National Defence Committee on Jan. 31st, 2024

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

You weren't able to identify the individual you contacted by phone. You described the role, but could you also follow up with the committee when you recall or are able to tell us whom you actually called by telephone on October 3?

[Robert Olmsted]

Absolutely.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

Were you aware that you were a target for a cyber-attack?

[Robert Olmsted]

No.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Before the September cyber-attack, neither the Communications Security Establishment nor the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security warned you. Were there any kinds of warnings or signs or communications from those organizations to you?

[Robert Olmsted]

I am not aware of any communications from anyone outside of our organization. As it's commonplace today in the world, we were obviously aware that this was taking place in other organizations, and we were very diligent and vigilant about protecting our flanks.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Can you characterize the response of the federal government after the attack took place?

[Robert Olmsted]

They expressed their concern, and they wanted to make sure that we were committed to corrective actions.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

I'd just like some clarification, Mr. Olmsted. When you say that on October 3 or October 4 it was encrypted and not available, was that encryption by you, or was that by the bad actor?

[Robert Olmsted]

It was by the bad actor.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Okay. Thank you for that point.

Madame Lalonde, go ahead, please, for five minutes.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here, Mr. Olmsted. I thank you very much for being part of this conversation. Maybe I'll bring you back again on our motion on some of the roles you have had over the last 15-plus years in helping our military families to relocate.

I would like you to talk to us and share your perspective with this committee and, I will say, the success, maybe, that you have seen in relocating our CAF members, including some of the programs, initiatives and policies that you have supported our members with when they have been required to move across the country.

[Robert Olmsted]

First of all, just to be personal for a second, moving military members is very close to me. I have a daughter who served in the U.S. Navy and was relocated with her family multiple times. I have been on the “dad side” in watching it happen, and it is a very complex and difficult process at times.

We have worked collaboratively throughout the years on the contracts, working with the military on delivery and how we can improve it for members. When we went into this contract that was really modernizing the delivery and utilizing technology along with just-in-time support, we very quickly, in the first year, heard concerns around the lack of briefings taking place on the bases. We heard concerns around something called a relocation card, which was introduced with the contract. On both of those things, we sat down with the CAF, the procurement folks and the contracting officer and talked about what the different options were and what things we do in the corporate world. We have 600 corporate clients we help with relocations.

We worked together to reinstate the option of the briefings that would allow members who wanted that time to ask questions and to have that one-on-one communication. We also reintroduced using electronic fund transfers to the members, versus the relocation card, which included making sure that we were giving the advances so that those members were never out of pocket.

Those are a couple of examples of things that I've seen over time where the collaboration between the Canadian Armed Forces and ourselves has benefited the members. That's why I feel really good about the operational and process-related work we've done, which I feel has improved the process for the members.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Thank you very much.

First, on behalf of all of us here in this committee, we would like to say thanks to your daughter for serving. We're always happy to say thank you to our own Canadian military, but certainly from a dad's perspective it must be wonderful to share this story today with us.

As you know, here in Canada, in terms of the Canadian government, the responsibility for the housing for the Canadian Armed Forces falls under the Minister of National Defence, and certainly the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities is probably not as close to that conversation. Maybe you can share with this committee some of the changes. That's why we're here, to hear what changes or improvements you would recommend to the Minister of National Defence in addressing the challenges of the lack of housing available on base.

[Robert Olmsted]

We share the committee's concern about housing availability, but we don't have any involvement in building or maintaining housing. With respect, we really believe that there are others who should have a bigger role in looking at those and coming up with solutions. It's just not our area of expertise.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

That's fair.

Thank you again, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Madame Normandin, you have two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Olmsted, if you don't mind, I'd like to go back to evaluating CAF members' satisfaction with your services. You have information about how long it takes to respond to their requests, so you can do a quantitative evaluation, but you don't have any way to do a qualitative evaluation of CAF members' experience. Is that right?

[Robert Olmsted]

That's correct.

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

So, in a way, you have no incentive to improve your services because you don't even know your client satisfaction rate. Is that right?

[Robert Olmsted]

We review all of our interactions. We have team members in a quality control role, in which they can review, listen to phone calls and grade our employees. We take a lot of pride. Our team likes to say they're serving those who serve. We take a lot of pride in how we deliver those services, and our team works very hard to ensure that nobody gets off a chat or a phone call without feeling that we've satisfied their need. We actually even track how often someone's issue is resolved in the first interaction.

We measure those things, and while they are quantitative, we truly believe that our quality assurance team ensures that the members go away satisfied with the answers and with the support they're getting.

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

Even so, there's no way to see how people's satisfaction changes over time. Here's a very specific example. Would you be able to tell me how many complaints you've received about the availability of services in French in a given year compared to other years?

[Robert Olmsted]

We measure how often someone comes in and asks for the support in French, and we have never had less than 100% ability in any month to serve a member in French.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Normandin.

Ms. Mathyssen, go ahead for two and a half minutes.

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

Just to clarify, I understand that you take a lot of pride in your work, and the people who work with you also do, which is amazing, but there was a cost to the service contract that you did provide, and I believe it was $123 million at the time of this breach. The government offered those impacted credit monitoring and reissuing of passports, and that was all provided by the public service. Out of that contract and the funds, was it the Government of Canada that paid for that coverage for credit monitoring, or was it your company?