Public Accounts Committee on March 9th, 2021

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Could the department please let us know if there is any public data on this? Thank you.

On another matter, but still on the matter of the Phoenix system, I'd like to talk about the recommendation in the 2018 report of the Office of the Auditor General, which contains some rather striking elements. The office mentioned that senior officials hadn't adequately briefed deputy ministers and this had resulted in a total boondoggle.

Last month, in February 2021, the office reported the same problem. So there's a lack of communication on the part of senior officials.

What can you tell us about this? Have you really started a change in culture, processes and policies?

[Peter Wallace]

I very much appreciate the question; it's an absolutely critical question. I do not believe that was the finding of the Auditor General in the February 2021 report, but that's a different dialogue, respectfully. There is a change of policy. There is a change of culture. We are in the process of putting it in place. One of the most fundamental things—and I'll ask Roch to deal with this—is that in the Phoenix context, hard, solid information that should have been available to decision-makers and that showed the true state of the progress instead of the wished state of the progress was not made available through the chain of command up to deputy ministers.

That was an unacceptable error. We're working hard to make sure that is corrected in a couple of different mechanisms, including peer supervision, the gating project I talked about earlier, the competencies, but most fundamentally, we are dedicating significant internal audit resources to monitor projects in real time and provide an independent and direct flow of information to decision-makers.

Roch, would you like to comment on that as well?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

I'm sorry. We are well out of time. Perhaps we can get back to that answer later during the rounds of questioning.

I now need to move to Mr. Green for six minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I want to begin by noting how, when senior management and the deputies come before this committee, and before all committees, it feels a little like being in the hot seat. I want to preface my comments by saying that I'm going to go hard on an issue, but I'm certainly not going hard on a person. I want to be very clear about that. In no way is this going to be a personal line of questioning, because when we talk about these conversations, they're often very difficult for people to explore and I want to be able to unpack it in a thoughtful way.

Ms. Sherman, in your opening remarks you made specific references to anti-racism, diversity and inclusion. Some of these comments have not sat well with me; I'll be very clear. Specifically, you noted, “Communities and networks of diverse public servants have been working to advance equity and inclusion in our organizations.” Yet nowhere in this statement have you acknowledged the fact that there are over 500 Black employees engaging in an unprecedented class action lawsuit, based on the culture—not just now but for the last 50 years—which includes the wrongful failure to promote, the intentional infliction of mental suffering, constructive dismissal, wrongful termination, negligence and, in particular, violations of employment law, human rights law and charter breaches as put forward in their claim.

In your opening remarks, you state that efforts are ongoing but there's still not enough progress. I would agree with that, but when you make the assertion that on January 22 the clerk released “Call to Action on Anti-racism, Equity, and Inclusion in the Federal Public Service”, I'm wondering why we weren't candid about the fact that this is likely in response to the class action lawsuit.

Can we start there? Again, this is about a difficult conversation around anti-Black racism. That's tough to have. It's not personal. It's not about you. It's about the public service and the way this is being presented.

[Janine Sherman]

The question is important, and it is an important conversation, as you said. I think that certainly my reference to the work that has been done is an acknowledgement that people have been working on better equity and inclusion in the public service for many years, a long time. There have been many reports and efforts to identify recommendations and actions that need to be taken. It was meant to acknowledge that work. As the clerk's call to action has pointed out, we have not made the progress that we need to, we have not spent the time looking carefully at our particular processes and systems that do have some level of bias, and we need to understand those.

I'm not in a position, of course, to comment on any cases that are before the courts, and I won't go there. I think that the call to action—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I will. I'm going to interject there. You might not want to, but I will. I'll set aside the compensation, because that would include, perhaps, getting into an area where you don't want to go.

I can't understand how, when the clerk is making the assertion that many organizations are creating anti-racism task forces, advancing dialogue to better understand and address what is transpiring in the workplace, you have an entire subset of your service calling for a Black equity commission. You can appoint somebody as a central coordinating entity to carry out and investigate these challenges.

I can share with you that having this as a piecemeal department-by-department response would be wholly inadequate. There has been a call for equitable representation, as per the employment law. There has been a call for the ability for self-declaration. There has been a call for external reporting mechanisms, your own reports on what we're dealing with today, talking about culture, talking about the fear for people to go along with the higher-ups.

I'm wondering why the clerk and the public service would try to parallel a discussion that has already been framed by some of the most egregious claims against the public service, rather than just work with these public sector workers to help negotiate equitable resolutions for this.

[Janine Sherman]

I am not trying to say that there are no discussions on both levels. My point about the court case is that I'm not in a position to comment on the specifics of that, as it is advancing through the legal system. It will be addressed and worked through. I think we have to realize that that's one thing that is happening. The call to action and our efforts to improve things in the workplace in a real way, based on people's lived experience, and to better understand that lived experience can work in complementarity with that.

This is not to say that one takes over or subsumes the other. We obviously want to have these efforts under way to improve things, to understand what they are in order to improve them, and to keep working with racialized Canadians, including Black communities of federal public servants.

I don't want to have created the impression that we are not interested in addressing these kinds of concerns. These are the things we are looking at when we are trying to explore programs and policies, as I referred to, within our organization's hiring processes. We have examples in some of our northern regional agencies where they are working to actually build a more inclusive approach to hiring indigenous people in the north in order to make sure that we don't have a system that doesn't relate to the cultural reality of their world. So, we are working on things—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you.

I'm sorry, Ms. Sherman. We have gone well over time.

Thank you very much, Mr. Green, for starting that very tough but critical conversation.

We will now move to our five-minute round, and we will start with Mr. Lawrence for five minutes.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you very much.

I appreciate you all appearing. I'm always very impressed by the civil service...and both of you with your candid answers.

I would like to give an opportunity—maybe 30 seconds of my time—to Ms. Sherman if she wants to finish up her answer. I thought it was a very important conversation that Mr. Green and Ms. Sherman were having.

[Janine Sherman]

Thank you very much.

My point in that example was simply to say that we are working at the very grassroots level to try to make sure that there are culturally appropriate and sensitive processes and systems within the federal public service. That's just one small example. All departments, by virtue of the call to action as well as the commitments the clerk has put out to deputy ministers and other GIC appointees, look very closely at how we do our work and how we improve it in an inclusive way that will help to build a much better foundation where all voices and perspectives can be respected.

Thank you for that time.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you very much for that important conversation.

I'm going to switch directions here. I want to talk a little bit about modernization going forward. I think we've litigated the Phoenix pay issue to a great extent.

I particularly appreciate, Mr. Wallace, your candour and your honest answer. That's how we change things.

Looking at the world in a broader scope, I see a number of issues, whether it be the CRA talking to HRSDC, the cyber-breaches that happened at the CRA, or the fact that Canada lags behind the European Union, Australia and the United States in money spent on R and D relative to GDP. These are challenges, and I believe that the next 10 to 20 years will be dominated by those countries that can get ahead and modernize.

Mr. Wallace, as I said, you've been spectacularly honest and candid, but perhaps you can put a forward-looking lens on how Canada, particularly the government, can capture the future by leading—not just fixing, but leading—in modernization and IT development.

[Peter Wallace]

It's an absolutely great question, and I think it's just a massive obsession.

Unfortunately, I almost always start off with a negative. My colleagues are tired and annoyed by this, but we do have to acknowledge that we're in a pretty big hole from the lack of some fundamental investments in some of our income support, immigration and other systems.

You know, I'm 60-odd years old, and we have code that's as old as I am. Frankly, we have to spend some time making sure that it's stabilized, that it has servers that will continue to function, that the mainframes are still alive and stuff like that. That's necessary, difficult, but absolutely critical work in the public entry. We have to make sure that the stuff actually works and doesn't blow up. That's job one.

Job two is to figure out what our clients need, what the policies are that serve our clients—that is, citizens—and then to understand how we bridge from that mainframe, ancient COBOL code—or other words—into a more modern, responsive, digital and agile mechanism.

That involves two parts. First of all, there's a profound need for technical competencies. We need to understand how software and servers work; we need to understand and be a participant in that market, and we need to understand and acquire the competencies. We also need to understand fundamentally how Canadians want to interface with the government and how they will use digital tools to interface with us. We need to bring those things together. That's exactly what we're trying to do right now, and it's an incredibly interesting set of pieces.

I'll add one other point, which I think is fundamental. Governments are a big part of the economy. They generate a tremendous amount of information, and that information has value, both positive and negative. Appropriate, solid, open government and open data strategies or data management strategies at the Government of Canada level will be a significant improvement in terms of our competitiveness.

I'll add one other piece—because I have been a provincial deputy of finance and provincial clerk—which is that integration at a PT level is a really interesting but non-trivial challenge.

I recommend all of these things as fundamental ways to make sure that we enhance the competitiveness going forward.

I very much appreciate the “forward-looking lens”. I share your view that it's critical.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you.

Do I have any time, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

You still have 30 seconds.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Very quickly, then, what can I do as a member of Parliament or what could the government do to help you with your work? There's so much I'd love to unpack there, but what are the barriers you're facing from government? What can we do to help you modernize the civil service?

[Peter Wallace]

It's not just a question of modernizing the civil service. Fundamentally, we need to start from what it is from a citizen perspective—“How do we design from a citizen perspective?”—and make sure that we always include that lens. From a policy, implementation, impact and digital or information technology perspective, as long as we start with the user, we'll be on a good track.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much.

We will now move on to Mr. Blois for five minutes.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for their testimony and for taking the opportunity to be here with us today.

Mr. Wallace spoke about not grudgingly accepting, but accepting in full terms some of the Auditor General's reports. Particularly, one of those elements was IT and the renewal of infrastructure that's needed for our civil service to be able to do its work in the 21st century and certainly in 2021.

I'm curious as to whether the work that was started by our public service to respond to the calls by the Auditor General was helpful in the midst of the pandemic, when we were asking a lot of our civil servants to work from home. Can you expand on some of the challenges that happen during the pandemic as we try to continue that important work but without having as many people gathered in one place in our downtown buildings?

[Peter Wallace]

I'll take an initial stab at this and then perhaps turn to Roch or Janine if they have additional pieces.

A year ago, the idea that we would not be in the office was just an impossibility. Frankly, 10 or 11 months ago it was still pretty frightening. We were scrambling to pressure Bell to give us more call lines and a variety of things like that. Our colleagues at Shared Services Canada were able to upgrade our laptops, find us bandwidth, find access to the Cloud and roll out Microsoft 365 as a fundamental tool for us on just an amazingly rapid basis. That was along with the supports and other aspects to make that real.

It basically shows that with some focus and capacity, we can do things in a very, very different way. That's kind of the critical thing that's allowed colleague departments to do things like deliver Service Canada benefits remotely and a variety of other pieces. We're now in a position where...and this matters in terms of diversity and inclusion. It matters fundamentally in terms of the access to technical talent. It matters fundamentally in terms of our ability to understand the needs of Canadians, and not just driven from a national capital region office tower. We're now in a much, much better place. I don't want to take advantage of the tragedy of Phoenix, and I certainly don't want to take advantage of the ongoing tragedy of the pandemic, but frankly, we have shown a great deal more flexibility and focus than I would have thought possible.

I think as we begin to absorb some of these lessons, we will realize that our ability to serve Canadians where they are, our ability to work with Canadians where they are, and our ability to employ Canadians where they live will just be enormously important. I think it's quite hopeful going forward. I don't think this will be an easy journey. I think we do need to understand and be thoughtful. Frankly, though, I think there are some really profound opportunities. I look forward to much, much stronger representation and a public service that ultimately is more representative of the diversity of Canadians, geographically and in almost every other respect.

Frankly, one of the challenges we had—

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Wallace, I'm sorry. I have only so much time. You're very eloquent, but I do want to get a few more in.

I have to say that I appreciate where your answer was going. As an MP in a rural area, the idea that we can have some of these important jobs.... You mentioned diversity on the basis of a whole lot of different factors. Indeed, I think having the opportunity for rural Canadians to take advantage of some of these opportunities that are available through the Government of Canada is important. It can lead to opportunities even in our greening of government strategy on reducing emissions.

You talked about culture. Of course, Mr. Green had certainly very important questions around aspects of marginalized Canadians. I want to talk about culture around new public management and how we incentivize the public sector to not be so risk-averse but to be, as you mentioned, citizen-focused and not necessarily process-focused.

Can you speak to some of the initiatives that perhaps your department has taken on to incentivize the private sector, maybe under the strategy of the new public management that has certainly emerged in the last couple of decades?

[Peter Wallace]

That is a really interesting and great question. Fundamentally, what public servants need to do, and this goes back to my answer to Mr. Lawrence, is spend a lot more time understanding what the impacts of our programs are—where they have an impact on Canadians regionally, diverse communities, all of those other pieces—and build back and understand what that is.

Whether we call it new public management or all sorts of different names, or even if we go back to earlier concepts like management by results, it is actually just fundamentally looking at the outcomes and then working backwards from the intended policy outcome in conjunction with the policies and fiscal directions of the government of the day. That has to be accompanied with a little bit of fearless advice as well.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Madam Chair, I think that's my time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Yes. Thank you so much, Mr. Blois. I appreciate your keeping track of that.

We will now go to our two-and-a-half-minute round.

Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, please go ahead.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm going to go back to the catastrophic file I touched on earlier, the infamous Phoenix system.

I reiterate what my colleague Mr. Green said: the slightly more sensitive questions we're asking today aren't personal attacks on you. However, I can't hide the fact that I'm outraged by the injustices that thousands of public servants are suffering because of the incompetence of the people who were responsible for managing the Phoenix pay system.

We don't want to know the names of the individuals involved. We simply want to know whether someone put on their leadership hat and decided that enough was enough, that the people on the job didn't have the necessary competencies and needed to be moved to another department, and that we needed to find the people who had the necessary competencies to solve the problem and assign them the job.

In any other organization, if the accountant doesn't do their job properly and can't pay on time, they'll be replaced. From what we see, that isn't the case in the government. No one can provide us with any data or tell us whether there have been personnel changes to try to fix the problem. There seems to be a culture of impunity right now. No one is being punished or facing any consequences for this situation.

We just want to know what personnel changes have been made to fix the problem.

[Peter Wallace]

I appreciate the question, and I do think it's fundamental.

I have an ongoing and strong interest in the accountability file, so I don't want to dodge the question.

I can speak only to the period in which I have had personal experience, which is after 2018, and my experience in the Government of Canada. Our colleagues in the responsible department, which is Public Services and Procurement Canada, have brought in new executives—including, I believe, Ms. Sherman—at the associate or deputy minister level, who have driven change. I've certainly chaired and co-chaired the committees to make sure that we have excellent disability information and new standards. We have laid out new processes and a variety of other things to make sure that we are both reducing the error rate and lowering [Technical difficulty—Editor] and making progress on the backlog, which remains unacceptable and too high. We're continuing to make progress on those things, and there has been a huge emphasis on ensuring that the appropriate level of executive authority, but also just general talent and capacity, including in Miramichi, is available and operationally in place.

The other piece is that we have put in place for our deputy ministers' performance contracts—and we do monitor and measure this—the need for them to provide timely information into the pay centre and a variety of other pieces, so we've incentivized this at the highest level on a going-forward basis. Those reforms have not been perfect, but they've been by and large successful in terms of improving the performance.

A fundamental error that was made earlier was that there was no engagement with bargaining agents. There continues to be significant engagement on Phoenix and also, on a going-forward basis, on Next Generation with bargaining agents and our union representative—