Public Accounts Committee on March 31st, 2022

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, I want to get some context here and find out how much is spent on the temporary foreign workers program. Any one of the civil servants is more than welcome to answer this.

What is the total cost—

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Chair, on a point of order, I'm very sorry to interrupt our colleague, and maybe it's just me, but I can hardly hear him.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Is anyone else having difficulty?

I'll suspend for a few seconds.

Please continue, Mr. Lawrence.

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

Thank you.

What was the total cost of the temporary foreign worker program in 2020-21 and can you forecast what it will be for 2022? If you don't have the answer right now, I'll take an undertaking to give this information to the committee.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

I will ask Lori if she has the number for the full amount of money. Otherwise, as you know, it also includes funding for other departments, so I'm not sure we're going to have all of this.

Lori.

[Lori MacDonald, Senior Associate Deputy Minister, Employment and Social Development and Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Yes, we can table for sure the full funding breakdown, but I would add that in budget 2021 we got $49.5 million over three years to support community-based organizations. Then we also got $54.9 million over three years starting in 2021-22 to increase inspections of employers. Of course, we also have our broader departmental budget that we can table along with these numbers.

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

Thank you. I would appreciate that.

Clearly, this is an essential program, but if I do the math quickly, and it's hundreds of millions of dollars and 70,000 employees, we're going to have up to $3,000 or $4,000 per employee that the taxpayer is responsible for, which is a significant amount of money.

We have heard that our agriculture producers were held responsible, as they should be, for not following the regulations that were put in place by the government, but we haven't heard if there has been any discipline for the inspectors or the management. It wasn't just one inspector; it was clearly most if not all of them when we've had failure rates at 80% or 90%.

Were any civil servants or bureaucrats fined, disciplined or demoted?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

I would say the issue that has been faced by the department during that crisis was a systemic one. It was a system that was not working well. It was the fact that we were doubling the number of inspections. We had to double the number of people. We also had to go virtual, and the guides were developed at the last minute.

It's really hard to actually say, “It's this person who made the mistake,” when the person didn't necessarily get the training, and the person who developed the training didn't have the time to develop the training.

We have been like that over the last year. This is really a case—

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

With respect, sir, our producers had the same COVID, and they were held responsible, as they should be, for failures.

You were tagged by the Auditor General halfway through the pandemic, who said that you had to do better. You did worse. Someone needs to be held responsible.

Was anyone in your department, including yourself, paid a bonus during this time?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

I don't have that information here. I was not in the department during that time, so I can tell you that I was not paid a bonus for this work.

The work we have done is about addressing the situation and the accountability in the right way. What we have done is redirect the team to focus their attention on what was key and what we were learning through the crisis.

As you can see, and as we have said today, during the year 2021, people made the progress that they had to make. It's a failure in the context of the pandemic, where we think we're under crisis, where people had to go outside of their comfort zone, where people had to take risks that normally they would not take. It's not a situation where some employees decided not to do their job.

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

Clearly, sir, the Auditor General called for you to improve the verification of the audits that your inspectors were conducting. They got worse. In fact, we're not talking about a 20% or 30% problem. We're talking about an 80% or 90% problem.

Everyone realizes the challenges. We were all underneath COVID-19, but our agriculture producers were held to that standard and were fined, and you're telling me that not one civil servant had any type of responsibility whatsoever for the failures that are fully disclosed in this report, which put our temporary foreign workers at risk.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

With all due respect, as I mentioned before, when the Auditor General advised Parliament of the situation in late 2020, actions were taken in 2021 from the get-go. Actions were taken, but it takes time to build up and to have results with actions. It doesn't happen in a day.

The fact that you have two proposals in the budget means that people were working on this from the get-go. The fact that we already put in place some measures in February, the fact that we opened up those lines, the fact that we worked with the countries and consulates to make sure that the information was shared are all things that prove the department was taking action immediately.

When you look at the results after June—

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

With all respect, sir, they weren't effective.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

They were effective after June. The year 2021 is actually 12 months long. If you look at the results we had with our internal audit, after June you see there is progress. If you look at the results today, for the month of February we were at 95%.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

MP Fragiskatos, you have the floor for five minutes, please.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for appearing.

I want to ask questions from the perspective of looking forward and of what can be done to rectify some of the problems we have been talking about today.

In December 2021, we know that Minister Qualtrough, the minister responsible for ESDC, issued instructions for you, Deputy Minister Tremblay. I want to go through each of those instructions and see where progress currently lies, recognizing that, yes, December 2021 was only a few months ago, but it would still be good to get an update for the committee, to have it on the record.

The first instruction is: “Ensure all staff responsible for inspections have received supplementary training by no later than March 2022.”

Where are we on that?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

It's done. They all received the training.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

The second point is: “Implement renewed guidance to ensure that if ever a worker's health and safety is at risk, necessary action is taken within 24 hours and no later than 48 hours, including the notification of appropriate stakeholders, authorities and jurisdictions.”

Where are we on that?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

It's done. That's what Mary mentioned. We now have a system that allows for actions to be taken when we know there is a risk or potential risk.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Fair enough. I'd like to make sure that it's on the record all in one spot.

The third point is: “Develop a plan to target higher risk areas to reduce backlogs and ensure inspections are timely.”

Where are we on that?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

It's done.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Finally, the fourth point is: “Reach a rate of 80% of inspection files without substantive errors by March 2022, and reach 90% by no later than September 2022.”

Where are we on that?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

We are above 80%. As I mentioned, in February we were at potentially 95%. We hope that it's going to continue, and we are on track for sure to get to 90% by September.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much for that.

I want to delve into and understand the relations between ESDC on the one hand and other levels of government, because clearly other levels of government have jurisdiction here, have a stake here. Can you tell me where we are on that as far as the way forward goes?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

We have agreements, as I mentioned, with a lot of provinces, and we will continue to do that. We also have engaged with people, including provinces, on the issue of accommodations. I think we all share the same objective to make sure it is done appropriately.

The issue that we have continues to be how we coordinate and make sure that we have actions taken in real time. This is something that we're working on. We expect and we hope that by the end of this year we will have a plan to implement on that side.