Public Accounts Committee on March 5th, 2024

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

There are 70. I'm sorry. I only heard seven.

[Dany Richard]

I'm sorry. There are 70 departments.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Okay.

What is your role?

[Dany Richard]

As national president, my full-time job is made up of primarily three things.

I go and listen to what my members have to say. What are their issues and what are the problems they are facing?

I interact with senior management to see what's going on and how we can resolve their issues. Generally speaking, this seems to work well. However, at any level of middle management, sometimes there can be issues.

We work with our members, we work with senior management and we work with other unions to collaborate as much as we can together.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

How do you work with senior management to resolve some of the issues, especially if members are fearful of reprisal?

[Dany Richard]

It depends on the department. Generally speaking, we try to have a positive relationship with senior leaders. Overall, if something were to arise as an issue with our members, we know that if we escalate it, generally speaking it will get resolved, the key word there being “generally”.

Sometimes, our members are not willing to risk it. I can speak to an example I've seen.

I've been president since 2016. Our members are sometimes even afraid to call us to let us know what's going on, because they're afraid that we might call the employer and rat them out, which is not our role. When you contact your union, it's confidential. We want to help our members.

If a member raises an issue, we will try to escalate it at the lowest level. Sometimes it's middle management or a lower level, but if we can skip a level and get back to the basics to avoid a grievance or a complaint, that's what we like to do. Ultimately, if it doesn't work, that's when we have to apply some formal recourse.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

What needs to be done to lessen this fear of speaking up? What could we do?

[Dany Richard]

We need better measures to protect whistle-blowers. If only we could see more positive cases of someone speaking up instead of having to sacrifice their career. Also, mental wellness is not good. There's financial instability because they had to change departments.

We need more examples of people who did the right thing and it ended in a favourable situation, but too often—you'll hear this in the media all the time—someone spoke up and their life became a living hell. If you're a bad actor, you're going to try to cover up your tracks, and that's at a cost to our members all too often.

This is even though our members.... Keep in mind that they work with the numbers, and numbers don't lie. When you keep accurate records, those records remain there. Often, our members are in a situation where they're able to provide some evidence as to what they're alleging, but even then, despite that, bad actors can try to cover up their tracks.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

The Auditor General commented on the poor bookkeeping that made determining the exact price of the application impossible. Is this lack of standards something your union is looking into?

[Dany Richard]

It's not our role to look into the lack of standards. Generally speaking, the Financial Administration Act, when it's followed, works very well. Internal control is only good if it's followed across the board.

I don't want to make this point, but we're talking about the CBSA. If you're trying to secure the border and you put border officers all across the border, but once a month there's a free-for-all, it defeats the whole purpose. It's the same thing for financial controls. If you do things willy-nilly and decide when you apply them, when they're in and when they're out, it doesn't work.

Internal controls need to be applied consistently to avoid blunders.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

During the pandemic, almost all of the federal public service was working from home. How do you believe this has impacted the quality of the work completed?

[Dany Richard]

For our members, I can tell you that working remotely is something we're able to do. The majority of our members are working with numbers, spreadsheets and audits. This is something we can do remotely, and I think we've shown for the past two years that it has not only worked well but increased productivity because they're able to really focus in and get the work done.

Don't get me wrong. I think there's value in being in the office every once in a while, but our members have shown the ability to work remotely and get the work done. I would argue they are more productive working from home than they are in the office.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Next we go to Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné for five minutes.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank Dany Richard for being here today.

Mr. Richard, you mentioned a survey you sent out to your members last week.

I would really like you to tell us more about that, without naming any names, obviously. It's important to respect people's anonymity.

[Dany Richard]

Of course.

I am the national president of the Association of Canadian Financial Officers. I don't work at CBSA, but we have members there.

I spoke with my team to find out whether any of our members had concerns they wanted to share with us. I wasn't surprised to hear that the answer was no. I have no doubt that they had concerns, but I think our members are sometimes afraid to communicate with us.

Knowing that I would be appearing before the committee today, my team and I decided to send out an anonymous survey in an effort to gather some information.

I can tell you that I was disappointed to see how little involvement our members had in a transaction of this nature. As we all know, for anything money-related, it's good practice to bring in a financial officer or accountant, not just at the end of the process, but also at the beginning and in the middle of the process. To find out that only 12 of our one thousand members across the three departments were involved is worrisome.

It's worrisome because it means that the importance of financial officers is not recognized. Our job isn't policing. Our job is making sure that taxpayer dollars are being well spent, so it's important to let us do our job.

After we gathered the information, two of our members called me to insist that I not mention their names, precisely because they feared reprisal.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

What have those members reported to you?

[Dany Richard]

Unfortunately, I can't speak to the nature of their involvement, as that would make it possible to identify them.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Okay.

While protecting their identity, can you tell us whether they mentioned professional misconduct at the Canada Border Services Agency?

[Dany Richard]

What I can tell you is that our members tried to do their job and were told there was no time for that.

Again, internal controls were set aside because there was no time to perform them.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Okay.

So those internal controls should have been done while ArriveCAN was being developed.

[Dany Richard]

It was during the development of the application.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Exactly.

My understanding, while still being sufficiently vague but making it possible to understand the situation, is that some people may have raised red flags internally during the application's design.

[Dany Richard]

That's correct.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Okay. That's noteworthy.

How many officers are there at the Public Health Agency of Canada?

[Dany Richard]

Off the top of my head, I would say there are about 50.