Public Accounts Committee on March 7th, 2024

[Arianne Reza]

Officials who were looking at the contracting did confirm with Indigenous Services Canada that they were a member in good standing in the indigenous business directory. That being said, we did ask them to carry out further audits as more and more information came to light, and an audit is under way with colleagues at Indigenous Services Canada.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Did anyone contact Alderville First Nation to verify that Mr. Yeo is a member of that community?

[Arianne Reza]

I believe that this is under way with Indigenous Services Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. That is your time.

Next up we have Mr. Genuis.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll just pick up on the issue of indigenous procurement.

Dalian's identity as an indigenous company as part of the set-aside for indigenous procurement is obviously absurd and a manipulation of the intention of the policy. The intention of the policy, presumably, is to give opportunities to indigenous Canadians to work in jobs that flow from government procurement. However, this was a company that simply received contracts and subcontracted them, taking a cut along the way. There were no opportunities created for indigenous people as a result of this.

You mentioned a registry or a list of indigenous companies that are used when considering this 5% set-aside. What percentage of those companies actually create jobs for indigenous people in Canada?

[Arianne Reza]

I actually don't have that information. I will refer the question to Indigenous Services Canada. There are about 2,600 companies on that list in various commodity areas.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I think we need to get further information at this committee or elsewhere about what extent those companies should really qualify given the objective of the policy to create opportunities for indigenous Canadians.

Ms. Reza, I want to ask you about staff augmentation. You spoke at the government operations committee about this. You said, “Traditionally, staff augmentation works in a similar manner, whereby you bring in a temp agency and it takes on the burden of finding the resources.” You said, “There are many shops that do this across the system, so there are about 635 IT firms that provide staff augmentation services.”

Canadians have become familiar with three companies—Coradix, Dalian and GC Strategies—that receive work and subcontract, often without providing any actual value themselves. However, this is an incredible number. We're not just talking about three companies; there are 635 companies. Why is this practice of multi-level subcontracting so common that there are 635 different companies doing it?

[Arianne Reza]

First off, there are 635 companies that provide task-based IT professional services. In terms of why there are so many, the Government of Canada has various priorities that need to be filled by niche skill sets of IT professionals.

In terms of your question about—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm sorry. I just want to clarify.

These are folks doing staff augmentation, which you defined before the government operations committee not as doing the actual IT work, but as doing the work of finding people who can do the work. Why can't the Government of Canada just maintain the database of external resources that have this expertise instead of going to 635 different companies that would act as middlemen? Why can't we just keep a registry of those capable of doing the work to perform specific tasks?

[Arianne Reza]

I received a similar question recently, and I think the traditional model, if you permit, is like having a general contractor when you need to find somebody with a specific skill—an electrician or a certified plumber. Now what is being proposed is that we don't use that skill set, which has been very helpful to us in the past to find resources when we need to bring them in, regardless of whether it's IT or other staff augmentation, but have a dataset where we can type in and say that we need five IT engineers, five computer science graduates, etc. We're taking that on. We're looking at various elements, and I believe we have a module that has the potential for us to do that. Again, it's going to require a lot of administration now that—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I just want to clarify the question.

I think the idea of having someone who has a general contracting function, someone who oversees the process of finding those external resources as necessary.... I mean, someone needs to be in charge of the project. I just don't understand why that general contracting function can't be a public servant, why there can't be someone inside of government who has that skill set of knowing where these different resources are and is able to consult the appropriate database.

I want to ask you specifically how many of these 635 middleman companies have two employees or fewer.

[Arianne Reza]

I believe that is an outstanding question we're working on. The list is publicly available and all the companies are on it, but we're trying to work to provide the breakdown.

Some of them are very large companies that are well known. Some of them are very small—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Okay. Just to clarify, you are in the process of providing to this committee the details of how many employees each of those 635 companies has. When can we expect that information?

[Arianne Reza]

I'm not sure if it's for this committee or OGGO, but I know we're looking at it.

I'm just looking over here. Do we have further information?

[Dominic Laporte]

I don't think we have further information to share right now. I would just be careful—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Just to clarify, we would like that information at this committee as well, if you can provide it, please. Do you agree to do that?

[Dominic Laporte]

Yes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you.

I'm sorry. Were you finished with your response to that question?

[Dominic Laporte]

No, that's fine.

I just wanted to say that we have to be careful not to paint all suppliers with the same brush as these three companies. Some of them are—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

But they're all doing the staff augmentation work of subcontracting—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Genuis, your time is up.

Mr. Laporte, if you'd like to finish your answer briefly, because the time has elapsed, go ahead.

[Dominic Laporte]

I'd say we have three companies that have been under the radar. We have to be careful, because we have legitimate suppliers that truly provide added value to the Government of Canada. I would be careful, before we have all the evidence.

Basically, it's systemic. Don't paint all suppliers with the same brush. I think we just have to be mindful of that.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Next is Mrs. Shanahan.

You have the floor for five minutes, please

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

I, too, thank the witnesses for being here. We've had occasion to expect we'd be questioning these witnesses, and that didn't happen in the past. It was abruptly cancelled, so it's good to see the witnesses here.

Continuing on that line, it's a reminder, I think, to all colleagues that in this committee, we're not here to micromanage.

It's interesting to hear that my Conservative colleague supports us hiring more, qualified public servants. I hope that continues to be the case and they will not be under the fear of being fired abruptly at any future time because somebody thinks it's a good move to make. As we have seen, it has long-term consequences to the professionalism, expertise and capacity of the public service to effectively carry out and monitor the work being done.

I am glad to see the deputy minister here, because I want to emphasize that it is with deputy ministers that this committee conducts its work. In the interest of contrast, I would like to ask what role the minister or minister's office plays in selecting bidders.

[Arianne Reza]

There's zero role in terms of what the minister does.

Procurement, from a PSPC perspective, is fair, open and transparent, and there is a very clear delineation between what is done in the public service and what is discussed with the minister. The minister is briefed on outcomes of procurement, with a focus on the fairness and transparency of various elements and on things that we're doing to improve procurement.

We are very much interested in procurement modernization. He has been briefed on various elements of that, which has included having discussions on what we can do for better vendor performance management and better integrity, how we do price substantiation and what the risk mitigation controls are. Those are appropriate roles for the Minister of Public Works. There are various elements here, and as I pointed out earlier, there's been a lot of delegation of responsibilities to ensure that there's no political interference.

If I... Thank you.