House of Commons Hansard #81 of the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was industry.

Topics

InfrastructureOral Questions

Noon

Liberal

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Liberal Alexandra Mendes

The hon. member for Cloverdale—Langley City.

Rail TransportationOral Questions

Noon

Liberal

John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC

Madam Speaker, our country's rail transportation system connects communities and keeps our supply chains running. However, accidents still happen that unfortunately result in injuries and even fatalities.

Can the Minister of Transport update the House on what our government is doing to protect Canadians and keep our rail system safe?

Rail TransportationOral Questions

Noon

Mississauga Centre Ontario

Liberal

Omar Alghabra LiberalMinister of Transport

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his advocacy.

Our government is working to ensure that Canada's rail transportation system remains one of the safest in the world. This morning, I announced that we are investing $24 million for 147 projects across the country under our rail safety improvement program. This is in addition to the $107 million we have invested since 2017.

I want to assure my hon. colleague and all Canadians that we will keep taking action to keep our rail system safe.

InfrastructureOral Questions

Noon

NDP

Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC

Madam Speaker, last month hurricane-force winds destroyed large sections of the power grids in Ontario and Quebec, and floods inundated the West Point First Nation in the Northwest Territories and the Peguis First Nation in Manitoba. A report from The Globe and Mail showed that even more Canadian communities are at serious risk of flooding.

Extreme weather is costing Canada more than $5 billion every year, and that will only increase. When will Ottawa fund significant proactive measures to protect our communities instead of just helping them clean up?

InfrastructureOral Questions

12:05 p.m.

Ottawa Centre Ontario

Liberal

Yasir Naqvi LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Emergency Preparedness

Madam Speaker, I can tell the member opposite that the storm impacted my community right here in Ottawa. We need to invest in building resiliency in our infrastructure. That is why there is an over $3-billion mitigation and adaptation fund available.

We will continue to work with our respective local communities so that planning can take place and we can invest in building more resilient infrastructure to deal with the drastic impacts of climate change.

Government Response to PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

12:05 p.m.

Winnipeg North Manitoba

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8)(a), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to one petition. This return will be tabled in an electronic format.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:05 p.m.

Conservative

Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB

moved that the first report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, presented on Tuesday, February 8, 2022, be concurred in.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to move concurrence on the first report of the Standing Committee of Public Accounts presented to the House on Tuesday, February 8.

The Standing Committee on Public Accounts is probably known as one of the most powerful committees of the House of Commons. It has, I would say, far more influence than many others. It is one of the very few committees where deputy ministers are obliged to appear in order to respond to questions from members of Parliament, but also to explain why there are often shortcomings in reports from the Auditor General. The report I am interested in debating today is “Report 1, Procuring Complex Information Technology Solutions of the 2021 Reports of the Auditor General of Canada”.

This particular report was last tabled in the 43rd Parliament's second session, in June 2021. I had the distinct privilege of briefly being elected chair of the public accounts committee, the standing committee of the House of Commons, late last year or the beginning of this year.

What I want to do, as I have done in past concurrence reports, is explain to constituents back home why we are debating this particular report. It comes down to the recommendations found therein and that is where I want to go. This report has eight recommendations in it, and I want to go over them so the constituents back home can understand why this is important.

I was trying to download the government's response to the report, but, as with much in the current government, it told me the link was broken and not working so I actually could not get it. It is typical. I tried twice on two different devices to get the contents of the response, so I am going to focus on the recommendations.

Often, I have constituents who come to my office and are worried about government spending. They are worried about excess spending and deficits and debt spending that is going on in our country. We saw, during question period, lots of questions about the state of the country's finances. We all remember that, back in 2015, it was the current Liberal government that promised itsy-bitsy, little tiny $10-billion deficits, and no more, to be over by 2019. It is 2022 now and we have massive, structural, permanent deficits.

Where am I going with this? I tell constituents that waste in government starts with millions: not billions. It starts with the little things. It starts with things from contract splitting to sole-sourcing to individuals likely close to the government or close to particular public officials in the bureaucracies, and then they have a few hundred thousand dollars here and a few hundred thousand dollars there. That turns into millions of dollars. Then there are delays. There are dry-dock fees, perhaps with the national shipbuilding strategy, that amount to hundreds of millions of dollars and there is sometimes no construction going on. That is a major source of concern to constituents. They think, “Just take this large program of billions and billions of dollars and then cut that.” I say that is not how government works.

The government, in its sixth year, with this current budget 2022, will be a half a trillion-dollar operation. Never in my lifetime did I think this would happen. I want to give some credit to the Auditor General. I remember being a much younger man 20 years ago. The Speaker will remember this, because it was important to a particular province. We all remember the sponsorship scandal. The sponsorship scandal and the 1995 referendum happened in my formative years and were how I got interested in politics. I still have a copy of the Auditor General's report and her findings on my bookcase. It is not in mint condition. It is well flipped through and has lots of annotations in it. Those were millions of dollars of wasted, corruptly spent monies that the Auditor General found and then reported on.

I am not saying that this report has the same impact, but it talks about millions of dollars being wasted, the opportunities for corruption to exist within government, and how we deal with it as parliamentarians. This place is supposed to provide accountability and oversight in order to ensure that the public purse is spent wisely. It is to ensure that we spend money wisely. It is a challenge function, as a board of directors would have with the executive in a company, where the executive here is the cabinet that typically sits in the front bench to the right of the Speaker. That is the importance of this place. It is to make sure we catch those millions before they become billions.

Let me get to the recommendations of the report. Recommendation no. 1:

That the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Public Services and Procurement Canada, and Shared Services Canada provide the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts with reports outlining what progress has been made with regard to developing more comprehensive guidance and training for employees to improve their understanding of agile procurement and how to apply collaborative methods.... Public Services and Procurement Canada should also provide a final report.

That is a lot of technical language right there. Very essentially, to constituents back home, it is better training for the Public Service and also better training, as we saw again for matters coming out of Question Period, on what the rules of the Treasury Board Secretariat are on things like splitting contracts in two so they fall under $25,000. It is as big an issue in my province, I suspect, as it is in the Speaker's province. These types of issues will come up where civil servants, at the closest level, are dealing with persons trying to seek grants or organizations trying to seek grants or trying to get a contract in very quickly, perhaps to procure a service or construction material or do quick renovations. The splitting of contracts is not supposed to happen. It is supposed to be an open bid so that the taxpayers can get the best absolute price and service: the two should always go together, hand in hand.

Recommendation no. 2:

That...the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, in consultation with Public Services and Procurement Canada and Shared Services Canada, provide the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts with a progress report regarding the assessment of the skills, competencies, and experience that procurement officers need to support agile approaches to complex information technology procurements.

In this space, I think we can all admit that we have a great amount of technology coming into our spaces, and we have a lot of individuals who are now using things like smart phone devices, but we have large tablets and we are doing a lot of work.

I want to make sure my dear colleague, the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola is in the chamber so that I can split my time with him, and he can then continue speaking to the recommendations of the report. I want to make sure that I got it in that I am actually in the chamber so that I could split my time with him.

Recommendation no. 3:

That the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat provide the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts with reports outlining the progress made with regard to ensuring that governance mechanisms are in place to engage senior representatives of concerned departments and agencies for the Next Generation Human Resources and Pay initiative.

Again, it is more training in place. I know the member for Edmonton West would appreciate this, because he is always hassling me in a friendly way about it. I used to work in human resources before being elected to Parliament. I was responsible for things like HR practices and labour policies. I was not directly involved with it, but I worked for the professional association that was responsible for setting things like the code of ethics or the practice guidelines, so I would often work with large committees of professionals who knew what the guidelines should be.

I learned a lot just by sitting at a table for three years with experts in the field: over 6,000 HR professionals in the province of Alberta at the time. It was about things like next generation human resources and pay. Pay is the most basic thing that has to be right in human resources. I see things like the Phoenix pay system, all the travails that have happened since then and all the difficulties in getting it right. If it had just been done right in the first place, all of those problems could have been avoided. I want to just spend a moment on Phoenix. I have a lot of constituents who have been affected by Phoenix, so I am always trying to help them. In fact, my case file manager was “Phoenixed” one month, while she was trying to help constituents. Although hers was a very small amount, others were much larger.

I have been given a signal that I am running out of time, but I do have a Yiddish proverb. The one I want to use at this time is one I have used before. I think it is so relevant. It is, “When you sweep the house, you find everything.”

We have so many reports that are tabled in the House. Some receive recommendations and get a government response, and some do not. Some of these reports have very valuable content and information. This particular one speaks to avoiding millions of dollars of potential waste so it does not turn into billions. We are running a $50 billion-plus deficit. That needs to stop: It needs to be wound down. We need to make sure we pay down the national debt, and it begins with ensuring that we spend money wisely.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:15 p.m.

Winnipeg North Manitoba

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that the Conservatives, once again, want to use their political gamesmanship to prevent good legislation from being passed. Bill C-21 is what we are supposed to be talking about today, but they have reached into their not-so-tricky tricky book and they are saying they want to debate this particular issue.

Why does the member feel that the Conservative Party wants to continue to play games inside the House and prevent the important debate that Canadians want? Bill C-21 is about guns and so forth. Why are the Conservatives trying to avoid that debate?

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:15 p.m.

Conservative

Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, during the Standing Orders debate, the member talked about making Friday a day when any members could rise in this chamber to speak about an issue they care about. I am simply practising what he is preaching.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:15 p.m.

Conservative

Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his ongoing work to make sure that the government is both accountable and responsive.

The use of agile systems to run procurements is something that has long been discussed. Members should be prepared, because I am going to shock them: Sometimes industry cannot read the mind of the government. There are so many things the government can do.

The member did talk about the Phoenix pay issues. Could he maybe just give us an example of how those processes could have been improved through agile processes?

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB

Mr. Speaker, in my experience, having worked for three years for a professional association responsible for this, not the Payroll Association but HR professionals, what people typically do is hire more compensation advisers.

I will admit that, at the time when Phoenix was being rolled out in its first phase, there were not enough compensation advisers, because one wants to work out all the kinks. It is like running an update to something, like an old Microsoft update for Windows 95. There are always errors that are going to happen, so before one makes it live and gives it to everyone, there is a small group of people to test it on. There are Treasury Board documents that show that this test did not happen with the Phoenix pay system. The minister at the time knew that a rollout of phase 2 would pose a disaster for those who would be caught up in the system.

It is an easy thing to do: do all the due diligence at the beginning, even if it means paying more for compensation advisers.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:20 p.m.

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB

Mr. Speaker, I am really quite pleased with the member's endorsement of the fact that, during the Standing Orders debate, I made the suggestion that Friday be a debate day, so I am going to take that as an endorsement of that particular recommendation I was making.

I will go back to the point about the government's legislative agenda, because that is really what we are talking about today, when the opposition moves yet another concurrence motion. Does the Conservative Party have any sense in terms of a commitment to pass Bill C-21, or could we anticipate that there are going to be many speakers on that particular bill? Are the Conservatives prepared to see that bill ultimately pass?

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB

Mr. Speaker, I cannot divine what my House leader is thinking, nor what the members on my side of the House may want to speak on, because I am sure that on Monday, when the government table-dropped this legislation, many of our constituents did not even know such a thing was coming and were not expecting its contents.

Over the summer months, I would hope that we will collect our emails, collect information that we get from constituents who are affected by this, and then reflect that back in the House, so that we can inform the government on what it is actually doing and the impacts it will have on the two million legal firearm owners.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from Calgary Shepard for the amazing job he is doing. I know that he represents his folks well.

He mentioned the Phoenix pay system fiasco. I was just wondering if he can tell us a little more about how that has affected his constituents.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. I have been to his riding. As in his riding, in my riding we have a lot of lawful firearm owners who want to abide by all the rules set out by the government. They understand that it is a privilege, and they have had a lot of difficulty over the last 20 or 30 years with ever-changing rules and expectations that keep being set higher and higher.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:20 p.m.

Bloc

The Acting Speaker Bloc Gabriel Ste-Marie

The hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé on a point of order.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:20 p.m.

Bloc

Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask for the unanimous consent of the House to present the petition I planned to table today.

People from Berthier—Maskinongé made a special trip to Parliament Hill for this reason.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:20 p.m.

Bloc

The Acting Speaker Bloc Gabriel Ste-Marie

All those opposed to the hon. member moving the motion will please say nay.

I hear none. The House has heard the terms of the motion. All those opposed to the motion will please say nay.

The motion is carried.

St. Lawrence River Shoreline ProtectionPetitionsRoutine Proceedings

12:20 p.m.

Bloc

Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Mr. Speaker, I want to start by thanking every single one of my colleagues for their kindness.

I rise today to present petition e-3748 regarding shoreline protection. I sponsored this petition, which is backed by a series of resolutions of support from various municipal councils and RCMs in my riding. I will share these resolutions of support with the minister in the coming days.

This petition, which was signed by 809 people, was started by Mr. Grégoire, of Saint‑Ignace‑de‑Loyola, who travelled to Ottawa with several mayors from Berthier—Maskinongé to deliver it.

The petitioners are calling on the federal government to implement a shoreline protection program for the St. Lawrence River and take the necessary steps to counter erosion and safeguard the environment, for example, by regulating the maximum speed of vessels based on vessel type and by creating and maintaining shoreline protection works.

I remind the House that the federal government cancelled the shoreline protection program in 1997, divesting itself of the responsibility. Since then, municipalities along the river and their residents have been abandoned as erosion has become an ever-growing concern. Our small municipalities along the river should not have to take on the federal government's responsibilities. They are now forced to carry out costly emergency repairs without any support.

In signing this petition, the people of Berthier—Maskinongé are building on the work started by the people of Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, with the support of their member of Parliament.

I am very proud to continue this work. It is high time that the federal government took serious action to protect the St. Laurence River shoreline. We are tired of the government's complacency and neglect.

Bill C-19—Notice of Time AllocationBudget Implementation Act, 2022, No. 1Routine Proceedings

12:25 p.m.

Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas Ontario

Liberal

Filomena Tassi LiberalMinister of Public Services and Procurement

Mr. Speaker, an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the report stage and third reading stage of Bill C-19, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 7, 2022 and other measures.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the respective stages of the said bill.

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House to speak.

Today, I would like to talk about agile procurement processes.

Before I get into the substance of the debate, I would like to say, first of all, that the Auditor General's role is extremely important. Anyone who wants can show appreciation for that role, where time, energy, human ingenuity and, I am sure, robust discussions happen so that Canadians can know that there is a proper value-for-money auditing of government programs and services.

We know that, as a country, we have tremendous difficulty when it comes to procurement. Part of that is institutional and part of it, I would say, has to do with a lack of leadership. It is a difficult task, and the Auditor General comes to this place and tables a report to make the system better. The government accepts the recommendations, but it is not about just saying “We accept them.” It is about whether or not the recommendations get the proper scrutiny or the political pressure to actually see those recommendations implemented.

For anyone in this place to rise and say that we should not be discussing things like agile procurement processes, given the failures of the government to effect the change that is necessary so that we can move past the process issues, I think, is not ideal. We should be talking about these things, because they cost billions of dollars, and when they fail, they fail Canadians.

The Phoenix payroll system, some people might say, was brought in by the previous government. Those processes were brought in, but the ultimate decision to initiate, overruling the advice given by IBM and others to this government that the system was not prepared and that there would be problems with the system, lies fully on the government's decision to start it.

Now, I am not going to relitigate that whole issue, but it does point out a very recent example where Canadians were hurt hard. We had public servants who, in effect, were unable to give the proper information to CRA and who were unable to feed their families or pay their mortgages. If any members in this place try to diminish today's debate on concurrence, that is on them. They are trying to avoid the accountability and the expertise brought forward by the Auditor General.

When the Auditor General says that she is “frustrated” about things like veterans wait-lists, when she and her office have made repetitive recommendations, accepted by government, but have not seen the subsequent improvements, I can understand how frustrating it is. We make recommendations to the government on a regular basis, and it does not accept any of them. The Liberals actually say things like, “We have nothing to learn”, yet they ultimately have to do it, such as the decision on Huawei. It was this side of the House that said that the government needs to stand with our allies in saying “no way” to Huawei, yet the government did not listen.

Now, getting back to agile procurement, for those who are not necessarily familiar with the term, let me bring out what the Auditor General had to say: “We found that the way in which procurement teams collaborated with private sector suppliers on proposed IT solutions needed improvement.” Suppliers reported that they “should regularly confirm that their procurement activities support the business need.” I will sum it up by saying that agile, versus the status quo, is bringing industry in early and developing ongoing understanding and objectives.

This subject reminds of a story right out of a book called The Death of Common Sense by a lawyer from New York. He gave the example of a public servant in New York in the late seventies and early eighties. This person was told he needed to put in place a procurement process for a new bridge. The gentleman at the time said, “Let's bring in industry.” He brought in industry, asked how they would do this and then was very quiet.

Some of the larger firms said they would do the traditional process and laid out what that would be, which was at great cost to the taxpayer and was a very lengthy process. One of the participants said they would not do any of that. They said they would build the bridge by using the natural characteristics of the route, which would save on time and money and get the bridge built much faster. The error the public servant made, after bringing the bridge developer back in a second time, was giving the contract directly to that person.

That bridge was built two years ahead of schedule at half the cost. Why? It is because rather than coming in with a prescriptive approach, wherein the government thought it had the perfect solution, and saying to industry to build a big bridge that would cost millions of dollars, go way over budget and take extra time, someone simply asked, “How would you do this?”

Now, the public servant was ultimately fired. Yes, he was fired, because he did not follow the procurement rules at the time. There is a great saying from the book The Peter Principle: The first to go in any organization are the hyper-competent and the hyper-incompetent. If someone is terrible at what they do, they are gone. If someone is incredible at what they do, they are gone.

That is the example I would like to put forward today because agile procurement takes a very similar approach. For example, instead of government saying what it thinks, we should go to industry, bring them in early and hear the proposals. That is not what the government is doing.

The government has been criticized as being too prescriptive and not necessarily taking advantage of the new technologies. This might shock some Liberal, NDP and Bloc members, but the government is not always a leader when it comes to new technology. We need to talk to the experts, and unfortunately the experts are in industry most of the time. They understand the technology and what it can and cannot do. Unfortunately, even when IBM said to the government not to press start on the Phoenix pay system, the government ignored the advice.

This report is incredibly complex. It is important for us to acknowledge that we need to move from the current procurement process to the agile process laid out in this report. I invite Canadians to go to the Auditor General's website. It is the first report of the latest batch. I would ask Canadians to take a look at it to see the contrasting approach. I really do hope the government will draw upon it.

I am a big believer in Canadian industry. I am a big believer in the notion that we can reinvent government, especially when it comes to procurement processes. However, we need a government that embraces change.

The government, with its so-called deliverology, has not delivered when it comes to procurement. I certainly hope it listens to our Auditor General. It may not listen to me, and that is okay and I understand it. Sometimes I do not want to listen to myself either. However, it is so fundamentally important that we start to address these processes, because procurement is one of the things that hold our government back.

While I am on my feet, I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:35 p.m.

Bloc

The Acting Speaker Bloc Gabriel Ste-Marie

If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes to request a recorded division or that the motion be adopted on division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

The House leader of the official opposition.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:35 p.m.

Conservative

John Brassard Conservative Barrie—Innisfil, ON

Mr. Speaker, I would ask for a recorded division.

Public AccountsCommittees of the HouseRoutine Proceedings

12:35 p.m.

Bloc

The Acting Speaker Bloc Gabriel Ste-Marie

Call in the members.