Public Accounts Committee on May 27th, 2015

[Louis-Paul Normand]

Under our project management framework, we assess privacy factors for each of our projects. As I said in the example I provided, that assessment covers everyone involved. In this particular case, every department that needed the information had to present their own case to the Privacy Commissioner to be able to use the information for the purpose sought.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you, Monsieur Giguère.

Mr. Albas, you have the floor, sir.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I want to say thank you to all of the witnesses here today. I certainly appreciate your roles and what you do.

I'd like to start by going back to the report.

I certainly recognize Mr. Woodworth and his earlier points in regard to the complexity of the environment you deal with. The different laws and different agencies and private companies you have to deal with add to that complexity.

I also appreciate that our trade relationship with the United States is one of the most important relationships we have. The beyond the border initiative is something that I'm very supportive of, and I know that people in my riding of Okanagan—Coquihalla are very supportive of it. Safety and an increased ability to get goods and services and people across the border are vital.

Getting back to the actual report, in response to paragraph 5.30, the CBSA commits to updating its agency investment plan. I believe you said that you'll do it by spring of 2015. Then, with the annual investment plan, I believe it will be by June 2015. We're almost at June.

Could you please give a status update on these two areas and what that means in regard to the recommendation going forward?

[Louis-Paul Normand]

The two reports have been delivered on time. In fact, the annual investment plan—and I'm looking at my colleague, here—was delivered on April 23, 2015. The annual IT plan.... By the way, both of them went to Treasury Board. They were done on time, and they do map all our investment to our PAAs and our priorities. In fact, in the case of the investment plan, it was the second one in a row that has been delivered. It was also the case for the annual IT plan.

We have taken the recommendation seriously. In fact, we had started on updating those documents prior to the audit.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Again, for many people who are watching at home, they may not have had the opportunity to peruse the report itself. Between the two different plans, that would include the almost $1 billion Ms. Weber mentioned earlier that had been earmarked for these things. Is that correct?

[Louis-Paul Normand]

That's right.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Both reports have been tabled.

[Louis-Paul Normand]

Yes.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

That's excellent news.

Also, the Auditor General recommended CBSA establish clear procedures and practices on how information, for example, the project dashboards, is collected, reported, and enforced. That's recommendation 5.61.

In response, your agency indicated that it will complete a formal review of the process by June 2015. Is this going to be an internal or an external review? How will CBSA ensure the review is consistently applied?

[Caroline Weber]

We look at this information every couple of weeks, and then every month at our senior executive committee, as well.

In my organization we're responsible for looking over the shoulder of my colleagues in making sure the information is accurate. We are putting in place more robust and clearer instructions on how to populate some of those things.

We did have some discrepancies, as the Auditor General referred to. We knew about those discrepancies, but we were living with them because there were time gaps or time lags between some of the information. We were not including some standard information that would have been easy to add because we knew it was there and it's not the way we usually reflect things internally. However, we are changing that as a result of this audit.

We will continue to look at this and conduct our own internal audits. I imagine the Auditor General will revisit this audit in a few years, as they usually do, and provide an external check on us, as well.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

The Office of the Auditor General noted that CBSA was due to complete a business plan for the single window initiative, which Mr. Norman had mentioned earlier, by March 2015. It's a condition for Treasury Board to release additional funds. To what extent is the single window initiative meeting its targeted outcomes?

[Caroline Weber]

It's a good news story. It's completed.

[Louis-Paul Normand]

The business case was tabled and approved by TB ministers in—I forget the date—I think it was April, as well. It was presented and approved.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Can you give a little context? Again, many people who are watching may not understand what the single window is. Could you please give a short...? I don't think I have very much time left.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

You have 15 seconds.

[Louis-Paul Normand]

I'll do it in 15 seconds.

I mentioned that we enact 90 acts of Parliament. We collect information on behalf of a number of departments. Think of Health, Agriculture, CRA, and so on. Every department that wanted information collected at the border used to have their own forms and their own ways of collecting it. We would enact or enable that. Now it's all been concentrated into a single window for coming into Canada, if you want to call it that. That has streamlined the process at the border a lot.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Very good. Thank you, Mr. Albas.

Over now to Mr. Allen.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, folks, for coming.

Mr. Normand, if I could start with you, I think I heard you say earlier that some of the issues that arise for delays are issues of other departments perhaps changing how they do things, or changing their mind on certain things. Did I hear that correctly? Is that right?

[Caroline Weber]

The sources can come from a variety of places. Sometimes there's a change in policy direction, as well.

Yes, it can be our partner departments. We are sort of at the end of many policy processes for other departments. We enforce the law for Agriculture, the Public Health Agency, Health, DFATD, etc. We are often kind of at the operational end of what they're doing.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

I draw your attention to page13 in the English version at paragraph 5.37, toward the end, just before paragraph 5.38. The Auditor General's report states that you changed your mind in a particular instance, and you made Citizenship and Immigration have to go back. When it came to the entry-exit initiative, you decided to change your mind on a particular way you were going to handle data, which forced them to go back and rethink what they were doing, and which delayed things. Is that how I read that paragraph, Ms. Weber?

[Caroline Weber]

Can you give me the paragraph number?

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Certainly. It's on page 13 in the English version at the very top of the page. It's the very last part of paragraph 5.37. It begins with “delivery of the Interactive Advance Passenger Information”. I can read it for you.

[Caroline Weber]

Master data management?

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

I'll read it for you, Madam:

In the case of the Entry/ Exit Initiative, the Agency began work with Citizenship and Immigration Canada—

—“Agency” being CBSA—

— in October 2013 to draft project deliverables and milestones. As of September 2014, these were still being finalized. The Agency also changed a key component in favour of a new solution (master data management) that has caused Citizenship and Immigration Canada to revisit the components it is building.

So as much as Mr. Normand said indeed there are other agencies—and I take that at face value; it's probably absolutely true, IT is a complex business—in this particular case that the Auditor General points out, you changed your mind as an agency and caused them to go back and do something that actually caused you a delay.

Is that correct?

[Louis-Paul Normand]

No. If I may clarify, first of all, the master data management decision is still before us. We had a comment on the enterprise architecture framework in the report. This is part of our town planning that we're doing right now.

Master data management has the ability to create a single entry record for either the traveller or commercial...so that we always make sure the name we scan at the border is matched against the right record. So this is the ability—