Public Accounts Committee on Dec. 14th, 2023

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That's not a point of order, Mrs. Shanahan, but it's an intriguing question.

I'll turn it back to Mr. McCauley.

You have two minutes and 40 seconds left.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Are there concerns about PwC linked to this very important project?

Again, how did Deloitte get involved when it was banned from bidding on the ArriveCAN, because of how it messed up the assessment and revenue management initiative?

[Arianne Reza]

Again, I want to confirm and clarify that Deloitte was not banned from any work. We have a vendor performance management policy. It was not banned from any work—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Who is lying, then? We heard very clearly at the operations committee—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. McCauley, I'm going to ask you to tone down the language. We have witnesses here.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I didn't hear a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

No. You're hearing it from me, Mr. McCauley.

Mr. McCauley, I have the floor, not you.

We have witnesses here. I don't want allegations of anyone lying. We're getting some good testimony.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I will rephrase it, if you'll allow me.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

That is what I am asking.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Who is not providing fulsome information, then? We heard very clearly in testimony—and I can send you the blues, if you wish, from the operations committee—that GC Strategies was given a sole-source contract, because the other company considered Deloitte was put in the penalty box, and not allowed to bid. This was right from CBSA.

The gentleman with CBSA is now managing director of PwC, which has its hooks into the government on this program. We have Deloitte, which got bumped from bidding on a project by CBSA, that has its hooks in the government for this program.

Do you understand my concern?

[Arianne Reza]

Yes, I actually do understand your concern, because obviously there's an ecosystem of vendors and government out there. PwC and Deloitte—all the ones in the BDM—have competed for the work.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Are you aware of our concerns?

Do you see the circle here of all these people involved?

[Arianne Reza]

As I noted, there's an ecosystem.

Let me go back to the CBSA perspective. We don't know the penalty box. We've checked our vendor performance. We have nothing that would indicate that Deloitte is in there. That's to the first question.

As it relates to PwC, this contract has been in place, I believe, since 2019. It was competitively led. There was no direct involvement or nexus.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Do the departments not talk? Do you not watch what comes out of OGGO? Does your staff not watch what comes out of the operations committee when we're talking about IT issues?

That's open to anyone here. There were very big allegations made.

[Arianne Reza]

Thank you very much.

On that observation, I'd like to note that we have been taking a very active, aggressive stance in terms of our procurement of IT consulting.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Could you maybe get back to the committee about Deloitte? Could you follow up with CBSA and let the committee know why they made those comments about Deloitte?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I see that as an affirmative answer, yes.

Thank you very much. That is your time, Mr. McCauley.

We'll look for that response as best you can.... We appreciate it.

We are turning now to our last member.

Mrs. Shanahan, you have the floor for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I thank you for intervening earlier, because I would like to remind those watching this committee that this is the public accounts committee; it's not government operations. Mr. McCauley knows that, being the chair of the government operations committee.

I would like to give this opportunity now to Ms. Reza, if there's any further clarification she would like to make. I think Ms. Luelo wanted to intervene there as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Luelo, why don't you begin, if that's all right?

[Catherine Luelo]

Yes. Thank you.

My point may not be relevant, but given that we've talked a lot about contracting and outsourcing in firms, there are a couple things I'd like to leave you with, given I'm moving out of the public service.

One is that there is no world where we're going to do this modernization without using third party help—we just will not. The volume of work, the labour intensity that it requires, and the fact, which was well pointed out, that we have difficulty bringing people into government with speed are all going to play into our using third party firms.

We've launched a digital talent strategy this year to attract.... We have an indigenous apprenticeship program that we're launching. There are some leading things that are going on in government. That's thing one.

Thing two is that I think in every firm I've ever worked in, I've fired every one of the firms, because they've not performed on a specific project. You name the firm—IBM, Deloitte, Accenture, EY.

In order for large organizations to maintain integrity of competitiveness and to get the best talent available, you need to be able to take the lessons from those bad projects, apply them into the new projects, make sure there are consequences in contracts—which I believe our procurement team does—then move on and demand better work for them. Having bad feelings around firms, because they have failed.... By the way, the Government of Canada is the consistency in all of these relationships, so we also need to put a mirror on ourselves in terms of how we work with partners.

I just wanted to make sure I shared that whole perspective. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that.

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

Thank you very much.

I think that shows the importance of the balance between the private and public sector.

At the same time, I remember sitting in this committee in 2015-16 looking at the Phoenix report from the Auditor General, which talked about the failings of the Phoenix program at that point.

We heard from the current Leader of the Opposition, who was sitting in that committee—who had been, I believe, the ESDC minister in the previous Harper government—that the firing of 700 public servants, who were experts in the HR systems in their field, was a savings. That was a savings to the implementation of the Phoenix system. That was what we heard then, and of course we see the results today.

I understand that we have continued to work—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I'll intervene to repay the favour.

I was actually at that meeting, and I will note that those terminations happened after the Liberal government took over.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That's not a point of order, Mr. McCauley. Thank you very much.

Mrs. Shanahan, you have about a minute and 30 seconds left.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Dealing with current day, we have the benefits modernization program going on at this time. Is the BDM going to be another Phoenix scenario? How can we ensure the issues plaguing the public service pay system are not repeated in the benefits delivery modernization?

Mr. Groen.

[Cliff Groen]

Certainly, we have derived and are continuing to derive lessons learned from what was experienced with Phoenix, and we have reviewed the different reports that have been prepared.

I'll reiterate a couple of the key elements.

First, we recognize that the success or failure of the BDM does not solely rest on ESDC. It is a cross-Government of Canada responsibility, which is why we put in strengthened governance in which deputy minister colleagues participate on a monthly basis and in which we review the status of the program to make sure that it remains on track.

Second is dedicated senior-level leadership. I'm an associate deputy minister, and my sole remit is accountability for the benefits delivery modernization program. I come with decades of experience in delivering government programs. My partner—the technical lead, John Ostrander—comes with over 40 years of experience in leading major transformation technology programs.

Third, we have implemented multiple releases to ensure that, when we go live, we will be successful and that if something happens with the release, we're able to roll back.

The last piece is that we know we will be more efficient once we implement the new programs, but we're not counting ahead of time what the savings and efficiencies might be.