:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I am pleased to be here today to talk about my two departments' main estimates and reports on plans and priorities for the 2015-16 fiscal year. With me from Public Works and Government Services Canada are the deputy minister, George Da Pont, and the chief financial officer, Alex Lakroni.
From Shared Services Canada I'm joined by the president, Liseanne Forand, and Elizabeth Tromp, the acting senior ADM, corporate services, and chief financial officer.
[Translation]
Both PWGSC and SSC provide essential services to other departments and support our government commitment to creating jobs, growth and economic prosperity.
[English]
For the 2015-16 main estimates, Public Works' net spending is expected to increase by $30.6 million over the previous year. This is primarily due to the transfer of responsibilities to Public Works from the former Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation, as well as to the rehabilitation of the Parliament Buildings, including interim accommodation for the Senate.
For Shared Services Canada, the 2015-16 main estimates represent a total of $1.444 billion and show a net decrease of $127.8 million compared to the previous year. This is due mainly to savings achieved across various key transformation initiatives and a $63.4 million reduction in funding for partners' projects and initiatives.
[Translation]
Over the next year, PWGSC is looking forward to reaching several milestones.
[English]
Last week my colleague , member of Parliament for Miramichi, officially kicked off the construction of the new public service pay centre, showing just how far we've come on the transformation of pay administration initiative. The construction of this building will create an estimated 200 jobs in addition to the 550 employees currently working in the interim pay centre. In fact, by the end of the year, over 140,000 pay accounts will be administered at this new centre.
By consolidating pay services into a single building, we will generate approximately $70 million in savings each year starting in 2016-17. Obviously that's good news for taxpayers, and it's good news for the people of Miramichi.
Another great Public Works initiative with which you might be familiar is the build in Canada innovation program, or as we fondly refer to it, BCIP. Through this program our government is kick-starting Canadian businesses by helping them get their innovative products and services from the lab to the marketplace.
[Translation]
One of the biggest hurdles that companies face with new products is making that first sale. As you all know, it can be tough to get someone to take a chance on an untested product or service.
[English]
I've heard the story from business owners a hundred times that when Canadian companies try to sell their products internationally, the first question they're asked is if the Canadian government is one of their customers. Let me tell you, it is a pretty tough sell when the answer to that question is no. It's through this program the federal government acts as a first buyer of new technology. I'd like to stress that this is not a subsidy or a grant. Companies and their innovation are matched with government departments that could use their innovation to fulfill a business need.
[Translation]
But, the government departments are not just customers. After test-driving the innovation, they provide real-world evaluation and feedback to suppliers who can then make refinements. We hear all the time that companies find this feedback very useful.
[English]
Having made a sale to the Government of Canada, businesses can demonstrate the value of their products and services to potential customers in Canada and indeed right around the world. With 100 contracts issued since 2010, this program is a great boost to innovative Canadian companies.
We're also looking forward to making further progress under our national shipbuilding procurement strategy. Over the next month, Vancouver Shipyards will begin construction on the Canadian Coast Guard offshore fisheries science vessel. Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax will cut steel on the Arctic offshore patrol ship for National Defence.
The two shipyards are employing hundreds of highly skilled workers, while some 256 companies across Canada have already been engaged in contracts valued at $900 million. This is all thanks to our national shipbuilding procurement strategy, which is helping rebuild a strong Canadian shipbuilding industry and a marine industry that will create an estimated 15,000 jobs over the next 30 years.
This long-term approach to building ships will ensure strong jobs and economic growth, stability for the industry, and vital equipment for our men and women in the Royal Canadian Navy and in the Canadian Coast Guard. We are also looking forward to making further progress on our government's new defence procurement strategy.
[Translation]
This strategy marks the most significant shift in the federal government's purchasing of military equipment in 30 years.
[English]
It aims to achieve three important objectives: deliver the right equipment to the Canadian Armed Forces in a timely manner; leverage these purchases to create jobs and growth; and streamline our procurement processes. While we've made progress on the implementation of this strategy, I am looking forward to taking further steps to its implementation. Value propositions are beginning to be applied to procurements and will continue to be applied on a systematic basis going forward.
If I may, I would now like to turn to Shared Services Canada. SSC continues to modernize and consolidate our government's IT infrastructure.
[Translation]
Our data centre consolidation will also continue over the course of the fiscal year, as aging data centres are closed and replaced by a small number of modern, secure and highly efficient ones.
[English]
Fewer data centres will eliminate duplication, will standardize processes, and perhaps most importantly, will tighten security. We have established three enterprise data centres already and closed 57 data centres over the past two years. Savings of $14.5 million have been achieved already through consolidation and renegotiation of data centre contracts under economic action plan 2012.
In the course of executing this part of the plan, SSC has identified over 200 additional existing data centres, the vast majority of which are small rooms within office buildings. While we initially planned for 485 aging facilities to be replaced by no more than seven modern, secure, reliable centres, opportunities that include better-than-expected pricing and the use of cloud computing will allow Shared Services Canada to now consolidate over 700 data centres to no more than four or five by 2020.
SSC is also helping to modernize our telephone system by moving away from conventional, and quite frankly costly, desktop phones to cellular service or voice-over-Internet protocol phones where possible. Believe it or not, this has already generated ongoing savings of approximately $28.8 million a year.
[Translation]
The safety and security of Canadians continues to be one of the government's top priorities. Shared Services Canada is building a secure, centralized communications infrastructure that directly supports Canada's Cyber Security Strategy. SSC works closely with government security partners to protect government systems from cyber threats and intrusions.
[English]
As new products are brought forward, Shared Services will work with industry experts to identify best practices and approaches by providing secure, cost effective, and robust IT architecture.
SSC is making it possible to partner departments to achieve their priorities and better deliver services and programs to Canadians. The total amount the government has saved since SSC's creation is now $209 million each year. That's $150 million for the consolidation of existing services and the reduction of overhead, $50 million through email transformation, and $9 million through the consolidated procurement of hardware and software for workplace technology devices.
[Translation]
Mr. Chair, PWGSC and SSC are tasked with very broad and complex responsibilities. While difficulties can and do arise, overall I am pleased with the progress that has been made by both departments over the last fiscal year.
[English]
I anticipate another year of steady progress in achieving cost savings, better services, and greater security for the Government of Canada and for the citizens that it serves.
Thank you very much. We now look forward to your questions.
:
I really appreciate that question, because small business really is the backbone of our economy. Nine out of ten jobs are in small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, and those same companies create three out of every four new jobs, so it's really important to us that we support them. In fact, some 39% of all the procurement that Public Works does for the government is done with small business. I'm really proud of that, because there was a day when it wasn't that high a number, but we respect small businesses and we try to make sure that we include them. In fact, that's why we set up the office of small and medium enterprises, OSME.
It's OSME that actually administers the build in Canada innovation program, BCIP, to which you referred. This is an exciting program that was trialled a couple of years ago. We've since made it permanent and doubled the funding for it so it's now $40 million a year. There's a $20 million component just for the military.
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, this is a program, not a subsidy, in which we identify companies that have really interesting products or services that are then procured, purchased, by a government department to match real business needs. These are products that probably aren't quite ready for prime time yet, but when companies work with the department, the department trials these products or services and identifies where they could be improved. It goes back to the company and says, “Okay, here you go. This is what we see as opportunities for improvement.” The company fixes things up, goes back to the department, and the department tries it again. At least nine times out of ten there's success. The company benefits by getting that real-world exposure and the trial to perfect its product or service. The government department gets a real business need met with something that's brand new. The company gets the benefit and the cachet, if you like, of having the Government of Canada as a customer, which adds a lot of credibility, especially when they're trying to sell worldwide.
I met with a number of the owners of these companies that have come up with these products. Some of them truly are innovative. Some of them are world-leading in their field, so it really feels good to be able to support companies that are now receiving perhaps 80% of their revenue from offshore. It's a real kick-start program and it's a win-win all the way around.
I would point out that the next call for proposals on this will be this summer, so people can check it out on the website.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be here with your committee today.
Minister, I'm very happy that you and the officials are here today.
Minister, sometimes I think that oftentimes parliamentarians relay only complaints to ministers. I think it's appropriate where that happens, but I would like to highlight a few things that are important to my riding of Okanagan—Coquihalla.
A few years back, I had the opportunity to question some of the officials from Shared Services Canada specifically on the accessibility of websites. I had a resident who is blind and had to rely on very cheap software or free software. Some of the changes made when Shared Services Canada made the Government of Canada websites more accessible were really a thrill to him, because he was able to feel that he was part of the country. He's able to ask and seek information about government programs or policies that affect him, and that certainly is an important thing. I wanted to say that it's been important in my riding.
There's some further feedback. Of course, this isn't directed at you, Minister, but he also wishes that the Parliament of Canada's websites were just as accessible. Obviously, Parliament is not a government agency, so it has its own processes for putting those in place, but I would certainly encourage those officials who are in charge of our websites to take a look at what Shared Services Canada has done, because it has won quite good accolades in my riding.
Furthermore, I had the opportunity to talk to someone who worked in Ottawa for a number of years for a subcontractor and did a lot of military work. I had the opportunity to ask him about Shared Services Canada's approach and to ask if he agreed that there would be a fair bit of savings, Minister.
Your presentation today shows first of all that there have been quite a lot of savings right across government. I'm happy to see that Moore's law is being reflected, in that we have new data centres that are able to consolidate into one centre the operations that previously would have had to be done by probably three or four centres. Actually, I think some of the numbers shown here are much higher than that.
He also emphasized to me that the security is much better for the government, because it's far easier to look after a smaller amount of resources than to have hundreds of these centres being watched.
A number of things are here, but in your statement, Minister, you showed that the main estimates represent a total of $1.44 billion and of course a net decrease. Are there specific files that you think the Canadian public would benefit from hearing about? Again, there are big savings and great security for the government. What other elements do you think would be important for my taxpayers to hear about?
:
These are two totally unrelated questions. I'll deal with the first one first.
We're very confident in the national shipbuilding procurement strategy. We're seeing good success so far. Both Vancouver and Irving in Halifax have invested heavily, not with taxpayers' money, in renovating and building the physical capacity and infrastructure to do the shipbuilding.
In fact, some 300 new jobs have been created in Vancouver at Seaspan. They're expecting 700 more over the next several years of the contract. I was there as we cut steel on a first test block several months ago, and we expect to be cutting steel on the offshore fishery science vessel this summer.
As well, in Halifax already we're seeing tremendous progress. We have every reason to believe they're going to be successful in cutting steel on the AOPS, Arctic offshore patrol ships, by September.
I think it's going really well. Obviously the industry had been allowed to languish for many years. In fact, we had virtually no large shipbuilding industry in this country. You can't go from zero to a hundred right out of the chute. It has taken time to build the proper facilities, for the proponents to develop the in-house expertise that's necessary, to develop the contracts to do all these things, but I'm really confident that we are rebuilding the shipbuilding industry in Canada. It's going to be around for a long time to come. We're building strong companies with strong capabilities.
The naysayers can go on waiting and watching; I think we're going to disappoint them. We will succeed with this and we will create—
:
Thank you, Minister, for being here today with your team, and for all the extensive information you've provided to us today.
Given that the member opposite has talked a little bit about Vancouver Shipyards, and coming from Vancouver, B.C., I wanted to provide an opportunity to share with this committee and put on the record how truly excited we in Vancouver are about Seaspan and the shipbuilding procurement strategy.
Several years ago I was fortunate to have been part of the announcement and attended when hundreds of people came together in a room to look at the procurement strategy and what that would entail. The excitement in that room was palpable. I noted in your presentation you said there are an estimated 15,000 jobs over the next 30 years and that some 256 companies across Canada are engaging in contracts for over $900 million.
I want to share with you that excitement. Many of those small and medium-sized enterprises are doing a number of different things. Building a scientific vessel is very complicated whether you're in electronics, or steel, or metal, or all of those guidance systems, etc. They were all there. This has had an incredible impact on Vancouver. They have spent the last couple of years rebuilding an underutilized site to get it ready for shipbuilding.
Minister, I think you said that you were there last month. I hope you enjoyed your visit there and the tour. Over the last few years, I've taken advantage of touring those facilities and seeing the true transformation. Anybody who's interested can log on to the Seaspan website. That company is extremely proud of the transformation of the site. They've had to tear down buildings, relocate other buildings, and build a whole new set of buildings because there had to be very large buildings to accommodate the cutting of the steel. They installed the largest crane, they say, in Canada. They had a contest at a local school to name this giant crane that is now part of the Vancouver skyline, but in a nice way. Everybody loves this crane. It's called Big Blue. It's been an incredible transformation to see how our government has leveraged public works to create jobs and strengthen our economy.
Minister, was that a new government strategy? Why wasn't this done previously, because there was no shipbuilding whatsoever in Canada prior to this? How can we continue through your programs, like you said earlier, with the SME program, etc., to do that, and to create even more jobs in the future?
:
When we launched the national shipbuilding procurement strategy three years ago, it was definitely something new that our government brought in because we recognized that we need ships for our military and also for the coast guard. We used to have that capacity to build them in Canada, but we didn't anymore because for years there had been a conscious effort, I believe, to shut down the shipbuilding industry in Canada and send it offshore. We wanted to create those good jobs here. We wanted to have a sustainable industry.
One of the reasons the industry shut down was that in the past, it was boom or bust. Everybody was really busy or there was no work to do. Thousands of people were laid off in the bust years, and then when companies tried to ramp up for a big production, they couldn't find those people because they'd found other jobs.
As we laid out the national shipbuilding procurement strategy, we did it in such a way that what we're trying to do was first of all develop the capacity here to build those ships, and second, to plan the work over 20 or 30 years in such a way that we would have an industry that is sustained over that whole period of time. It will eliminate the boom and bust cycle and create jobs.
People think about ships these days and think it's all welding, when the greatest value in those ships, the most expensive parts, are all the hi-tech stuff: the electronics and navigation systems, the defence systems. I've toured them and it's absolutely amazing to see the technology that's in them and the people in high-skilled jobs who are needed to produce them.
I'm really pleased that we are developing this industry and we're putting in place programs and planning that will support this industry for years to come. Not only that, but the companies have to invest in Canada. The two leads can't just outsource everything offshore. So far in B.C. alone, some $150 million has been spent with local companies as Seaspan has ramped up its operations in Vancouver.
:
In other words, every five years there's going to be $1 billion of savings and, Ms. Forand, I think you said it's going to get up to $400 million. In other words, every five years we'll save $2 billion. That is the kind of government that I think we want to have in place, so thank you very much for that. That's music to my ears.
One of the other things, and this is a little personal note, is that my office used to get a lot of calls from people that they couldn't use the websites. I think you mentioned the IT has improved greatly. I'm not getting those comments now. I think your websites in the various departments, all the departments, seem to be more user-friendly. As a matter of fact, I was on one yesterday for Canada 150 and it was really useful. Even I could use it, so that's a good testament. It's nice to hear.
The other thing I heard is about the 256 companies. My riding is a middle-class riding and over the years we've had challenges with employment and now we find that our companies are working. Shipbuilding has nothing to do with my riding—we're between both oceans—but quite frankly, we're excited about that because we're going to get a heck of a lot of contracts, especially from the east coast. There are a lot of fabricators in my riding. You mentioned small businesses. These folks are creating jobs and when another welder is hired at $60,000 to $80,000 a year, that adds to our economy. All of that is good.
As I said, I heard a lot of good things here. You talked about the Miramichi call centre. For the last five years we have had a call centre in our riding and it's like an anchor tenant at a mall. When you have a good government facility like that, it encourages other people to invest, and our community has improved over the last five years as a result. I'm very happy for Miramichi.
I have a question for the minister. Minister, you mentioned there would be 50,000 jobs for the next 30 years for shipbuilding, so probably in the next three to five years we'll be dealing with everybody in the world. We have 38 free trade agreements already and growing. You talked about the ups and downs in shipbuilding, but is there a way that once we do our work we can sell our shipbuilding expertise to other countries? I guess that's what I'm asking, because I would think that after 10 to 15 years we're going to be in pretty good shape.
:
It's going to take a little longer than that, because we've had a decade of darkness where equipment just wasn't bought for our forces, but we're fixing that. It's a long, slow process and there's a lot to be done, but we've achieved a lot already.
We have the LAVs and the CC-130Js, and we have the helicopters. We're going to be taking delivery of the new Cyclone helicopters next month. That's really exciting, since they were cancelled back in the early 1990s, so we'll be able to start retiring the Sea Kings.
It is our hope that through the national shipbuilding procurement strategy and indeed the defence procurement strategy these Canadian companies will be able to continue to work with the and his people to develop their export business. People investing in Canada who want to supply the Canadian government will partner with Canadian companies to fill Canadian needs. That will create jobs. Exporting creates jobs. All of that is really good for the Canadian economy because, as you know, our priority is jobs, economic growth, and long-term prosperity.
We can support Canadian business by rebuilding the shipbuilding industry, by supporting them through the build in Canada innovation program where the government is a customer, by making sure that as we do our everyday procurement we make it possible for small business in Canada to do business with government. That's what the office of small and medium enterprises is there for. They've held over 4,000 different meetings, seminars and webinars to help small Canadian businesses learn how to do business with the Government of Canada. As I said, 39% of our volume goes to them now.
All of these things are going to help create local jobs, create exports, which is money coming into the country and not going out. It all works. We're going to end up with not just a strong shipbuilding industry, but we already have a strong Canadian defence services and products industry. In fact, I think we're about number seven in the world or higher and it's going to be even stronger going forward. We're laying those foundations right now for long-term success.
:
The transformation agenda that Shared Services Canada is responsible for really is a Government of Canada transformation agenda that will affect every public servant in terms of how they work, the equipment they have to do their work, and the IT security they can rely on. We consider that engagement with public servants to be very critical both within our own department, in terms of how their workplace and work will change over the next five to seven years, and more broadly with public servants.
Also, we've actually used the opportunity of the clerk's initiative called Blueprint 2020, which sets out a vision for the public service in 2020, to point out that in fact that vision cannot be achieved if we don't do the infrastructure modernization we are doing as part of our agenda.
We've pointed out that for that to be possible, we need better computing capacity and more storage capacity. Our data centre consolidation program will increase storage capacity by seven times, which, as I'm sure you can appreciate, is important in a world of big data. It's also important for public servants to be able to connect with one another more easily and on an ongoing basis.
Our transformation agenda will increase bandwidth, for example, by at least four times, which, as you can probably appreciate, is critical for streaming data, video conferencing, and enabling public servants in the regions to be full participants in the work.
There are a number of areas in which the transformation is really going to improve the workplace for public servants.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Welcome. I want to get back to a topic that was raised earlier, and that's the shipbuilding program itself. Obviously, you don't commit $33 billion to the economy of Canada without having some massive impact.
I noticed that recently, bank economists declared that it would be worth 1.5% growth to the Nova Scotia economy alone in the coming years, year over year. It's a substantial part of that province. I'm also aware that one of the companies that has picked up some of the contracting, separate from this, just committed $50 million to $60 million in P.E.I. It's unrelated to shipbuilding, but because they're there, they wanted to grow into the economy. I also know that a number of small shipbuilding firms have really captured both the atmosphere, I guess you could say, and the opportunity, particularly in Europe in a number of ways with the smaller ships. They're looking forward to the $2 billion that will be spent on maintenance and so on.
I don't know how this will be calculated going forward, but obviously there will be a few glitches, if you want to discuss those. I think the big thing here that we have to talk about is the massive impact this has over a 25- to 30-year span on the economy and the spinoffs. I know a number of small companies. I went to a number of the briefings around the province to have the economic side talk about it. A lot of the small companies that had nothing to do with shipbuilding and nothing to do with engineering realized that if they could get a subcontract, in other words, if they spent the money and invested and geared up, they would be pretty well guaranteed work for a long time, for 20 to 25 years. Many of them said it was incredibly unusual to be able to bid and make that kind of investment in terms of growing the small firms. I noticed that the number is 200 or 300, but whatever the number of companies is, these are spread across the country.
I wonder if you could elaborate on that and talk about some of the impacts that maybe you notice more at the staff level or which you anticipate.
:
Thank you very much for that question.
As you said and as the minister highlighted, one of the main purposes of the national shipbuilding procurement strategy has been to rebuild the shipping industry. We've seen a great deal of progress on that in the first phase.
Irving Shipbuilding has invested over $300 million to upgrade its facilities. Seaspan on the west coast has done the same thing and has spent about $170 million of its own money. I've had the opportunity in the last couple of months to tour both those facilities and I can tell you that we now have world-class infrastructure in place that's going to be ready and capable of proceeding with the build contracts.
I think as the committee's well aware, the contract's been let for the building of the Arctic offshore patrol vessel. I'll use that as an example to highlight what the minister said. That's a large project and it will create spinoff benefits for companies throughout Canada, and not just in Irving Shipbuilding, because a lot of the value, a big part of the expense, is not so much building the vessel itself, but everything that goes onto the vessel: the navigation systems, the sonar systems, and so forth.
As part of the national shipbuilding procurement strategy, when contracts are being let, a great deal of emphasis is being put on value propositions and ensuring that there's ample opportunity and benefits to Canadian industry from that.
We're seeing that beginning obviously with the AOPS. As the minister said, we anticipate being in a position in June to see the start of the offshore fisheries science vessel for the coast guard, and we've started the very early stages of a process that will lead ultimately to a request for proposal for the Canadian surface combatant.
These projects are now at the takeoff stage, under way, and they will generate significant spinoff benefits throughout the country for all kinds of firms.
:
Thank you very much for the question.
In fact, a lot of that is laid out in the report on plans and priorities.
Let me start with the West Block rehabilitation. We're now about 72% complete. Our expectation is that it would be completed by March 2016.
As you are aware, I'm sure, since it may have disrupted some of your operations, we have been undertaking the evacuation activities as the first part of establishing a new visitor welcome centre. That work is also scheduled for completion in March 2016.
Similarly, for the Wellington Building rehabilitation, the fit-up and the installation of the building is about 92% complete. Again, we'll be ready next year.
We've started work on the Government Conference Centre, which includes fit-up, design, and the beginning of some of the interior work. As you're aware, that will become the temporary home of the Senate. Again, we're expecting that to be finished in 2016.
The final part is the East Block exterior rehabilitation. We expect it to be about 15% complete by March 2016.
We're making good progress on all of them. The various estimates in front of you reflect the funding for those projects.
:
Yes, and if I may just give a bit of an opener, we're three years into a 30-year strategy. This is the biggest project, as you noted. The budget is $26 billion for up to 15 ships.
As my colleague pointed out, we recently announced a procurement strategy that in our view is going to maximize competition. We've had 15 industry engagement sessions to get a better idea of Canadian capacity, what designs are out there, seeing where it's possible to buy off the shelf so that we don't spend wasted months in a competition when in fact there are existing designs available to meet Canada's needs, but also assessing where there's Canadian capacity not just to contribute on this project but also to become part of a global supply chain and supply worldwide.
We announced the procurement strategy on May 13, and over the course of the summer we're going to be talking to firms, as my colleague mentioned, to see which firms have built designs before and have proven capacity in this area, and then we'll be running a competitive process in the fall for combat systems integrators and warship designers.
I would highlight, as was noted earlier, that the ship is one thing, but the real complexity now is what's on the ship, all of the complex systems to allow them to integrate with satellites, with radars, and to have interoperability with our allies. That's where there's a lot of value; that, plus in-service support.
One reason we want to use competition throughout the process is that the first ship might not look like the last one. These are going to evolve over time, taking advantage of innovations, of reduction in prices that we should see as benefits over time, and quite frankly, also the shipbuilding expertise that will develop in Canada.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question.
When you look at the RPP, report on plans and priorities, you see that for the accommodation program for 2015-16 we are looking at $2.1 billion, in comparison with year-end spending of $2.2 billion. It's fairly stable.
There are increases and decreases, however, over the past few years, that I would like to cover. The most important thing in this plan is the trend over the next few years.
Over the past four years there was an increase of $164 million, as per the RPP, primarily because of parliamentary precinct rehabilitation, which went from $200 million to $384 million. That's an increase of $185 million. Also, there is the addition of Cape Breton operations, which were transferred to PWGSC in 2014-15; that accounts for $40 million.
These increases over the past four years were offset or reduced by the savings, which are referred to as “Budget 2012 saving commitment”, which account for $74 million. Over the last four years this accounts for a $164 million increase. In summary, it's because of parliamentary precinct work.
Moving forward, what is important to note for the real property portfolio is that there are some changes in engineering assets, to start with. Our working engineering assets are going to decrease by $53 million, not because of unfunded projects but because some projects are coming to a conclusion and others are starting. The decrease in engineering assets accounts for $53 million; that item is going from $73 million to $20 million.
The second item of note is parliamentary precinct rehabilitation. The work is changing by about $51 million less. Again, this is not a decrease in funding because of budget reduction, but just of cash flow, because some projects are just starting and some are ending.
Last, the item important to note is that there are additional reductions of $49 million. The real property portfolio is going to be saving $124 million by 2017-18, up from the existing $74 million that we have in current estimates.
In summary, this explains the reduction of $210 million.
:
Thank you, Mr. Ravignat. You'll have to be satisfied with that. As you get re-elected in future terms, you will get used to the frustration of replacing our fighter jet aircraft. We all do.
We thank our witnesses for appearing before us today and answering questions on the main estimates.
I'll ask committee members if they're ready to proceed with the votes that have been referred to our committee.
In the interest of time, I'm going to begin right away while our guests are excusing themselves. I should point out that in the main estimates for 2015-16, $10.8 billion have been reviewed through the consideration of the committee out of $88 billion that have been referred to us. That's not exactly living up to the standard we had set for ourselves of doing a more thorough and robust examination of the estimates process. Having said that, I'm going to proceed with the votes.
CANADA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC SERVICE
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$53,794,403
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
CANADIAN INTERGOVERNMENTAL CONFERENCE SECRETARIAT
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$5,549,653
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
CANADIAN TRANSPORTATION ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION AND SAFETY BOARD
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$26,290,301
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$17,165,126
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR INTEGRITY COMMISSIONER
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$4,934,882
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$104,454,216
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$71,397,504
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
PUBLIC WORKS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES
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Vote 1—Operating expenditures..........$1,651,054,220
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Vote 5—Capital expenditures..........$1,099,063,968
(Votes 1 and 5 agreed to on division)
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Vote 1—Operating expenditures..........$1,169,183,901
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Vote 5—Capital expenditures..........$203,868,605
(Votes 1 and 5 agreed to on division)
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$57,031,359
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
The Chair: Note that there was a big division on the Senate.
TREASURY BOARD SECRETARIAT
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$219,601,334
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Vote 5—Government contingencies..........$750,000,000
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Vote 10—Government-wide initiatives.........$2,090,470
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Vote 20— Public service insurance..........2,250,070,604
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Vote 25—Operating budget carry forward..........$1,600,000,000
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Vote 30—Pay list requirements..........$1,000,000,000
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Vote 33—Capital budget carry forward..........$600,000,000
(Votes 1, 5, 10, 20, 25, 30, and 33 agreed to on division)
The Chair: Shall the chair report the main estimates 2015-16 to the House?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your patience committee members. I'm going to suspend the meeting briefly while we go in camera to discuss future business. It will be no longer than five minutes. I promise.
[Proceedings continue in camera]