National Defence committee  It's done independently. The two biggest contractors right now for the IDEaS program are Calian and Telus. What they do and how they use that grant money is not for the department to say. We do not have any oversight, transparency or accountability, so I cannot say for sure.

National Defence committee  A long time ago, yes they did.

National Defence committee  Of course there is, but start paying them the market rate: Start recognizing them for their professional services and treat them as professionals. Why they're going to Calian.... I just talked about the pandemic and a government that had frontline workers and was refusing to pay pandemic pay to the frontline workers.

National Defence committee  The processes that he might be referring to is the newest guideline from Treasury Board on contracting services. I've been very clear about our position on that. It looks like it's a gauntlet for somebody to get through before they can actually contract out. It doesn't put any oversight in the hands of the departments.

National Defence committee  May I add something to that because I think it's very important for this committee to know? There are procedures for the department where they can convert an operational maintenance budget into a salary/wage envelope, but they just do not do it. They do not make the mechanisms and say they're going to convert this amount of money that's in O&M; that is being spent on contractors and do the process that is available to them to convert it to salary/wage envelopes.

National Defence committee  I haven't looked into the numbers. When you say augmentation in the public service, I do think that it's mostly at the executive level. It's at the higher levels; it's not at the working levels. That's where we're still seeing a reliance on contracting out to perform that work, but as for an augmentation in the federal public services, we need to really dive into where the augmentations are happening.

National Defence committee  DND and most federal departments have not invested in human resources, so you are leaving hiring up to engineers or IT workers, people who are already overworked, to rely on the staffing mechanisms. We need to make sure that we make it easier to hire faster and more efficiently, and you can't do that if you're doing it off the side of your desk.

National Defence committee  Thank you for mentioning DRDC—the research arm—because something is happening that is very concerning to our members. We represent the research scientists. The government has started to rely on grants to do defence research. They're taking those dollars away from our research scientists and making them almost contract managers instead of those who do the important research on behalf of the Department of National Defence.

National Defence committee  Again, it's very complex, but you have to look at how easy it is to hire somebody. I would ask that this committee think about talking to DCC or NETE and asking them how they hire their people. What happens is, they know somebody. Somebody is brought in under a NETE contract to do that work.

National Defence committee  I don't have any knowledge of them right now. We can certainly look into them, especially because they say they're for professional services. That is something that we have always looked at from a contracting-out perspective. That is where they engage in engineering services or IT work, which is work that could be done by our members.

National Defence committee  No.

National Defence committee  From a transparency perspective, of course we want to make sure we're getting value for taxpayer money. We would have to take a look at them. But GC Strategies and McKinsey aren't really big on our radar. We have other really big players, like Calian and Telus and some others, that are taking major amounts away from the government.

National Defence committee  For those on the committee, like I said, the Professional Institute has been looking at outsourcing for a long time, for over a decade. I will be honoured to present those reports. I don't have any others. We will be looking at doing a concentrated survey with the Department of National Defence at some time in the future.

National Defence committee  I'm sorry. You have the bells sounding.

National Defence committee  Okay.