Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 26th, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Shugart.

We'll now move into the second round of questioning. I'll remind you that they're typically five-minute rounds.

Mr. Kelly.

[Pat Kelly]

I'm going to let Ms. Kusie take my time.

[Stephanie Kusie, Calgary Midnapore, CPC]

Thank you, Mr. Kelly, and thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here this morning. It's very nice to see you.

I was very fortunate to have a career at Global Affairs Canada for 15 years and to have served as security officer at mission twice. So this is something that is very dear to my heart.

I am encouraged by the recommendations within the report and the explanation we've had here today, but my former colleague Madame Jeffrey certainly knows that a lot of the time, when the rubber hits the road, it comes down to these nuts and bolts types of things.

When I reflect back upon my time at mission, there were generally three obstacles. I want to address each of them briefly, because they are a little bit more in the weeds, and of course give my colleagues from Foreign Affairs a chance to address each of those.

The first one is personnel. Certainly as MCOs, we were often in charge of three or four programs at a time—human resources, property, finance—and finally, often we were the security officers as well. While the training certainly encourages me, of course our colleague Madame Cameron, who served as head of mission in Lebanon, comes from my.... I consider her a contemporary. Have we addressed the capacity situation? Have we put the numbers in place for people to effectively address these problems? That's the first thing.

The second challenge I always encountered—out of fairness to the Government of Canada, the people of Canada—was procurement. Of course, this is something that is always incredibly complex and incredibly time-consuming. Procurement processes in the Government of Canada do not happen overnight; they take a lot of time. I was there during the time of MERX, which I want to say had a $75,000 threshold, so you could certainly achieve things like installing minor alarm systems, but anything that was larger required an extensive, month-long process, especially when we're looking at major missions.

The third, which Monsieur Shugart addressed briefly, was money, of course. Historically, this went the other way, where it was difficult to move from capital to operations, rather than the other way.

It sounds as though these things have been addressed, but I wanted to put forward these three obstacles that I continuously faced as a security officer at mission. That's the capacity of the personnel, the procurement processes and then finally the financing, although I am encouraged by this process you outlined.

Mr. Shugart, could you please comment on those three things, because when the rubber hits the road, those were the three obstacles I found in terms of implementing the necessities required to keep my people safe?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Shugart.

[Ian Shugart]

Perhaps, Chair, we could address people, procurement, then money.

[Stephanie Kusie]

Excuse me, Chair, just briefly, I will take 30 seconds at the end for one more question—a minute and a half, please. Thank you.

[Heather Jeffrey]

We agree that our management consular stream is the engine room of our missions abroad; they have a large number of business lines. In the complex security environment that we're dealing with, it has been very important to supplement that capacity with dedicated readiness and security program managers. This is being facilitated through the duty of care investment.

This year alone, we have more than 35 new dedicated security program managers deployed to missions abroad, fully trained. The training of those new security-dedicated staff is also funded through the new duty of care investments, freeing up staff in our highest-threat missions and also providing regional expertise to missions in their areas.

The readiness aspect is particularly important because, as you pointed out, it's about the protocols, exercises, training and having the right reflexes when a crisis or security deterioration occurs, so that we can respond. That personnel enhancement is a big part of the new investment plan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

What about procurement?

[Dan Danagher]

We have also increased our capacity in procurement in headquarters. I don't know the time when the honourable member was an MCO out in the field, but in recent years, we've developed these common service delivery points in seven parts around the world. That has served to strengthen our responsiveness with respect to being able to procure in the missions and to track it and get the headquarters assistance for those larger procurements out in the missions. We're still measuring the impact of that, though.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Shugart.

[Ian Shugart]

It does still remain a major challenge.

On the money, I'll leave aside the question of whether we have enough. I have no complaints about the resources the government is currently giving us to deal with mission security. The way this works with the Treasury Board is that often these funds that are focused on particular programs are in special-purpose allotments, and we can only draw them down for those specific purposes.

On an earlier question raised by Mr. Kelly, sometimes what happens is that, based on the speed with which a project is being implemented, if we can document that, we can go to the Treasury Board and ask for reprofiling of funds so that they are not lost, even though they are spent in a subsequent fiscal year. Our objective is, of course, through project management and improved governance, to be spending more and more of the money allocated for a year in that year, and we're making progress in that regard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I think, in response—and we're going to go to Mr. Sarai next—what Mr. Kelly was referring to was paragraph 4.59 in the report, which referred to the “Timeliness of physical security projects”. Of the $652 million in funding provided to Global Affairs Canada over the past decade to upgrade physical security at missions, about $425 million was slated for capital projects. Although these projects were to be completed within 10 years, by 2017, about one-quarter of the funding, $103 million, had not been spent. The department had to obtain special permission to retain $82 million of the $103 million in order to complete the security projects. Later they went and asked for more money when that money hadn't been spent. I think that was where the committee was questioning the allocation of funds.

We'll move to Mr. Sarai. If there's something in there you want to refer to later, you can.

Mr. Sarai, go ahead, please.

[Randeep Sarai, Surrey Centre, Lib.]

My concern is that you audited the upgrades to security and that in almost all of the cases, they were at least three years behind schedule. They're taking almost twice as long to complete as originally planned. Who does the original assessment of the timeline? Is it your contractor? Is it your internal assessment? Do you use Defence Construction Canada in that regard? I find it alarming, if it's a pattern, that every single time it takes twice as long and is at least three years behind.

[Ian Shugart]

Our goal, Chair, is that you won't read that in future reports of the Auditor General because of improvements in our planning capacity. For those, we would have—as for all of our projects—worked with our contractors in the implementation, but they would have been planned internally, often in consultation with other departments, depending on the particular project. That planning would typically be internal with expert-based capacity within the department, and that is what we are seeking to improve.

[Randeep Sarai]

Is it contracted out to contractors in that territory or is it Canadian contractors who go out and do that work?

[Ian Shugart]

I'll let Dan expand on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have one minute.

[Dan Danagher]

We use a combination of contractors, but typically we would use local contractors. Most projects go out to tender. We would evaluate bidders based on their competencies, price and those sorts of things. Typically it's local construction companies.

[Randeep Sarai]

Have you thought of using a government-based...somebody like Defence Construction Canada, who would know the operations, know the security parameters, and be able to do this in a maybe more timely and perhaps even more cost-effective manner? Or has that not worked in the past?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Danagher.

[Dan Danagher]

What we're learning from Defence Construction is some of their practices in project management. They're not a construction company per se with an international reach. We do use a combination of really qualified local contractors, really good ones. It depends on the size of a project. You can have a project that's $10 million, $20 million, or $30 million and a project that's $2 million, and they have different scopes.

[Randeep Sarai]

You also spoke about a risk-based approach versus a one-size-fits-all. How would you do this? Do you use internal assessors or outside assessors? Is it Global Affairs or Foreign Affairs? Is it Defence? Is it the RCMP or private? Who will determine the risk-based approach versus...in these situations?

[Ian Shugart]

The main change here is to move from a planning approach that would see projects being renewed on a cyclical basis. To take the analogy of a car, that would involve replacing the car every five years, for example. The approach we're taking is more based on a recognition that the world doesn't actually work that way and that in some cases, with respect to the life cycle of facilities, a cyclical approach might be right, but for security, a risk-based approach.... So you might have to replace that car every two years if the security environment is changing. If it is not, you might not have to replace that car for 10 years.

The planning is done internally and we compare notes with other like-minded countries in the various locations, as well as with others like DND and RCMP and so on, to gather all of the relevant inputs for planning. We also have expertise within the department, under the departmental security officer, and in the branches, which understand that risk environment. We also get the information from the missions. It's a fairly elaborate process but it's now risk-based rather than just having routine turnover.

[Randeep Sarai]

Are you taking into account the comments and suggestions from staff who are working in those environments?

[Ian Shugart]

Absolutely.