44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 1, 2022 10:00AM
- Nov/1/22 11:41:17 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to discuss the motion regarding the ballooning costs of the ArriveCAN app.
In a time when too many Canadians are struggling just to make ends meet, it is critical that the government ensure we have sound stewardship of tax dollars. I share the concerns of Canadians and frontline CBSA officers that the ArriveCAN app has cost way too much and delivered too little.
Last week at the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, we heard from the national president of the Customs and Immigration Union that frontline service workers were never consulted on the development of the app or any of the more than 70 updates that were required.
While the government continued to pour money into ArriveCAN, frontline workers were forced to deal with the fallout of a glitchy app on top of a severe staffing shortage. This has had a huge demoralizing impact on the mental health and the moral of CBSA officers.
At committee, I supported a study to provide more transparency to Canadians, which they deserve, about the costs associated with the ArriveCAN app. I also pushed the committee to go further. I believe the ArriveCAN debacle is part of a larger systemic issue of the government increasingly hiring expensive consultants, who hire expensive consultants, with no regard for delivering the best value for Canadians.
That is why I tabled a motion, which was supported unanimously at OGGO, to request that the Auditor General conduct a performance audit on outsourcing policies and practices more broadly.
Earlier this year, the Globe and Mail reported that since the 2015-16 fiscal year, government spending on outsourced contracts had increased by 41.8% under the federal Liberals, reaching $11.8 billion in the 2020-21 fiscal year alone. This trend started under the previous Conservative government and continues to cost Canadians today.
All too often, outsourced contracts seem to balloon and cost more than if public service workers were tasked with the same work. The Treasury Board has provided guidance on preparing estimates to help departments with “make-or-buy” decisions, as well as policies on the planning and management of investments that require departments’ decisions that demonstrate best value and sound stewardship. However, it is not clear how these policies are applied in practice or what oversight is involved.
A broader performance audit by the Auditor General, as I proposed and as was supported at the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, could provide important insights to Parliamentarians on questions. How often are departments' cost estimates exceeded for outsourced work? What happens when a department gets an estimate wrong? How are lessons learned and shared across departments?
I want to highlight the concerning transparency and accountability issues that arise in relation to outsourced contracts.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada recently told the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates that “The procurement process to contract out work favours corporate secrecy over the rights of Canadians to know how funds are spent and how services are managed.”
Our access to information regime is broken and it is extremely difficult for Canadians to get a full picture of how funds directed to the private sector are being spent. This is a perfect example of what we are talking about today.
It is also extremely difficult for public service workers who become aware of mismanagement related to outsourced contracts to raise the alarm without fear of reprisal. Canada’s whistle-blower protection regime has been called among one of the worst in the world and cases like the Phoenix pay disaster and the ArriveCAN app show how there are real costs to the Canadian public when public service workers cannot speak up.
The blame for Canada’s ineffective whistle-blower protection regime lies with both the Conservative and Liberals parties.
David Hutton, a whistle-blower protection expert and senior fellow at the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, recently wrote in the Hill Times that when the member for Carleton, then-minister under the Harper government, introduced federal accountability legislation in 2006, “he claimed repeatedly that it would offer 'ironclad' protection, and indeed it does—but for the wrongdoers, not for whistleblowers or the public.”
Since the Liberals came into power, they have failed to remedy this situation. Instead, they have sat on a unanimous report from the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates for over five years. That report recommended sweeping legislative reforms to Canada’s whistle-blower protection law. As the Liberal government bounces from scandal to scandal, it seems to have no interest in improving protections for whistle-blowers who could shine a light on government wrongdoing or mismanagement of public funds. This is critical to the transparency for which we are calling so Canadians can trust their government.
In addition to the transparency and accountability issues that I am talking about, the government’s increasing reliance on outsourcing raises concerning equity issues that warrant discussion.
In 2018, the UN special rapporteur on poverty and human rights discussed privatization as a cause of poverty while still costing governments more.
In 2019, the Standing Committee on Human Resources tabled a report on precarious work, recommending the government, “[review] human resources policies and budgeting practices to ensure that they incentivize hiring employees on indeterminate contracts.” It is critical that the government stop the precarious work and incentivize hiring people full time.
Further, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada has written about the interplay between outsourcing and gender equity, stating:
In IT, lucrative contracts are doled out to a male-dominant industry that has notoriously struggled with gender equity. While at the same time, lower paid and precarious temporary service contracts are disproportionately filled by women. The majority of temporary workers become trapped in a cycle of persistent temporary work, defined by low pay, few if any fringe benefits, and high risk of unemployment and labour force exit.
While the government will say it is forced to rely on the private sector to deliver IT services because of skill shortages within the public service, it is ignoring in-house talent and failing to invest in building further institutional capacity in a way that promotes gender equity, and I will also say failing to work with public institutions to tap into that expertise and knowledge that lies in our public institutions, including higher-learning institutions.
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada has filed more than 2,500 grievances where work was outsourced rather than assigned to existing expertise in the public service. In the last fiscal year, the government spent $2.3 billion on information technology service contracts compared to $1.85 billion on its own IT workforce. If the government is truly committed to building a strong and inclusive public service, it is essential that it maintain and build in-house IT capacity.
The government’s increasing reliance on outsourcing is not only undermining efforts to promote equity, but it is also costing Canadians more. Although it is difficult to get information on outsourced contracts, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada shared with me the following alarming examples: “one IT Technical Architect at National Defence cost Canadian taxpayers over $359,000 per year in a contract that was renewed for over 8 years. The equivalent public servant (including their pension) would have cost $147,876 – saving over $1.5M”; and “Another example: Shared Services Canada has spent over $14M over the past five years on 3 resources and posted a contract tender extension for another four years. Three public servants (including their pension) over the same five years would have cost $1,855,476 – saving over $12M.”
It is not just in IT that we are seeing these increased costs because of reliance on outsourcing, but also in other areas like cleaning, grounds maintenance, health care and access to information.
While I agree that Canadians deserve transparency on the ArriveCAN app, they deserve much more. They deserve transparency on the true costs and risks of outsourcing public services. I hope all members will agree that a broader examination of outsourcing by the Auditor General is warranted and is in the best interest of Canadians.
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- Nov/1/22 11:52:37 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will just start with the government financing oil and gas. It makes these huge investments in industries that had $147 billion in profit last year, and here the government is subsidizing building the Trans Mountain pipeline, which is skyrocketing out of control.
Outsourcing is built into this whole regime. It is a waste of taxpayers' dollars. It could all be going to help improve the lives of Canadians, so they could get access to medicine, housing and things they actually need to live.
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- Nov/1/22 12:25:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate that question from my colleague on the public accounts committee.
I tend to agree with the member. The amount of outsourcing from this government is stratospheric, and it is costing taxpayers way too much money, but I also think there is a quid pro quo. If we are going to rely on public servants, public servants need to show up and do their job. In my riding and across this country, Service Canada closed for too long during the pandemic. If Service Canada is not there when Canadians need it most, I think a lot of Canadians will ask: “Why do we need Service Canada?”
I agree with the member that we should rely on our public servants, but at the same time, let us ensure that they do the job they have been hired to do.
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- Nov/1/22 3:02:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Government of Canada is committed to collective agreements that are reasonable for taxpayers and that provide employees with fair wage adjustments and provisions that reflect today's workplace.
Can the President of the Treasury Board inform the House of the new agreement that has just been reached?
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- Nov/1/22 3:48:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, look, having transparency and accountability in how every level of government is spending money is imperative for taxpayers, including the taxpayers in my riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge.
I know that all of the processes and procedures were followed by the Government of Canada in the procurement process for the app. If members would like to go to the CBSA website, there is a breakdown of how the monies were spent with regard to the ArriveCAN app, and, for that matter, with regard to all of the measures that were put in place during COVID-19, which was an extraordinary period of time in our country and the world's history.
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- Nov/1/22 4:16:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what we need to focus on is that when we look at food bank users in that statistic that I referred to in my speech, which was 1.5 million in one month, the highest ever recorded, it was also in conjunction with the highest employment rate. People are working, and they still cannot afford food.
The government continues to waste money over and over again on programs that do not work and that do not get to the people who need them, who are constantly met with red tape. Unless we do these audits and hold the Liberals to account, why let them just waste taxpayers' money?
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- Nov/1/22 4:17:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, to my colleague's point, $54 million may seem small when talking about a trillion-dollar debt. The comprehension level of the money that is owed in this country is not really conceivable to the average Canadian. It did not even work, and we cannot even calculate the amount of money that was lost because of its ineffectiveness.
We should be challenging the government if it is not stepping up. It should be offering to do this audit. We should not have to call on it to do this audit. That is the right thing to do. If the government is mismanaging Canadian taxpayers' money, it ought to be ready to take a stand on that.
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- Nov/1/22 4:28:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member spoke a lot about debt and the debt that the country has incurred. This motion has to do with spending and how the government uses its money and what it is spending it on.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has a debt clock, which circulates through how much debt we are incurring. We are incurring about $6 million a day, adding to our debt.
I wonder if the member could speak a little more to our incurring such debt at the pace that we are and how that is affecting our economy and the capacity of the government to be able to operate.
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- Nov/1/22 4:29:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I could give many examples to show how, when the government keeps racking up debt, it loses some the flexibility it has to offer real services to citizens. More importantly, it affects the ability of future generations to access government services because the price of that debt is going to keep growing. Our children and the children of all Canadians are the ones who are going to have to pay that debt. That is the big problem.
I just want to say one thing. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we are adding $6 million a day to the debt. That does not include the Prime Minister's $7,000-a-night hotel bill. It cost at least $14,000 for those two days.
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