OTTAWA — Anita Anand has been a Minister Fix-it for the federal Liberals, and now she’s assigned to overhaul the government’s primitive digital systems and culture, oversee its internal uses of artificial intelligence, and cut $15 billion over several years from its spending plans.

Anand entered federal politics in 2019, putting aside a career as a University of Toronto law professor specializing in corporate governance. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named her minister of public services and procurement, typically a low-profile, technical post overseeing government contracting. The COVID-19 pandemic meant the rookie minister was responsible for the effort to scour the globe for protective gear, medical equipment and ultimately vaccines.

She became defence minister after the 2021 election, and last summer Trudeau moved her to her current post as president of the Treasury Board, the unglamorous but critical body that runs most of the government’s back-office functions. This makes Anand the boss of the federal government’s chief information officer, the soon-to-depart Catherine Luelo.

The Logic spoke to Anand in her Ottawa office, a spartan space with white, unadorned walls and little furniture but a grand view of the National War Memorial and Château Laurier through two walls of windows.

*Editor’s note: After publication, Anand’s office contacted The Logic to say that, although she has spoken publicly about having 30,000 vacancies in digital roles, that number is incorrect. The government has 28,000 to 30,000 digitally oriented jobs, of which about 30 per cent are vacant, making for a shortage of about 8,000 digital workers.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

I saw you on stage at the FWD50 digital-government conference a few weeks ago. One of the things that really blew me away was your saying that the government is short about 30,000 digital workers. What do you put that down to?

Demand for expertise in an area in which we are growing. As we have seen, Canadians need to have their services delivered as quickly as possible. And we are responding to that with increasing digitalization, which is definitely central to my portfolio. I’m working with Minister Terry Beech [the new minister of citizens’ services] in terms of service delivery, and that is necessitating additional employees in this area.

Why do people not seem to want those jobs in the federal government, or at least not the people you want?

I think it is a matter of demand across labour supply chains. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the G7 and it is difficult to find labour in these expertise areas—cybersecurity, overhauling digital systems, ensuring we have benefits rolling out as quickly as possible, passports being delivered as quickly as possible, visas being processed. Those are large items in front of us. We have massive programs that were launched through COVID, and before. That means that we’re going to have to continue to search for the labour necessary. At the same time, as I said, we are modernizing our systems. That number is a projection of what we will continue to need as we build those systems out.

What does not having those people mean for the efforts that you are in charge of?

Right now our focus is really on the increased digitalization of our systems, and that means revamping those systems, making them able to function most efficiently. We are very much a paper-based government right now, and we need to move that system over to digital. That is occurring at different stages, depending on the department under consideration. 

One of the people you are soon going to be short is a chief information officer. I watched her testify this morning to the public-accounts committee, and one of the things she said is that you really need to work on modernization—

We do.

—before transformation. Do you agree with that assessment? Because that seems at odds with what you’ve been saying.

If I could just say—Catherine Luelo has been a wonderful chief information officer. I have enjoyed working with her. She is an expert in her field, and I will continue to be in touch with her, given her expertise.

I don’t think we are at odds. I think that we both believe that there needs to be a continued focus on digitalizing government systems. We, as a government, took on massive obligations during COVID to deliver benefit after benefit to Canadians. The CERB is a key example. The small-business loan, increases to Old Age Security, the list goes on. It’s unprecedented in terms of what we are delivering to Canadians. 

We need now to make sure that our systems can keep up with the supports that we are delivering to Canadians—and continue to deliver, by way. And I would say that is one major difference between us and the party opposite, that we truly believe that in order to grow an economy, we need to provide supports to Canadians. Whether it is $10-a-day child care or the Canada Child Benefit, those are two examples that have enabled families to survive and to get back to work.

And yet, the woman who has been as much in charge of this at the staff level as anybody says the government needs to prioritize and it has not been prioritizing. Do you think that from where you sit, the government needs to be better prioritizing some of these massive modernization and transformation projects when it comes to the tech?

Yes, we will continue to prioritize it. The work that I do at the Treasury Board very much involves ensuring that we are undertaking what we’re calling BDM, or benefits delivery modernization. That is a program that is front and centre on my desk and the desk of Minister Beech, with whom I’m working. And we will continue to ensure that that modernization of our systems occurs so that we can continue to support the benefits that we are offering to Canadians from a systems-wide standpoint. That work is urgent.

To return to my first question, how do you make the pitch to a digital-transformation all-star to join a government to work directly under someone whose job it is to make the government smaller—to cut, not invest?

You mean me? Well, I wouldn’t say that that’s my job. So I’m interested that that’s what you’re characterizing my job as being.

Well, you said—

The spending review is $15 billion over five years, and $5 billion every year thereafter. That is a little different from the way you characterized my job. We have to be prudent with taxpayer dollars. And undertaking a spending review, as many advanced economies have done over time, is responsible. And I, as someone who is generally fiscally prudent, am very excited to be able to lead the spending review. I wouldn’t say “massive cuts” is accurate at all.

Did I say “massive”? I think I said “cut.”

Well, whose sole job it is to cut? I think so.

All right. But the point remains, you come to someone and say, “Hey, you’re a digital-service all-star, you have a job in the private sector. Come help overhaul the Canadian public sector IT and digital-services world. Also, we’re going to be spending less money on it.”

So this is a challenging time across the country, and the government of Canada is no different. As Canadians examine their pocketbooks, in times of high interest rates, and high inflation, the government of Canada must do the same. That is the rationale for the work that I’m doing on the spending review.

We’ve already indicated that we are going to be refocusing $350 million in outsourcing towards government priorities like the green economy, and like affordable housing. $150 million will be refocused in terms of executive travel. And so that’s the exercise. So to the extent that we see digitization as a priority, government money will be refocused towards that priority also. And clearly as you can see, it is a top priority for me, it is also a top priority for Minister Beech. In fact, if you look at his mandate, you will see that we need to work on this together. So I am very excited to have another person in the chief information officer role who’s as excited as I am about digitizing government. 

I want to talk about artificial intelligence, and the use of artificial intelligence in the public service. Putting on your law-professor hat and governance-expert hat for a second, how do you think about the problem of regulating a large distributed workforce’s use of disruptive new technologies, with huge potential for good and huge potential for bad?

It’s a fascinating question, really, from a law-professor standpoint, as well as from a ministerial standpoint. You’re aware that I released a guide on the use of generative AI. That guide really contains the answer to your question, because what it says is, “Yes, public servants, the use of generative AI like ChatGPT is acceptable in the public service, and there are efficiencies to be gained through the use of those platforms.”

It’s actually more encouraging than that, to my reading.

Yes.

“Yes, please experiment—”

“—and do so within the parameters of the legal regime in which we operate, generally speaking.” Privacy laws [are] the key example here. We need to always be cognizant that as public servants, no matter what we are doing, we have to adhere to the existing legal regime. And that’s why in the use of generative AI, it is prudent to have a set of guidelines. It is prudent to have the conversation between public servants and their managers about the use of AI. It is prudent to say, “Confidential documents will not be part of the use of AI in the workplace.” So I am very encouraged by the general willingness in the public service to use generative AI. And by the same token, I say, “Please, when you do that, be prudent about compliance with existing law.”

One thing about the directive on automated decision-making that’s under your purview is that it only applies to a large but limited set of agencies and departments and ministries. It does not apply to law enforcement, does not apply to the military.

Mm-hm.

Arguably places where the risk of misuse or harm—

Mm-hm.

—from the misuse of AI is greatest. Should the directive be turned into a law or some sort of instrument that is of near universal application in the government?

We know that at the head of these agencies are very responsible individuals who are guarding the use of confidential information. I know because I was at the Department of National Defence, and I know that there are conversations often amongst the leaders of these organizations about how to treat such information in the utmost confidence. We are always examining how we can have better processes in place and certainly in this age of increased cyber activities and the use of cyberattacks as a means of addressing global conflict, we need to continue to examine that.

This is a technology that is moving faster than even people who spend their lives doing it can follow. Government is not by nature a fast-moving institution, because it’s not generally supposed to be. One of the pitches that is generally made to really smart people to join government is, “You can make a difference. You can make the world better in a way you can’t in the private sector.”

That is true.

Is that a pitch that you can really make in good conscience to specifically AI specialists and experts, when they see what the private sector is doing and compare it to what it’s possible to do in government?

You yourself just mentioned in your question that in this workplace, we move at a different pace than other smaller organizations, but we have the ability to move quickly. As you saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, when I was at Procurement, we were able to procure 2.5 billion items of personal protective equipment and stand up Canadian manufacturing. We were also able to procure millions of rapid tests and become the world leader in vaccine procurement, all in the span of a year and a half to two years. Government can move quickly. Government can be efficient. And we will continue to improve our processes to deliver that result.