National Defence Committee on Feb. 28th, 2024

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

Obviously, there are direct impacts, of course, on those employees. What are the impacts on our Canadian Armed Forces?

[June Winger]

They were without cleaning services for about three weeks.

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

When you say “cleaning services”, can you be specific?

[June Winger]

Their bathrooms weren't being cleaned. The offices weren't being cleaned. None of the eating areas or living areas.... None of this was being looked after. It was just increasingly getting worse.

The third contractor on base with the third contract was able to pinch hit, but these are 80 members and they have 20 employees who are already fully employed doing the other cleaning, so now they were extending them to do the work of a hundred people. Lots of those areas couldn't be cleaned because they needed security clearances that these employees simply didn't have. Places were just left with nothing, yet once again military members were being asked to do the work, outside of what they're normally supposed to be doing.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

That completes our first round. We have 17 minutes and 38 seconds before the next vote. I intended to get Mr. Kelly and Mr. Fillmore in. That will take us to seven minutes before.

I'm going to work on the assumption and hope that we're prepared to vote with the app rather than go back to the House and vote. If there's any indication to the contrary, please let me know.

[Cheryl Gallant]

He's lucky it's pouring rain out.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

If I can get those two questions in, then we can suspend at that point and maybe get through this entire meeting.

I have Mr. Kelly and then Mr. Fillmore, which is a strange spelling for “Fisher”.

With that, Mr. Kelly, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Winger, you actually mentioned GC Strategies specifically in your opening remarks—the ongoing scandal over the ArriveCAN app and the awarding of that contract.

Are you aware that GC Strategies—the same company that is embroiled in the ArriveCAN scandal—is also a significant Department of Defence contractor?

[June Winger]

I'm not aware of that, but I'm not at all surprised either.

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

I wonder if any of our witnesses.... For example, just a search of Open Government can reveal some of this information. There is some public information about this.

For GC Strategies for example, procurement number W7683-22-R017 is a procurement that was sole-sourced. It says it was for $38,000. We don't know what was done. Does anybody know anything about this particular contract?

Another one is for $99,553 and dated July 31, 2020. Another contract with GC Strategies is for $2,148,650.70. I've got a date of January 22, 2019, for "professional services not otherwise specified". This one says it was competitively sourced. I have no idea what particular skill was involved there.

Do any of our witnesses know anything about these particular...?

[Jennifer Carr]

I don't have any knowledge of them right now. We can certainly look into them, especially because they say they're for professional services. That is something that we have always looked at from a contracting-out perspective. That is where they engage in engineering services or IT work, which is work that could be done by our members.

We can take a look and see what we can find, but professional services is something—

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

Now GC is not the only one. You had mentioned it in your opening statement. We know that this is a controversial contractor because of the overrun—and overrun is not even the right word for it—that has happened with the ArriveCAN app.

McKinsey is another one that we've talked about at this committee.

Are you aware of the scope and scale of the McKinsey contracts with the government?

[Jennifer Carr]

No.

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

For example, there's a contract for $3 million from November 4, a contract on April 25, 2022 for $1,533,766, and another one for $935,000 on March 25.

Can you speak to the issues around transparency? We see these contracts. We don't know what they're for.

Do you have any comment?

[Jennifer Carr]

From a transparency perspective, of course we want to make sure we're getting value for taxpayer money. We would have to take a look at them. But GC Strategies and McKinsey aren't really big on our radar. We have other really big players, like Calian and Telus and some others, that are taking major amounts away from the government.

We need to make sure that all contracting that is done on behalf of the government is done in a way that is transparent and accountable to make sure we have value for taxpayer money.

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

Right.

You spoke about “shoddy work”, and I think you, Ms. Winger, talked about the “total failures” of certain contracts. I'm not sure what you meant. Do you have examples you could give us on some of these consulting contracts that, under this government, have ballooned, as Ms. Kramp-Neuman showed in her questioning?

[June Winger]

I guess that's the catch, isn't it? We try to catch all of these, and they're nearly impossible to track because they're simply not being tracked. The oversight simply doesn't exist. So that's nearly impossible for us. I can't even really give you a fair answer about these sorts of contracts, because my members are dealing with what they actually see, that tangible work that's being done right at the department, that I can speak to more. But on these other contracts or even most contracts we ATIP the heck out of National Defence and we get very little back. When it does come back, much later, it's all redacted. It's nearly impossible to make head or tail out of it. When we ask the department for it, we get very little from them.

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

We're at five minutes already?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I know, and it was so fascinating asking these people questions they couldn't possibly answer.

Mr. Fisher, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses.

Again, as Ms. Kramp-Neuman said, thank you for your patience. What happens in the House happens in the House, and it certainly impacts committee.

I represent the riding of Dartmouth—Cole Harbour in Nova Scotia. We have large groups of both Canadian Armed Forces members and DND employees. I've heard from DND employees that they have concerns regarding contracting out, and they, in fact, echoed some of the very things you've said, Ms. Carr.

Whether it's at Defence Research and Development Canada or on one of our bases—and Mr. Fillmore represents a base as well—we have so much expertise in-house. I think we can all agree that, whenever possible, we need to invest in our people. We need to invest in our people so we can continue to have and grow that expertise you've spoken about in both CAF and DND.

Ms. Carr, you touched on some specific recommendations, but you had only five minutes. Getting things on the record once or twice in this committee is always helpful when we're studying things like this. What are your specific recommendations or suggestions to the government when it is considering contracting and consulting services and other professional services, especially as all departments are currently conducting exercises to refocus spending? I will give you the bulk of my time.

[Jennifer Carr]

Thank you for mentioning DRDC—the research arm—because something is happening that is very concerning to our members. We represent the research scientists.

The government has started to rely on grants to do defence research. They're taking those dollars away from our research scientists and making them almost contract managers instead of those who do the important research on behalf of the Department of National Defence. Not only do we not own the intellectual property for the research they have done with our taxpayer money but also, if they come up with—I'm going to say a widget, because I'm not a scientist—something important, we have to buy it back from them. On top of that, they can sell that idea to another government. I don't think that is in the best interest of our national security.

When we talk about contracting out and value for money, the most concerning thing for me as a professional is the loss of institutional knowledge. This cannot be understated. When we start outsourcing and sending that expertise outside of the house, we cannot bring it back. There is nobody to oversee that engineering contract and bear witness that there's something wrong with it, because we don't do any of that. It's very simple, but it takes will. We have to bring it back in-house. We have to make a concerted effort to say, “Are these long-term positions and long-term interests?” and bring them in.

You had a comment about relocation—how the RCMP still does it in-house and the Department of National Defence has left it outside. The answer was that it would be too costly or too hard. I don't think it would be. In fact, I think a service provided in-house would be better. Our members would be better served, because they would be dealing with people who understand their daily life and reality.

The reality is that a federal public servant has pride in what they do. They are going to look for the root source and root cause of something that has gone wrong, and they're going to provide solutions. The contractor is always going to give you a solution that relies on the contractor, thus perpetuating the cycle.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I'll give my last minute to Mr. Collins if he has a short snapper.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Very quickly, President Carr, you referenced an issue that's always been a pet peeve of mine. It's almost a bureaucratic buddy system when somebody retires. It's almost a Seinfeld episode. Somebody retires and we have a big going-away party for them and their 30 years of service. Then they're back two weeks later, working on a contract basis.

You highlighted that, but you didn't give a recommendation in terms of what we should consider as it relates to putting rules in place that prevent this from occurring. I see it as a morale issue. It prevents people within the organization from applying for the position that was made vacant by people who retire.

Can you provide some assistance, in terms of where we should go with that issue, if we're looking at recommendations to improve the system?

[Jennifer Carr]

Again, it's very complex, but you have to look at how easy it is to hire somebody.

I would ask that this committee think about talking to DCC or NETE and asking them how they hire their people. What happens is, they know somebody. Somebody is brought in under a NETE contract to do that work.

We have hiring rules, so make the contractors have those same rules. Make sure they have to comply with diversity and equity, language requirements and security clearances. Make sure they can't just hop over and get a market rate.

I represent professionals. A doctor should not have to jump over to Calian to get the market rate and then the government pays 30% on top to a company. Pay your professionals a market rate. Don't make it easy for them to be hired by a contractor with the same skills, and pay them properly.