. There's a lot of criminal interest in the Government of Canada. Sometimes hactivists are just interested in seeing what they can do. It is a full range. It is everything from states to hactivists and individuals who want to see what they can do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you again for your time. We appreciate it.

Colleagues, we are running out of time in supply days, so we're going to get to the votes on the supplementary estimates (C).

CANADA POST CORPORATION

Vote 5c—Payments to the Corporation for the purposes referred to in section 31 of the Canada Post Corporation Act..........$1,008,000,000

(Vote 5c agreed to on division)

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

Vote 1c—Operating expenditures..........$39,634,699

(Vote 1c agreed to on division)

NATIONAL CAPITAL COMMISSION

Vote 1c—Payments to the Commission for operating expenditures..........$2,465,000

Vote 5c—Payments to the Commission for capital expenditures..........$16,450,000

(Votes 1c and 5c agreed to on division)

PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE

Vote 1c—Program expenditures..........$4,500,000

(Vote 1c agreed to on division)

SHARED SERVICES CANADA

Vote 1c—Operating expenditures..........$13,255,834

(Vote 1c agreed to on division)

TREASURY BOARD SECRETARIAT

Vote 15c—Compensation Adjustments..........$31,195,709

Vote 30c—Paylist Requirements..........$140,000,000

Vote 50c—Defence and Security Initiatives..........$1,000,000,000

(Votes 15c, 30c and 50c agreed to on division)

Shall I report supplementary estimates (C) 2025-26 to the House?