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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 286

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 27, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 286 - Feb/27/24
Ms. Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné
  • Feb/27/24 11:43:02 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. This gives me a chance to say that the Liberals have already considerably increased the size of the public service. Although they increased the size of the public service, they ended up with essentially operational positions responsible for managing the consultants. All the expenses to get expertise have gone up. Often the work is duplicated. Sometimes consultants are hired to do the work that an entire team could do internally. We see inefficiencies everywhere. The problem is more widespread. We need to consolidate the public service and finally provide better services to the public.
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Context: House Hansard - 286 - Feb/27/24
Mr. Charlie Angus
  • Feb/27/24 11:58:06 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. I think the member should be asking the minister in charge of the file how the heck that happened. The issue is that the government is giving out enormous sums of money to groups like McKinsey, which has a very dodgy record on everything from opioids to articles in the United States saying that this is the company that destroyed the American middle class. Nonetheless, we give them millions of dollars even though we have a trained civil service that is dedicated and can do the job. I cannot imagine that ArriveCAN would have gotten off the ground as far as it did if we had mechanisms in place. However, I want to be fair. I do not have a problem that the government tried to get ArriveCAN, and I do not have a problem that it tried to bring in people to get it done, because we were in unprecedented circumstances. My problem is where the heck was the oversight once it began to realize that this thing was not going to work?
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Context: House Hansard - 286 - Feb/27/24
Mr. Luc Berthold
  • Feb/27/24 4:11:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the problem is that the NDP blindly supports all of this government's financial decisions. There are more civil servants and there are more subcontractors. Unfortunately, services are worse than they were prior to 2015. Every Canadian in every riding can confirm this. People are lining up for passports. People are waiting months and weeks for Service Canada. People are waiting weeks for immigration. I think the NDP should show some restraint before they start throwing stones.
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Context: House Hansard - 286 - Feb/27/24
Mr. Charles Sousa
  • Feb/27/24 4:56:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know the Chair is watching us intently and very much likes to address us as “the mighty OGGO”. It is certainly mighty indeed, and the member from the Bloc also does a tremendous and excellent job, and I apologize for not responding to her in French. I wish I could. I am taking lessons, but that speaks to skills. The skill set that you are asking for, and hope the civil service can have, needs to be improved upon. I recognize that I should speak through the Speaker. Maybe she can translate on my behalf to the third official language of the country, as it should be. The member has commented on the degree of competency, integrity and skill sets within the civil service to do the work, and had that been available to us during the ArriveCAN application, we may have been able to expedite things even more quickly, but that did not exist. The resources were not available to us, we had to procure them and go through a contract system and a subcontract system, similar to what has been done in the past, but we have recognized the ability. We should be improving our internal service for that reason.
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