Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 5th, 2018

[Martin Dompierre]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

We'll now move to Mr. Christopherson, please, for seven minutes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to all of you for your attendance today.

We have a report that is not necessarily good, but it's not horrible.

On page 2 at paragraph 2.10, we see the focus of the audit: “This audit focused on whether selected federal organizations disposed of surplus goods and equipment at the appropriate time in a manner that maximized benefits.” The conclusion is in paragraph 2.62 on page 13: “We concluded that the selected federal organizations did not always dispose of surplus goods and equipment in a manner that maximized benefits.”

It's a fail, but given what we've seen recently, I have to say that it's not the end of the world.

As for what really stands out, Mr. Hamilton, you should hope this meeting goes on forever, because the Canada Revenue Agency is looking great through this whole thing. I want to raise that because I think it's really important. Most deputies at one time or another have had a difficult time here at this committee. You in particular recently went through the meat-grinder on issues that still get referred to in terms of major problems at the Canada Revenue Agency, which I hope you're working diligently to rectify.

I think it's always fair and important for this committee to also go out of its way to give credit when an agency and a department has done well and has done things right. You're the gold star pupil in this one, Mr. Hamilton. I can't emphasize enough how positive this is for your organization. I would strongly recommend, whether it was you or other key people who made this happen, to tell yourself to keep going down that road and that you go out of your way to find out why that worked. What was the incentive that made it work?

I find it interesting and passing strange that the agency that did the best was the agency that didn't have help from Treasury Board. Everybody that had help from Treasury Board didn't do very well here. CRA, which did it on their own, did a great job. I wanted to point this out because it stood out. Even in the recommendations, it jumped out at me, and normally that stuff is meant to say what it's supposed to say. However, I thought it was very intriguing.

The response of the Canada Revenue Agency—and they were the only ones that I saw that took a government-wide perspective—was a simple sentence, but I thought it said a lot. I'm quoting the Canada Revenue Agency responding to the Auditor General's report: “However, a broader, integrated horizontal approach across government would facilitate an efficient, fair, and transparent donation process for both the donor departments and agencies and the receiving organizations.”

Again, that tells me that they've thought this through. They've done a great job within their own organization. When the AG asked what could be done better, they were the ones who cast their eyes up a little further and looked across the horizon and said,“You know, if we started to do some of these things across the whole government, we could do a lot better.”

Again, I was one of those that came down on CRA on some of those reports, and I think rightly so, but I also want to rightly give all kinds of praise and credit to you, Mr. Hamilton, and to the CRA on this file. You've done an exceptional job. Believe it or not, you're now the standard that everybody else has to get to, so kudos to you.

I'm not going have a lot of time left, but I wanted to say two things.

One, the big disappointment in here for me was data. At paragraph 2.63, the Auditor General says in conclusion, “We were unable to conclude on whether the selected federal organizations disposed of surplus goods and equipment at the appropriate time because organizations did not maintain sufficient documentation.”

Really? After all these years of our saying that this is a priority and the Auditor General saying that this is a priority, we now find that when the Auditor General goes in, they can't even do the audit because they don't even have sufficient numbers to work with. Like, come on. I don't know when the deputies and these departments are going to start getting with it on data. It's not that difficult, yet it's something that keeps falling and falling. I for one am going to continue to press on this issue, and I'm sure our colleagues will too. We committed that this was a priority for this committee in this Parliament, and so far, across the board, most entities are failing horribly.

It's time to get your act together. That's the big rant on this one. That just jumped right out at me.

If I have the time, Madame Lemay, I also want to note that you received some credit. The AG said that GCSurplus did a good job, and they did, and you were right to point that out. Kudos to them.

The question I have is on the CRA. What it did best was finding the donations, but when I look at the rules around GCSurplus, I see that they're based on commission and profit. You mentioned that already. Is there something there we need to change so that the entity gets a financial credit?

Since they're already set up to receive commissions when they sell, is there some way you or the AG can think of that we could credit them with dollar value to create the incentive, so that GCSurplus would want, where it can, to make transfers?

Right now it appears to me that if they go with a transfer, they run the risk of losing a potential sale. They need that money because they're profit-oriented.

That would be my one question in terms of how we could improve things going forward.

[Marie Lemay]

Thank you for that question. I totally agree with you that we do need to look at that.

If you don't mind, I would like Nicholas to tell you a bit about what we're doing on that front on the donations. There's a proof of concept that's being done, so maybe he—

[Nicholas Trudel]

Thank you.

Possibly there's a disincentive to transfer, and I acknowledge that.

We've started to work with the RCMP on a first proof of concept on how we would donate. We started with a set of 400 first aid kits that could no longer be used because of partial expiry. We issued call letters, transparently, to charitable organizations, to try to find out who was interested.

The purpose of that was for us to figure out how we might do this—figure out the policies, the incentives, and how we should set up a program. In that first stage, which we anticipate finishing by the end of this fiscal year, by March, we hope to have a better idea of how this program might work.

Then we'll go to a pilot phase. We'll try to look at how we implement it at an institutional level. Just because it works on a handful of transactions doesn't mean that it will be a good program design.

That's where we'll start to look at what it costs us to make a donation: Is this marginal to our business and not really a big deal, or is this much more of a burden and we need to think about it differently?

If the results of the pilot show that it's warranted, we'll look at making it more of a permanent program.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We're still on the first round.

Mr. Arya, you have seven minutes.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I too want to place on the record my appreciation of the CRA's performance in this context. The last time Mr. Hamilton was here, we were quite hard on the quality of the service provided by call centre agents. It's very rare that we see reports like this at this table.

Going to Shared Services, Mr. Parker, you mentioned 1,200 new employees. How many people do you have? It looks as though a big empire is getting built there.

[Ron Parker]

We now have about 6,400 employees.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

How diverse is the employee force?

[Ron Parker]

With regard to diversity in the different groups examined, we're below on a number of the groups.

We are above on visible minorities, about equal on the aboriginal side—

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

You can send the exact numbers later. Thank you.

[Ron Parker]

I can send you the report.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Yes.

One of the things that the AG always refers to is the factors you use to measure the success of what you're doing.

Do you have something? You did mention the customer satisfaction survey results. Is that publicly accessible? What were the questions that you asked?

[Ron Parker]

Of course. It's publicly available.

As I mentioned, it's gone up consecutively for the last three years.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Are there any other measures you have in place to measure the success of what you are doing?

[Ron Parker]

We have established service expectations for all of the service clients we have. We have benchmarks now against the performance criteria, which will be reported through our departmental results to Parliament.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Now, with 6,400 employees, with an additional $2 billion being invested in your department, as I said, you have an ambitious and unprecedented mandate to modernize the Government of Canada.

Trust me when I say I am scared to find out what will come out of it, especially with our experience with regard to Phoenix.

[Ron Parker]

What will come of it is better service to Canadians. I think that's the bottom line in terms of security and durability of the IT services they receive.

We already have established three enterprise data centres. We are in the process of equipping one in Montreal. We have new contracts for the provision of cloud services. We have improved cellular services. There is a wide range of—

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

There must be a method for the deputy minister of Public—

Is Shared Services part of your department, Ms. Lemay?

[Marie Lemay]

No, but we report to the same minister.

[Ron Parker]

We report to the same minister, but it's a separate department.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Okay, that's fine.

When we started three years ago, I think you came here. We were quite concerned at that time with the way things were going. If I recall, I mentioned in that meeting the things I heard from my constituents who were federal service employees, especially about the IT sector. At that time there was a complaint that the federal unions were not being adequately consulted. We have unions like PIPS, whose members are quite active in your organization. Are you in touch with the unions? Are you in consultation with them?

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, we meet regularly with the unions, about once every three months. The whole management team participates in those meetings, and on any series of initiatives, a number protocols are followed to bring in the views of the unions and to provide for their participation.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Mr. Chair, I would like to ask Ms. Lemay something.

I just went to gcsurplus.ca to see what things are available for sale. One thing that popped up was a 2018 Chrysler with just around 2,700 kilometres being sold with a reserve price of $25,600. I don't know the reason for the sale. Obviously we are taking a loss on this, but I am sure that many government departments are in the process of buying similar cars. Why is that one being sold? Why doesn't some other government department get it transferred?

[Marie Lemay]

Before I let Nicholas answer, I just want to remind you that we do not set the prices. The departments bring in the value.

Anyway, Nicholas, maybe you have more details on that specific one.