:
I'm calling this meeting to order.
Welcome to the ninth meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.
The committee will meet today from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. to hear from the Minister of Digital Government and officials on the main estimates 2020-21.
The committee will next meet on Monday, November 30, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and will hear from the Minister of Digital Government and the on the supplementary estimates (B) 2020-21.
To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.
Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like in a regular committee meeting. You have a choice, at the bottom of your screen, of floor, English or French. I would ask that you choose the language that you are going to speak in when you do so.
Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. To raise a point of order during the meeting, committee members should ensure that their microphone is unmuted and say “point of order” to get the chair's attention.
In order to ensure social distancing in the committee room, if you need to speak privately with the clerk or analysts during the meeting, please email them through the committee email address. For those people who are participating in the committee room, please note that wearing a mask is required in the committee room unless you are seated.
Finally, we will take the last 10 to 15 minutes of the meeting to do some committee business.
I will now invite the Minister of Digital Government to make her opening statement.
Minister, please go ahead.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'm really happy to be here amongst you—virtually—and I want to thank the committee for inviting me here to discuss the 2020-21 main estimates, and I guess the 2020-21 supplementary estimates (B) next week, for the digital government portfolio. This portfolio, I would like to note, includes the Office of the Chief Information Officer and the Canadian Digital Service, both in the Treasury Board Secretariat, as well as Shared Services Canada.
I am pleased to be joined today by Paul Glover, president of Shared Services Canada; Samantha Hazen, chief financial officer, Shared Services Canada; Marc Brouillard, acting Chief Information Officer of Canada; and Karen Cahill, assistant secretary and chief financial officer at Treasury Board Secretariat.
After my remarks, my officials and I will of course be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Mr. Chair and colleagues, as the Minister of Digital Government responsible for our digital transformation, part of my mandate is to work with my ministerial colleagues to provide federal public servants with the tools and strategies they need to design and deliver the services Canadians expect in the digital era—services that are secure, reliable and easy to use. While there is still much to be done, we have already made headway in updating our systems and rolling out better and more powerful tools so that we can improve Canadians' experience and their access to our trusted digital services.
We have an overarching policy, which came into effect on April 1 this year, on service and digital. This policy sets out just how departments need to manage service delivery, information and data, IT, and cybersecurity in the digital era. Importantly, it requires departments to consider putting the needs of people at the centre, right at the outset, when designing and developing their programs and services. It's an iterative policy that we will continue to improve and update. We're actually already looking at what changes should be in the next version.
I would note that we saw this policy come into effect when COVID-19 struck. Our government developed and launched, in just a matter of weeks, digitally accessible programs, such as CERB and the emergency wage program, that normally would have taken months, if not years, to develop and deliver. We collaborated with industry, our international partners and Canadians to develop, consult on and launch the COVID Alert app, also in record time. As a result, more than five million Canadians in eight provinces are now using the app to help slow the spread of the virus. I encourage everyone, in the room and virtually, to download it, if you can.
Looking ahead, we'll be examining our structures, incentives and culture and breaking down institutional barriers, such as silos, so that we can more easily develop and adopt digital—in other words, take an enterprise approach to IT and the Government of Canada, always with the goal of better serving Canadians. We will also continue to work on the next-generation HR and pay solution, committing resources to build a modern, user-friendly human resources and pay solution. That project has been transitioned to Shared Services Canada from Treasury Board Secretariat.
These same themes inform the items included in the main estimates and the supplementary estimates related to digital government. In the main estimates, the Treasury Board Secretariat will be seeking, for the next fiscal year, $281,600 to contribute to the Open Government Partnership, or OGP. The OGP is the leading global forum for advancing open government around the world. Canada was the chair, actually, and hosted the conference in 2019. We remain a very active member. These 78 member countries have a shared purpose, which is to make government more transparent, accountable and participatory. This is a very important forum for all of its members around the world.
We recently launched the consultation on the next iteration of our open government national action plan, which we worked to develop with civil society. I encourage anyone who's interested to contribute to that plan.
I am going to also mention the supplementary estimates (B), although I know we have another meeting on that, because some of the questions that you may have may weave through both of these estimates.
Shared Services Canada is requesting Parliament's approval to increase its authorities by $278.4 million, to a total of $2,490,741,062. These new funds would be allocated as follows: $91 million for information technology services that directly support the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as emergency relief programs for Canadians; $84 million for the information technology refresh program, which supports better life-cycle management of assets; $37.3 million for IT modernization initiatives, such as advancing Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud; $31.3 million for the secure cloud enablement and defence project, SCED, meeting the need for more secure and high-speed operations during the COVID crisis; $23.5 million for core information technology services and funding for the public service; and $10.1 million for secure video conferencing as part of the expansion of the secure communications for national leadership, to better support the cabinet, cabinet committee meetings, and senior officials and decision-makers right across government.
Taken all together, these investments will help provide federal departments and employees with the tools, guidance and capacity they need to improve operations and support the delivery of better services at this time, in a digital age.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We'd be happy to take questions from the committee.
:
In a moment, I'm going to save Mr. Glover from having to send us a letter by asking him or Madam Minister to answer the question in greater detail.
First, as the member for Gatineau, I need to point out that, in the National Capital Region, we were very pleasantly surprised by Shared Services Canada's performance when it came to providing network access to many of our public servants. We know that it has not been perfect or always smooth sailing. Nevertheless, I want to commend your and Shared Services Canada's efforts, Madam Minister. You have mobilized human, technological and financial resources to ensure that the government can continue to function during this pandemic.
Now I'm going to talk about data centres and cloud services. When we came in as a government, we found servers from the previous government under the offices of public servants in remote buildings. IT-wise, it was a real mess. They had no strategy, but now it's clear to me that a lot of thought has been put into data centres, our strategy and our cloud services strategy.
Madam Minister, I'd like you to tell us about the strategy for data storage, data centres and cloud services. Of course, if Mr. Glover would like to add anything, he is free to do so.
:
Thank you very much, MP MacKinnon.
Just to start, I'll say that all major organizations are transitioning into a cloud as an essential part of their modernization, and for a very good reason. For those not familiar with the cloud—not too many months ago, frankly, I was not—the equivalent would be receiving electricity services. Rather than having the electricity plant on the site of your building to supply electricity and needing to have enough capacity for your peak—and you're paying for that kind of capacity of the equipment all the time, whether you're at the peak or not—the electricity utilities have the infrastructure and connect with us, and we just pay for what we use.
It's a bit similar with cloud services. Instead of the ministries having the infrastructure and capacity for their peak usage—think about CRA at tax time but paying for that level of equipment year-round—now, with cloud service, they pay for the usage they actually need at any one time, and the infrastructure is managed and handled by the cloud service provider.
I'd love to invite Paul to let the committee know how the transition to the cloud is going.
Thank you, Minister and Chair, for the member's question and the kind words on the work we've done.
The short and quick answer is that we have not invested any money in new data centres—not a penny. We've invested money in closing data centres. We have four enterprise data centres. Those are state of the art. They have uninterruptible power. We are consistently taking workloads out of older data centres, inefficient data centres and end-of-life data centres and moving them to the cloud or to one of the end-state enterprise data centres.
There are costs with those migrations, and there is a cost to put equipment into the enterprise data centre to handle the workloads, but the physical infrastructure is built. As we know what workloads are going in there, we put in the racks—the computers—to handle that workload.
We are not building more data centres. We are closing data centres. In fact, last year was a record. We closed more data centres than we ever have—just short of 100—and we're going to continue to close data centres until we have all of our workloads in the cloud, in an enterprise data centre—one of the four—or in a hybrid of the two.
[Translation]
I can answer that.
[English]
That is a phenomenon we continue to see. We're storing more and we're using the networks more for video and voice, plus all of the applications.
It is for infrastructure. That will be to replace end-of-life gear or to put network switching gear, storage, servers and those sorts of investments in infrastructure into the data centres and the network. It breaks down into two categories, which are replacing those things that are end-of-life so they don't break and fail on us, and installing new to support the growth that is occurring.
As to the question of why we are seeing an increase in expenditures, it is because the unit costs go down every year with IT—that's Moore's Law—but the volumes go up faster than the price comes down. We're using the networks more and we're using the technology more. The unit cost goes down, but the utilization goes up, which means we need more gear and more capacity.
To respond to the member's question, we have identified eight cloud vendors. They range from Microsoft to Amazon, Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google, Oracle, a Canadian company called ThinkOn and others. That's all publicly available information. Just visit our website. It's there on OpenGov. You can see who has already been pre-qualified. There are a total of eight that the departments can choose from.
All of those vendors had to set up operations here in Canada, so they are subject to our legislative requirements. None of this data is offshore. We're working with the CSE and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security to establish the security requirements. They regularly go in and audit those facilities to make sure they are compliant with security requirements, so that we know exactly how the data is being stored and who has access to the data. These are some of the most stringent security requirements, so we have confidence that the data is there and, just like in any other data centre, properly secured.
However, we don't stop there. As the minister and others have spoken about, the path to the cloud matters. We don't want departments all creating their own networks—
:
Thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to talk about it, because I'm quite excited about it.
Not only is my vision an enterprise approach to person-centred service—which means all the departments coordinating, which, as we've heard, is important for security and other reasons—but it is about the public. It's about Canadians, and it's about secure, reliable and easy-to-use services from any device so that public servants can provide better one-on-one service for those who don't use or have devices.
There are some very specific things that I have heard are very frustrating to Canadians, and I'm aiming that we can help transform how they experience their transactions with the Government of Canada. My vision includes no more having to use paper forms and faxes, but being able to do it digitally. It includes no more confusing and hard-to-find government benefits and services, but a digital way of finding out in a centralized way what you're potentially eligible for. It includes no more having to call and sit on hold to get an update on your transaction.
After all, you can order something from Amazon and you'll get a text telling you exactly where it's at and when you're going to get it at your door. We can aim for that as the Government of Canada. There will be no more complicated log-ins with credentials that are easily forgotten or different credentials for every department. There will also be potentially automatic tax filing for simple returns for as many Canadians as possible, partly so that those who leave benefits on the table because they didn't file their taxes can get the benefits. Two billion dollars don't get collected by those with the lowest incomes, surely because they weren't able to get through a complicated tax form.
That's the small package. I am aiming that we can have some tangible forward movement on those things over the coming 12 months, so I'll be pitching to my colleagues to work together on that.
:
The early part of the NextGen process was to have the three gates to determine who would potentially be qualified suppliers to work with the Government of Canada to do an HR-to-pay, a full system. That was under the auspices of the Treasury Board Secretariat. The Treasury Board Secretariat is not so much a ministry that operates major IT-based activities, whereas Shared Services is, so at a certain point it seemed appropriate.
That point came about when, through exploration and consultation, the wide field of potential vendors had been narrowed down to three. Right now, we have three vendors that are qualified to work with the Government of Canada. We are very engaged in an exploratory process with one lead vendor, SAP, working with one of our departments, the heritage department, to test the different requirements that public servants have for HR-to-pay in the heritage department. That exploration will lead to a pilot to see if SAP can satisfy and supply HR-to-pay.
We're doing this in sprints. We're checking out, we're learning, then we're doing the next thing, and we'll continue in order to have a successful outcome.
:
There are two parts to that question. I'll try to be brief to allow you follow-ups, because I suspect you might want to do that.
The first is that, as an enterprise service provider, we need enterprise-grade solutions. Microsoft is the vendor in this space, and we have set up a large relationship with them for things such as Office 365 and Teams. IBM and Unisys are the mainframe vendors; we have specific relationships with them, and it moves like that. The same is true, frankly, with networks. Most networks around the planet run on Cisco and Cisco gear.
As one of the members, MP MacKinnon, pointed out earlier, when Shared Services was created we didn't even know what was given to us. We had to inventory all that stuff. As we've done that and as we try to fix it when it breaks, it's important that we replace it like for like so we know it works.
I want to tell this committee that I, too, have been hearing a lot from industry.
Mr. Glover, I do want to touch on Gartner. I know that when Gartner talks about network infrastructure, it says that the infrastructure and operation leaders “should never rely on a single vendor for the architecture and products of their network, as it can lead to vendor lock-in, higher acquisition costs and technical constraints that limit agility. They should segment their network into logical blocks and evaluate multiple vendors for each.” The blocks are defined as data centering, LAN and WAN.
I'm just wondering, within all these blocks, is Shared Services comfortable that it's operating in a multivendor environment, as Gartner would probably advise the Government of Canada?
:
Mr. Chair, I'm looking at my notes for the numbers.
I would suggest that today it is probably somewhere around 70-30 in terms of the split the member is asking for. I would also say that, moving forward, we are committed that any new...is open and competitive.
In saying that, we are also saying that it must be interoperable. When you run a network the size that we operate, it is important that all of the pieces talk to one another smoothly and efficiently. That is something the industry is getting better at. It will be easier for us to be more agnostic about who the vendor is, moving forward, and it doesn't matter what the gear is. They don't put in updates that work with only their stuff and complicate that.
Interoperability will be a key requirement even in a multivendor environment, moving forward. There are technologies to make that happen. We are introducing those quite rapidly.
:
There are three parts. First, we look to those who we think are world class and leading. I regularly have touchpoints, as I call them, with industry leaders to obtain their advice on what they're doing and how they're doing.
Second, you referenced Gartner. They are a wonderful research firm. They put the players into quadrants. There are the well-established market leaders, but we also look at the new and up-and-coming companies, who may not be in what Gartner calls the golden quadrant, the perfect one, to see if there are new and emerging technologies that we should be aware of and experimenting with, because they will eventually be in that preferred quadrant, moving forward. We are taking those steps as it moves forward.
Finally, our approach to procurement is different. We are going out with, “This is the problem. Tell us what the best solution is.” In the past, we would have gone out with, “Here's the problem. This is how we want it solved.” That meant we were far less open to new technologies and new approaches. It gets back to creating more space for some of the Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises and new and developing start-ups to be able to interact with us.
:
Perhaps Mr. Brouillard can complete my answer.
In my case, the first obstacle is culture.
[English]
It's that fear of change that I think we see. People like what they have and they prefer that we just continue to allow them to do that. I often speak in analogies. There's too much customization. Everybody gets a custom suit, rather than being willing to go in and buy one off the rack that mostly fits. They're attached to their custom suits. We have to break that culture down.
For us to work, we want to work at speed at scale. That requires standardization. That requires departments to let go a little bit. It also requires us to actually make it work. Our track record in the past hasn't been the best. We've had some significant challenges, but I think we've shown through the pandemic and others that by simplifying, by standardizing, we can move at speed at scale, and there are real benefits.
I do feel that we are breaking down the cultural resistance.
:
There are service standards in expectations of responding to ATIPs. As was said earlier, during the pandemic there were challenges, especially as business continuity plans were invoked in departments and employees could no longer access the networks.
There are three primary issues related to that. The first is that ability to connect remotely from home. That has largely been addressed by Shared Services Canada. There still remain departments that rely heavily on paper-based records. Even if they are able to connect to the network from home, they can't access the paper-based.... As well, there is the sensitive and classified information that is on secure networks.
There are still capability requirements for being able to physically access buildings to be able to produce some of those ATIP requests, causing natural challenges and concerns for health and safety.
As of October 26, of the 131 institutions that responded to our questionnaires, 30 institutions say that they're at full capacity to respond to requests, and 101 institutions are at reduced capacity. None are at zero capacity. All departments have reported that they are processing ATIP requests on a best-effort basis.
I have a question for Mr. Glover.
I want to pick up on my colleague's line of questioning, which I found really interesting, about the threat of quantum computing.
In 2018, this government, our federal government, invested about $15 million in the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo. Last year, this government invested an additional $41 million in the Quantum Valley Ideas Lab. This year it invested an additional $7.2 million in numerous tech companies, including ISARA Corporation, which is a quantum-safe security company. The goal here it to help turn Waterloo into the world's quantum valley.
Can you comment on whether this is a smart strategy, to be basically partnering with and making investments in quantum research, Canadian quantum research institutes and Canadian quantum tech companies? Is this a smart strategy to protect ourselves from quantum threats, or is this something that really is just a role for Shared Services to consider?
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the member's question, and I will also ask Marc to help me with the response.
I need to be briefer. I apologize to all the members for my rambling.
The short answer is, I believe it is. These are fast-paced technologies that are developing very rapidly. It would be arrogant for us to think that we have all the expertise in Shared Services to be able to do what we need to do.
Furthermore, as was pointed out, if you look at the global movement of large tech companies, if we do not invest in Canadian IP, that is a challenge for us. I want to be able to do business with Canadian companies, and that means we need to encourage them to play on a global field, to think big. We're a big client, so it only makes sense that we make ourselves available to them to tap into the IP that they are building and developing. If we don't, we won't have it, or it will just be bought up.
Earlier, you were talking about the fact that one of the big obstacles you face is fear of change.
Have you tapped into public servants' expertise to find solutions to this type of issue, that is, fear of change and others that come to mind?
If we want public servants to have the reflex to recognize an issue when they see one, rather than have them say, well, if I saw it then someone else will surely see it too, the best way is to include them in the solution and work openly with them.
Do you work openly with public servants to resolve the issues you encounter when rolling out new technologies?
I will go back to what I was saying at the beginning to Madam Minister.
Clearly, Shared Services Canada has come a long way in terms of network access, cloud computing, desktop software, data centre migration, and more.
Mr. Glover, you and your team have done an enormous amount of work compared to how things were several years ago. In two minutes, tell us where you are headed now. What are the organization's key priorities as you look to the future, especially post–COVID-19?
:
Thank you for the question and for your kind words.
I am grateful to you for that.
[English]
For us, moving forward, we have a document. It's available publicly. It's called SSC 3.0. It aligns with the minister's digital vision. It clearly lays out what we believe were the priorities before COVID, and it was reaffirmed during COVID. These continue to be our priorities moving forward.
First, it's what you've talked about and asked me about today. It is the network. In order to be digital, in order to be connected and in order to do what we're doing today, we need a good network, and not a good network but a great network, a commercial great network that functions like a utility.
In order to be digital, public servants and Canadians need to be able to access this. It's all about the connectivity in the network, and we need to make sure that we have one of the best, because it is being stressed each and every day. We have to deal with the legacy stuff we inherited, fix it, replace it, modernize it and move to simplified, standardized, software-defined zero trust networks moving forward. That's job one.
Job two is the collaboration tools and things like Microsoft Teams, Office 365 and Zoom to make sure that public servants have the tools they need. When we were created eight years ago, it was about email. It's not about email anymore. It's about Dropbox. It's about OneDrive. It's about cloud. People interact differently.
If you talk to the younger generation, you'll know that they don't send emails. They wouldn't know what emails are. We need to make sure that we give them the tools they need to be able to do their job. That includes voice-over-Internet. That includes video.
These things are collapsing, and we need to give them the tools they need. The inspectors who are out walking the field need connectivity. They need access on mobile devices so they can do their jobs. We need to equip the public service with the tools they need to serve Canadians.
Finally, with respect, it was said that SSC was all about closing data centres. No, it's not. We are going to close data centres. We did a record number last year, and I will keep closing them, but as Marc said earlier, it's about the health of the applications in there. I don't want to close a data centre and move crappy applications. We want to move good applications. It doesn't make any sense to take an old, outdated application and move it into the cloud. It's still an old, outdated application.
We will close data centres. We want to move them to end state, because that responds to MP Green's question on no single points of failure and redundancy. Those data centres have redundancy built into them. If one goes down, it goes to the other. We have to focus on what the departments do, and that's the health of their applications moving forward.
Those are the three areas. They served us very well through COVID. They accelerated what we were doing. We continue to believe that those are the right things, and we want to do those, as the minister said, in utilizing an enterprise approach.
No more negotiating with 42 departments. We work with the OCIO to set standards. We ask for their guidance and direction and then we do it, and we do it in a way that works. We create a process for exemptions when the enterprise approach doesn't work; I don't want to leave anybody with the impression that it's a one-size-fits-all all the time. As was said, we don't want to be reliant on one vendor for everything, and we know that one solution will not always work for all departments. We need to start with the common and then move to exceptions.
:
Thank you, Mr. Glover. I appreciate that.
That ends our rounds of questioning.
I'd like to thank all the witnesses for showing up and appearing today and answering. We appreciate your coming on. You're welcome to sign off at this point in time. Thank you all for returning.
We have a little bit of committee business here to attend to before we adjourn, so I just ask the committee to bear with us for a little bit.
Committee, please bear in mind that we are still sitting in a public meeting while we're doing this business today, just so that you're aware of that and remember that as we discuss things.
There are two things that I'd like to cover. One is the vote on the main estimates, and two is the revised work plan on the COVID-19 pandemic.
The order of reference for the committee to study the main estimates expires on Friday, November 27, 2020. If the committee feels it has completed its consideration of the main estimates, then we can proceed to taking a decision on the votes that were referred to the committee.
In all, 23 votes in the main estimates for 2020-21 were referred to the committee. Unless anyone objects, I will seek the unanimous consent of the committee to group the votes together for a decision.
Is there unanimous consent to proceed in this manner?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
:
Shall all votes referred to the committee in the main estimates 2020-21 carry?
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Vote 1—Payments to the Corporation for special purposes..........$22,210,000
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
CANADA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC SERVICE
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$64,350,979
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
CANADIAN INTERGOVERNMENTAL CONFERENCE SECRETARIAT
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$5,531,372
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
CANADIAN TRANSPORTATION ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION AND SAFETY BOARD
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$30,034,773
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES
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Vote 1—Operating expenditures..........$2,316,072,146
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Vote 5—Capital expenditures..........$1,587,143,543
(Votes 1 and 5 agreed to on division)
NATIONAL CAPITAL COMMISSION
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Vote 1—Payments to the Commission for operating expenditures..........$66,609,096
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Vote 5—Payments to the Commission for capital expenditures..........$23,749,549
(Votes 1 and 5 agreed to on division)
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S SECRETARY
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$20,021,968
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENTARY BUDGET OFFICER
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$6,520,482
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR INTEGRITY COMMISSIONER
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$5,045,978
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$148,367,516
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$78,358,024
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$79,715,174
(Vote 1 agreed to on division)
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Vote 1—Operating expenditures..........$1,674,997,553
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Vote 5—Capital expenditures..........$286,370,379
(Votes 1 and 5 agreed to on division)
TREASURY BOARD SECRETARIAT
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Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$254,165,851
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Vote 5—Government contingencies..........$750,000,000
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Vote 10—Government-wide Initiatives..........$31,030,279
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Vote 20—Public Service Insurance..........$2,171,215,724
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Vote 25—Operating Budget Carry Forward..........$1,600,000,000
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Vote 30—Paylist Requirements.........$600,000,000
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Vote 35—Capital Budget Carry Forward..........$600,000,000
(Votes 1, 5, 10, 20, 25, 30 and 35 agreed to on division)
The Chair: Shall I report the votes back to the House?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: Thank you.
We'll go to the work plan for the committee's study. On Monday we had a meeting and you wanted to make some changes on the work plan for the committee's study of the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysts made those changes and a revised version was distributed to the committee members yesterday.
Does the committee wish to adopt the revised work plan?
:
I thank Ms. Deraspe for her work.
I'd like to adjust the meeting blocks to make sure everything is in order.
First, currently a two-hour meeting is scheduled with the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Auditor General. We would like to have two separate meetings.
We would like a separate meeting with the minister, followed by three meetings with public servants and the directors responsible for three things: vaccine distribution, personal protective equipment and the national stockpile. So we should have four meetings.
With respect to meetings with public servants on cybersecurity, we agree.
The sixth meeting is about health. Depending on our meeting with Public Services and Procurement Canada, we will determine whether to recall the public servants responsible for vaccine distribution and personal protective equipment.
For the other meetings, we can wait until later to see where we are at.
In raising the issue of the twelfth meeting, I feel like I've opened a Pandora's box full of discussions.
Having said that, I like to play devil's advocate. We could plan the next four meetings with witnesses, which would take us to January 4 or 5, it doesn't matter. In January, for the rest of the study, we could wait and see what we come across further down the line.
As Mr. Drouin said, and as we all know, anything can happen at our table at any moment. I think it would be a good idea to meet halfway, that is, plan the next four or five meetings on this topic and then keep the other meetings open. That way, everyone would get along and work in harmony.