Hon Senators: Agreed.

(Debate adjourned.)

[English]

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Loffreda, seconded by the Honourable Senator Moncion, for the second reading of Bill S-259, An Act to designate the month of March as Hellenic Heritage Month.

Hon. Bernadette Clement: Honourable senators, I note that this item is at day 15 and I’m not prepared to speak to it. Therefore, with leave of the Senate and notwithstanding rule 4-15(3), I move the adjournment of the debate for the balance of my time.

Hon. Yonah Martin (Deputy Leader of the Opposition): I move the adjournment of the debate for the balance of my time.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

[Translation]

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Gerba, seconded by the Honourable Senator Klyne, for the second reading of Bill C-282, An Act to amend the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act (supply management).

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: No extension is granted, and your time has expired.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Deacon (Nova Scotia), seconded by the Honourable Senator Smith:

That the Senate call on the Government of Canada to replace its outdated program delivery and information technology systems by urgently accelerating the implementation of user-friendly, digital solutions that transform the public service delivery experience of Canadians, and ultimately reduce the cost of program delivery.

Hon. Senators: No.

[English]

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Honourable senators, we have 33 seconds left. Senator Bellemare, if you would like to answer questions, you will have to ask for five more minutes.

[Translation]

Senator Bellemare, would you like to ask for five more minutes?

Hon. Tony Dean: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Senator Colin Deacon’s motion calling upon the Government of Canada to reform its program delivery and information technology systems by urgently accelerating the implementation of user-friendly digital solutions, to transform the public service delivery experience of Canadians while at the same time reducing costs. I support Senator Colin Deacon’s motion, colleagues. I imagine most of you do too.

I would like to speak this afternoon about the context of reforming public services more generally and to share my own experience in leading public service reforms as a former head of Ontario’s public service. I’m going to start with a public service delivery reform story and then draw some pointers that I think are important in the context of Senator Deacon’s motion.

Shortly after the first election of former premier of Ontario Dalton McGuinty in 2003, he tasked me with addressing some pressing public service delivery issues, including reducing wait times for key health care procedures, such as cardiac and cancer surgeries; improving standardized student test scores and reducing high school dropout rates; and addressing severe backlogs in the issuance of birth certificates. All of these things were subsequently accomplished. Today, I’m going to focus on the issuance of birth certificates because it goes directly to the benefits of digitization.

In 2004, colleagues, wait times for birth certificates in Ontario had reached nine months, causing analogies to be made with the time frame — you know what I’m going to say about the romantic evening. The former premier, though, was understandably not amused. Public service delivery had become a political issue. The public service team, led by former deputy minister Michelle DiEmanuele, who is the current head of Ontario’s public service, mapped the process chain and found that the birth certificate process was entirely paper-based, with applications arriving by mail in Toronto, being shipped by van to Thunder Bay for processing and driven back south to Toronto for final shipping out to applicants. Tougher security protocols, which had been tightened after the 9/11 attacks two years earlier, made things worse.

The team quickly concluded that digitizing the process could reduce processing times from months to days and reduce costs from dollars per transaction to cents per transaction. The cost was initially around $5 or $6 per transaction. It also provided the opportunity to redeploy staff to higher value-added work. I said, “Let’s do it.” I had a chat with the premier, and off we went.

In less than a year, the new system was launched after two or three offline test runs.

Wait times for birth certificates in Ontario were reduced from 9 months to 14 days, with an option for an expedited 7-day service delivery with a money-back guarantee if that was not met. This, understandably, became a popular service — and I’m not exaggerating — with complaint letters quickly being overtaken by thank-you letters, a rare occurrence in public service organizations.

What can we learn from this?

First, it helps if a transformation priority is a premier’s priority or a prime minister’s priority because that makes it a priority for the head of the public service.

Second, just like in any other organization, one of the key jobs for leaders is to identify big challenges and fix them or positively identify big opportunities and seize them.

Third, human resources leadership capacity is critical. This is a function that was and, I think, still is routinely underappreciated where it should be elevated. It is a key success factor in leading and managing change. The most important HR decision we made at that time was, instead of going out to consulting companies, to recruit a seasoned IT manager from one of Canada’s largest phone service providers who had led that company’s transition from paper-based to digitized public service delivery.

Fourth, we needed the right people working on these priorities — this was not just another job — so we assigned enthusiastic reformers who see the opportunity to change public services for the better. Believe me, there is no end of public servants with these skills who are waiting to be asked at every level of government, including the federal government. They just need to be asked and they need to be tasked.

If that was possible, what about reforming applications and access to birth registration at the municipal level, which is a precondition for birth certificates, driver’s licences, health card renewals and social insurance numbers at the federal level, which are, in turn, a precondition for passport applications, obviously, and other federal government services?

Colleagues, many of these services are now available online or in joined-up service centres such as Service New Brunswick, Service BC, Service Alberta and ServiceOntario. Other provinces and territories have similar service centres.

Colleagues, bringing Canada to this table joined up service delivery through digital means and through joined-up one-door, one-window service centres and was the last hurdle in making this multi-jurisdictional.

Following a frank meeting between Ontario’s then-head of public service and a senior minister representing the federal government of the day, the key logjam to bringing the federal government together with the province and the municipalities was solved. Everyone’s flag would be on the rooftop, and everybody’s name plate would be on the front door. That’s what it took eventually because it was about visibility, an understandable concern.

What did we learn from these reform initiatives? Just like everywhere else, leadership and expectation-setting from political leaders are important drivers of change initiatives. Virtuous reform initiatives focused on improving public services attract supporters and activists in the public service organizations, and breakthroughs happen. The tumbler locks, the combination falls into place, the lock opens, and change happens.

As we have heard, digitization reduces cost from dollars to cents per transaction.

Most importantly, improving public service delivery — and this has been proven — increases citizens’ confidence in government. Numbers don’t matter as much as consumers’, customers’ and citizens’ expectations and experiences at the focal point of delivery. They look at things like this: How long do I have to wait on the phone or in line for a public service or cancer care? Do I have confidence in my teachers? Is my kid’s school clean? How long do I have to wait for other medical services? I’ve mentioned cardiac, but what about hips, knees and eye surgeries?

Colleagues, improving public services is the right thing to do.

Lastly, I want to touch on something that is very important, particularly when we look at federal national organizations. This is true not only of Canada but also of other countries, and it’s certainly true of other federations.

Scale, obviously, matters. When we were creating this empowered service delivery organization, ServiceOntario, I wanted to know why New Brunswick was ahead of us. Why did New Brunswick beat us to the punch on this, and a couple of other smaller jurisdictions as well? It took a lot to get answers to this question. They had entrepreneurial leaders, of course, but part of the answer was that New Brunswick is relatively small, and the smaller the jurisdiction, the faster and easier it is to implement change.

Scale tends to be important internationally, too, with smaller countries and subnational jurisdictions advancing ahead of national governments. For example, Australian states, just like Canadian provinces, have been entrepreneurial in relation to their national counterparts. Those are two countries that public service colleagues and political leaders around the world look to for public service success stories. That includes at the federal level, colleagues.

The same is true in Europe. Smaller and recently modernizing countries are often ahead of their larger counterparts. Lithuania is a prime example of that, as is Albania.

But the U.K. has come a long way also — it is a large country with a large national government — especially with the digitization of passport renewals and, for a lengthy period of time, with automated income tax processing for those in regular employment.

As many of you know, regular workers earning hourly incomes and salaried employees can choose not to file tax returns. They are otherwise automated, and you simply receive a refund or an order for payment of deficits.

So, colleagues, yes, we must expect more from our federal government, and we know it can deliver. We’ve seen this with the rollout of the Canada Child Benefit, which has lifted almost 400,000 children out of poverty since 2016.

Here is another anecdote. When I was in the public service, we used to call poverty an intractable problem — too thorny to fix, too big to wrap our arms around — until poverty became too expensive. We then started to figure out how to tackle it. The Child Benefit is a terrific example of lifting large numbers of needy people out of poverty. It is the same with the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors. There will be myriad other examples.

Finally, it is important to highlight the work of the Institute for Citizen-Centred Service, formed decades ago by a group of federal and Ontario public servants, which still produces periodic benchmarking reports on key aspects of public service delivery. Some of my former federal colleagues around the room will recognize this.

Colleagues, we can be proud of our public servants working at all levels across this country. They are as hard-working and as entrepreneurial as those working in other sectors of the economy, but they — perhaps understandably — work in risk-averse environments. Colleagues, we have to send the right signals. We just have to unleash that entrepreneurial talent, and we can get, in a relatively short space of time, to where Senator Deacon would like us to be.

For every one of the stories of successful public service reform I’ve mentioned tonight there are countless more, but there is also much more to do. I thank Senator Deacon for opening up this important conversation. Thank you.

Hon. David M. Arnot: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak in support of Senator Simons’ inquiry into the challenges and opportunities of Canadian municipalities. I thank Senator Simons for giving this chamber the opportunity to reflect on this timely and critical topic. I add my voice to those of our colleagues, using my home province of Saskatchewan as a lens to frame my observations.

As with other jurisdictions, legislation compels municipalities in Saskatchewan to provide good government, services and facilities, all while fostering economic, social and environmental well-being and ensuring public safety. These purposes seem straightforward and unobjectionable. Why do we need this inquiry?

Over the course of the summer, I reached out, met with and listened to municipal leaders. These leaders are true champions for their communities, they are committed and they are driven to serve the public. They are pursuing large projects like new public libraries, event centres and partnerships to promote post-secondary education.

Like all other municipalities in Canada, Saskatchewan’s communities are also facing real, hard truths. In addition to the kinds of projects that could be considered jewels, they are creating — partnering — to offer warming shelters in parks, rapid access programs, overdose outreach teams and counselling for children, youth, and caregivers. They are responding to the significant social, safety and economic challenges related to mental health and addictions; toxic and contaminated drug supplies; domestic violence and sexually transmitted and blood‑borne infections.

Municipal governments are increasingly taking on responsibility for long-standing social challenges, many of which are exacerbated by the rising costs of shelter, food and fuel. They are having to replace aging infrastructure that is more costly than ever to repair and replace. Municipalities are responding to these hard realities with and without the support of federal and provincial governments.

His Worship Mayor Charlie Clark, the Mayor of Saskatoon, observed that:

We currently have a patchwork of funding programs that provide very little predictability or ability to plan. Cities are being called more and more to step outside our spheres of control to meet the needs of our communities, as we take on more responsibilities being downloaded onto us.

Federal-provincial and federal-territorial partnerships have been a long-standing pathway to achieve social and infrastructure objectives. For example, the Investing in Canada Plan is a 12‑year, $188-billion investment strategy that started in 2016. However, the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported that this program has likely:

. . . contributed to increase municipal capital spending, but not provincial capital spending. . . . funding from the federal government probably displaced provincial investments . . . .

Municipal leaders are acting within — and sometimes beyond — the constraints of their mandate and resources. They are making hard choices for two reasons. One, they cannot operate with a deficit, and two, their ability to tax residents was not designed for and cannot keep pace with current realities.

Municipalities are at the forefront of service provision and their costs to operate and respond to their residents is increasing. Citizens are dealing with year-over-year cost of living increases and a consumer price index that has seen an almost 4% increase in the last twelve months. Municipalities are responding to these price increases — gas and fuel costs, for instance — and declining housing availability, which in turn amplifies addictions, mental health concerns and homelessness. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has, for example, long called for federal investment in programs that address both housing and chronic homelessness, particularly for our most vulnerable populations.

In my home community of Saskatoon, 550 people are known to be experiencing homelessness, an increase of 15% since 2018. This is believed to be a very conservative estimate. Of those, 83% identify as Indigenous and 49% said they experience chronic homelessness. Saskatchewan reported a 14.8% increase in housing starts between September 2022 and September 2023, a 1.6% year-over-year comparison.

While this is a welcome shift, the current inventory level of housing in Saskatchewan is exceptionally low. Just weeks ago, the Saskatchewan Realtors Association reported that housing inventory is the lowest it has been since 2009. The Saskatchewan Housing Continuum Network projected a need for more than 100,000 housing units by 2030 based on expected population growth over the next eight years.

To be clear, municipal leaders are builders. They are proud of their people, their community and their province. What they want is better relationships with and between their province and the federal government so that communities and people can succeed.

His Worship Mayor Charlie Clark told me that he supports:

. . . [the] exploration of a new funding and governance model for cities that will reflect the urban reality of Canada, today. [that] so much of what determines the well-being of our country — the health of our citizens, our climate, our economy, our democracy — plays out on the streets of our cities. [because, as he observes, cities] have the least flexibility in terms of revenue and jurisdictional authority to be able to address these challenges and meet the needs of our citizens. [And further,] the urgency of addressing these issues, especially in terms of having tools to address aging infrastructure needs, responding to the climate challenge, building a new era of urban truth and reconciliation, and stopping the growing crisis of homelessness and addictions.

These sentiments were echoed in a letter to me from Her Worship Sandra Masters, Mayor of Regina. She further amplified the relationship between climate change, infrastructure and resources:

Climate adaption continues to be a focus of the City of Regina as we work towards becoming a renewable, net‑zero community by 2050. Rebuilding and retrofitting infrastructure to meet net-zero requirements is no small feat and requires substantial funding. Furthermore, infrastructure renewal directly impacts our capacity to address other municipal issues of infrastructure. We value federal programs such as the Canada Community-Building Fund and the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program and would welcome direct access to alternate flexible funding programs . . . .

 — from the federal government.

The need for funding and revenue streams is common to all Canadian municipalities. Cities, towns and villages across Canada are responsible for 60% of the infrastructure in Canada.

In my province, the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association, or SUMA, has stated that projects, including critical infrastructure projects, are going over budget because of the cost of construction and labour shortages. Projects are being cancelled, and there is increased rescoping and phasing in taking place.

For example, bids for road and sidewalk improvements are 30% higher than they were in 2021, just two years ago. There has been at least a 6% increase in construction costs, as well. Urban municipalities are looking for — and use — federal infrastructure grants to meet their obligations.

Ms. Randy Goulden, President of SUMA, told me that her home community, the city of Yorkton, with a population of 25,000 people, is facing significant challenges with its water system. It has been denied funding on several occasions by infrastructure programs. President Goulden believes that longer funding time frames are needed to address the looming infrastructure gaps in urban municipalities. Together, the cities of Saskatoon and Regina represent over 40% of the Saskatchewan population of 1.1 million people.

However, the social and resource-related issues are not unique to urban settings. More than 30% of Saskatchewan’s population lives in rural areas. Mr. Ray Orb, President of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, told me that the needs of the people he serves are somewhat different. There is a focus on land, water and transportation, which enable jobs that are connected to Saskatchewan’s agricultural economy.

The drought crisis from this past summer, for example, is increasing demands to get water where it is needed. A lack of infrastructure means that that is not happening, and 70% of the available fresh water in Saskatchewan cannot be accessed for agricultural purposes as a result.

Federal programs that offer even two-thirds funding that could help with such challenges are often out of reach for rural municipalities. The one-third financial contribution required of rural municipalities is not fiscally possible because of their limited tax bases. Of all the things that would help rural municipalities, it was not programs or money that Mr. Orb highlighted. He called for better communication and better consultation, as well as direct involvement by municipalities in the federal-provincial discussions that affect them.

Colleagues, I believe our country is ready for direct dialogue. Indeed, Canada needs it. As I was told by municipal leadership:

Canada will only thrive if our cities and communities can thrive. [That it] is time to build a financing and governance model that enables that to happen . . . .

 — in a modern era.

What are the solutions? It has been argued, convincingly, that the constitutional doctrine that municipalities are “creatures of the provinces” is a legal fiction. That is, the real and prominent place in the Canadian state that municipalities hold must be recognized. I believe it is our role, as senators, to consider the practicalities as well as the legalities in this inquiry. This inquiry recognizes the real, practical importance of municipalities to the fabric of our country.

Of course, the provinces are rightly protective of their authority. It is also true that the federal government has the ability and the tools — if not the obligation — to work with provinces and municipalities. Relationships are the lifeblood of our municipalities. Good relationships ensure success. Local leaders know this.

In a municipality, no matter if you are the mayor, the reeve or a councillor, you cannot avoid questions about taxes, services or roads in the grocery store checkout line. In other words, accountability between residents and the civic leadership is part of the day-to-day; it is baked in.

Canadians should expect no less of our federal, provincial and municipal relationships. I have said many times that the health and well-being of communities is directly related to the health and well-being of all communities that comprise the whole. Canadians want and deserve healthy communities and healthy municipalities.

These acute issues need identification and solutions. I support the inquiry, and I look forward to its report.

Thank you.

[Translation]

Hon. Colin Deacon: Senator Dean, thank you for bringing your excellent experience to this debate. I wonder if you could speak briefly about the need to change policies, regulations and practices in order to achieve those efficiencies. You can’t digitize the old cow paths; you have to change how you do things. Can you speak to that? Thank you.

Hon. Éric Forest: Will the honourable senator take a question?

An Hon. Senator: Hear, hear.

(On motion of Senator Clement, debate adjourned.)

(At 4:30 p.m., the Senate was continued until tomorrow at 2 p.m.)