Government Operations Committee on March 12th, 2026

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

Okay. Well, that's new information that was not given by either the minister or Canada Post when they were here. It's interesting that you would say that.

I want to move quickly to another topic. One of the towns in my riding received payment for the lease of Canada Post office space from a company in Utah. Apparently, the Government of Canada is outsourcing payment to a company called Conservice that is based in Utah. It is quite ironic that a company that can't make money, or that is losing money at such a rate, isn't even the preferred carrier for paying the bills for that company. They're shipping it through UPS.

I'm curious. Is it standard practice within Public Services and Procurement to use American companies to pay utility bills for a public entity?

[Arianne Reza]

I'll answer it in two stages. One, we will follow up with Canada Post, because we don't have any visibility. They're a stand-alone Crown on this. We will certainly look into this.

From a PSPC perspective, I would anticipate that all of our bills are paid through Canada Post.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks very much.

Mr. Osborne, go ahead, please.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions.

Some of the biggest pressures on Canada today are homes, defence and security. I will start with the public lands for homes plan and just ask for the progress we've seen there to date.

[Arianne Reza]

Unfortunately, I'm only going to be able to speak to the PSPC piece, because in terms of the work we're doing now, as you may be aware, the Build Canada Homes organization is under housing and infrastructure. They are taking the lead in terms of moving forward on that.

What I can tell you is that the role of PSPC has been, to date, on the federal land portion of it and on what federal lands we have available. Over the last year, we've been ramping up our efforts to identify those properties that have high value for housing across the country. We have all kinds of geospatial tools. We have that information available on the public-facing website. I encourage everybody to go and look, in your own municipalities and your own areas of interest, at what we've identified as being high-value for housing. We've taken into account transit. We've taken into account the flood plains, the highway systems and the various elements that would be interesting.

It's an interesting tool. I'm always looking for people to go and look at it. On it, we've also put in kind of an active offer of interest if people are interested in doing that. That work is now being knitted into the much more significant broad framework about buy Canada homes and what that looks like. It's moving very quickly. It's really about the execution of taking those lands and turning them into housing.

There's another area we're working on. PSPC is one of 26 custodians in the government. We are the largest. We have a lot of responsibilities for office buildings. Can some of those office buildings be converted, and if so, which ones and when? How do we actually expedite the process of disposal? Once a building or some land is identified as disposal-ready, we have to go through and identify other things: Is it contaminated? Is the province interested? Are the municipalities interested? Often, we have French-language or English-language communities that also have a right by law to be consulted on it. It's about seeing what the use for it is, or whether there's an indigenous aspect to it as well that we want to honour.

There are many different pieces of it. What we're trying to do is identify, in broad swatches, groups of housing-ready properties so that instead of doing them one-off, we can consolidate and work with Build Canada Homes to be able to bring, say, 10 or 15 to the forefront as quickly as possible to make the land commercially available.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Thank you.

Can you give us an update on the establishment of the joint transition office to support defence procurement reforms and how that will support defence procurement?

[Arianne Reza]

That money came through out of a commitment in a budget 2024 announcement. We've been using that money, which is roughly $2 million, to amend and update the Defence Production Act and to look at what we're doing with the new Defence Investment Agency, which I believe has come forward to OGGO. We're looking at the regulatory requirements that need to be adjusted to identify work with international best practices in the space of defence procurement.

It's really a kind of incubator money, I'm going to call it, to launch DIA on whatever path it's going to take to support the defence investment strategy.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Thank you.

I will throw a bouquet to Shared Services Canada, because while you've had a new ask, you've maintained your spending in line with last year.

On the new ask for the security information and event management solution, can you give us an update? What does that look like and what successes can we expect from that system?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm sorry, Mr. Jones. I'm afraid there are only 10 seconds for a response, so perhaps we can get it in writing from you to the committee, unless you want to answer in 10 seconds.

[Scott Jones]

Okay: contract signed, executing now, replacing legacy system, modern way of managing data and events.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We'll look for the half-page written report as well.

Madame Gaudreau.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Let's talk about that, actually. I'm not done yet.

I talked about foreign interference in the elections. I noticed we lack legislative tools to be adequately protected. Now, we're hearing about all sorts of reforms and increases. That's what we're talking about today.

Nowadays, we're talking about new AI and cybersecurity technologies. How will you ensure Quebeckers and Canadians are well protected?

[Scott Jones]

Thank you for the question.

We need to build layers of protection within the programs.

To start with, we're trying to create a sovereign, Canadian-controlled database to protect the data as best we can. There are many ways to do that. It can be done physically by hosting our own data centres to house servers, databases and information.

Then there's cybernetics, where you have multiple layers of defence. We work very closely with the Communications Security Establishment and the Treasury Board Secretariat to ensure the layers of defence are complementary.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I don't have much time left, and I'd like to ask you another question.

I talked this morning with representatives from the Notre‑Dame‑du‑Laus municipality and they voiced a number of concerns about Canada Post reforms and the $1 billion government loan. We don't even know when that loan will be paid off.

When will they know if their local post office will remain open? It's taking a long time.

[Lorenzo Ieraci]

Thank you for the question.

There will be no major changes to the Canada Post network over the next few years. We know one of the recommendations from the study was to allow Canada Post to close offices in communities previously considered rural, but where there are now too many branches for the level of service needed. That's what Canada Post will be looking at.

Unfortunately, I don't know the details regarding the municipality you're talking about, but I can tell you that Canada Post will use those parameters to make its decisions.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Mrs. Jansen, go ahead, and then we'll finish with Ms. Rochefort.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Just for quick context for anybody who's watching, today we're here with Public Services and Procurement Canada. They are basically the central purchasing agent for the Government of Canada. The reason they're here is that the government is coming back to Parliament asking for more money than was originally budgeted. That's what the supplementary estimates are about.

As I was going through the new numbers, one thing caught my eye, and that was the increase in government spending on advertising.

First, I just want to confirm with you, Ms. Reza, that in the estimates, your department is asking for $17 million in additional funding for government advertising programs. Is that correct?

[Arianne Reza]

That is correct.

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

Okay.

I want to go over, for a moment, one ad campaign that was launched last month. I think it popped into my Facebook feed or something like that. It's from the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. I thought it was really interesting. You're advertising a website for them that has a mortgage calculator and a household budget planner. It has a credit card repayment calculator. It compares bank accounts, planned savings and goals, and management of monthly expenses. I was really quite impressed with all the different apps, although I know that those apps are available for free elsewhere. They're all designed to help Canadians budget carefully and stay on track financially, especially when times are tight. The basic message of that ad campaign is that when money's tight, careful budgeting matters.

I know that, as members of Parliament, we also get a budget. We have this great tool. It's kind of like a dashboard that lets us know whether we're within the budget or whether we've overspent. The advertising is the one thing that I find the easiest to keep track of. If you're getting close to the end, you just stop with the advertising so that you don't go over your budget.

Does your department have something similar for you to make sure you don't go over budget?

[Arianne Reza]

Certainly. There's a lot in there to unpack.

On the $17 million, that's for unplanned needs that the government is thinking—

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

It's all discretional. Is that correct?

[Arianne Reza]

Well, it's unplanned needs that have come up. The campaign you indicated would have been something planned that would have been part of their individual budget.

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

Okay.