Government Operations Committee on May 7th, 2026

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Madame Gaudreau.

Mr. Williamson, welcome to OGGO. It is an honour to have the chair of the almost-mighty public accounts with us today.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[John Williamson, Conservative, Saint John—St. Croix, NB]

Well, you are a lucky chairman. You see the front end of the animal. We see the back end over in public accounts. I hope we'll get some answers that are clear and a little less messy.

My first few questions are going to Public Works.

On Tuesday, Minister Lightbound said that if a police officer has a suspicion about small mail containing something illegal, the officer must go to the home of the person rather than get a warrant to search the mail while it's in transit. I think I have it right.

Why is the government moving to allow the search and seizure of mail without requiring a warrant? What's the rationale for that?

[Lorenzo Ieraci, Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy, Planning and Communications, Department of Public Works and Government Services]

Thank you for the question.

Section 40.1 of the Canada Post Corporation Act indicates that when a letter is in the postal system, it cannot be opened by anybody other than the person to whom the letter is addressed. Because of that, a potential gap has been identified. There is a possibility for people to use letter mail to ship small quantities of potentially nefarious products. Even with a warrant, a law enforcement official would not get access to that letter. The proposed adjustments, if they go forward, would enable letters to be seized when necessary, as long as this is undertaken in compliance with another act, such as the Criminal Code or the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

It's to try to address what is seen as a potential issue, because even an inspector within Canada Post cannot open a letter while it's in the system of Canada Post.

[John Williamson, Conservative, Saint John—St. Croix, NB]

What's an example of a small product that might be targeted?

[Lorenzo Ieraci]

The example cited most often is fentanyl potentially being shipped through letter mail. Fentanyl is something that, even in small quantities, can be very dangerous. While it is not necessarily efficient to transmit drugs through letters, it is possible. I think the view is to see whether there's a possibility of addressing this potential gap.

[John Williamson, Conservative, Saint John—St. Croix, NB]

Does the government believe it's safer to deal with that at the person's residence rather than in a post office or postal truck? We've all seen these stories of mail being opened. That's when the white powder blows out of it.

If there's a concern, isn't this an additional danger? In addition to not having a warrant, there's a public safety risk as well.

[Lorenzo Ieraci]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question.

There are two things to that.

The first is that any letter seizure would have to be done in compliance with another act. The second is that any opening of a letter would need to be done in a way that is safe.

We have heard from law enforcement officials that, right now, if they have a suspicion that there's something in a letter, they have to wait for that letter to be delivered—which means it's out of the postal service—before they can go and collect it. This may increase the risk of someone's detecting the fact that there's an investigation going on. This is the reason there's a proposal.

[John Williamson, Conservative, Saint John—St. Croix, NB]

Thank you. I'm going to move on to “buy Canadian”, but I appreciate those answers.

In a previous meeting, it was said that buy Canadian will apply only to projects above $5 million.

What happens when a project initially costs under $5 million, but expenses grow and grow, going far beyond what was ever envisioned? This happened with ArriveCAN, which seized our committee for weeks and months on end. Going forward, would that project be reassessed to see whether it is compliant with the policy, or would it continue to be given a pass?

[Dominic Laporte, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Procurement Branch, Department of Public Works and Government Services]

The threshold right now for the buy Canadian policy prioritizing Canadian content is $25 million. This threshold will be lowered to $5 million.

If I understand the question, you're asking this: If we put in place, for example, a contract for $3 million, and that contract increases in value, would this be captured by the policy? There is always the discretion to apply the policy to any procurement that is not captured by the threshold. This is something that is a possibility. If we were to see a huge increase for a contract that was initially under $5 million, we would have the discretion to say, “We're going to apply the buy Canadian policy because that's going to be driving huge Canadian content.”

[John Williamson, Conservative, Saint John—St. Croix, NB]

Thank you. I might come back to that. I have a lot of follow-up questions.

This is for Shared Services Canada.

In a written response to a question on how much your department spends on American digital providers, your department said that 11.9% of vendors are neither Canadian nor American. Could you provide the committee with a list of those vendors, the services they provide, their nationalities and how much they have been paid? Could the committee get that at a later date, please? Is that possible?

[Scott Davis]

Yes, sir.

[John Williamson, Conservative, Saint John—St. Croix, NB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, Mr. Williamson.

Go ahead, Mr. Danko.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Some of the things that I'm most excited about here in Ottawa are the restoration, renovation and structural upgrades that are ongoing for Centre Block. Canada's Parliament Buildings have been described as a cathedral to democracy. They're an icon for residents across Canada and around the world.

On the significant amount of work that's going on there, there's the historical restoration of the buildings, but as a structural engineer myself, one of the things that I'm the most interested in is the isolation of the historic masonry building from the bedrock to make it earthquake-safe, which is an amazing technological undertaking.

Could the department give us an update on the Centre Block renovation project? Where are we? How are the timelines and budget? How is the project proceeding?

[Michael Hammond]

Thank you for the question.

It's a very important project that PSPC is undertaking on behalf of the government.

That project is in flight, as you all know. It's under major construction. I don't have the specific details in terms of the status of that project, but I certainly would be happy to provide some details in writing.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you.

We'll switch to consulting.

In your opening statement, you talked about the reduction of management consultants as a strategy to save public funds. I worked in consulting for 20 years as a consulting engineer, mainly in large, heavy, civil public infrastructure projects. One thing that was always interesting was saying when to bring in an external consultant—when you needed external expertise versus when a project could be delivered in-house.

When I was at the City of Hamilton, I was always really interested in building in-house capacity, building up the civil service so that they could do as much work in-house as possible. However, I also understood that there are times when you need to go to an external consultant.

Through you, Mr. Chair, I'll ask the question. When we are going outside to external experts, to consultants, how much of that is management or advertising versus architectural or structural engineering and that kind of thing? Also, how do we make the decision of when to keep that work in-house versus going to an external expert?

[Michael Hammond]

Thank you very much for the question. I can certainly answer it on behalf of PSPC. Other colleagues, such as Scott, may want to talk a bit from the Shared Services perspective.

You rightly point out that there is a balance between the use of external consulting versus building in-house capacity. We are looking at that on an ongoing basis to determine when it's appropriate to invest in building the capacity internally to address our requirements versus those areas that may continually be outsourced because of their high area of expertise.

In terms of the dollar spend for 2024-25, the latest publicly available figures, PSPC spent approximately $3 billion on professional services externally. Of that, a large portion is related to construction and architectural engineering, at approximately $1 billion in total.

On management consulting, which is the area in which there is a bit more discretion, our spend was approximately $130 million in 2024-25. It represents a very small portion of our total professional services spend.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Davis, do you want to add to that?

[Scott Davis]

There are a couple of things of note. During the pandemic, for speed capacity, we brought on a series of professional services, and our numbers went up significantly. During the last two reviews that we did, we focused on government spending and the CER reductions we've done. If I go back, we're in the same predicament. We're currently closing the current fiscal year, so I'll be reflective of prior commitments.

In 2023-24, we reduced our professional services by $86 million, and we've made a commitment of an additional $68 million going into this following year, getting us back to pre-pandemic levels in professional services. We use a multitude of various contracts. As you unpack it, you'll see that, in the case of PSPC, they use engineers and various other things, and we use a series of IT professionals and various other capabilities.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you.

For my last question—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

You have about 10 seconds.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

I was so close. Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We'll go to Madame Gaudreau, please.

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

I would like to go back to Canadian sovereignty and all that entails.

I just want to make a distinction between one company with its senior people in Canada and another whose parent company is the White House.

What happens to our sovereignty if those companies decide to withdraw?

Look, we can have CANChat, we can have whatever we need. We have companies here, in Quebec and in Canada.

Can you explain why you keep those links?