National Defence Committee on Feb. 28th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

It was five minutes and 10 seconds. I don't think we should engage in the next round of questions with Ms. Normandin and Ms. Mathyssen, unless they feel inclined to do so.

I think we should suspend at this point.

If you're comfortable with two and a half minutes, we'll do that.

You have two and a half minutes, Ms. Normandin.

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

Thank you very much.

Ms. Carr, there are several things I find paradoxical. I'd like to know your thoughts on them.

On the one hand, when there was talk of cutbacks in national defence, the minister said that they would make cuts in professional services and subcontracting.

This prompts us to wonder if we have sufficient resources internally to do the work that won't be going to private companies.

On the other hand, under the Liberals, there seems to have been an increase in contracting out as well as an increase in the size of the public service.

A lot of things seem paradoxical to me. I'd like to hear your thoughts on what's been going on over the last few years.

[Jennifer Carr]

I haven't looked into the numbers. When you say augmentation in the public service, I do think that it's mostly at the executive level. It's at the higher levels; it's not at the working levels. That's where we're still seeing a reliance on contracting out to perform that work, but as for an augmentation in the federal public services, we need to really dive into where the augmentations are happening. They're concerning to us.

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

I'll stick to the same line of questioning about the ability of public servants to do the work that's being contracted out.

I know you've already talked about that, but I'd still like for you to elaborate further.

When work is contracted out, are any reasons given along the lines of whether public servants would be able to do that same work?

Should that happen systematically?

Is it a question that's asked and never answered?

[Jennifer Carr]

DND and most federal departments have not invested in human resources, so you are leaving hiring up to engineers or IT workers, people who are already overworked, to rely on the staffing mechanisms. We need to make sure that we make it easier to hire faster and more efficiently, and you can't do that if you're doing it off the side of your desk.

I am 100% sure that those jobs of the health care workers with Calian could be done by public service professionals if you paid them correctly and you put the effort into making those hirings happen.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Normandin.

With that, I'm obliged to suspend.

Colleagues, I think we can come back fairly smartly. We'll start with Ms. Mathyssen for two and a half minutes. That will finish off this round, and I propose to go for a third round and see where we land at that point. We still have something in the order of an hour worth of time available to us.

With that, we're suspended until after the vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Colleagues, the sooner we get started the sooner we finish. We're now back.

We've got the balance of this round to finish.

We'll start with Ms. Mathyssen, then go to Ms. Gallant, and then Mr. Fillmore. That will finish that round and then I have bodies for the third round, but you can tell me which set of bodies you want going.

With that, Ms. Mathyssen, you have two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This may be for both groups.

Ms. Winger, you referred to ADM review services and that horrible lack of transparency where you were unable to track that money. You both spoke about the value-for-money analysis that you cannot do and cannot find.

Interestingly, I asked the deputy minister about this at our committee and he assured us that they have created processes to create a clear business case for each outsourcing decision.

Have you seen any business cases put forward since 2018?

[Jennifer Carr]

The processes that he might be referring to is the newest guideline from Treasury Board on contracting services. I've been very clear about our position on that. It looks like it's a gauntlet for somebody to get through before they can actually contract out. It doesn't put any oversight in the hands of the departments. It doesn't say when they should be looking and how they should be looking. It just talks about the steps and the processes.

For me, there need to be clear rules and oversight. You need to see if this job can be done by a public servant and not look at the easiest way to hire or go to a contract. You should be able to say there should be oversight that says, “No, we don't believe this should be done outside".

I really would question the fact that it's just easier, and we need to stop that.

[June Winger]

I don't really believe that it is being done. From the example I gave you earlier about asking the management for that, it's simply not being done and they don't see it as their role. Perhaps it might be done on a much higher level, but then they wouldn't be able to apply the actual knowledge in making a fair determination.

It's very common for management to be telling us that they prefer to have public servants. They know that the work is going to be done more quickly; they know that the work is going to be done better, and less expensively. It's simply a budgeting issue that doesn't allow them to do it. Because of this budgeting issue where they feel they don't have the salary/wage envelope to allow for it and are stuck with their O&M budget—which is greater as we spoke about earlier—they're left in the position that they have no other alternative but to contract out the work. Then that analysis simply does not get performed because they feel that's the only option.

[Jennifer Carr]

May I add something to that because I think it's very important for this committee to know?

There are procedures for the department where they can convert an operational maintenance budget into a salary/wage envelope, but they just do not do it. They do not make the mechanisms and say they're going to convert this amount of money that's in O&M that is being spent on contractors and do the process that is available to them to convert it to salary/wage envelopes.

Again, when I hear their saying it's easier because it's O&M, they also have mechanisms to bring it back.

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

And that's because of the HR issue?

[Jennifer Carr]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

I have Ms. Gallant.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

I'd like to go back to research for a minute.

With research being contracted out, does the contractor deal with scientists from other countries as well? Is there co-operation with foreign scientists?

[Jennifer Carr]

It's done independently.

The two biggest contractors right now for the IDEaS program are Calian and Telus.

What they do and how they use that grant money is not for the department to say. We do not have any oversight, transparency or accountability, so I cannot say for sure.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

We saw with the level-4 laboratory in Winnipeg that they engage scientists who are actually from the Wuhan lab, which has a large defence component to it. So the same thing could be happening with our own defence research is what you're telling me. We have a national security risk right there in our research.

Secondly, Brookfield is doing the moving. Are you telling me that previously National Defence had the ability to move our people?

[Jennifer Carr]

A long time ago, yes they did.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Brookfield was hit by a huge cyber-attack. They don't even know the level of intrusion at this point, but more importantly, aside from the ransom, they could be drilling through and trying to connect to our defence system, so now we've got another security issue.

With regard to Defence Construction Canada, I was at Base Petawawa not too long ago, and I saw signs saying “Dexterra” on the empty residences that soldiers are supposed to be living in. I looked up Dexterra. It's another contracting company, and Dexterra hires more contractors, so we're not saving any money, but it's somehow easier.

Up to 2015, we had 70 outsourced contracts, and that ballooned by 100% to 7,000. What made it easier at that juncture in time, at the end of 2015, for having all of these contracts as being preferable to going through DND itself?

[Jennifer Carr]

That's a complicated question.

I could say it's as a telephone chat goes on: When somebody starts doing something and it becomes acceptable, then others start doing it. Again, I would think that the hiring practices and the change that left it under the Public Service Employment Act, and to individual departments and giving the responsibility to managers to do the hiring, would be a big contributing factor to the overreliance on contracts.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Okay.

I had a medical person who said they had been approached by Calian. However, they've heard about Calian and how Calian did something with Brookfield and then sliced all of their wages, so the person is reticent to go through Calian.

Is there a way that a medical professional could work for DND—or on base, for that matter—without going through a third party? Is there a direct hiring process still in existence?

[Jennifer Carr]

Of course there is, but start paying them the market rate: Start recognizing them for their professional services and treat them as professionals.

Why they're going to Calian.... I just talked about the pandemic and a government that had frontline workers and was refusing to pay pandemic pay to the frontline workers. That's just an example of disrespect. Add to that a Phoenix pay system: I'm sorry, but nurses and doctors and others need to get their pay on time and correctly. If you go to an agency and you do the same job, you get paid better and you get paid on time and properly every time. You get your overtime on the next paycheque. It is more and more attractive.

Plus, I would say that Calian is actively recruiting disgruntled or demoralized workers from our bases to go over, because they then get an additional 30% overhead from the government for doing absolutely nothing.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

It's the exact opposite because they would prefer that the government be signing their paycheques rather than having Calian take a slice of the action. We've got a system that costs more by doing this contracting; we're losing institutional memory; it's a national security risk; and on the jobs, especially through defence workers, they provide jobs to the wives and husbands of the people who are in the armed forces. That's one of the major drawbacks of recruiting: There's nothing for the spouses to do.

All of these things are speaking against that major 100% increase in contracting out: Why is it being done?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Gallant. You've run past your time considerably.

Mr. Fillmore.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.