Public Accounts Committee on June 9th, 2009

[Sheila Fraser]

I think that's a really interesting question.

Obviously, I think one of the main lessons to be learned, which other departments could use, is that when there is a “crisis”--I use the term used by the deputy, but I don't know that I would have used it--that lessons be learned from that.

I think we have to give credit to the passport office. They did analyze what went wrong and what needed to be done, and they resolved it in a relatively short period of time. I'm not sure that departments always do that and do it with the diligence that the passport office has used.

I think the contingency planning could also serve as a good lesson and a good example for other departments.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Are there any other comments regarding that question about what other departments can learn from this exercise?

Okay. I'll go to my next question.

In 2007 this Conservative government recognized that Passport Canada needed additional funds and allocated $55 million. Can you comment on the impact this money had on implementing these changes?

[Jody Thomas, Chief Operating Officer, Operations Bureau, Passport Canada]

The $55 million allowed us to open a new print facility in Gatineau that increased our capacity by about 40% for mailed-in applications. It also very much allowed us to resolve the mail-in crises and the long delay in issuing passports that had been mailed in from areas where we don't have walk-in offices.

The other thing it allowed us to do was to build up pools of employees and have staff ready. Because we are fee-recovery.... Generally if you're getting 100 applications you have to have a number of people on staff to deal with 100 applications. We needed to be prepared for 120--or 5.1 million versus 4 million--and the additional funds allowed us to be prepared in the number of resources we have on staff.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I have no more questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Saxton.

That, colleagues, concludes the first round.

We're going to go now to the second round. We're going to start with Mr. Cannis.

Before we do that, leaving aside the report, I just want to report to you, Mr. Edwards and Madam Desloges, from a person on the ground. My riding is Charlottetown, and we don't have a passport office. My office is sort of the de facto passport office. Because of the location, we handle an awful lot of passports from two of the neighbouring ridings.

I went through the crisis back in 1997. It was very stressful. To give you an example, people were booking a trip, paying for the trip, applying nine, ten weeks out for passports, and then the day before didn't have their passports. Of course, they can't call the passport office. They call their member of Parliament or their member of Parliament's staff and scream into the phone.

That was a constant occurrence back then, but let me say that in the last number of months, actually the last year, the service has been excellent. We're getting them back in three weeks and we have no complaints. All I can say is that just echoes on the ground what the report says. We get tremendous service from Passport Canada, so I just wanted to report that.

Mr. Cannis, five minutes.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to our panel.

I'm just a guest here today. Public accounts is probably the first committee I served on after I got elected in 1993. It's been a long time.

I must say that I was very impressed with some of the comments I heard, constructive comments, where we were on your suggestions from previous reports. There's no question that we, and I'm sure other countries, were going through this metamorphosis in some way, given the circumstances globally speaking.

My riding is Scarborough Centre, Mr. Chairman, and in my riding there's a facility, the Scarborough Town Centre, that's very busy. I can tell you there were glitches in the past. Again, I use that word in a constructive way.

What I had asked years ago, through the officials there, was for some kind of an MP helpline, as other offices have. This is something I think, Mr. Chairman, we had discussed years ago with colleagues who were experiencing some of the difficulties that you were in some of the remote areas. Remote or not, we were facing some of these problems as well.

I don't know if that's feasible today, but I'm sure I speak on behalf of all members of Parliament that in our respective ridings, if the garbage isn't collected, they're not going to call the city councillor. They're going to call their member of Parliament. If eavestroughs have been plugged, they're going to call their member of Parliament. If something happens to the delivery of health care, they're not going to call their provincial member. They're going to call their member of Parliament. And that's fine. We're pleased to take that on. It's our responsibility and we get paid to help facilitate, but I would just ask, if I may, that some consideration be given to an MPs helpline, to be used properly, when and if needed.

I want to ask a question with respect to the rural areas and the mobile units. I was really pleased to hear that. I and maybe my constituents in the greater city of Toronto, in Scarborough, might take it for granted that we get on the bus, go to the town centre, do our shopping and we go in and apply, and that's wonderful, but I'm concerned about Canadians living in some of these remote areas, border towns as you mentioned.

I just want to know a little bit more of how this wonderful system works, this mobile system, because you mentioned so many different parts of our country. Are there units that are designated to a region, or are they there and they just cover a certain region, one unit, two units? Can you just give me some more details on that?

[Leonard Edwards]

Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased to respond to both, and then I'll ask Madam Desloges maybe to talk a little bit more about these mobile units.

First of all, if I may, Chair, I'd just like to correct a figure that I gave earlier. I talked about half a million passports since the start of the fiscal year. I should have said a million passports, which means we are pretty close to the prediction of about 6.1 million that we anticipated for this fiscal year. I just want to correct the record on that.

Second, with respect to the member's request around a helpline, I'm pleased to say that we do have a helpline. In fact, I can give it to you: it is 819-994-3536.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Well, I'm thankful. It just tells me that your staff in Scarborough Centre office are not doing their job, sir, because I personally went there and I asked and I was treated rudely.

So thank you for the number.

[Leonard Edwards]

We'll make sure you're not treated rudely the next time, because this does exist--

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

As my colleagues will tell you, even from the opposition, as vocal as I might get, I think I'm a gentleman when it comes to working with people.

That's just basically a response to the number, and thank you for the number. Certainly, after 15 years as a member of Parliament, I should have had this number. One of your directors or officers there should have had the decency then to say, “Here you are, sir. This is how we can serve you.” That didn't happen.

[Leonard Edwards]

Again, let me assure the committee and other members of Parliament that we do have a dedicated section in the passport office to deal with--

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I don't mean to be disruptive, but my colleague Ms. Crombie has taken down that number. That tells me one thing: she doesn't have the number either.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

No, I don't.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

That just confirms, sir, that your people aren't doing their job properly.

Anyway, let me go on to something else, to staffing. I'm going to interrupt you, because now I'm on a roll.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

You may be on a roll, but you're out of time.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

There you go. I come here once in a blue moon.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Weston, for five minutes.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Ms. Fraser, Mr. Edwards, Ms. Desloges, I thank you for coming. Mr. Edwards and Ms. Desloges, I congratulate you. Be it in the private sector or the public sector, an organization can be proud of accomplishing this kind of follow-up work.

Following on my colleague's question, I'm thinking this is a model. You've identified a problem after the problem arose, and then a response was planned, and then there was implementation of the response. Then there was a review of how it went to prepare for the next level.

We hear things like “best practices” from Madam Desloges. “The job is not done”, as one of you said, and you “remain vigilant”. But this is what you want to hear in any enterprise, whether it's private, public, here, international, or whatever.

So I want to get back to this question. Maybe each of you--Madam Fraser, Mr. Edwards, and Madam Desloges--can identify something about what's working here that we can be looking at when other agencies come before us. There are five points in that circle, and how can we see that happen, recur again and again in other departments?

[Sheila Fraser]

Perhaps I can begin, Chair.

Some members will recall that we did a follow-up on a department and actually tried to identify what some of the critical success factors were. One of them, which I think is really important, is sustained management attention. I think it's quite obvious in this case that there were plans put in place and they were implemented and I presume there must have been people held to account for implementing those and things got done.

I think the fact that the agency probably went through a bit of a crisis that was very public and a lot of members were asking questions about it obviously helped to focus the mind, I'm sure, and there were additional funds given.

So I think there were a number of elements. I'm not sure it is always the case when we do our audits that there is that kind of urgency to action. The focus that was given in this case...not to take anything away from what people have done here. I just don't think in other cases we necessarily have the same kind of attention and heightened attention that there was in this particular case.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Madam Desloges.

[Christine Desloges]

Personally, I have to thank my colleagues who did most of the work on this. I would say that if there's a lesson that has to be learned, it's that it's really teamwork.

The systems we have in place at this point in time we're monitoring on a daily basis right across all channels--the counter, the printing shops, the websites, the call centres. It's the processing times right across the network that we check on a daily basis.

We have a tactical response team that, at this point in time, is meeting twice a week to look at trends and to look at whether we need to adjust and deal with a specific buildup in certain channels. It's really the result of looking at the risks at the local level, at the regional level, and at the national level. The other thing that has been fostered in terms of teamwork is backup among various regions so that if a region is not as busy, it can electronically take in the processing of files from another region that may be busier, and this way we balance the work.

So I would suggest that it's really looking at the challenge together. It's looking at the risks together and it's looking at how we can optimize the results for our clients as well as maintaining a staff that is healthy in the process since this is a long-term challenge.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

The guy who wrote Good to Great, a famous business book, says the CEO will never take the credit, and always passes it on to teamwork, so it's no surprise.

Mr. Edwards.

[Leonard Edwards]

I was going to start where you just left off. There's no question there was leadership, and it extended from the top of the organization--the CO at the time--to all of the staff, two of whom are here today, to recognize that this was a crisis situation and needed the kind of urgent attention that near-death experiences can bring you.

As a consequence, they took radical new approaches to business processes. They updated technology and brought in new staff in a very traditional kind of way, but these new staff came in to do different kinds of jobs.

So it really was a fairly radical makeover, and it's still ongoing. This is not the end of the road. The implementation of the ten-year passport, the e-passport, and so forth will continue to bring some very substantial changes to the passport office, for which Madam Desloges is now responsible.

We also got some extremely good cooperation from other parts of government. The Public Service Commission, the Public Service Agency, and Public Works and Government Services Canada all had to contribute to the setting up of the new headquarters and the new printing office, and the hiring of staff, short-circuiting some of the more traditional rules around hiring, and so forth, to make it all happen.

I think it's a good example...and maybe I'm sounding a little self-congratulatory on this, but maybe, if I'm congratulating anyone, it's the public service of Canada, which, at times of stress and crisis, can actually do some remarkable things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Weston.

Mr. Desnoyers, you have five minutes.