National Defence Committee on Nov. 30th, 2023

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you for that.

I think it's safe to assume that we all understand the cost of relocation can be very expensive. If a member is transferred to another location, it's like the rent reset. They might have to move into a different rent reality. I think we also understand that housing costs associated with putting up a whole family and relocating them are high.

I want to ask you to explore for us the remittance of expenses. That wasn't exactly what you said, but could you unpack that a bit?

Then, if there's time, can you talk to us about whether the costs of relocation and family residences are starting to have the armed forces think about changing its relocation policy—the idea that members are expected to move among postings regularly?

[BGen Virginia Tattersall]

Mr. Chair, thank you. Those are three very good questions, and I will endeavour to answer them in order.

First and foremost is what I spoke to regarding the rations and quarters remittance when you join the Canadian Armed Forces and go through your preliminary training. For basic training in Saint-Jean, followed by whatever occupation or trade training you need to undertake, during that entire time frame, if you are in our quarters, and you are eating in our mess halls, you are neither paying for your room nor paying any costs for the food you are provided. That is significant. As you can imagine, that's probably putting back into those individual's pockets, over the span of a year, approximately $10,000 in terms of costs they wouldn't otherwise have. Those are members who are making the lowest amounts. One of the positive changes to addressing the challenges, particularly in attracting individuals, is in offering that to them.

The second, if I understand the question, is regarding the cost of relocation. Just to perhaps explain this to the committee, when Canadian Armed Forces members relocate, we actually have a very robust suite of benefits we provide to members. All the costs for relocating your households goods and effects, for packing those up in a van and moving them wherever are paid for by the Crown.

The Crown also pays for your real estate fees, your legal fees and your land transfer tax. We reimburse you for the costs of your lodging and your travel expenses, as well as provide meals for you throughout that time period. Once your house is packed up, and while you're waiting for your household goods and effects to be delivered, we pay for that.

We also pay for your house-hunting trip. We pay for those costs so that you are able to go to the location and spend a week or more, if you want to extend that. Those are in addition to benefits, as I mentioned, such as the temporary dual residence, the home equity assistance or the real estate incentive. For most members, the actual costs of physical relocations are covered. In addition, we also provide a posting allowance to members, which, depending on your marital status, will be either a full month's pay or a half a month's pay.

The second piece around looking at relocation is not so much about our relocation benefits, but about looking at how we have traditionally managed our personnel in meeting the Canadian Armed Forces requirements. At the end of the day, there are certain service imperatives where, if we need someone to go overseas because we have a commitment to fulfill for NATO, that billet has to be filled. If there is a unit that needs a commanding officer or a chief warrant officer as the regimental sergeant major, then that will cause relocation.

We are certainly looking at how frequently we have to relocate members. I would say that, largely, if you are in the navy, you would tend to stay located on whichever coast is your home port for a longer period of time than, perhaps, individuals who happen to be in support trades would stay where that need is greatest. We are looking, overall, at how we can minimize some of that churn, but we understand, as part of our proposition, that we need to incentivize members to be mobile so that they can get the experience and attain the training required so that there can be general officers or senior NCOs to lead the Canadian Armed Forces.

I hope that answers all your questions in the order that you asked.

Thank you.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you very much, Brigadier-General.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Fillmore.

Ms. Normandin, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for joining us. I'm very grateful to them.

Their testimony and their comments will enable us to delve deeper into certain issues. I will have a specific problem to put to them during the second round.

I'd like to start with some questions about Brookfield Global Relocation Services, or BGRS.

Unfortunately, military members tell us that the BGRS system is often a source of frustration. I submitted a question on the Order Paper to find out, for example, how many retroactive reimbursement requests have been made to military personnel since the last contract with BGRS was signed in 2016. Just to put this in perspective, the BGRS system processed 73,000 file requests. Of that number, there were 3,285 retroactive reimbursement requests made to military members. I find that figure, in proportion to the number of files processed, quite impressive. When that happens, a lot of pressure is put on the military member. For example, it could be a brokering service that is refused or moving expenses.

Are you concerned about the high number of retroactive reimbursement requests made to members of the military after the claims have already been approved?

[BGen Virginia Tattersall]

Thank you for the question.

If it's okay with you, I will answer in English.

I believe where that question originated is that since we brought in the new contract in 2018, last year we went through a period of a significant recovery of funds from members. That had not occurred since we had brought the contract in, for a number of reasons. The most significant reason was of course COVID, when we were limited in what we could do.

Let me explain that this recovery comes about as a result of two reasons.

The first reason is that, when people move, they have the right to apply for an advance payment.

They have the right to ask because they think they will incur a certain expense. They would like an advance. There is a way we calculate it, but that advance could range in the neighbourhood of $30,000. We will give them that advance.

That advance, however, is exactly that, which means that eventually it has to be either repaid or settled because the reason they took the advance has been adjusted. They've provided the invoices to explain the expenses, so effectively we reduce that advance down to zero.

For a large majority of those recoveries, that was the case. It was that individuals took advances.

They did not take the necessary steps to submit a claim in order to reduce the advance.

That was the first piece. We were catching up with that. As a part of our financial due diligence, we can't just let the money continue to sit out there.

The second reason is that sometimes people have not provided receipts for the expenses they submitted.

It will happen that an individual will submit a claim for an expense that is not covered by the policy or they have not sought that adjudication to give them.... There are situations where, upfront, they may have presented a case that they were going to move two cars,. When they go to settle their claim, they're now charging to move three cars, so we will have to adjust that.

In all cases, we certainly endeavour to make sure that when we recover funds, a thorough review of the file has been done and we're not recovering from individuals monies that they legitimately should have.

I apologize if my answer is a little long, but I want to add that we always give people a certain amount of time to repay the amount.

We always give them the ability to repay it over a period of time. We're not going to put someone in a situation where they have to repay $30,000 in a month when, obviously, they don't have $30,000 to pay back.

I hope that answers your question.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

Concerning BGRS, I asked a question that was on the Order Paper. I asked for the number of complaints that had been filed by military members with regard to how BGRS operates—in other words, with regard to its internal management. It's not possible to get that number. I was told that it was impossible to obtain the number of complaints made with respect to Canadian Forces compensation files. As a result, in terms of the processing process or the management of files by BGRS, National Defence has no idea how many complaints have been received. You would have to go through the files manually and pull them out one at a time.

Do you see that as a shortcoming, the fact that the Department of National Defence is unable to have a real idea of military members' satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the services of BGRS? On the ground, military members generally say that they are really dissatisfied.

[BGen Virginia Tattersall]

Thank you for the question.

It is true that we do not have the capabilities I would like to have to compile the data that would enable us to say whether the military members are satisfied or not.

It is a piece that we are certainly working on. We're in the process of retendering that particular contract. We are working into the contracts the performance management and having a better ability to determine the level of service and satisfaction, so that we will have that information.

I would also just qualify that. We do surveys of individuals to understand if they are happy with the service or not. It's difficult because people don't like to respond to surveys. They tend to get too many of them. They get survey fatigue. They can sometimes feel like it's not going to change anything for them.

We are looking at ways for how we can better get that pulse in terms of whether individuals are happy with the service or not.

I can certainly tell you that I am made aware when there are challenges with the service. I certainly endeavour to try to resolve the issues.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Madame Normandin.

Ms. Mathyssen, you have six minutes, please.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you to the witnesses today.

Mr. Chambers, I'd like to ask you some questions.

Back in September, I asked Deputy Minister Bill Matthews about an audit of the facilities maintenance services. It found that your team didn't have the ability to complete a value-for-money analysis on outsourcing and on different private for-profit contractors. I think this is one of the base issues that we're trying to get into in this study today.

We've seen the stock of military housing decrease in recent years and the backlog for maintenance requests balloon. Buildings are being left under-repaired until they are falling apart and then they need to be demolished. For-profit contractors are doing rush jobs without robust oversight, instead of using the public servants they used to use to serve Canadians in the armed forces.

I've heard a lot from Canadian Forces members about the systemic challenges within your department's service delivery, the tracking of contracts, the contracting authorities involved, and feedback from service members on whether repairs are at the standards that they need to be.

Since that 2018 audit of contracting for facilities maintenance services, I'd like to know what is being done to fix that to modernize your department.

[Rob Chambers]

Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Chair.

I could offer some general remarks in that regard, but if I could, I would like to pass this to Serge. He could speak specifically to the housing situation and the quality control that's in place around the work that contractors would be doing in the houses specifically—if that's of interest, Mr. Chair

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

By all means, go ahead.

[Rob Chambers]

In general terms, this is obviously an issue that we spend a fair bit of time talking about with our union colleagues. Of course, we're all interested in the same outcome, which is to make sure that we have the infrastructure in place to support members of the Canadian Armed Forces in all of the work that we ask them to do.

Because we share that objective, we were able to come up with some arrangements and understanding about how to talk about the assessment of facility maintenance contracts, for example. Again, Serge will be able to speak to this in more detail on the housing front.

If we have a new facility, a very large facility, coming online, for example, we always take the time to do a business case analysis of how we want to maintain that building going forward: Would in-house make more sense, civil servants doing the work, as I think you're describing, or is it through private contractors or some combination of both?

Currently, I would describe the organization overall as being that sort of hybrid approach—that last approach—where some of the work is done in-house and some of the work is contracted out. There are all sorts of reasons for why we might partner with a private sector contractor. I'm happy to go into that in more detail, but I'll stop there for now.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Specifically, it was found that the problems and the reason why.... I mean, yes, you deal with a lot of older buildings, but part of the reason that they were falling into further disrepair was the lack of quality by those for-profit contractors who were used, as opposed to public servants.

That was one of the big points coming out of a lot of the criticisms. Ultimately, it was that those for-profit contractors were potentially cutting costs, or what have you, to meet contracts, as opposed to having public servants consistently maintaining better quality buildings. I wanted to know, since that audit showed that, what have you done to better that situation?

[Rob Chambers]

Mr. Chair, we have certainly stepped back and taken a look at how we manage performance around contracts: Do we have the right contract inspectors in place, for example? Do we have people who are following up and making sure that the contractors have what they need to do the work we're asking them to do? Where there are performance issues, it's that we're following through with them and holding them accountable, as we should.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

It's my understanding that the department hired Deloitte—the largest benefactor of outsourcing by the federal government—to restructure how the department decides on that outsourcing and contracting. I think there's an inherent conflict of interest when you hire a contractor to decide on contracts, but there you go.

Because the government hired Deloitte, can you table with this committee how much your department has paid out to Deloitte for this contract, what recommendations they gave your department, and what new contracts have been signed with Deloitte to follow up on those recommendations that they provided?

[Rob Chambers]

Mr. Chair, we're of course happy to provide that information. I apologize, but I don't have it with me today. It's readily available, so we can make those arrangements.

On the point about the work that Deloitte did with the organization—because it was done with the organization—they consulted staff, and there were surveys and working groups. We've now taken those recommendations and we're actually using an in-house team of employees to help generate the next steps on that.

We're going to take these recommendations, and then we have to translate those into measures that are meaningful to us and the staff. That's going to be a grassroots-driven process. In fact, we had a meeting with union colleagues just a couple of weeks ago. We were discussing the process around that. While I wouldn't pretend to speak on their behalf, we've made a point of being very transparent with them throughout this process. We recognize there are some sensitivities here for some of the reasons you mentioned.

We're very committed to making sure that whatever comes of this, employees are a part of that design process and a part of that implementation. In fact, it's a critical part of the process.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Bezan, you have five minutes.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for joining us today.

This is an important study, because of its impact on retention and recruitment of our Canadian Armed Forces, which we know are at critical numbers. We're short 16,000 members as it stands right now.

In your opening remarks you talked about capitalization of the current housing stock. How much money is that, and over what period of time?

[Serge Tremblay]

Mr. Chair, currently we have a baseline funding allocation of $40 million for the recapitalization of our current portfolios. This is the money we need to basically keep the plane in flight, as it were—

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

All you have is $40 million.

[Serge Tremblay]

No, this is the baseline funding that the department has allocated to us.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Let me ask this, then. We know that over the past several years over $10 billion in the national defence budget has been lapsed. How much money has lapsed from the Canadian Forces housing agency and just gone unspent?

[Serge Tremblay]

For the capital programming over the past few years, there has not been very much. We tend to be very judicious in our application of how we—

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

How many new units have been built over the past year or two to address the shortfall that we have right now in the Canadian Forces?