Evidence of meeting #34 for Public Accounts in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was project.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Karen Hogan  Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Graham Flack  Deputy Minister, Employment and Social Development, Department of Employment and Social Development
Bill Matthews  Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Roch Huppé  Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Paul Glover  President, Shared Services Canada
Benoît Long  Chief Transformation Officer, Department of Employment and Social Development
Joanna Murphy  Director, Office of the Auditor General
Marc Brouillard  Acting Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Stéphanie Poliquin  Assistant Deputy Minister, People Management Systems and Processes Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
Clerk of the Committee  Ms. Angela Crandall

12:40 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, People Management Systems and Processes Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat

Stéphanie Poliquin

That's true. We'll be taking part in tests. As more and more products are ready for testing, the same user can see whether things work.

12:40 p.m.

Bloc

Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC

Thank you.

I'm always concerned that the hierarchy creates siloed structures, which lead to issues in all workplaces.

An action plan should outline the current situation and establish goals, timelines, accountability mechanisms, implementation tools, and so on. All this should also be analyzed. Where is Shared Services Canada's analysis plan and implementation roadmap to respond to recommendation 1.64 in the Auditor General's report? The recommendation is as follows: “Shared Services Canada should begin to use data analytics to improve its ability to identify procurement integrity issues.”

Where's the departmental analysis strategy?

12:40 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kelly Block

I'm sorry, Ms. Vignola. We do not have any time for an answer to that last question. We are well over time. Perhaps we could ask for an answer in writing.

Yes? I see a thumbs-up to that. Thank you very much.

We will now move on to Mr. Green for six minutes.

12:40 p.m.

NDP

Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Thank you.

I'm simply unwilling to kind of accept where we're at as it relates to the gender-based analysis plus, based on the past work that we have done at this committee in a non-partisan way to give clear direction to staff.

Through you, Madam Chair, to Madam Hogan, have you considered in your line of work doing an audit across departments on how they use gender-based analysis plus?

I know that you've have talked about being committed specifically to using it within your own office in your analysis, but I look at this federal contractors program and I reference the recent article in The Globe and Mail on the study conducted by Abacus Data that was commissioned by Senator Colin Deacon in the African Canadian Senate Group, which demonstrated what the feeling is qualitatively speaking—and I think what we're going to find here is quantitatively speaking as well. We have programs like the federal contractors program. Nobody seems to know about it. Nobody seems to be able to provide clear analysis on what the plus is within their analysis of GBA+.

My question for you is, has your department ever considered or are you in the process of considering doing a study and audit on the government that might bring us back a clear picture of exactly where we are when it relates to equity, diversity and inclusion within the public sector?

12:40 p.m.

Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General

Karen Hogan

We absolutely are. I was trying—I have so many little papers around here—to see if I had the one with the list of upcoming audits to give you an exact date. I want to say that it's in 2022 to do exactly that, to look at it in a much more horizontal way and to see the kind of progress and whether or not it's just part of a Treasury Board submission document or if it's really being put into action.

I don't know off the top of my head the date of that. I could provide that information to the committee if you would like. Or it's on our website. We could consult it and let you know.

12:45 p.m.

NDP

Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Yes. I'm keenly interested. I will be watching with interest, given the testimony by members of the different departments here, to see exactly how they're doing the gender-based analysis plus in their submissions to TBS and to see if there is a national standard on how this is being applied through the TBS.

Because what I'm afraid of—and I will put my cards right on the table here—is the language of equity, diversity and inclusion without a commitment to outcomes and actions. That setting aside of partisanship in the conversation around what identity politics look like without actually having a commitment to justice is, in my opinion, actually worse than not even bringing it up and talking about and committing to it in the first place.

I actually think it does a disservice to have policies like the federal contractors program that nobody seems to know about and that we have no idea whether it has been applied. You go on their website. Not one company that is over $1 million and that is supposed to have an equity policy in place and that is supposed to be audited—if they're not audited, compliance says that they will not get further business—is on that list, not one company. I can't for the life of me imagine that there's 100% compliance with contracts over a million dollars, and there have been hundreds of billions of dollars put out during COVID without any real tracking of where it's landing.

What I want to do in this remaining part of this section is allow the different members from the different departments to maybe speak a bit about how they are actually implementing towards outcomes, not just gender-based analysis that talks about having men and women being equal, but the plus side as identified by this committee in our own equity policies.

12:45 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services

Bill Matthews

Madam Chair, maybe I can start with a quick answer.

In terms of the federal contractors program, from a procurement perspective—the member mentioned the size requirement for the companies—bidders do have to certify that they're in compliance. As was mentioned earlier, Labour has the responsibility to monitor that, so I think that's being taken up offline.

From a GBA+ perspective on procurement, there were dollars announced in budget 2021, but there are initiatives under way to increase the diversity of the bidders and suppliers who are winning government contracts. One of the things you will see coming, as I've mentioned, is our e-procurement CanadaBuys. Gathering data is key to this. We are undertaking steps to gather more data so that we can understand who is bidding on federal government contracts and who is winning—you can't win without a bid, obviously—to allow us to better parse that data.

So I would just suggest that we keep a close eye on that space. There's more coming on that front.

12:45 p.m.

NDP

Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Mr. Flack...?

12:45 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Employment and Social Development, Department of Employment and Social Development

Graham Flack

Our focus, obviously, is on the design of the programs. The large procurement is done by PSPC. I want to assure you that in the design of the BDM program, all of the elements of the plus are fully integrated in what we do, because the programs are designed to serve all Canadians. As the Auditor General identified in the previous audit of the CERB, we did take into consideration those factors as we were designing that very CERB program. Certainly for the—

12:45 p.m.

NDP

Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON

Mr. Glover...?

My apologies. I have limited time here.

12:45 p.m.

President, Shared Services Canada

Paul Glover

Very quickly, for all of our procurements, we have been engaging with industry to get better information. We have been querying them on Black-led businesses, visible minorities and women. We've looked at that. We've asked them to report to us so that we can engage them. We've made specific efforts to launch pilot projects to reach out to small and medium-sized enterprises so that they are better able to understand the opportunities to work with government and to engage with us.

We are also trying to improve our dataset so that we can report better, have more consistent data and report back better on what we have been doing.

12:45 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kelly Block

Thank you very much, Mr. Green.

We will now go to our last round of questioning. This is a five-minute round, starting with Mr. Lawrence.

12:45 p.m.

Conservative

Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON

Actually, Madam Chair, I will give my time to the fabulous Mr. Webber.

May 27th, 2021 / 12:45 p.m.

Conservative

Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Lawrence.

Thank you, everyone.

I apologize if these questions were already asked. My Internet is quite shaky here today. It dropped a couple of times.

Madam Hogan, you noted that other jurisdictions, such as the U.S. and the U.K., provided their employees with more comprehensive guidance when rolling out their new agile approaches in procurement. How do you know this? Is it part of the scope of your audit to look at other jurisdictions?

12:50 p.m.

Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General

Karen Hogan

When we can, we always try to compare and discuss with other jurisdictions or other areas across the government.

If the member would like, I could ask Joanna if she perhaps wants to elaborate on exactly how we went about doing that.

12:50 p.m.

Conservative

Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB

I would be interested in that. Thank you.

12:50 p.m.

Director, Office of the Auditor General

Joanna Murphy

Yes, it's exactly as the Auditor General said. We like to look at leaders in this space and see what they are doing. As mentioned in paragraph 1.45, we did look at, for example, the State of California. They had introduced agile processes in their technology procurement. That's one example. We also talked to individuals within the U.K. Cabinet Office and to a few other states, such as Florida, which we didn't mention here.

It's in our interest to look at and see what others are doing so that Canada can learn from that.

12:50 p.m.

Conservative

Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB

And they're very willing to share, of course, their knowledge?

12:50 p.m.

Director, Office of the Auditor General

Joanna Murphy

Yes, they are.

12:50 p.m.

Conservative

Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB

Great.

I guess I will ask Mr. Matthews, Mr. Glover and others that question. What are you doing to reach out to other jurisdictions around the world to gain knowledge and perhaps better improve your systems?

12:50 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services

Bill Matthews

We have a few other countries that we regularly partner with. The U.S. and the U.K. are two of the most common. We are now looking at other jurisdictions, as we look to augment our training and our documentation, to see if there are things we can borrow from to better improve that. I think with the creation of the centre of expertise as well as the playbook, yes, we have more to do, but I believe we're well under way.

12:50 p.m.

President, Shared Services Canada

Paul Glover

Madam Chair, we have been talking to the U.S. and the U.K., but more recently we find that our interventions and our outreach are more successful when we are more targeted. We've actually gone, for example, on NextGen, to states and provinces that have reformed their pay systems. On that expert advisory committee on NextGen that I spoke about earlier, we have members from private companies too, meaning private companies in Canada. We have a province and we are looking to engage a number of leaders from the U.S. at the state level who have made the transition.

On agile governance, more broadly through DM Core we were recently talking to Australia and New Zealand on their experiences. Rather than the broad generalities, which in the early days were very helpful, we're now microtargeted on projects, on the nature of them and on who has been best in class on those. They are more than happy to come and share their experiences with us. We have found that very helpful.

We also work a lot with Gartner, and I know people are curious about that. They really take market intelligence globally, and they can help you with benchmarking and point you to the market leaders, in what they call their magic quadrant, who you should be engaging with, or who, with their global practice, they've seen be very successful. We also employ them to help point us in the right direction.

12:50 p.m.

Conservative

Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB

It's excellent to hear that you are doing that.

Mr. Berthold has a quick question.

Go ahead, Luc.

12:50 p.m.

Conservative

Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC

Thank you, Mr. Webber.

I have one last question.

As we've seen, the processes are very long. However, from the sound of it, things are moving in the right direction. I want to know whether the agile process, the various services, the different meetings or the deputy ministers core services committee, which was briefly mentioned, all constitute measures to help us adapt projects to new realities.

It should be noted that things are changing quickly. For example, from now on, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of people may be working remotely for longer. As a result, the solution considered last year may no longer be the solution for next year.

Mr. Glover, how is your ability to stop the study of a solution or to change the solution being put to the test by the current situation? A drastic and very strong change is happening right now. Will we be required to fulfill any contracts initiated, even if they're no longer useful?

12:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kelly Block

I'm very sorry, Mr. Berthold, but we are well over time and you have not left any time for an answer unless it's a very short answer. Perhaps you could ask—