INDY Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON INDUSTRY

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE L'INDUSTRIE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, May 11, 1999

[English]

• 0916

[Editor's Note: Technical Difficulty]

The Chair (Ms. Susan Whelan (Essex, Lib.)): I call the meeting back to order and welcome the witnesses from Halifax, Nova Scotia.

We're very pleased to have with us today several witnesses from Nova Scotia. You're going to have to help me out, because I have five names in front of me and I only see four people. So maybe you can identify yourselves. That might be the easier way to do it.

Is the Government of Nova Scotia present, Mr. Chris Topping?

Mr. Chris Topping (Strategies Manager, Year 2000 Project Office, Technology and Science Secretariat, Government of Nova Scotia): Yes. I'm Chris Topping from the Technology and Science Secretariat for the Province of Nova Scotia, and I'll let the other three that are here introduced themselves.

The Chair: Okay.

Ms. Amanda Whitewood (Chair, Information Management Steering Committee, Nova Scotia Health Care Organizations): Good morning, I'm Amanda Whitewood. I'm representing the health care organizations in the province and I am the vice-president of the Nova Scotia Hospital, which is the psychiatric facility for the province.

Mr. John Perkins (Federal-Provincial Liaison Officer, Emergency Measures Organization, Nova Scotia): Good morning. My name is John Perkins. I'm with the Emergency Measures Organization for Nova Scotia and I'm here to speak to any public safety questions you might have.

Ms. Ann Petley-Jones (Chief Information Officer, Nova Scotia Power Inc.): I'm Ann Petley-Jones. I'm the chief information officer at Nova Scotia Power.

The Chair: Okay, great.

Mr. Chris Topping: I think Yvan Toner is expected here from Maritime Tel & Tel. He's not here yet, but as far as I know, he's expected.

The other thing I'll mention is that we can't see you at all. There's no video.

The Chair: You can't see us at all, but you can hear us?

Mr. Chris Topping: We can hear you. I think we can hear you, but there's no video.

The Chair: Okay.

Is it working now or not?

Mr. Chris Topping: Not yet.

Yvan Toner has just arrived, and I'll let him introduce himself.

Mr. Yvan Toner (Director, Relationship and Opportunity Development, Maritime Tel & Tel Corporate Communications Ltd.): Hi. My name is Yvan Toner. I'm the director responsible for the year 2000 readiness program for MT&T.

The Chair: Great.

I guess we've lost the picture that you should be seeing of us as well, but you can still hear us, correct?

Ms. Ann Petley-Jones: That is correct.

The Chair: I propose that we continue anyhow while we let the technicians try to figure out the picture.

What I'd like to do is begin with opening comments from Mr. Chris Topping from the Government of Nova Scotia.

Mr. Chris Topping: Thanks very much. I have brief presentation that I'll switch on in a minute.

As I said, I'm here from the Technology and Science Secretariat. We're operating a year 2000 project office that I think is similar in some ways to the type of project office services the Treasury Board is offering in the federal government. I'd like to briefly go over seven or eight slides to give you some idea of how the province has been approaching the problem.

So let me just switch over here to the presentation. Can you see that all right?

The Chair: Yes, Mr. Topping, we can see it.

Mr. Chris Topping: Okay. It is truncating the logo at the bottom, but all of the text and everything is there. So I'll just go through it very briefly.

The first thing to describe is how we've organized efforts within the provincial government. It's the departments themselves of the government that are running their year 2000 projects and going through the remediation and contingency planning and all of the efforts, and the governing structure on top of that is deputy ministers and the cabinet or executive council.

To support year 2000 in particular, the priorities and planning committee is a subcommittee of cabinet, and the business and technology advisory committee is a committee of nine deputy ministers within the province who are acting as the province's year 2000 steering committee.

• 0920

Our Technology and Science Secretariat is running a year 2000 project office, and as well as providing support and coordination to the departments, we're also a secretarial support to BTAC in their role as the steering committee for the province.

At the end of the presentation, during the question session, John Perkins will answer any questions you may have about the public safety aspects, but this is a diagram showing the relationship. The Emergency Measures Organization in Nova Scotia has primary responsibility for public safety and emergency preparedness aspects of the year 2000. He and his team are working very closely with the year 2000 project office. So while we're working with the provincial departments to address our business functions and the readiness of the province itself, John is proceeding with the emergency measures aspects, especially in areas outside of the provincial government itself. That would be dealing with municipalities and emergency readiness. In that sense, a target date of June 30 for a provincial risk assessment is the key date they're shooting for.

As I said, I'll let John fill in, if you have any questions about that, at the end of the presentations.

Just to give you some idea of how the departments have organized their year 2000 efforts, this is probably old news to you if you've been dealing with year 2000 for any length of time, but basically you could divide the projects up into five main components: the IT infrastructure; the computer systems themselves; the issues with embedded chips; the issues with service dependencies, and that's where you'd get into our relationship with the federal government as well as other municipal agencies, suppliers and clients; issues around the public infrastructure, and I'm sure Mr. Toner and Ms. Petley-Jones will be able to speak to some of those issues; and then the final piece is the business continuity contingency planning that we need to put in place to be prepared for any unforeseen circumstances.

I'd also like to acknowledge the Treasury Board Secretariat and their business continuity process that we've been making use of. We've adopted it for use here, and we've had good support and coordination with the Treasury Board in making use of that service.

I'll give you a little bit of history. As long ago as 1991 the province had started to address some of the potential issues with year 2000, and that progressed over the years. In 1997 we had our first formal assessment of our IT applications within the provincial government, and it was really in 1998 that it took a much higher priority, with the creation of the project office and the establishment of BTAC as the steering committee for the province.

Overall, the departments of government have organized their efforts into about 213 projects. Our total cost estimate for the provincial government is approximately $80 million, and we're looking at about $40,000 a person, so that works out to roughly 200 person-years, I think. As for the details of that, we've been putting the project status up on our public Internet site since last October or November, and the details are available there for what those projects are and what sort of progress is being made on them.

The focus now has shifted from a corporate point of view to two categories of high priority for the government. We've basically identified that essential services—that's to say, those services that have a direct impact on health, safety or security—are to take the highest priority in addressing year 2000, and we've identified 56 services within the provincial government that meet that categorization. The other high-priority category underneath that is termed mission-critical services—core business functions of the Province of Nova Scotia, or services that have a significant impact on the delivery of essential services—and we've identified 46 services.

Those are the two groups of services for which we've applied corporate target dates. The province intends that for essential and mission-critical services the remediation, the repair of computer systems and other assets, be completed by June 15. That leaves the summertime to complete testing and implementation so that the year-2000-ready service is implemented by August 30. On the contingency side for essential and mission-critical services, our target dates are to have the contingency planning complete by June 15 and then the subsequent steps of business continuity implemented by August 30.

• 0925

That's basically the brief overview of what we're doing here at the provincial government. More information is available, such as the list of what services have been identified as essential and the target dates for those. The status of the more specific projects within the department is also available at our website.

I'd now like to hand it over to Amanda Whitewood. She'll give a brief presentation of the status of the health care sector.

Ms. Amanda Whitewood: Thanks, Chris.

I'm just wondering, since we still don't have visual, if it would be possible just to introduce yourselves to us, if there aren't too many people in the room.

The Chair: I'm Susan Whelan and I'm the chair. I'm the one who's been talking to you since the beginning. The only way we're going to get visual is if we hang up and call you right back, so we're going to do that, Amanda. We'll try it again and be right back to you.

Ms. Amanda Whitewood: Thanks.

The Chair: Amanda, can you see us now?

Ms. Amanda Whitewood: Yes, we can, Susan. Thank you very much. That's much better.

So I'll take you through the status of the health care organizations.

Over the evolution of our projects, we've come to terms with three key messages, and I will be walking through those over the next few minutes. The first one I want to take you through is a snapshot of our overall objective for the health care organizations in the province, which is to minimize the disruption to patient care.

Our approach to achieving that objective, since April 1997, has been to establish a coordination office. This has been essentially a coordination point to provide resources to all the health care organizations, eliminate duplication, and centralize reporting, so we can offer information to a variety of venues, such as yourselves today.

We have also been leveraging best practices through our coordinated approach. That has taken place in respect to provincial seminars we've been hosting on a monthly basis and research we've been taking part in. Through our coordinated approach, we've seen a lot of success around the supply chain campaign, in terms of going out as one voice throughout the province to canvass our suppliers and eliminate some of the duplication they may face in responding to multiple organizations. That's been quite successful to date. There has been witness testing, again looking at where we can work together on approaching this problem. Right now we're fully engaged in provincial contingency planning.

I will just give you a snapshot—I won't go through this in detail—of the organization of this effort. As with many coordination-type efforts, you need a lot of linkages with partners, and you'll see that reflected in the chart. At the top of the chart there's a group called the provincial leadership committee. That represents all the CEOs of health care organizations in the province and the deputy minister of health. That ultimately reflects our accountability as health care organizations.

The group managing the coordination effort is called the information management steering committee. You'll see that the coordination office is reflected there and many of our partnerships, such as external jurisdictions working with CYNCH and other hospital associations.

• 0930

We've had speakers in from provinces such as Alberta and Quebec, to help learn from their experiences; Chris' organization, TSS; our provincial health organization; as well as major stakeholders.

Our PR working group—and I'll be getting into that in a minute—is a group that has come together across all the health care organizations and represents public relations experts putting their arms around this challenge and trying to create key messages that will hold us in good stead as we go through the next several months.

The health care organizations are reflected at the end of the chart, and the Department of Health is working in partnership with us. We're working partly in a regionalized health care environment here and partly still with health care organizations with their own boards. That has been somewhat complex. We've just had nine organizations, including the Department of Health, and that's helped us to come together as a group, unlike some other provinces that are still struggling with coming together, with all of their hospitals still working distinctly. So we've had that as a positive aspect.

Another key message we've been driving home over the last several months is that the magnitude of the problem has been going down dramatically for health care organizations. Our assessment is complete across the province, and we're now fully into remediation in developing our continuity plan in relation to contingency planning.

The cost has gone down dramatically, in terms of our estimate, from our peak of $87 million, when we were first able to generate our costing information in September of last year, to $44 million now. So again that reflects the magnitude of the problem going down as we moved from using a costing model that was prevalent across the country to actually being able to tag devices as assessments were completed.

You'll see that our statistical information is much the same as in other jurisdictions. Approximately 5% of medical devices are showing failures. The important point is that the failures detected there have been limited to things of a date-stamping nature and have not been of a life threatening nature. So calculation of drug dosages and things of that nature have not been an issue with the Y2K problem.

Our last message is our commitment to public relations. That is a strong connection with our accountability for managing this problem and a way we're approaching the challenge together. I spoke to the coordinated effort in the health sector, the group that is putting their arms around this challenge together.

We have a live public home page that the public can enter, if they have access to the Internet. If they don't, we've started a provincial road show campaign where two hospitals per month are taking part in issuing a press release and inviting the press to come to look at their site. They're walking the press through different aspects of their remediation effort, so people in the general domain can get more of an attachment to the human element of this issue in terms of public safety in our health care organization. Again we're communicating realistically with the general public in terms of what they can expect if we have any minimal disruptions at the turn of the millennium.

That's the conclusion of my presentation. I just want to reiterate that our messages from the Province of Nova Scotia for the health care organizations are around minimizing the disruption to patient care. We see the magnitude of the problem decreasing dramatically as we move forward, and we have a strong commitment to sharing information with the public.

Chris.

Mr. Chris Topping: If it's all right with you, we'll introduce Ann Petley-Jones from Nova Scotia Power and she can do her part of the presentation.

The Chair: Certainly.

Ms. Ann Petley-Jones: Thank you very much, Chris. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you this morning.

On behalf of Nova Scotia Power, I would just like to say we provide the majority of electrical service in Nova Scotia. You can find specific information on our company, our customers, and our preparedness in the additional information we have provided to you.

• 0935

I am very pleased to report to you this morning that we are essentially complete in our Y2K preparations. We have completed 99.5% of all of the remedial work necessary to have all of our operating systems in the year 2000 mode. We have 0.5% of that work remaining, and that will be complete by the end of June. It happens to be one particular project.

It's important to note that from the standpoint of electrical preparedness, that which we need to actually generate the electricity, to transmit and distribute it, all of that work was completed in March of this year. In addition, all of our power generating units are fully operational in the year 2000 mode.

We completed our testing on our power production units last August, and in October 1998 we started rolling them into production, one turbine at a time, on a staggered basis. Approximately every two to three weeks we cut another generating unit into production and completed that in March. In March, we also completed our testing of the replacement system for our SCADA systems. SCADA is the system that manages the transmission and distribution of our electricity.

So within that context, I would like to be able to give you an update on specific aspects of our preparedness.

As of the end of March 1998, the overall remediation and testing efforts required to obtain compliance were 99% complete. Those mission-critical components that are related to the delivery of Nova Scotia Power's electrical products are 100% complete. We remain on target to have 100% of the remaining systems complete and compliant by June 1999. We will, however, be keeping our project together until April 2000. In that period we will be completing our integration testing, our contingency testing, and our clean management.

Transmission and distribution's SCADA control system and the power production's plant control systems have entirely completed their remediation and testing and the results have indicated that we have no significant problems. In fact, the industry now reports that there's a declining process control risk due to embedded systems. Both our results and reports from other utilities continue to reinforce this finding.

Regarding contingency planning, 94% of our contingency plans have been developed. Drills of these contingency plans are going to take place over the next few months. Our target date for completing all of our contingency drills is September 30, 1999. At that point we will put a freeze on all of our systems.

In addition to our own contingency drills, NERC and its member coordinating councils in the grid have targeted both April 9 and September 9 to jointly hold simulations and drills of our contingency plans. These collaborative drills will be designed to assess the readiness and stability of North America's electrical generation and transmission infrastructure.

Nova Scotia Power has participated in the April 9 drill and will be participating in the September 9 simulation and test. The main goals for the April 9 drill were to train and exercise backup communications. The April 9 drill in Nova Scotia was successful in all its aspects. It was able to demonstrate that our power system operations could be continued, even with some loss of communications and with some loss of SCADA functionality.

During April and May, the Y2K team has been looking at ways to benchmark Nova Scotia Power's Y2K contingency strategies with electrical and other disparate industries.

To further reduce the risk of any problems arising from January 1, 2000, we've put in place a plan that advances the dates on all of our generating units so that not all units arrive at the year 2000 at the same time. All of our generating units have been in this mode since March. As far as we can tell, Nova Scotia Power is the first utility on the continent to take such a plan. We were definitely the first to put it in place in October. It is our intention to use this risk mitigation strategy on all our mission-critical systems. In fact, the majority of our mission-critical systems are already operating fully in the year 2000 mode.

• 0940

Our approach to the year 2000 communications will become more proactive in 1999. We've exercised many media avenues to inform our customers and our stakeholders about our year 2000 status, including an article in the prestigious Wall Street Journal. Recently, we've used an omnibus survey to ask Nova Scotians about their understanding of the year 2000 issue and their confidence in our ability to continue to deliver electrical service through that critical date.

The results of that survey were very positive, with 81% of the respondents indicating their confidence in Nova Scotia Power. The confidence levels indicated in the survey were echoed by other electrical customers across Canada in a similar survey that was conducted at the same time by the Canadian Electrical Association.

Aside from working with our utility and business partners to share year 2000 information and experience, Nova Scotia Power has also formed some Y2K alliances with other key businesses in Nova Scotia. For example, we're a member of a working group formed in 1998 whose purpose is to share Y2K information and experiences. Other members of this group include the provincial government and MT&T. We are also exploring joint Y2K communication strategies with the provincial government and working with the EMO on an operational contingency plan.

In conclusion, we have taken the challenges of Y2K very seriously. We completed our assessment two years ago. We had 98% of our mission-critical systems completed in 1998. We will have our contingency plans complete by the end of next month. We will have the drills on those contingency plans completed by the end of the third quarter. We have proven that our generating capacity and our transmission and distribution capacity will continue to function.

At this point I'd be very pleased to take any questions the committee may have.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Petley-Jones.

Mr. Perkins, do you have an opening statement as well?

Mr. John Perkins: No, I don't. Basically, Chris' presentation represented the position of the Emergency Measures Organization in Nova Scotia.

Our principal business function is ensuring a prompt and coordinated response to an emergency that occurs here. Our organization has to be accountable, like every other department of government, to Chris' office for its readiness to do that. So that's a deliverable as a provincial business function for our department, like anybody else.

Really, what Chris had to say about the way in which the province is approaching the problem as a whole is reflected in the way in which we are approaching the various municipal governments and industries within Nova Scotia. My presence here is to answer any specific questions you might have with respect to public safety preparedness in Nova Scotia.

The Chair: Okay, Mr. Perkins, we'll get to questions just after we hear from Mr. Toner.

Ivan Toner.

Mr. Yvan Toner: Good morning. I'm pleased to be here today to give you an update on the overall status of the year 2000 program for MT&T. To give you a sense of how far we've come, we've been working on this program since 1996, and, similar to what we've seen in the health care industry, we are spending less than we anticipated when we did our assessments of the magnitude of the problem back in 1996.

In March of this year, we requested Gartner Group to conduct an analysis of our overall program. Gartner Group is a world leading authority on information technology provided in the world, and this independent analysis gave us a very good sense for the status of our program and the fact that the processes we're following in the overall program are best in class in many cases.

The scope of that assessment covered project management, the organization, the methodologies, the tools usage, the approach to inventory and scope coverage, right through to business continuity planning and third-party vendor management, business partner management, and testing and readiness.

• 0945

Within the organization, all of our critical systems that support the organizations have been upgraded. They're currently in the process of upgrading the remaining 10% of what we consider the non-mission-critical systems. We plan to have completed that activity by the end of June 1999.

Within the context of our program, we have a focus on our network, through which we have activities both locally and partnership with our sister companies in the Atlantic provinces, and we are also very involved with our partners across the country through the Stentor organization, which I believe you're hearing from in a separate venue.

Within the local area, the network component is due to be ready in June 1999, both critical and non-mission-critical.

Another point I want to make is that the mobility business within the telecom industry is also included in our program.

As one of the activities we've undertaken to facilitate the development of strategies that MT&T can use to mitigate, respond, and recover from catastrophe year 2000 problems, we've been in the process of developing business continuity plans since late 1998. Within that program, we have followed a process designed by the Disaster Recovery Institute.

We have completed our business continuity plans for our critical services. Those have been defined by an industry forum, and we've been doing this in collaboration with Stentor organizations. We're currently working on the priority services that we've defined within our organization to be critical, and those are expected to be completed on target in June 1999. One of the benefits of the business continuity plans and that activity is that it has allowed us to really uncover any remaining gaps in the scope coverage of our program, and it has helped us in our preparedness.

In summary, our network is currently ready to deliver services to our customers. Our internal systems that support the services we provide will be completely ready by June of this year. Our business continuity process that will ensure that we recover from any unplanned event is on track.

There are three areas on which we continue to focus diligently. CSM 2000 is our internal billing system, which we've replaced in conjunction with four other telecom companies. We also have a collaborative effort around directory assistance, and we're also working on clean management for making sure that any new systems, any new changes to our network or internal systems, do not impinge on the progress we've made to date.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Toner.

I'm now going to turn to questions. Mr. Lastewka, are you ready to begin?

Mr. Walt Lastewka (St. Catharines, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

I really appreciate the straightforwardness of the witnesses to explain their readiness. I do have a number of questions, though.

I'm not quite clear on the Government of Nova Scotia. You talked about being complete as far as within the government system. I understand the procedures you're working on and so forth, but could you explain where you are to completion?

Mr. Chris Topping: Do you mean at the status of completion today?

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Today, and what are your target dates?

Mr. Chris Topping: The target date that we have is for the essential and mission-critical, which I think is very similar to the date the government-wide mission-critical—I believe that is the term used by the federal government—is using. We have August 30, 1999 set as the target date for all the provincial departments to be ready, basically. We have an intermediate date that says by June 15, 1999, remediation repairs will done. That allows time for full system testing, and June 15th for contingency planning to be done so that the full continuity process can be implemented by August 30.

• 0950

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Regarding the Nova Scotia health care sector, I want to get some better definition on hospitals and the equipment within hospitals.

Are you getting all the information you need from the manufacturers that service your hospitals, and are there any outstanding items, as of today, as far as getting data from either Health Canada or the manufacturers?

Mr. Chris Topping: I think that's a question for Amanda to answer.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Yes, please.

Ms. Amanda Whitewood: I'm not aware that we had any significant complications in receiving support from our manufacturers. I think where we are with it now is well past that point in terms of remediation, and so on. So my answer to your question is no.

My understanding is that we did not encounter significant issues with the manufacturers of medical devices for hospitals.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: That's good to hear.

Going further on that, I understood clearly your situation, where you're trying to get the media in to review, and you're trying to update them so that everybody feels more comfortable, that the problem has been resolved. Are you saying, then, that you have hospitals that have completed and tested all their systems and are year 2000 ready?

Ms. Amanda Whitewood: No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying we're inviting the media in to get an understanding of the process so that we can explain that to the general public, so that we can give them a sense of what they might expect at the turn of the millennium.

Right now, to give you some status information, we're approximately 55% complete in connection with our remediation efforts. Our dates in relation to testing and implementing for those solutions vary across the board, between April and November, in relation to all the health care organizations. When you're looking at such a massive undertaking in connection with all the hospitals, I think it's important to provide that range of target dates in connection with our timelines.

It's also important to recognize that while one organization, such as the organization I represent, the Nova Scotia Hospital, may say that our deadline for completion of remediation and contingency plans implemented and tested might be November, that may just represent the lowest common denominator of all our projects. So it's important to look at the detail when speaking about the projects and to reflect the range of dates we have.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: I wonder if each one of you could explain what is the most critical item you're working on, from your perspective, in each of the respective areas, that will require additional focus to get done. What is the critical area in each one of your areas?

Mr. Chris Topping: I guess I'll start.

Working in a central project office, where we're not actually running any remediation projects but are in support of the province, I think the most critical thing for our project office is support of the corporate steering committee and for the communications plan to be able to communicate to the public where the provincial government stands overall.

So in our particular case, where it really is the departments that are fixing their systems, our concern is getting the information from all the departments so that the deputy minister's steering committee can identify if there are significant risks and take action if that should happen to be the case, and also to be able to reassure the public that the provincial government is doing everything it can to ensure that there is a minimum disruption because of year 2000.

Go ahead.

Ms. Amanda Whitewood: The most critical area that the health care organizations are focusing on right now is twofold, really. One is actively involved in contingency planning and looking at ways to test those contingency plans, and the second one, which I'd like to bring to your attention, is around the supply chain. We would fully support the recommendation that was provided to you in the briefing from CHA around the supply chain and how that connects with stockpiling. Our position is much the same as theirs. If the federal government would like to take a leadership role in bringing out a policy that would help us with the issue of stockpiling, we would fully support that.

• 0955

Mr. John Perkins: I think from the public safety perspective, the principal issue that we might see some more attention paid to, and in fact that we're working on very actively with colleagues around the table here and with all of the agencies of the provincial government and a number of industries as well, is informing the public appropriately about what's going on and what would be reasonable and prudent measures for them to take. Again, all of my colleagues have spoken about the need to fully inform the public of what our current situation is with respect to compliance and preparedness for year 2000. It is a major concern for us to have a clearer understanding in the public's mind of what the real level of threat to Nova Scotians may be and what would be appropriate measures for them to take from a self-protective and self-preparedness perspective.

The provincial government's communications steering committee, which has been referred to by a number around the table here, has that well in hand. We will be aggressively pursuing that as the year unwinds.

I think the other issue that remains of concern for us—and of keen interest for us, actually, more than concern—is the full implementation or the full testing of contingency plans and emergency procedures on a shared management basis. We've begun some discussions with our provincial government colleagues, and soon we'll be expanding that to our friends from Nova Scotia Power and MT&T to formalize some arrangements by which we can participate in an appropriate test or exercise of emergency management and information coordination arrangements.

I would expect that to occur probably in the September-October time period, hopefully to coincide with some of the activities that our friends at the National Contingency Planning Group have been undertaking, and we're going to try to work that as a joint effort.

I really don't think there's much pressing in the way of public safety threats in Nova Scotia. But we would like to have that final push to make sure our publics are completely informed and that we really do understand what management information needs to be exchanged amongst us should something go wrong.

The Chair: Mr. Toner.

Mr. Yvan Toner: From a telecommunications perspective, the area that I believe requires the most focus throughout the rest of this year is clean management. We've established a clean management policy in conjunction with Stentor for both local and national—clean management really being defined as the processes required to ensure that our environment remains year 2000 ready throughout the year and into the year 2000 in fact.

We've defined exceptional need periods between October and December 9, where any activity involving the implementation of new systems or new products will have to go through a new level of scrutiny in order to be actually approved. We've got restricted dates where only emergency activities can take place, to introduce changes to our network and our systems. That is an area that's going to require a lot of focus because it involves so many people throughout the organization that are involved in the day-to-day activities of making changes and enhancements and dealing with issues. That's an area that will continue to require a lot of focus.

The Chair: Thank you.

Ms. Petley-Jones, did you have any comments?

Ms. Ann Petley-Jones: Yes. We are essentially very close to completion, with 99.5% complete on both remediation and testing. On a contingency planning basis, 97% of the plans we need have been submitted, 87% of those have had quality assurance against them, and a good number of them have already been tested. So on our contingency planning, we're 84% complete overall.

There's very little from a strategic area internally. Our two focuses for the rest of this year are in the integrated testing that will be done on September 9 of the entire electrical grid in North America and in adding as much value as we can to the preparations for that test.

• 1000

In addition, we have been sharing our test approaches and our methodologies with people on an as is, where is basis, when requested, and we will continue to do that. We are actively encouraging companies to move their systems into year 2000 mode as soon as those companies or organizations feel they have adequately tested. It is very much a risk mitigation strategy to do that.

We have undertaken that approach internally for all our own systems. We cut our first systems into full production last March, and we've completed the remediation and testing of all but one small system.

We're very much encouraging any organization to take stock of its own status. When that organization feels they have adequately tested and remediated and fixed any problems that need to be attended to, I think it's very important to then move systems into year 2000 mode on that organization's own schedule, as opposed to waiting until the night of December 31, when it all happens at one time.

That's essentially our focus for the remainder of the period. As Ivan Toner indicated, clean management is a critical priority. We started working on clean management plans last summer. We pretty well had them complete by early this year, and we're living up to them. So any new hardware, software process, or procedure that comes in house has to go through that same kind of testing, that same kind of quality assurance, that same kind of risk assessment that all of our existing systems had to undergo.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Lastewka.

Mr. Shepherd, please.

Mr. Alex Shepherd (Durham, Lib.): Amanda, in the health care sector, you mention that 5% of the equipment has been detected as being defective. That may be an illusion, if 5% is the most critical equipment used in the hospitals. Is the 5% just an across-the-board number, or in fact is some of that equipment highly sensitive and highly critical to the operation of the hospitals?

Ms. Amanda Whitewood: The 5% is reflective of the total inventory of medical devices in the health care organizations. Within that 5%, we've been working with a variety of options to address the failures, i.e., take the piece of equipment out of service altogether, remediate or replace. So in answer to your question, I can't tell you whether or not that 5% focuses on what we might consider high-end, highly sensitive mission-critical devices. It is reflective of inventory across the board.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: You mentioned in your presentation the lowering of the cost. I'd be interested in basically two questions that surround that. One, why was the original estimate so much higher? Does that just reflect changes in technology, that replacement equipment has actually gone down in price? And when we talk about the identification of the cost, are there adequate funds in your budgets to allow you to in fact undertake the work you think is critical?

Ms. Amanda Whitewood: The primary reason the original estimate is much higher than we see now is in connection with a costing model we employed, based on best practices across the country.

What that means is that when we took our inventory of all medical devices, the costing model told us that we should use 20% as an estimated ratio in connection with that inventory as potential failures for medical devices. So what's happened now, as you can see from the presentation, is we're finding 5% of those medical devices actually need remediation of some type. That's a long way from 20% that we originally started with. So we went out with a very conservative best-practice costing model, and what we have found through doing our assessments and completing those assessments is much better news than our partners across the country had originally thought.

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To answer your second question around identification of the cost and funding availability, if I'm interpreting the sense of your question correctly, you are asking whether funding has been an issue from a go forward perspective. In other words, have boards and health care organizations been saying we don't have money, let's not go ahead with our remediation processes until the money's in the bag, so to speak?

We went forward to the provincial government last year and told them we were proceeding with our plans regardless of funding. That has taken place. Where funds have not come forward as quickly as we might like to see, there have been cash advances made by the province to assist with any cashflow difficulties. Therefore, the funding aspect has not impeded our progress. Boards and health care organizations in small communities and large communities have been dealing with this problem and dealing with their accountability to meet the health needs of the population they serve.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: I'm still not totally clear. Obviously, you have these dates of November, which to me, quite frankly, are kind of scary because they're very late to the critical date itself. What happens when the hospital says it needs these pieces of equipment and the money isn't there to buy them? Your idea of a remedial action is to take them out of service. Is that what we're going with, then? Is the money going to be there to replace this equipment or not?

Ms. Amanda Whitewood: All of the health care organizations work with their own finances and their own financiers, if you will, and they have been proceeding with their plans. They've been buying equipment, taking equipment out of service, depending on what their decision might be that makes sense for their community. So the funding has not been impeding our progress to date.

You're looking at November dates, and perhaps I should draw your attention to the fact that that is the lowest common denominator date for all the health care organizations in the province. There are many aspects of our projects and many health care organizations across the province that will be finished in advance of that date.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: I hope so.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Shepherd.

Madam Jennings, please.

Ms. Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for your presentations. My question will be directed to Ms. Whitewood and to Mr. Topping.

It concerns the target dates. We've been told by witnesses that one of the issues we have to look at is precisely the target dates. We've been given an example. If six months ago witnesses came before us and, according to their plan and their best assessments, 90% of their preparedness plan would be completed, for instance, by April 30 and the remaining 10% by, say, July 30, and if they're coming before us now, at the beginning of May, and their April 30 date, instead of being 80% completed is, say, 60% completed, and their July date has now been pushed to the end of August or September, they've said we should take that to be a red flag.

Therefore, I ask you, Ms. Whitewood, in terms of all of the organizations in the health care organization, have their plans of six months ago and their target dates for right now been kept? Have they kept to their target dates? Has their assessment or their projected assessment from six months ago been met at a high level? Or are you seeing that targets that were to have been met at a high level have not been met and the dates are being pushed along, so that this November 2 date, six months ago, was in fact September and has now been pushed forward? It may be the lowest common denominator, but it's been pushed to November now, because that's a red flag. That means there are real problems in the assessments and in the remediation. That's my question.

Ms. Amanda Whitewood: I'll take a chance at responding to it. What we have seen, I think, in terms of our dates, has been consistent, and I'll explain that to you.

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We have always been working with an April to November timeline. Having said that, there has been some date slippage over the last six months by some health care organizations within that umbrella of the April to November timeline. So within our range, we're still comfortable. We're monitoring very closely those areas where we have date slippage, and that's where our whole coordinated effort has really helped us do that, to learn from each other, to go in and give those organizations more resources if they in fact need them.

To get to your other question where you're talking about percentage completion and what you should be concerned about, I think one key area that perhaps hasn't been mentioned is prioritization within remediation. What I mean by that is, when I tell you that 55% of our remediation efforts are complete right now, for our organization that means having first tackled the real life-threatening essential services, mission-critical devices, off the top. That's the way we are approaching our projects. So what we have left may be 45%, but it's the real tiny stuff, the disruptive, the inconvenient, like-to-have types of devices. So prioritization is critical in a project like this, and it's hard to reflect that in aggregate data.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: So in the 55% complete, what percentage is the highly critical? Is it 100% of the highly critical areas that are 100% complete?

Ms. Amanda Whitewood: I can only speak to that with respect to my organization. I don't have that level of detail for all the organizations here right now. My response to that question for the Nova Scotia Hospital is yes.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Jaffer, please.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer (Edmonton—Strathcona, Ref.): A quick question for both Mr. Toner and Ms. Petley-Jones.

I was listening to your presentations, and it sounds like things are on track and that the contingency plans are on track as well. Things sound good. My only concern is that you both mentioned the various companies you either work with or provide services to and who rely on you. How confident are you both that those companies are following the same sorts of guidelines and will be able to be prepared by the year 2000? Perhaps you could explain in a little bit more detail what sort of work is being done with some of the other people who rely on you, or whom you rely on, when it comes to the services you provide.

Ms. Ann Petley-Jones: That's a very good question, and it probably has several questions embedded in it. Some of the suppliers that are key to us are obviously suppliers of fuel for our generating stations, and we do have strong contingency plans for alternate sources of fuel. We also will have on site a larger stockpile of fuel leading up to December 31 than we normally have. For instance, we'll have more weeks supply of fuel on hand than we normally have, as one of our contingency plans.

Within the context of suppliers of hardware and software and systems, your question is very valid, because we have found that we have needed to do our own due diligence on all of our systems. We didn't take anyone's word for it. When certain systems were deemed to be compliant by the vendor, we were very democratic about it. We treated everyone the same. We didn't take anyone's word for it and we did our own due diligence. And we did find that some systems that were reputed by the vendors to be absolutely compliant turned out not to be, so some of those systems we have had to replace. Therefore, the issue of keeping a very diligent hand on all of those aspects of the project has been critical.

From the start, when we were designing our testing methodology, we decided early on that we would do quality assurance on the test plan. We would then execute the test plan in as scientific a manner as we could, we would know the state going in, we would know exactly what was being done, we would monitor it during the test, and we would record exactly what happened. Then, at the other end, we had a quality assurance on what those tests actually produced. It's within that context that we did find several vendors whose claims of compliance were, frankly, not true. Those systems we then had to replace. Those are complete, with the exception of the one outstanding small system that has yet to be completed. It is on site; it is in its final testing stages.

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Within the context of other suppliers, we are just ensuring that we have alternate sources of supply. We are ensuring that we have additional on-hand inventory of critical items, and we're working very closely with our key suppliers and our key vendors to ensure that supply is not disrupted.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: Thank you.

Mr. Yvan Toner: From a telecommunications perspective, we share similar experiences. All of our remediation work, whether it's changes to our own systems by our own people... when it comes to the testing and acceptance phase and certification, we follow the same procedure for systems that are provided by other suppliers. We get many situations where we're provided a certificate of year 2000 readiness, or certification by a supplier of a system, and we conduct the same due diligence with that as we do with changes we're making in our own systems.

In addition to that, from our network perspective, we share many of the same suppliers for our telecommunications in our industry and in collaboration with other member companies, such as Stentor, across the country. We have worked very closely with companies such as Nortel, where we share lab facilities, to do much of the testing required. Even in those cases, once Nortel provides certification of some of their products, we turn around and test them in our environment, or at Stentor in the labs that exist there.

The Chair: You are finished, Mr. Jaffer?

Lastly, Mr. Bellemare.

[Translation]

Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Carleton—Gloucester, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

[English]

My question is to Ann Petley-Jones. The approach you took of moving the date ahead I found impressive ever since I heard about it a few months ago. As far as you know, how many of your Canadian counterparts have copied you? Did any unexpected problems occur when you advanced the dates, and what areas remain a concern for you?

Ms. Ann Petley-Jones: You've asked three very good questions. We did first derive the strategy of taking our future into our own hands, so to speak, by moving our clocks forward as soon as we felt we had completed due diligence. We took that approach and shared it with our colleagues in the electrical business as early as last July. At that point, we were over 95% complete in our tests of our power generation. We completed those tests in August. In the remainder of August and September, we did our due diligence and quality assurance on those test plans. By the end of September we were confident that we could indeed take that step of moving those clocks forward.

As we've gradually been moving each plant into production, turbine by turbine, some of our colleagues in the industry have also felt more confidence in this approach. Now that we have more than two months behind us of having everything in production for power generation, a series of them are starting to take that approach.

I can't really speak for any other company but my own, but I know that some other companies are in the process of moving their power generation clocks into the year 2000 mode, and several others are looking at doing so. In addition, because we all work very closely together, a number of our colleagues in the grids in the U.S. are also adopting this strategy.

That was one of your questions. I believe your second question was regarding whether or not we had any unforeseens and unexpecteds. No, we did not. As part of the due diligence on the test plans, before we actually tested them we used some of the best minds in the electrical systems in Canada, in the U.S., and in the U.K. to ensure the quality and the level of robustness that was necessary in those tests. So we thought them through very carefully. We had some of the best minds review the plans before we actually executed them. So, no, we did not encounter any unforeseens and unexpecteds.

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I believe your third question was on our areas of residual concern. Regarding our own environment, we have very few areas of residual concern, just because of the extent of completion at which we stand. We remain very committed to working with our colleagues in the electrical industry to share any test approaches and results, so with the integration testing of the grids on September 9, we will be able to add as much value as we can. That is our key area of focus, in addition to the completion of our own contingency planning tests.

I have one residual concern on a more macro basis, however, quite independent of the electrical industry, and it's been raised several times this morning. That is to have the appropriate level of communication with the public, so the public is not unduly concerned when matters are in hand. Around this table, all of our colleagues are working together to ensure that accurate and appropriate information gets out to the public, so people are not unduly concerned where there is no cause for concern.

It's also an obligation of every institution to very pragmatically assess its own readiness and be very honest with the public. I think we have some stewardship accountabilities here, from the standpoint of doing everything within our power to have our own institutions ready. We have an accountability to be as honest with the public as we can on that readiness. Wherever it is appropriate, we have an obligation to reassure the public wherever we feel confident.

I hope I've answered your questions.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Bellemare.

I want to thank you all for being with us this morning. I apologize we've gone slightly over the time we asked you to join us. It has been a very interesting discussion. We appreciate your participation in our hearings.

We're going to sign off now, and we wish you all a very good day. Thank you.

We will suspend until 10.30 a.m.

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The Chair: We will resume our hearing and welcome our next group of witnesses all the way from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

We are very pleased to have with us today, from the Government of Prince Edward Island, Mr. Payne, year 2000 coordinator; from the Health Association of Prince Edward Island, Mr. Herman J. McQuaid, director of health informatics, Department of Health and Social Services; from Emergency Measures Organization P.E.I., Mr. Michael A. Francis, manager; from Maritime Electric, Mr. Gil Jubainville, manager, management information systems; and from Island Telecom Inc., Mr. Terry Byrne, chairman, year 2000.

We're very pleased to welcome you all to our videoconference hearing today. I propose that each of you do your opening statement and then we will turn to questions as a group. We will begin with Mr. Payne from the Government of Prince Edward Island.

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Mr. Chris Payne (Year 2000 Coordinator, Government of Prince Edward Island): Good morning, Madam Chair and committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to provide you with an update on the provincial government's year 2000 preparation efforts.

As Herman McQuaid is here representing health, he will provide you with an update for his department, and I will speak for the rest of the provincial government.

In 1996, the province implemented the strategy to address the year 2000 challenges. The responsibility was given to each department to complete readiness work over three years, using existing funds. By the end of 1996, a complete inventory and assessment of information systems throughout government were completed. We estimated that it would take about 5,000 man days of effort and $2.3 million to complete the work.

In May 1997, coordinators were assigned and each department developed a three-year plan that outlined strategies and timeframes to ensure their information system structure would be year 2000 ready. In early 1998, the scope of the year 2000 challenge expanded to include embedded systems used in equipment and controls throughout government facilities.

In October of last year, an external assessment on our year 2000 readiness was initiated by our provincial risk manager. The consultant found that most plans were on track. The report outlined several recommendations specific to each department's progress and area of risk.

From the report, each department developed an action plan to address issues, and any incremental resources and funding needed were identified. Also, Treasury Board directed the Minister of Technology and Environment to take corporate responsibility for the year 2000 initiatives and identify specific resources throughout government that needed to be centralized and accountable for the year 2000 coordinator.

On February 3, Treasury Board approved an acceleration strategy to assist departments in their efforts. In addition to traditional information system readiness in embedded systems, it also addresses key management challenges such as supply chain readiness, business continuity planning, due diligence, quality assurance, and public awareness. Additional resources have been identified throughout government to staff the central project office and accelerate efforts in these activity areas.

As we stand today, there are no issues identified to prevent government's readiness of critical systems and facilities needed to serve Islanders. Although the year 2000 challenge involves a significant effort, working under tight timelines, all departments are reporting confidence in their completion targets.

The provincial government started work on preparing its information systems three years ago and will accomplish that work. The majority of repair efforts will be completed by the end of June. Since our plan was developed three years ago, however, additional areas of diligence have been identified that have expanded the scope of the year 2000 challenge.

Gartner Group, an international watchdog on the year 2000 problem, has estimated that non-IT year 2000 spending has grown to that of IT-related year 2000 spending during 1998. A large portion of this non-IT-related spending is focused toward business risk management and contingency planning. Work in these areas will be carried out through to the end of the year. Additional resources have been applied and additional costs will be incurred to address these challenges in a responsible and prudent manner.

To conclude, the latest assessment from the Gartner Group has predicted that in the top-ranked prepared countries, of which Canada is one, we can expect a moderate distribution and severity in disruptions to government-provided services. This means we must continue to press on with this important work and accelerate efforts where possible.

The acceleration strategy, through the central project office, will ensure that departments can complete their year 2000 readiness preparations within reasonable timeframes and minimize risk to an acceptable level. Government-wide priorities are set to ensure the public health and safety of Islanders are first and foremost addressed.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Payne.

We'll now turn to Mr. McQuaid.

Mr. Herman J. McQuaid (Director of Health Informatics, Department of Health and Social Services, Health Association of Prince Edward Island): Good morning, Madam Chair and committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to provide you with an update on Prince Edward Island's health system's year 2000 preparation.

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My name is Herman McQuaid and I am the director of health informatics for the Department of Health and Social Services in Prince Edward Island. It is my division that is tasked with the responsibility for year 2000 readiness for the entire health care system in Prince Edward Island.

In Prince Edward Island the health system consists of the Department of Health and Social Services and five regional health authorities. The Department of Health and Social Services is responsible for policy and the regional health authorities are responsible for the delivery of services. The programs delivered in the health system in Prince Edward Island include acute care hospitals, long-term care, home care, mental health, addictions, public health, housing, social services, and other associated programs.

The year 2000 project is being managed as one provincial project within health, with leadership provided by the informatics division of the department. The project organization includes a steering committee, project management and coordination from the department, seconded staff from the health regions, designated staff in the health regions, and some contract in consulting resources.

The corporate responsibility for electrical power, telecommunications, and liaison with Emergency Measures Organization is the responsibility of the Department of Technology and Environment and is represented here today by Chris Payne.

This has allowed the health system to concentrate year 2000 activities within the health system. The project started in 1996 as an information systems project and expanded to five streams in 1998. Work groups of experts in the various areas were established for each stream, and these work groups have developed plans that are now being implemented. The five streams of activities are information technology, building systems, biomedical, supply chain, and business continuity planning. I will briefly describe these.

Information technology was divided into three subactivities: information systems, desktop, and infrastructure. Activities include inventory of all three subsystems; an assessment of compliancy, which includes correspondence with vendors; the development of priorities; determining if systems are mission-critical; the development of remedy plans, which include replace, upgrade or discard; preparing test strategies and test plans for each area. The ongoing activities including repairing, replacing, and testing. Status and mission-critical information technology, equipment, and systems will be completed in September.

In biomedical, similar activities include inventory assessment and priority setting—setting priorities of category 1, which would be life support systems, to category 5, which would be of a serious nature but not seriously impacting patient safety. Ninety percent of the devices assessed were considered compliant and remedy plans have been developed. Currently 80% of the devices have been tested. I must state we are testing both items considered to be compliant and those considered non-compliant. Biomedical equipment in systems will be completed by September.

Building systems and facilities follow a similar pattern of testing, and currently 95% of the building systems are considered to be compliant. The work in this area will be completed by July.

Supply chain—a complete inventory of all supplies currently used in the health system was completed. Supply chain risk-level definitions and risk-level categories were assigned. High-risk items include medical-surgical supplies, oxygen, and high-risk drugs. Low-risk items include such things as vitamin supplements, cough preparations, and cold preparations. The work group assigned risk categories to these items and then immediately turned their energy to preparing a mitigation strategy for dealing with the potential of supply shortages. A mitigation strategy has been developed, and it has been determined there must be adequate inventory levels at year end, in particular in risk categories 2 and 2. Letters will be sent to suppliers over the next little while.

The business continuity planning in the health system is an identification and priorization of health systems business processes. The processes have been categorized into life support, mission-critical support, and non-critical.

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The major activities include preliminary assessment; a functional inventory; a risk analysis; contingency planning in accordance with the risk analysis; testing of continuity procedures, including backup systems and backup supply; and contingency preparation, which includes training of staff in contingency procedures.

Business continuity planning will be completed by October; the training will occur in November. Coordinators in each region will be on call at year end. The health system in Prince Edward Island will be prepared for year 2000 risk. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. McQuaid.

Mr. Francis, did you have anything to add at this time?

Mr. Michael A. Francis (Manager, Emergency Measures Organization P.E.I.): Yes, I do, Madam Chairman. Thank you very much.

Good morning, committee members, ladies and gentlemen. I'm representing the Emergency Measures Organization for the province of Prince Edward Island. In accordance with the Emergencies Act and the Emergency Measures Act, and to accommodate consequence management and business resumption within this province, a lead government department is chosen, based on responsibilities normally associated with the normal statutes or mandates of that department. In this particular instance, with regard to Y2K, the provincial lead department in P.E.I. for Y2K is Technology and Environment. The procedures for this are detailed in this province's all-hazard emergency plan.

In our organization we tend to look at the responsibility for the Y2K challenge as everyone's responsibility. The levels of responsibility identified for this province include the individual level—they're expected to assume responsibility for their individual preparedness and to expect minor inconveniences associated with the Y2K challenge.

The next level we look at is the industry or business level, and they're expected to retain responsibility for accounts payable, accounts receivable, inventory control, and include considerations for the supply chain and their ultimate... to supply services to their clients.

Governments at all levels, whether it be federal, provincial or municipal, are to maintain the ability to provide uninterrupted service to the public.

As per the mission statement for the Emergency Measures Organization of Prince Edward Island, EMO is to provide an emergency management system for the protection of persons, property, and environment for the province of Prince Edward Island. As previously mentioned, these provincial all-hazards plans will provide the platform for the response by this government in the event of a major emergency associated with Y2K, or any other emergency within this province. This all-hazards plan will dovetail with the national emergency support plan, which is a federal support plan, and other emergency plans associated with local governments.

The most difficult aspect of Y2K is for the formation and ultimate preparation of the hazard analysis and ultimate risk assessment for this province. Meetings were held with organizations responsible for mission-critical systems, they being electrical utility, telecommunication provider, major fuel and food distributors, major industry, and input was received from major municipalities or cities in this province on positive results from their accomplishments in working toward Y2K compliance. All in all, this organization is satisfied with the concerted effort of government and industry to meet the potential challenges of Y2K in this province.

Much of our work over the next few months, from an EMO perspective, will be setting up a structure to meet the operational requirements for this province in case of an emergency associated with Y2K. It is expected that this operation will be protracted over a period of months, and this province may expect negative effects of things beyond the control of this province, similar to the Asian money markets that experienced difficulty some months ago. That's beyond our control.

In closing, it is expected that this province will come through the Y2K challenge in good stead. Islanders have always demonstrated good resolve in the past and there is no reason to expect anything less in the future. Thank you very much.

The Chair: Mr. Jubainville from Maritime Electric, please.

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Mr. Gil Jubainville (Manager, Management Information Systems, Maritime Electric): I am the manager of MIS of Maritime Electric. Good morning to Madam Chairman and the members of the committee.

Year 2000 preparations began at Maritime Electric in September 1997 with conversion of its customer billing application. In the spring of 1998 a committee was formed, encompassing all business areas of the company, to deal with the year 2000 issue. This committee reports to the vice-president of finance.

The committee completed an inventory of all systems and electronic components in use at the company that could be subject to failure because of date-related issues in the year 2000. The inventory was completed by early June 1998.

A total of 125 systems were identified as being date-aware and thereby subject to year 2000 problems. As of May 11, 1999, only two items remain on the list of items not ready for the year 2000 rollover. Of the two remaining items, the first item is software used in reporting on meters used in our substations. These have no impact on power distribution.

The second item is our SCADA system. A new SCADA system was purchased in December of 1998 and is currently being commissioned as we speak. The new system is year 2000 ready, but has not been deemed so until in-house testing is completed prior to commissioning. The existing old SCADA system had previously been tested and had not interrupted the power supply during the tests.

The committee held a contest in November 1998 to help ensure that no items had been missed in our original inventory. A draw for a colour television set was held for all employees who could identify a year-2000-sensitive item that was not on our original inventory list. Four new items were found, none of which had an impact on power distribution.

A contingency plan was drafted in January 1999 and has been reviewed and accepted by senior management. The plan allows for additional staffing on December 31, 1999, and ensures that supplies of critical stock items will not run short in the months surrounding December 31, 1999. A drill of the main components of the contingency plan will be tested in September 1999.

Year 2000 presentations have been made to the board of directors, our staff, our large customers, and other industry representatives. The company is a member of the year 2000 CEA—Canadian Electrical Association—committee, and is sharing information with other utilities across Canada. Recognizing that telecommunications are important to our industry, Maritime Electric is also working closely with Island Telecom to ensure that preparations are made and contingency plans of both companies are harmonized.

An external review of our year 2000 process was conducted in early January 1999, and the company received a favourable assessment.

The company has been in close contact with the City of Summerside and New Brunswick Power in regard to year 2000 preparedness. Both of these entities interconnect with our grid and have their own generating facilities.

Letters were issued to software and hardware suppliers in late June 1998, and also to suppliers of items that the utility considers critical to its operation.

In summary, Maritime Electric is confident that it has met the challenge presented by the year 2000 issue. By July 1, 1999, all items on its year 2000 inventory will have been tested and remedied. The company has been working closely with its critical business partners and has a contingency plan in place. It has also ensured that staff will be available on December 31, 1999, to respond quickly to any unforeseen events that may present themselves.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Jubainville.

I'm now going to turn to Island Telecom, Mr. Terry Byrne.

Mr. Philip Acorn (Vice-President, Operations, Island Telecom Inc.): Mr. Byrne is not here this morning. I will be doing a presentation on behalf of Island Telecom. My name is Philip Acorn. I am vice-president of operations. I also hold executive responsibility for the year 2000 preparation efforts.

I forwarded a written brief on April 26, and I'd just like to take a few minutes to further elaborate on our progress.

Island Tel's year 2000 program is further along than most and has enjoyed a high degree of commitment within our organization. In fact, we have been at work on this project since 1997 and have spent over $2 million to date.

Island Tel works very closely with the other telephone companies in the region and across the country, and as you may or may not know, Maritime Tel and Tel of Nova Scotia is a majority shareholder in Island Tel. Therefore, we work very closely on a number of fronts, including year 2000 readiness.

The Gartner consulting group conducted an independent analysis, an assessment of Maritime Tel and Tel's year 2000 program, and gave them an exceptional ranking for the year 2000 readiness initiatives. The following is a reference to Island Tel's year 2000 preparedness in a Gartner Group letter dated March 25, 1999, and I quote:

I also want to take a moment to comment on the programs at Island Tel and MT&T mobility. As I noted in my presentation, it was not logical or feasible to rank these programs independent of MT&T. The reliance of these organizations on MT&T is so high that their remediation and contingency efforts both depend on MT&T.

Island Tel and Mobility have integrated with MT&T very well and the common processes, practices and methodologies have been the keys. These two organizations have done a good job of leveraging their size to drive participation and maintain close control over all program components. Many smaller organizations have delayed Year 2000 efforts by claiming that their size postponed the urgency; to their credit, Island Tel and Mobility followed MT&T's lead and are therefore far ahead.

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As I indicate in my brief, we have converted all critical networks and information systems and will have all remaining systems completed by June. The bulk of testing is completed, and we'll continue with Island Tel's efforts focused on contingency planning and claim management.

As I said earlier, Island Tel takes its responsibility seriously, and we will continue to work diligently toward our goal to provide uninterrupted service to all our customers. I am pleased to report that we are on track to achieve this goal.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Acorn.

I'm now going to turn to questions, and members of the committee can either identify who they're asking their question to or maybe put them to all of you and each of you will have the opportunity to respond.

Mr. Lastewka, please.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I wonder if we could get some data from you as far as work completed and work left to be done. I understood from your presentations that you were on schedule and working on contingency plans, but I didn't hear anything about government mission-critical areas in terms of how many have been completed and how many are to be completed before June or August.

Similarly, in the other areas, I wonder if each one of you could try to give us an estimation of where you are in the process as far as what is completed. When I say completed, I mean that they've been not only completed but tested and verified. Could you give us some numbers as far as your work to completion?

Mr. Chris Payne: I'll speak on behalf of the government.

With regard to information systems, of 164 systems identified, we have completed 112, tested and returned. Of those, included are all the mission-critical systems that are related to services to the public, such as driver-vehicle, social services management, property tax—those kinds of systems.

We have three replacement strategies that will go out beyond June. That's an HR PeopleSoft initiative, an integrated inspection system, and an integrated revenue taxation system. Those are all scheduled to be completed before the end of the year, but they do slip out beyond June.

Other than that, the remainder of the 164 identified will be completed by the end of June.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: What about the health area?

Mr. Herman McQuaid: I don't have the same kinds of statistics with me, but I can forward them to your committee if you'd like to have them. I have several tables that break things down into percentage complete, compliant, and so on. We expect all the IT to be fully completed by September, with the exception of one major system, and that one system will take us a little later into the fall.

The activities in year 2000 will continue. In biomedical, in terms of percentage complete, the approach we've taken is all the high priority items will be completed within the next month or so, but we will still continue testing into September. So it depends on how many we put in the high priority category.

Building systems will be completed by July. For the supply chain we will have finalized any ordering we're going to do prior to September. Business continuity will continue right through to the end of the year. But I can supply some specific statistics if you wish and forward them to your committee.

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Mr. Walt Lastewka: I wonder if you could also comment on information that you have required from either Health Canada or manufacturers. Have you had any problems in receiving information that allows you to do your work?

Mr. Herman McQuaid: I assume that's a general question to everyone, or in particular—

Mr. Walt Lastewka: I'm more concerned about the health area, in terms of the manufacturers required to provide data for the various devices that come under Health Canada and that you require in order to do your work.

Mr. Herman McQuaid: We have experienced some difficulty in getting good responses, although I would say our strategy has been developed to such an extent that even if we don't get a response we will still test the item ourselves. We have corresponded and we have experienced, I would say, moderate to good but not exceptional response from suppliers. Regardless of whether they have responded or not, our strategies have allowed us to test the system or piece of equipment.

Where we consider we have some risk is in promised upgrades from vendors. It's fine for them to say they will have an upgrade by July, but if, for example, this does not occur, that's where we believe there is a bit of risk in health. Everything for which we're depending on the vendor for an upgrade is where we are most concerned.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: It would seem to us as a committee that the most critical area is that of health care and health care devices and information on suppliers. I would request that if there are difficulties with certain manufacturers and certain items that you forward a short note to the committee such that we could follow up and make sure we do whatever work we could do on those items to help you.

I'd ask Maritime Electric and Island Telecom if you could give us your status as far as completion and any major outstanding items are concerned.

Mr. Gil Jubainville: As stated, we have two items left out of 125. One is being commissioned and tested as we speak today. On the other one we're awaiting word from a supplier. If he doesn't respond shortly, we are replacing the gear—that's for our substation meters only. Those are the only two items left, and we plan to have everything wrapped up by July 1 and go into a contingency plan a moment after that.

Mr. Philip Acorn: We have completed and tested all critical network elements as of last year. We have two remaining non-critical systems. One has been converted already and we're into the testing aspect of that. This is our billing system, and we'll have concluded testing that early next month. The remaining one is the directory assistance system, which is a retrieval system of the information, and the testing for that will be concluded by the end of next month as well.

In total, we had in excess of 1,500 elements that we had to deal with, and those are the only remaining ones left at this point in time. Interoperability testing has been completed and will continue on as we go forward with claim management.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: I have one more last question, Madam Chair, if I may. It's a general question to all of you.

In terms of any of your linkages with other areas, whether they be in Canada or the U.S., or various other departments within Canada and so forth, are there any situations where your linkages with other areas are holding you back for any reason?

Mr. Chris Payne: We have none. We've had great cooperation with our sister jurisdictions across Canada, as well as with the federal year 2000 committee. So we have no identified restrictions external to our own resources and getting the job done here.

• 1100

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Lastewka.

Mr. Michael Francis: I would note that from the emergency management perspective we have a very close association with our sister Atlantic provinces—Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and ourselves, P.E.I. We also have a written agreement on Atlantic cooperation of emergencies, where there's a very quick protocol for the passage of information from the emergency management agencies in the different provinces. Also, that is being extended to the IEMG, or the International Emergency Management Group, which is our tie to the New England states. We've been working quite closely, and they're almost to the point of the formation of an international agreement between the Atlantic provinces and the New England states with regard to the passage of material and resources with regard to the mitigated measures, if required.

So from that perspective we don't really see too many problems, or don't anticipate any problems, with those arrangements.

The Chair: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Francis. We're now going to turn to Madam Jennings.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for agreeing to appear before us. I have a question for Maritime Electric, Island Telecom, and the Health Association of Prince Edward Island. Have you had independent audit of your Y2K preparedness plans done? That's the first question. If you have, what was the result? If you haven't, why not?

Second, we had Nova Scotia Power Incorporated appear before us, and what I found very interesting was that on their main turbines and machinery they're already at the point where they're running on Y2K. Do you have any intention of incorporating that part of a Y2K preparedness in your own plans, once you've actually done your remediation of machinery, and actually advance the calendar and operate it as though January 1, year 2000, has come and gone? Those are my questions.

Mr. Gil Jubainville: I'll answer that last one first. At Maritime Electric we actually backed up the clock on our system to 1990 in July last year. So it rolled over to 1991 and will be rolling over to 1992 in the year 2000. The system was actually rolled back as a cost-saving measure because of the cost involved in upgrading the software. It will be turning over to January 1, 1992, on the year 2000.

Your first question, I believe, was in regard to dealing with other suppliers. Is that the question?

Ms. Marlene Jennings: No. My first question was as to whether or not part of your Y2K preparedness plan had an independent audit component to it.

Mr. Gil Jubainville: We had the internal auditor of Newfoundland Power do an audit of our Y2K process, and we received a favourable assessment. The only issue that was faulted was making sure the documentation was up to date and making sure we kept clear documentation of all the tests we did. Otherwise, the assessment was favourable.

Mr. Philip Acorn: We've had external audits conducted, and the results were favourable. As well, we had an external assessment done by the Gartner Group with the same results.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: What about my first question about running the clock forward, as Nova Scotia Power Incorporated has done?

Mr. Philip Acorn: In our equipment it's a little bit different from the power generation's. We have access to national labs, and in the national labs our testing has been completed for clocking a lot of our equipment forward already.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Thank you.

Mr. Herman McQuaid: There was an external assessment completed in the whole of the provincial government, which included Health—a very extensive one—and it looked at year 2000 readiness. That was done in the October-November time range in 1998. That pointed out to us some areas where we could improve what we were doing. Those actions have been taken immediately.

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On the second question, on testing plans, part of our testing procedures requires complete testing of plans, which includes rolling the clock ahead and testing each individual component in that way.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Madam Jennings.

Mr. Bellemare.

[Translation]

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Thank you, Madam Chair.

[English]

On emergency measures, DND has come forward in this committee and told us what they were doing. Could you tell us what concerns you may have regarding DND and P.E.I., if any?

Mr. Michael Francis: I'll field that one.

At this point, regarding the concerns about DND, I think it was the whole process, how it started. There are emergency management arrangements already in place between the provinces and the federal government. Apparently, for some reason, to meet the Y2K challenge, some of those arrangements were—and I shall use the term lightly—disturbed or not followed. My understanding was that the PMO's office obviously had delegated the responsibility for Y2K contingency planning to the Department of National Defence and ultimately the compliance side to the Treasury Board Secretariat.

From our arrangements, Emergency Preparedness Canada, which is an arm of DND, was to form a group of representatives from the different federal government departments regarding Y2K or any emergency situation. That mechanism or process was shortchanged somewhat, or it didn't quite work out that way. So there was much confusion at the start of this Y2K and the reporting across this country.

Ultimately we started getting federal government departments dealing directly with provincial government departments, which had disastrous results with the emergency measures organizations in the provinces, because they were dealing directly from the federal departments to the provincial departments, whereas the clearing house for that kind of information should be the emergency measures organization for the particular province. So we had some difficulty in that regard.

Also, DND started out with their national risk assessment. Ultimately they had their brick of questions. You then started getting DND out surveying municipalities for mission-critical systems in the different provinces.

The whole process didn't quite get off on the right foot, as we reflect and look back on it.

Right now, what we're ultimately waiting for is DND's national risk assessment. As I said earlier in my comments, as far as I'm concerned, our organization is quite happy with the process with Y2K compliance in this province, but it's the external influences that are beyond our control. So I await the national risk assessment to maybe get some sort of an indication of problems that are beyond our control, and hopefully we can take some measures to respond to that challenge.

Did I answer your question?

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: What would you say is the greatest risk or concern as of today?

Mr. Michael Francis: The greatest risk that we found, from our perspective, was ultimately the provision of electrical power. As we all know, Y2K in itself is non-regulatory; it's basically self-compliant. There are no regulations to dictate or to say that you shall be compliant; it's self-compliant. Any indications from the gentlemen around this table... we are very happy.

To answer your question, it's electrical power, because that's going to drive everything.

We know Maritime Electric have their contingency plans in place, and they also have backup power generating plants in this province that will sustain the power requirements for this province in the event of a power shutdown from the power grid from our sister provinces.

That's first, and then obviously the second is telecommunications. At Emergency Measures, we feel quite confident that both Maritime Electric and Island Telecom have met the challenge for Y2K compliancy. There's a certain co-dependency here, and I'm quite confident that they will meet the challenge. If you have electrical power, you have telecommunications.

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The next level of concern is health care. Mr. McQuaid has put that together quite succinctly, and we are very confident with the progress. I might say that Mr. McQuaid's department is one of the leaders in the provincial government process for compliance in this province.

Does that answer your question?

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Yes.

On the Confederation Bridge, do you have any concerns?

Mr. Michael Francis: Absolutely none. Most of the computer systems on the bridge itself are obviously very new, and—let's put it down to its basics—all there is is a gate that goes up and down that's run by a small computer. There's nothing that should stop traffic or transportation issues on the bridge because of Y2K issues.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: I'd like to turn to health care. Did you find any non-Y2K compliant medical devices in short supply, even on back order?

Mr. Herman McQuaid: Our level of sophistication in Prince Edward Island is probably not the same as in some of the other provinces, but we have identified some non-compliant Y2K biomedical products, and we have those either on order or have already received them. We have delivery dates in the near future. We're not anticipating any problems in that area.

Does that answer your question?

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Yes.

I don't remember which one of you, but someone mentioned the rollback rather than the roll forward. My colleague Madam Jennings asked you why you hadn't advanced the date on the hydro system for testing. The answer that was given, if my memory serves me right, was that you had rolled back rather than forward. Did I hear that correctly?

Mr. Gil Jubainville: Yes, that's correct. It was simpler to do that. The dates in the system basically only affected a lot of the reporting, so they will just look at the reports they have and take eight years off it. The reason we rolled back eight years was to keep at least the leap years in synchronization. We can continue doing that for a long period of time or until the system needs replacing.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Did you do that only on date-sensitive mission-critical systems?

Mr. Gil Jubainville: It was just for the plant generation system.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Oh, internally.

Mr. Gil Jubainville: A generating plant.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Was this done because of financial constraints?

Mr. Gil Jubainville: Yes, that was one of the reasons, because of the cost to upgrade the system at this point.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Had you budgeted for that but you discovered your budget wasn't big enough and you had to fall back?

Mr. Gil Jubainville: No, we just thought this was the best way of doing it, since the dates didn't mean a whole lot to us in this case.

In other words, the dates were not a big issue for us from a reporting perspective, if we rolled the dates back eight years. It just means the reports will show dates back eight years, but it doesn't affect the operation of the plant. The plant keeps running as if it were 1991 or 1992. That's the reason for it.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Bellemare.

I have only one question, which concerns what I guess you call local services—sewage and water. Can someone tell us what stage of repair that is at, or what stage of remediation?

Mr. Michael Francis: I can answer that.

We had meetings with the two major municipalities in this province. They do have Y2K coordinators appointed for those two cities, and they're well underway for Y2K compliance.

The surveys that came out from the federal government, from Industry Canada, regarding that whole issue... the surveys we conducted showed that the systems in the city of Charlottetown and the city of Summerside are, shall we say, antiquated to the point where most of them are manual systems, which can be valves closed, valves open. Therefore, there's absolutely no concern with regard to the provision of water purification or sewage treatment or any of those things. Some of the smaller municipalities that have their own sewage treatment felt it was not an issue.

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So when you look at mission-critical systems on water treatment, water distribution, and sewage, we are in very good shape. I'm not concerned whatsoever.

The Chair: Okay. Great.

I have one other question for Mr. Jubainville. We heard from Newfoundland that they're not affected by any grid failure; they have their own power system. What is P.E.I.'s situation?

Mr. Gil Jubainville: We are linked to New Brunswick Power with two submarine cables. We've been in close contact with NB Power. We have participation agreements with them in the Point Lepreau plant and in Dalhousie. Point Lepreau is supposed to be up and running—it's shut down at the moment—by July 1, with year 2000 issues. The only other interconnection is with the city of Summerside, which also buys power from us.

So the main interconnection with the North American grid is through the submarine cable, through to New Brunswick Power, and we've been in constant contact with New Brunswick Power on their year 2000 issues and reporting schemes.

The Chair: Okay. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you all for joining us this morning via satellite. We do appreciate your participation, your frankness, and your discussion with us today on Y2K. We're going to sign off now, and we wish you a very good day. Thank you very much.

We're going to suspend now for ten minutes.

• 1117

• 1124

The Chair: We'll reconvene.

I'd like to welcome our witnesses for our next session. We're very pleased to have Mr. Denis Lalonde from Bell Canada. Just so members know, Bell Canada in Ontario and Quebec is one region.

We're very pleased to have you here with us, Mr. Lalonde, to discuss the year 2000 project. We're also very pleased to have Mr. Jacques Bédard, the chief for the year 2000 project from Hydro-Québec.

I propose that you both do your opening statements, and then we'll have questions. We'll begin with Monsieur Lalonde, s'il vous plaît.

• 1125

[Translation]

Mr. Denis G. Lalonde (Assistant Vice-President, Year 2000 Project, Bell Canada (Ontario)): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Denis G. Lalonde and I am the Assistant Vice-President for the Year 2000 Project at Bell Canada. We are happy to have another opportunity to appear before the Standing Committee on Industry as members of the Quebec delegation and to share with you more up-to-date information on our Year 2000 Program.

Bell Canada's Year 2000 Program is progressing in leaps and bounds, and we expect in fact to be ready before January 1, 2000. Bell Canada's Year 2000 mission is to ensure that systems, network elements, as well as products and services provided by Bell Canada that depend on the date continue to operate with transparency as we usher in the new millennium.

Here is an overview of progress made by Bell Canada as of April 30, 1999. Let's start with the networks. Bell Canada has completed 99.8% of all conversions, upgrades, tests and redeployment, i.e. returns to service, of all network elements so that they meet the requirements for the year 2000.

All network elements that are part of the public switched telephone network have been converted or upgraded, tested and redeployed. Bell Canada expects to redeploy the vast majority of the remaining network elements by the end of June, 1999.

Throughout 1999, Bell Canada will continue to test its network elements as part of its ongoing testing program.

The information systems and information technology systems are also progressing very well. Bell Canada has renovated, upgraded and converted 96.9% of the 83 million lines of code in its information and information technology systems. More than 99.5% of the neuralgic systems have been upgraded, and more that 98% have been deployed. Bell Canada expects to renovate and redeploy the vast majority of the remaining applications by the end of June.

Approximately 94% of the products and services offered by Bell Canada, including the products and services the company offers at the national level in co-operation with its business partners, are "service ready"; in other words, all of the network elements and the operating systems are ready for the year 2000 and the client can use the service or product normally.

Approximately 78% of all products and services are "client ready"; in other words, in addition to being "service ready" they generally cover control, service and billing. Bell Canada expects to have the majority of its products "client ready" by June 30, 1999.

Although the Year 2000 Program will be for the most part completed by the end of June, we are also preparing our business continuity plans, i.e. our contingency plans. Bell Canada would implement these business continuity plans beyond the year 2000 if there were a system crash or an unexpected internal or external delay that would be likely to have a major impact on Bell Canada activities.

The objectives set out in these business continuity plans are to ensure public health and safety, to minimize the impact on customer service, to minimize the financial consequences for Bell Canada and to meet regulatory requirements.

We have also done a comprehensive risk assessment. Although Bell Canada is confident that it has an adequate plan in place, the Year 2000 Project involves some unprecedented challenges and risks. The Y2K issue could have a major negative impact on Bell Canada if its Year 2000 Program were not completed in time, if its essential suppliers or other businesses that depend on Bell Canada and its clients were not prepared for the year 2000 or if the business continuity plans at Bell Canada were ineffective.

For the time being, Bell Canada does not expect that its Year 2000 Program will be slowed down much by the temporary work stoppage of some of its unionized employees. It will however continue to closely monitor the situation. Unionized Bell Canada employees might well be back on the job shortly.

Bell Canada continues to work in close co-operation with its national and international business partners, as well as with the members of the Canadian Telecommunications Industry Forum on tests among carriers and business continuity plans with respect to Y2K preparedness.

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In addition, Bell Canada has put together a comprehensive communications program that enables us to share the details of our Year 2000 Project with our clients and employees. A letter was sent to 800,000 business clients in January 1998. We have set up Web sites for Stentor and Bell Canada. We have also produced year 2000 compliance charts for Bell products. We published a Year 2000 brochure that was sent out to 560,000 SMEs in April 1998. We established a year 2000 bilingual information centre in Montreal in order to answer our clients' questions. An insert was included with the statements sent out to 7 million of our clients in November 1998. We have established personalized contact with large corporations. Internally, we have prepared a year 2000 document that was distributed to all our employees in March. We also put together an Intranet site to serve Bell Canada employees. I have provided you here today with copies of some of the documents that we have used with our clients and that you will certainly be able to use.

We hope this additional information on the state of Bell Canada's Year 2000 Program will satisfy the members of the Standing Committee on Industry. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you for your attention.

[English]

The Chair: Merci, Monsieur Lalonde.

I'm now going to turn to Mr. Bédard from Hydro-Québec.

[Translation]

Mr. Jacques Bédard (Chief, Year 2000 Project, Hydro-Québec): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Hydro-Québec thanks the standing committee for this invitation to appear today. I will be updating you on the progress we have made since November 26, when we last appeared.

At the end of April, we had completed 99.5% of the conversion and certification of products that are critical for our corporate mission and economic stability. Approximately 20 products still need to be dealt with and we plan to finish that work by the end of June 1999. One of the reasons that explains why we were not in a position to carry out the work to convert and certify all of the products is that we had to wait for the annual shutdown of the Gentilly nuclear power plant.

All of the 3,800 products have been tested in a development and operating environment. However, to ensure the utmost security, we have created year-2000-compliant independent testing environments at all locations. These are environments where we conduct integrated production tests. These tests will be completed by June 1999 at the latest.

In addition to this work, we completed a risk analysis associated with moving to the year 2000 in December 1998, and the results were presented to and approved by the Year 2000 Steering Committee in February 1999. A contingency plan was subsequently developed and approved by the steering committee in April 1999. This plan focusses primarily on measures for diminishing risks, as Hydro-Québec already had a contingency plan. The implementation of this contingency plan will be completed by the end of November 1999.

The other activities that will continue until the end of 1999 include follow-up on suppliers of products deemed essential, private electrical producers and carriers, and large electricity- consuming clients that could have an impact on the network if their systems crashed, as well as increased communication with internal and external clients.

It must also be pointed out that Hydro-Québec is working in close co-operation with the North American Electricity Reliability Council, and the Canadian Electrical Association to remain abreast of progress being made and potential problems facing the industry. Moreover, on April 9, Hydro-Québec successfully carried out a simulation conducted by the NERC and will participate in the exercise scheduled for September 9, 1999.

In conclusion, Hydro-Québec will be ready for the year 2000 before the end of 1999. It is very confident that the transition to the year 2000 will be harmonious and that its clients will not be impacted.

Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Bédard.

I'm now going to go to questions. Madame Jennings, s'il vous plaît.

[Translation]

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Thank you, Mr. Lalonde and Mr. Bédard.

• 1135

I live in Quebec, and like many other Quebec men and women, I experienced the ice storm, and I must tell you, Mr. Bédard, that your presentation on the plan for the transition to the year 2000 and the contingency plan reassured me a lot. I was also reassured when I heard you say that you have already participated in an integrated testing plan with other hydro-electric suppliers Canada- wide and that your participation was successful. You undoubtedly expect the same level of success during the next tests, which will take place on September 9.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: The next test will not necessarily cover the same aspects of the network, but instead all of the other functions linked to electricity, which was not the case during the last simulation, when we focussed primarily on telecommunications contingency plans.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: I would like to ask both of you a question about an external audit of your plans. The witnesses have told us that at the government level, it was deemed important to have recourse to an external audit or review. When that was not possible, an internal service was asked to verify another service in order to obtain objective and independent results. Is an internal or independent external audit part of your plans?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: Yes. At Hydro-Québec, internal auditors, who report to the board of directors, regularly conduct two audits each year; in 1999, they plan to do three. One of them has already been conducted and we plan to do two more by the end of the year to ensure that the project is unfolding as planned and in accordance with proper practices. We have had recourse to the services of external auditors mandated by the auditor general of Quebec, who has already audited our plan and the steps we foresee taking. As far as I know, the auditor general is satisfied with the way the project is going and the steps we plan to take.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Thank you.

Mr. Lalonde.

Mr. Denis Lalonde: We have conducted three internal audits. The Vice-President of auditing, Mr. Michel Doyon, regularly audits projects and participates in all of our weekly meetings on this project, which keeps him up to date on project development.

We have also retained the services of external auditors, who have conducted audits on three occasions. We plan to retain their services again, probably at the end of the summer, to do another minor audit to ensure us that everything has been done well.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: That is excellent. I have no further questions. I would like to thank you and your teams for the important work that you have accomplished. You told us this morning that these projects are drawing to a close, and your time frames seem very realistic.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Jennings.

Ms. Lalonde, please.

Ms. Francine Lalonde (Mercier, BQ): Good morning, Mr. Lalonde and Mr. Bédard.

Mr. Lalonde, I arrived a little bit late because my colleague was holding a press conference on a private member's bill that he is tabling. I imagine that you explained what that document is for.

Mr. Denis Lalonde: Yes, this is a communication tool that we use with our clients. We used the document in front of you at various times in 1998 and 1999.

We prepared the black brochure in conjunction with Industry Canada and we distributed it to 560,000 business clients, mainly SMEs. The insert for the statement was sent to 7 million clients in November. As for the small cards, we use them at conferences. The cards can be used in our payphones and replace 25-cent coins. On the back of the card we have indicated how to contact us to discuss the year 2000 project. They have been very useful at conferences, when people ask us how they can get in touch with us once we're gone. The little card enables them to do so.

• 1140

Ms. Francine Lalonde: You told us that your audits and your plan are well underway. However, that does not guarantee citizens who have a phone that may contain chips that there won't be any problem when we reach the year 2000. Is that correct?

Mr. Denis Lalonde: Not entirely, Ms. Lalonde, because phones in the home do not contain computer chips.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: Since there are no computer chips, there is no problem.

Mr. Denis Lalonde: There is no date function in the phones we sell in our tele-boutiques. Clients who want specific information on their phones can call the information centre we set up last August. By checking the list of products and services, that I can show you, employees at the centre can tell the client that there is no problem with their Vista 350 or with equipment from another supplier, be it Sanyo or someone else, that they have purchased. We have verified all of this equipment, and none of it poses a problem.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: The equipment you sell.

Mr. Denis Lalonde: Yes, that we sell. We can't answer for other businesses, that sell equipment that is perhaps different from what Bell sells.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: With respect to information, consumers should know that even if you are 100% sure that their equipment does not pose a problem, that does not mean that there won't be problems. You do however guarantee your equipment.

Mr. Denis Lalonde: We do not foresee the equipment we sell in our tele-boutiques or that we offer our clients posing a problem.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: Regardless of how old the equipment is?

Mr. Denis Lalonde: Yes. In fact, the older the equipment is, the better, because there are no computer chips in rotary phones.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: I still have a rotary phone.

I'd now like to turn to Mr. Bédard. Mr. Bédard, I read articles in the newspaper on the April 9 test, and I found them very interesting, but I was not aware of the fact that the communications systems were being tested. That is what you said and that is what it says in your text. The system itself was not tested.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: To manage the system, we need telecommunications to transmit commands from the network control centre, the power stations and the substations.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: Indeed.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: What we verified or simulated are slippages in these telecommunications systems or the computerized data transfer systems that feed the network control system. The back-up plans functioned normally.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: No problems.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: No problems. The goal of the next simulation is to test possible slippages in the network.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: That will be on September 9.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: Yes.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: If problems were to occur at that time, would it not be a bit late? Our experts have told us that the final testing must be conducted by June at the latest so that there is time to work on contingency plans.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: It will not be too late because contingency plans have already been developed in the event of problems with the network. The measures we are currently putting in place will minimize these risks. We don't expect there to be any problems during the September 9 simulation.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: Could there be problems with the internal and external feed?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: No, because Quebec does not have very many interconnections with neighbouring networks and these transition lines are equipped with security and control equipment. If there are too many power surges, the circuit shuts down automatically. So the electricity coming into Quebec would be cut off. So there wouldn't be a problem.

• 1145

Quebec can isolate itself easily. Our production capacity in Quebec is 31,000 megawatts, and that is normally enough during peak periods. So Quebec is self-sufficient. So its hydro-electric production capacity is 93% and its nuclear and thermal capacity is 7%. The hydro-electric capacity is hardly affected by the year 2000 problem, because we have more analog equipment than we do digital equipment on the network for the production and transmission of hydro-electric power.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: You said that you had not yet reviewed the Gentilly generating station.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: In its entirety. We have already started to work on the Gentilly generating station. However, for about 20 products, we have to wait for the annual shutdown to be able to change the equipment or verify them outside the network. Some equipment cannot be tested live in the generating station.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: No, no.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: We have to wait for the annual shutdown.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: It has to be done with alternating current.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: That is correct. But many of the products have already been verified at the Gentilly generating station.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: So you are not worried about that either.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: Not at all.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: Has the terrible ice storm exercise at least been useful?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: I'm not sure that it was an exercise, but the ice storm enabled Hydro-Québec to update its contingency plan and to implement it. It was implemented at the start of 1999. All emergency measures are therefore in place in the event of a major problem.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: Do you have any advice for the others?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: Advice for the others? It depends on what you're talking about.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: For those who did not experience it.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: Hydro-Québec recommends people prepare for a normal winter, nothing more, nothing less. Every year, people should prepare for a normal winter.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: In Quebec, and not in the South.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: In Quebec, yes.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Lalonde.

Mr. Bellemare, please.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Thank you, Madam Chair. Many have recommended that the general public buy generators. I am talking about people in the cities, not those who live in the country. What is your psychological reaction to that?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: We are not in favour of buying generators for a number of reasons. First of all, we are under the impression that people would be spending money for nothing, because our circuits can be fed from different sources. Just because a generating station or a line is down does not mean that electricity is not getting from one place to another. Secondly, there is always a danger associated with using these generators. We are not sure that the average citizen is always aware of the precautions that need to be taken when using a generator.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: You said that there was little communication with your neighbours, that you were self-sufficient. I suppose that is in relation to your own assets and operations. When you said that, I immediately thought of Churchill Falls. I thought that you were hooked up with Churchill Falls.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: Churchill Falls produces 5,400 megawatts for Hydro-Québec.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: And what percentage of your production does that account for?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: It's 5,400 megawatts out of 36,000, that is about a sixth or a seventh of our production. However, the 31,000 megawatts produced by Hydro-Québec are sufficient for Quebec. The Churchill Falls contribution of 5,000 megawatts brings our production capacity up from 31,000 to 36,000 megawatts. There wouldn't be any problem for Quebec even if we didn't have Churchill Falls because the 1st of January is not normally a peak period. Industries are generally functioning at a slower pace and lots of businesses are shut down. So it isn't a peak period unless there is extreme cold, which is quite unusual around the 1st of January. We are also in contact with Churchill Falls to ensure that they also are ready.

• 1150

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Do you expect any problems in the case of certain suppliers, and if so, what emergency plan do you have in place? Or have these people been brought into line?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: Since 1997 we require our suppliers to provide us with Y2K compliant products. So far we haven't identified any problem suppliers. According to our information, our suppliers will be in a position to get through this transition to the year 2000. In any case, should we have doubts about certain suppliers, we would be able to stock spare parts in preparation for this contingency. At the present time we do not have any problem suppliers.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: You are such a big and impressive organization that when you say you are ready, it's almost as if we are hearing the word of God. What sort of tests are you doing? Are you conducting any tests to find out whether your capacities are in keeping with your size?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: All products considered critical for the mission or the stability of the corporation have been tested. Whether or not a supplier has told us that the product is in compliance or not, these products have all been tested in a lab or environments simulating the year 2000. These products have been put into use or corrected depending on whether they have problems or not. So the products have all been tested.

That being said, we are now at the stage of integrated testing, the type of testing that is not normally done. In our normal practice, we do not carry out integrated testing whenever we start using a new product. In this case, however, we are doing integrated testing to ensure that in an isolated environment reproducing exactly the conditions of the year 2000, the systems and products will function. Obviously we cannot test all products in an isolated environment. If not, products are tested in a lab.

For example, as far as telecommunications are concerned, Hydro-Québec now has its own telecommunications network for the management of the electrical network. Five labs were set up and were connected to each other to simulate normal conditions of telecommunications networks. In this lab we are able to perfectly simulate the entire year 2000 environment, we can take a product and test it in this environment, changing the dates to ensure year 2000 compliance, that it is able to make the transition to the year 2000, that it also properly processes the leap year, that the Julian dates are right, that the 100th day is the appropriate one and so forth.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: We heard from the representatives of Nova Scotia that they had brought the dates forward. They realized that there were certain problems that they could deal with. Prince Edward Island seems to have done the opposite. They set the dates back by about ten days to gain ten years. I'd like to know whether you have conducted this type of testing of the entire system in Hydro-Québec. Did you decide that a certain weekend would be considered the 1st of January of the year 2000 to conduct testing of the entire system?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: We cannot put the entire network on the year 2000 and I don't think that Nova Scotia would have been able to set its network for the year 2000 at the same time.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Why?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: You have to realize that the management of the network also depends on dates and that transactions are recorded. We have logs of all transactions and all events occurring in the network and these events are all dated. If the date is not correct, we would be faced with a very serious records problem. We could also have serious billing problems.

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However, Hydro-Québec has looked into the possibility of conducting an advance run for the year 2000, a bit like Nova Scotia and Ontario Hydro. This trial should take place around the end of the summer. We do not expect any problems. We have to be careful when we make such changes in dates. If we have dates, it's because it is important for the management of the business, of the network, the records and billing. So we cannot change the dates on a whim. We cannot change all the network dates at the same time.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: I suppose there are meetings between people from Hydro-Québec and Ontario Hydro.

Mr. Jacques Bédard: Yes. The Canadian Electricity Association meets once a month or every two months and we take part in these forums that brings together all the power companies in Canada.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: What is the greatest concern of Ontario Hydro and Hydro-Québec at the present time?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: I cannot really speak on behalf of Ontario Hydro, but as far as I know, there is not really a great deal of concern. Our main concern right now is to reassure the public and that is why we are stepping up our communications programs. What we're worried about is public reaction to the transition to the year 2000; extremists, religious groups, etc.. If everyone buys a generator and starts it up without taking the necessary precautions, that can create a lot more problems than it would settle.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you. Merci, Monsieur Bellemare.

Mr. Jaffer, please.

[Translation]

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: I'd like to ask a question of Mr. Lalonde but perhaps Mr. Bédard will also like to answer.

[English]

On the last page of the report you've provided for the committee, it says Bell is also continuing to work closely with its national and international business partners and members of the Canadian telecommunications industry forum on matters of intercarrier testing and business continuity planning related to year 2000 preparedness. I guess my only question is simply this. With some of the work you're doing internationally or nationally, how confident are you, with either the people you're providing services to or the people you're relying on services for, that they are doing the same types of planning for the year 2000 and that their services will not be interrupted? Are you getting a good indication as to how that's working through your network of services and people you rely on?

Mr. Denis Lalonde: Let me answer that in two ways. The first aspect is on the national front. We are a member of the Stentor Alliance, and we are working very closely with all of the members of the Stentor Alliance in doing interoperability testing. That testing should be complete by the end of June. As an industry, we're also collaborating—I think the last time I was before the forum we indicated we had the Canadian telecom industry forum set up. We have all of the major players in that forum, the telecom carriers, facilities-based providers, such as AT&T, Cantel, the Bell Mobilities, the MicroCells, and so on.

We completed our intercarrier testings as an industry back in February—February 1 and 5—and we ran over a thousand tests, simulated in a lab environment where we had 13 locations from across North America linked together to simulate the telecom network. The tests were very positive. In fact, next week, I believe on the 19th, there is going to be a press conference by the forum to divulge the results of these tests to the general public. I can't release them today because it's under nondisclosure, but next week I will be able to talk to those tests.

On the international scene, we're working through the International Telecommunication Union, the ITU. The ITU has taken a very proactive role in trying to mobilize the telecom industry at large, a global telecom industry, if you will. While there are still pockets, countries, if you will, that don't have as good a program as Bell Canada does or as Canada does, certainly there has been a lot of progress in the last several months. However, there are still some hot spots around the world where we're still concerned that we may run into problems come January 1, 2000. So it's through the ITU that we're trying to influence these countries to really get their program advanced and completed.

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As to the suppliers of the telecom industry, that's another dimension, and we're working very closely with all of our suppliers. In fact, we're into our second wave of verification or validation of the readiness of our suppliers, and that should be completed by the end of June.

We've essentially completed our due diligence with 100% of all of our suppliers—our mission-critical suppliers. There are a few new priority suppliers that have come on board in the last few months that we still have to complete, but our mission-critical suppliers all have essentially very good programs. The products and services they deliver to us are either year 2000 compliant now or will be very shortly within the next couple of months. We're continuing our efforts to ensure that they are doing due diligence with their own suppliers so that the supply chain remains intact.

So we're very confident at this point, from a telecommunications industry perspective, that things will hold together. The only question that remains is with some of the international countries, where their level of readiness is not as advanced as that of Bell or of Canada.

[Translation]

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: Does the representative of Hydro-Québec have any comments to make?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: At Hydro-Québec we do not have the global problem that Bell may face with respect to telecommunications. Nonetheless, because of our work with the NERC and AEC we are able to follow the North American electric industry, including the Mexican one. The trials that we have been conducting with NERC on the North American electricity network have been very reassuring to us.

As for our essential suppliers, we conduct a regular follow-up to ensure that they are ready. So far we do not foresee any problems in this respect.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Jaffer.

[Translation]

Ms. Lalonde, do you have any other questions?

Ms. Francine Lalonde: No, that's fine.

The Chair: That's fine?

[English]

I have just one quick question for you, Mr. Lalonde.

People depend on their phone lines in times of emergency. As much as you can get ready, you must depend on Hydro-Québec and Ontario Hydro to ensure that phones work.

I can remember when I was much younger, your phone didn't need hydro to operate, and now it does. It seems kind of crazy that we've come so far and yet we're further behind when it comes to telecommunications in that sense. I'm just concerned that something that used to work without hydro now depends on hydro. Maybe you can respond to that. Maybe there's a Y2K phone out there that I'm not aware of.

Mr. Denis Lalonde: Let me first of all assure you that hydro was always a part of the telecommunications network. While we may have had the impression that hydro was not a key factor in the provision of telecommunications, it was, although it was behind the scenes.

There are two things I'd like to address. One is we have very high confidence in the hydro companies. We've been working very closely with Monsieur Bédard and Mr. Clark at Ontario Hydro to ensure that their programs are up to speed. We are continuing our due diligence process with the hydro companies, and again we've very confident that the hydro companies will be there, just as telecommunications will be there, come January 1, 2000.

However, even if there was a hydro failure, the telecommunications network... the central offices have a backup battery supply that can provide power for a certain period of time. Usually for about six hours the central office can work without any commercial electrical power. After six hours—and actually it's automatically engaged—we do have diesel generators that we use in our main central offices, and we have the capability of parachuting in generators for those central offices that don't have a permanent generator supply.

So telecommunications can continue to work, and we demonstrated this during the ice storm. At the worst of the storm, 98% of the people in the affected areas had telephone service. They didn't have hydro service, but they had telephone service as long as the cable wasn't cut.

The Chair: Can I just stop you there? When you say they had telephone service... I know my telephone doesn't work without hydro.

Mr. Denis Lalonde: Then you may have a particular situation, but I think if you check, you would still have a dial tone, unless you're talking about your office telephone.

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The Chair: No. I have a two-line system in my home that used to work without hydro, and then they had this new-fangled system that you had to buy because you had to take the old system out, and now it requires hydro.

I raise it because I find it ironic that I have a system that now depends on hydro, whereas previously I didn't.

Mr. Denis Lalonde: I'd have to check your particular situation specifically, because my knowledge of the telecommunications industry is that a dial tone is independent of what hydro supply you have at home, unless your particular telephone doesn't work without electrical power. If that's the case, then I'd have to talk to you individually and look at your situation.

Generally, even in the absence of power, you pick up the phone and there is a dial tone, because the power on telecommunications is not generated at the house or by the telephone; it's generated by the central office. That's why when people have a power failure, they can pick up the phone to call the hydro company and say their power is out.

The Chair: That's very true. I just know that with this new phone system we have... I found it strange that it didn't work when the hydro went out. We had to go and find the old dial phone and plug it in and use it.

Mr. Janko Peric (Cambridge, Lib.): Where did you buy it?

The Chair: I got it from Bell.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Are you sure you got it at a téléboutique?

The Chair: Yes, I'm very sure.

So most Canadians won't have to worry then?

Mr. Denis Lalonde: Yes.

The Chair: That's my concern, that most Canadians will have telephone service if they have to notify them of power service. But Mr. Bédard has assured us that they won't have to do that in Quebec anyway, and we've had several provinces already tell us that they've had outside auditors as well. Different provinces audit their service, so we're very pleased.

I want to thank you both for joining us here today. We do appreciate the update you've given us.

Just to clarify for the committee, Mr. Bédard, you're not linked to a grid in Quebec. Correct? You're a stand-alone system?

Mr. Jacques Bédard: Yes.

The Chair: So you're not affected the way other areas may be if they're part of a grid with the United States.

[Translation]

Mr. Jacques Bédard: No. We are not affected by what is taking place in the United States, in Ontario or in New Brunswick. We are easily able to isolate ourselves from the North American interconnection grid.

[English]

The Chair: Great.

I want to thank you both.

To let committee members know, we're going to be suspending just until our witnesses arrive. We'll suspend for about 10 minutes.

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• 1229

The Chair: I'll call the meeting back to order and welcome our next group of witnesses. Witnesses, my name is Susan Whelan. I'm the chair of the committee and I am very pleased to welcome you here on behalf of the committee.

We're very pleased to have Mr. Colin McMichael from the Government of Manitoba. He is the assistant deputy minister and project director for the year 2000 project; from Manitoba Telecom Services, Mr. Warren Reimer, director, year 2000 program; from the Regional Health Authorities of Manitoba, Mr. Reg Toews, the chief executive officer, South-Eastman Regional Health Authority; from Manitoba Emergency Management Organization, Inez Miller, planning officer; from Manitoba Hydro, Mr. Vince Warden, vice-president, finance and administration and chief financial officer; and Earle Floyde, manager, Y2K contingency planning.

• 1230

I hope those are the people who are present. If I've left anyone out, or if someone is replacing someone, you can let us know. What I propose is that the witnesses all make their opening statements first and then we'll turn to questions as a group. If it's okay with you, we'll begin with Mr. McMichael from the Government of Manitoba.

Mr. Colin McMichael (Assistant Deputy Minister and Project Director for the Year 2000 Project, Government of Manitoba): Good morning.

Manitoba, I think, has not taken the issue regarding year 2000 preparedness lightly. We were what I think of as proactive in terms initiating the project office back in 1996. What is unique about that project office is the fact that we took a centralized approach in that the project office assumed responsibility for dealing with year 2000 compliancy across government. So, organizationally, our scope not only covers the traditional government departments, but boards and agencies that are under the direct control of a specific government department, health care facilities and institutions, and, from an arm's length point of view, educational institutions and liaison with essential service providers, the Manitoba business community, and emergency preparedness organizations.

From a technical standpoint, our scope covered not only the traditional information technology supported business processes, but also physical sites, including elevators, security, fire alarms, medical equipment, and what I'll term non-IT equipment in the hospital or health care facilities.

We have a funding strategy that's directed at assisting both the departments and health care facilities to cover incremental one-time costs that are not within their departmental or organizational capabilities. We have a vendor strategy that allows us to streamline how we issue work and how we deal with the tendering process that seems to be quite well received within the vendor community. In fact, it is looked on as an economic development advantage to the province of Manitoba.

In terms of our present status, breaking the government organizations into three main areas... computer systems and hardware, information technology equipment, and premises. With respect to computer systems and hardware, we're approximately 85% complete with respect to all of our remediation efforts. That 85% includes not only what we deem to be mission-critical applications, but also those applications that support the needs of the business but are less critical in the business processes they support. So the 85% in terms of computer systems and hardware is an all-inclusive number.

With respect to the non-information technology equipment—things like global positioning devices, agricultural equipment, and so on—assessment and inventory have been completed, we're well underway in terms of remediation, and there are no major issues that are expected. A completion date for having those pieces of equipment totally remediated is June 1999.

The third component—premises—deals with buildings and physical sites. Again, inventory and assessment of the individual devices have been completed, and those include the provincially supported or provincially controlled prisons, remand centres, and those types of organizations, including, obviously, the locking devices in those facilities. We have completed the assessments. We're dealing with refurbishing those areas that need refurbishment. Essentially, there's very little that really has to be dealt with.

The fourth area, the area we're focusing on over the next number of months, is contingency plans. We are developing and bench-testing contingency plans for all of those areas.

The second area of concern is health care facilities. To provide some background, the province offered and assumed some assistance responsibility with respect to project management and providing some organizational expertise. As well, we are managing the remediation process on behalf of the Winnipeg Hospital Authority, the Winnipeg Community and Long Term Care Authority, and the Regional Health Authorities.

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Again, the process was to break those organizations into three main entities: computer systems, medical equipment, and facilities.

With respect to computer equipment, all of the major mission-critical systems are currently undergoing remediation or replacement, and at this point all are on schedule. We're running roughly 40% complete. Our expectation is to have all of the computer systems and hardware equipment remediated by, I believe, October 1999.

The next area of concern, and actually the one we focused on initially, is medical equipment. We have completed a full inventory of all the medical equipment that exists within the province. We've triaged that medical equipment into devices that are critical to the provision of health care, and we have a process to both test and remediate. Our rule of thumb in that case is if the device is considered to be critical or significant to the ongoing provision of health care, we will test that device using our own biomedical engineers. We do not rely on manufacturer's warranty or manufacturer's statements of compliancy, even though we do attempt to solicit those compliancy statements.

We're currently about 50% complete for the overall repair and replacement on all medical equipment work, and the actual remediation work really covers less than 4% of the medical devices. What that means, really, is that out of all the devices we've tested for compliancy issues, very few of those medical devices really require some form of remediation. Our target for complete remediation of all the medical equipment across the province in all facilities is targeted for June 1999.

With respect to premises equipment, we're currently about 30% complete with respect to the repair and replacement of the premises. There is minor premises equipment remediation that's targeted to be completed by August 1999, but nothing that's of any particular significance. They have been relatively small issues that we felt we've had to deal with.

We do have teams that are responsible for dealing with supply chains and with the ability to order and maintain critical supplies during the millennium rollover, and there is a health care organization that's taking the lead role with respect to health care supply issues.

The last issue I mentioned was with respect to contingency plans. Our target date for contingency plans to be developed, reviewed, and tested is scheduled for completion in June 1999. We do plan to do a series of full dress rehearsals. There are critical response teams that are going to be identified or are in the process of being identified with respect to being available during the period December 15 to January 15 in the unlikely event that something transpires and we need to deal with those issues.

I have two other comments I'd like to make. First, some comment is worthy with respect to our essential services group. I think in the province of Manitoba we have both a close-knit and a well-oiled essential services committee that's made up of Manitoba Hydro, MTS, and roughly 50 essential service providers. This group meets on a regular basis, and their objective is essentially to share information and collaborate on contingency planning methodologies and to ensure that we deliver a consistent and coordinated message to the public on our remediation efforts.

Last but not least, the province of Manitoba embarked on a fairly extensive business awareness campaign to ensure that our business partners within the province of Manitoba are well aware of the potential impact of year 2000 issues and that we bring to the forefront organizations that are able to help the business community remediate.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. McMichael.

I now turn to Mr. Reimer from Manitoba Telecom Services.

Mr. Warren Reimer (Director, Year 2000 Program, Manitoba Telecom Services): Thank you for this opportunity to address the committee. My name is Warren Reimer and I'm the project director for Manitoba Telecom Services' year 2000 project. I manage the project management office, which has responsibility for directing year 2000 activities for the MTS group of companies.

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MTS provides high-quality telecommunications services to Manitoba, and we are confident that we will continue to provide the same quality service on January 1, 2000.

As a technology and telecommunications leader in Manitoba, we've made year 2000 readiness a top priority. We started preparing for the year 2000 at the beginning of 1996. To implement this very large undertaking, we established a project management office and assigned extensive resources that were dedicated to ensuring that the telecommunications services we provide will be ready for the year 2000.

We completed a thorough impact assessment in 1996 and developed and implemented a detailed action plan to address all of the issues we identified.

Executive management and the MTS board of directors have accepted responsibility for completion of the year 2000 plan. We provide monthly status reports to the senior management team and to the audit committee of the MTS board of directors. These reports include status, milestones, and plans for contingencies.

As part of our due diligence activities related to year 2000 readiness, we engaged Deloitte & Touche to review our year 2000 readiness work program and process, and that review was completed in March of this year.

We began our conversion activity at the beginning of 1997. Target dates were established well in advance of failure dates. By the end of 1998, all upgrades to the MTS telecommunications network, which includes telephone, data, and mobile communications equipment, were complete. Critical business systems are now year 2000 ready.

MTS has tested its telecommunications networks and critical business systems and we will continue to test throughout 1999. In addition, extensive testing has been performed and will continue with Stentor and other key alliance partners for intercom activity of our networks.

The test to ensure that national interoperability is on target is to be completed by the end of June of this year.

We established an intermanagement program back in 1996. We're dependent on many third-party suppliers. That's why we contact all of our key suppliers on a regular basis and monitor their year 2000 readiness of all the products and services MTS relies on.

MTS is also in regular contact with suppliers of products and services that our customers buy, lease or rent from us, and we monitor our affiliated dealers, agents, and companies for their year 2000 readiness. For critical components, in addition to vendor claims of compliance, we perform our own verification and testing.

To ensure continued operations, MTS has developed contingency plans to protect itself and our customers from unpredicted events. MTS provides service seven days a week, 24 hours a day today. Consequently, business continuity planning is a formal process at MTS and has been in place for some time.

Year 2000 plans are built on existing plans. We have conducted a year 2000 risk analysis and are augmenting our current plans to account for any unique year 2000 issues. These plans include response, recovery, and restoration procedures for all critical elements, including availability of staff on critical dates. We have limited vacations for our critical staff.

We have standby power generation in place for all of our critical sites today. We will establish a year 2000 incident command centre to track status and quickly react to any disruptions, and we will collaborate with our Stentor partners and other telecommunications carriers in the world to establish an early warning procedure to alert each other of any failures that occur throughout the rollover.

MTS is a member of the Manitoba year 2000 utilities forum, along with the other essential service providers. The forum is working to identify areas of interdependence as well as sharing information and resourcing.

We're also a member of the Manitoba EMO central services subcommittee that Colin referenced, and we have worked with this committee to cooperate in the provision of essential services and have also participated in community awareness programs.

In addition, we're a member of the Canadian telecommunications industry forum, whose goal is the continued integrity and operation of the Canadian telecom system for our national services. This includes emergency, local, long distance, data, toll free, wireless, and operator services.

In summary, I'd like to stress that MTS has successfully completed upgrades to the telecommunications network. It has, as well, completed conversion of the critical business systems. Testing, as I say, will continue throughout 1999. While no organization can claim absolute immunity from year 2000 issues, I'm confident we will continue to provide the same quality of service in the year 2000 as we do today.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Reimer.

I'll now turn to Mr. Toews from the Regional Health Authorities of Manitoba.

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Mr. Reg Toews (Chief Executive Officer, South-Eastman Regional Health Authority, Regional Health Authorities of Manitoba): Thank you for this opportunity to report. I'm reporting on behalf of all 13 regional health authorities in the province.

In the interest of time, I will move specifically to the particular issues. I should also identify that we've enjoyed a very good and close working relationship with the Manitoba government, as we as independent RHAs have nevertheless had to address the issues.

The RHAs concur with and support the brief submitted to the committee by the Canadian Healthcare Association. The issues of communication and supply chain continuity identified by the CA are consistent with those identified in Manitoba. The health authorities also wish to raise the issue of contingency planning. Let me now address those three issues.

First, on contingency planning, regional health authorities recommend that provincial, territorial, and national governments coordinate the overall review of cross-sectoral contingency plans to ensure all sectors are prepared and the impacts of one sector on others are assessed. In Manitoba, the year 2000 project office has drafted a contingency planning process and procedures document to ensure all areas of concern are addressed and procedures put in place for coordination with its central services.

Key contacts have been identified in each RHA, and a provincial planning manager has been appointed. However, the regional health authorities have identified that greater focus needs to be placed on contingency planning. Contingency for higher-risk areas must be addressed. Continuous focused monitoring of the planning and testing of plans are required to ensure preparedness.

On the supply chain continuity, the RHAs recommend that the provincial, territorial, and federal governments immediately develop a coordinated policy regarding potential stockpiling by health care facilities and agencies. The year 2000 poses a particular source of risk to the supply chain due to the number of organizations involved and the difficulty in effectively testing the supply chain—to ensure that it will continue to be able to deliver the product.

Failures in the supply chain may not appear at a specific time, but may take weeks or months to work themselves through the supply chain. A failure in another part of the world could take many months to surface in Manitoba. It is not practical for health authorities to be able to plan for or anticipate how these kinds of international Y2K problems may appear, nor should they be expected to have to plan for them.

All levels of government, and in Manitoba the provincial government with the RHAs, need to more aggressively address supply chain issues. Regional health authorities and their facilities should be prepared to take reasonable steps to avert realistic and practical scenarios. Communication needs to occur with individual facilities regarding an official position on stockpiling.

Finally, on communications, the regional health authorities recommend that, as much as possible, information to the public regarding the year 2000 preparedness of health care facilities in regions be coordinated between various levels of government, provincial health associations, and individual health care facilities and agencies. Common messages are needed to ensure that the public is informed, but not unduly concerned or confused, as to the level of year 2000 preparedness of their local health care systems. A coordinated communications strategy will also be key to resolving some of the supply chain issues.

In closing, the regional health authorities of Manitoba are cognizant of our role in preparing for the year 2000 and appreciate the support of the Manitoba government. We support the role of both the federal and provincial governments in ensuring that we are ready to enter the next millennium.

The RHAs are committed to working with governments and others to address the issues we have today. We look forward to the Standing Committee on Industry's support in resolving issues outside the scope of the RHAs' mandate or influence.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Toews.

I will now turn to Mr. Colin McMichael to speak in place of Ms. Miller, from the Manitoba Emergency Management Organization.

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Mr. Colin McMichael: For purposes of year 2000 compliancy issues, the Manitoba emergency measures organization reports to the provincial year 2000 project office, and the membership of Manitoba emergency measures is an integral part of our project office.

Manitoba emergency measures personnel meet on a weekly basis. As project managers responsible for ensuring emergency preparedness across the province, we are preparing contingency plans with respect to both provincial municipalities and provincial organizations, or organizations that are responsible for the delivery of the central services across the province. It is a joint effort between the emergency measures organization and the year 2000 project office.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. McMichael.

I will now turn to Manitoba Hydro and Mr. Warden.

Mr. Vince Warden (Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer, Finance and Administration, Manitoba Hydro): Good afternoon. My name is Vince Warden and I have executive responsibility for the Y2K project. I also have with me Earl Floyde, who is the Y2K project manager at Manitoba Hydro.

We began our Y2K project over two years ago now and went through a very rigorous process of compiling an inventory, going through an assessment process, and testing. I'm very pleased to say we have declared ourselves Y2K ready as of April 30. We set that target date about a year ago, and we have achieved that target.

We issued a press release last week declaring Manitoba Hydro to be ready for 2000. So we fully expect our systems to be operating normally come January 1, 2000. Between now and that time, we will be retesting our systems and making sure we have a comprehensive clean management program in place and that we don't pollute our systems with any new inventory that's brought in.

Working on our contingency planning process, our contingency plans will be in place by June 30, and we will be meeting that target date as well.

In summary, we have provided our customers with the assurance that we will be there for them, and we're very confident that will be the case.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Warden. I will now turn to questions of the committee, if there are no other comments. Have I missed someone at the table?

Mr. Calev Ruberg (Chief Information Officer and Deputy Minister, Department of Finance, Government of Manitoba): I just want to introduce myself. I'm the chief information officer for the Province of Manitoba, and deputy minister. The Y2K office is part of my responsibility for the province.

The Chair: Do you have any opening comments you wish to add?

Mr. Calev Ruberg: I'll answer questions if they're directed at a general level at the provincial point. One issue is governance in the province. Just to highlight the importance of this issue for the province, the office of the chief information officer reports directly to the finance minister and as such is a deputy minister position. Colin McMichael and I work very closely together in trying to put together much of the response for the province, in both the government sector and the emergency and essential services part. We also coordinate our work with the health authority.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Ruberg.

I will now turn to questions. Mr. Jaffer.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to thank everyone in Manitoba for their presentations.

I have just a quick question for Mr. Warden from Manitoba Hydro. This morning we had a discussion with someone from Hydro-Québec, and there was one thing I asked them to find out a little more about. They said a lot of the same things you mentioned in their preparedness for the Y2K problem. They felt they were on track and would be ready for the new millennium, and you've said the same things.

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My concern was with some of the people you directly rely on for services or people you may be providing services to. How confident are you with regard to the ability of all those people you rely on or who may rely on you to have completed their Y2K preparedness, although you may be confident that you will be prepared?

In Quebec, for instance, they're on a separate grid for power. They don't have to worry about any other external factors. They feel confident that they'll be able to provide their services.

What situation are you in on those levels? I would like to hear your opinion or your comments on that to see if anything external could affect the way you provide your services.

Mr. Vince Warden: In Manitoba, we generate all the power for the province of Manitoba—I should probably have said that at the outset—with the exception of the central portion of the city of Winnipeg. We have surplus energy that we export out of the province. Of our total generation, about 30% does go out of the province. So we don't have a reliance on other suppliers for our product, for the power that we generate.

With respect to the suppliers of equipment, we've had very close contact with them over the last number of months. We're relatively confident that our suppliers will be there for us, but as a contingency plan we are building up our inventory so that we will have a minimum of a three-month supply on hand, over and above our normal inventory levels.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: I don't have anything else right at this point.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Jaffer.

Mr. Lastewka, please.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for your input this afternoon.

I need to have some better understanding in the health care area, where we've had numerous discussions here on the industry committee with various health care regions, hospitals in particular, where identification of the devices and information from manufacturing was a critical item and has now been slowly removed.

Could you give us the status of the identification of devices and manufacturing information such that the hospitals and long-term health care areas are able to complete their work? Have you had any difficulty or are you outstanding in any manufacturers or information from Health Canada?

Mr. Colin McMichael: The short answer to your question is no. We don't feel that we have any issues with respect to medical equipment, particularly with respect to either suppliers' responses to the compliancy of those pieces of equipment or for our remediation efforts associated with that equipment.

I'll give you an idea of really where we're at right now. We have approximately 22,000 medical devices in the Winnipeg Health Authority, and another 12,000 medical devices in the Winnipeg Hospital Authority and Rural Health Authority. Of those devices, over 86% of them currently today have no issues or compliancy problems associated with them.

With respect to non-compliancy, we're looking at in the range of 3% in terms of remediation of those devices. That translates into roughly 1,000 pieces of equipment. Of those 1,000 pieces of equipment, approximately 550 or so have already been remediated.

Because we've taken the approach that we want not to rely on suppliers to ensure that their medical equipment is compliant and we do our own testing, we feel we're in a much better position to be able to feel confident and to make statements of compliancy in terms of where we are today.

Does that answer your question?

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Yes, it does.

Further to that, what is your target date in completing your health care sector area?

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Mr. Colin McMichael: The overall target date is September 1999. That's broken into three sectors, however. Medical equipment is scheduled for full completion in June. I believe premises is scheduled for September, and the larger or main computer applications are also scheduled for September. The largest health care facility in the province today, Health Sciences Centre, is very close to full compliancy.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Thank you very much on that item.

I want to switch back to the government and mission-critical areas. Where are you now in your government mission-critical areas? Are you experiencing changes or difficulties between any federal departments that might be affecting your provincial departments as far as getting the work done?

Mr. Calev Ruberg: We currently have thirteen systems that are still on the high-risk table. Of those, seven are scheduled to be completed by the end of May. That leaves us with six in the HRDC area, which is a direct involvement with your federal Department of Human Resources.

Our education and training services are currently beginning to work with HRDC, but we would very much appreciate that this involvement be as seamless and as smooth as possible with that particular area. We haven't experienced any untoward difficulty; however, there have been occasional issues of data interaction there. We just want to make sure that doesn't occur. However, we are working on that issue with the CIO council as well.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Have you had any difficulties with the child tax credit system and Revenue Canada and so forth that have caused any delays?

Mr. Calev Ruberg: No, that actually hasn't caused us any delays. We're working on that issue as well with the finance department, Revenue Canada, and our family services area. That's being currently worked out as well.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: This is my last question: In each of the areas, what is the most critical item you're working on now that's preventing you from getting to completion? We're trying to get a handle on critical items across the country.

Mr. Colin McMichael: With respect to the provincial efforts and the whole year 2000 compliancy issue, at this point in time there really isn't any one outstanding critical item. We're on the down side of compliancy. Most of the government departments are considered to be 100% ready and are going through certification at this point. So I think we now have well in hand issues such as supply chain, contingency planning, and those kinds of things, which six months ago would probably have been considered to be the key or the critical issues.

A voice: Why don't we go around the table once and listen to the critical issues?

Mr. Warren Reimer: From MTS, Manitoba Telecom Services, our key activity or issue right now is finalizing our contingency planning, our response procedures. We have completed our remediation and our upgrades to the networks, and now we're planning for any risk scenarios and making sure we have business continuity plans in place.

Mr. Vince Warden: From Manitoba Hydro, I would say that we have no critical items left. As I mentioned earlier, we are ready. Our work now is on the contingency planning area. I wouldn't classify that as critical at this time, though.

Mr. Reg Toews: From a health perspective, we've identified them. Clearly the contingency planning is to ensure that if unanticipated events occur, we have a way of handling them. So that's a particular kind of work. Secondly, I think communications remains an issue, because in fact fear can be created within the minds of the public, so we'll continue to work with the government on the communications issues. Supply chain is something that's significantly beyond us, so we're dependent on others on that. So those will be the two we'd be working on.

Mr. Calev Ruberg: Finally, from a central point of view, communications is certainly a very key issue that we do have—continued communications with the CIO of Canada and making sure that our coordinated communication efforts work, and understanding from all of the other provinces that there is a coordinated effort there. All this is key to making sure we speak with a reasonably common voice and a very precise voice so that the public is informed and they can make some informed decisions.

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Mr. Walt Lastewka: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Lastewka.

Mr. Shepherd, please.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: Mr. Toews, you mentioned in your presentation the concern for supply chain planning and the possible role the federal government could play, presumably for things outside your jurisdictional control.

Can you elaborate on that, and tell us how you see the federal government playing an effective role in that area?

Mr. Reg Toews: The supply chain serves the whole country. The suppliers serve different provinces, different facilities. Obviously, they're all independent entities.

If, as an example, one province chooses to in fact increase the amount of inventory on hand beyond a reasonable level, that could in fact affect the supplier's capacity. So none of us individually can address the issue, because it's outside of any single jurisdiction. It might be seen that the only player that could in fact bring all of the potential buyers of that product together is the federal government. No one province or no one regional health authority can do that on its own, but we can be impacted by the actions of an adjacent facility in an adjacent province.

I don't know exactly how the federal government would play out that role, but clearly it's not something that any one of the rest of us can do on our own.

I don't know if that helps.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: I'm a little clearer now.

So what do you see happening? Is it possible for the federal government to set reasonable inventory points based on an individual hospital, on the number of rooms, possibly, or something of that nature? I presume you're saying your supply of drugs or whatever the case may be would be based on some type of ratio or conformity across Canada so that within the domestic economy there isn't abuse by one player as opposed to another. Is that what you're trying to say?

Mr. Reg Toews: That could be a practical application, but let me go one step further back. It might even be useful to convene a forum of some type, with appropriate provincial representatives, to be able to express ourselves regarding how the action of an adjacent player could affect us.

I think it might also be a matter of making us aware that together we're in fact able to talk about the issue, that together we can agree on what actions we might or might not take, and that together we can agree as to what might be a reasonable additional inventory in anticipation of an event.

That might then in fact flow to some type of monitoring or reporting-back system just to assure all the players that no one player is breaking significant rank on something that can impact us all in a collective fashion.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: Do you have any idea how much of your supply chain is dependent on production within Canada as opposed to the stuff that is perhaps coming in from the United States?

Mr. Reg Toews: On that question, I'm afraid I'm going to have to look to Mr. McMichael or to Mr. Mason, who's at the back of the room.

Mr. Colin McMichael: Like most other provinces and larger health care facilities, our major suppliers are essentially U.S. suppliers. What happens in the U.S. with respect to demands on those suppliers will impact what happens provincially in Canada as well.

The answer to your question is that every province, I think, is dominated by the fact that our supplies come from primarily U.S. suppliers.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: Would you see a role for the federal government to secure or protect that supply line possibly vis-à-vis Canada as opposed to some of the individual states?

Mr. Colin McMichael: To the extent that's possible.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: Okay.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Shepherd.

Mr. Bellemare, do you have any questions?

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Yes.

You've had budgets established some time ago, I guess, even months ago. Have you constantly readjusted your budgets to address the Y2K problem?

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Mr. Calev Ruberg: Yes. At the same time, because of the way we're handling centrally much of the purchasing and our actions with the vendor, the issue is one of efficiency. It's actually turned out to be a much more efficient operation than we had first forecast, particularly because we have such a large number of vendors involved. A single vendor has not basically captured the entire market here.

I'll let Colin McMichael answer the particular number issues, but I think we're somewhat below forecast even though our scope has increased substantially.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: That's good.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: That's very good.

Now, did that affect your timelines?

I'm sorry, Mr. McMichael; I just noticed you were getting ready to supply a second answer.

Mr. Colin McMichael: I think the timelines, again because of the way we've interacted with vendors, have actually shortened as opposed to lengthened. Smaller companies have been able to react much more quickly to fixing smaller problems. We still have some large systems that do have to be fixed and still do have to be remediated in some of the health care sectors, and I suspect they will take as long as we budgeted for them. However, the smaller systems have certainly taken a lot less time.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Do you have any problems with regard to contingency planning?

Mr. Colin McMichael: If there is a problem associated with contingency planning, it's really one of sheer volume. When you look at how the year 2000 issue can potentially impact the province, and at the number of organizations involved, I think you can very easily get an appreciation of the complexity of dealing with contingency planning.

I think in Manitoba we've had some advantage in the sense that as a province, two years ago we had the opportunity... I shouldn't say “opportunity”; we were forced to look at how the province dealt with the whole contingency planning issue and how our various organizations interrelated. During the flood in Manitoba, I think in much the same way as during the Quebec ice storm, we learned a lot regarding how we might go about improving our contingency planning process.

The efforts today are directed primarily at ensuring that the existing contingency plans in place in both government departments and municipalities and with respect to some of the essential service providers, including the health care facilities, are vetted against potential year 2000 scenarios. There is a planning committee, and there are project people assigned, to ensure that takes place.

We look at contingency planning from two points of view. The assumption is that by dealing with all of the year 2000 issues, we've mitigated the risk of some unlikely event occurring. If that does occur, our contingency planning process is broken into two components—teams of people to fix whatever has failed and teams of people responsible for ensuring business continuity or service continuity while that fix is executed.

That's the direction we're heading with respect to contingency plans. Our overall effort is directed at ensuring those plans are available in all of the individual organizational entities necessary.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: How much of your contingency planning relies on Operation ABACUS from the Department of National Defence?

Mr. Colin McMichael: None.

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Bellemare.

I have just two questions. The first question is for Mr. Reimer and Mr. Warden, and perhaps Mr. Toews. It has to do with audit.

We heard from several provinces today that they were doing external audits from the different hydro and telecom and health authorities. While some were doing auditing, we also heard that some were doing internal audits to verify their Y2K compliance. I'm just wondering at what stage your three organizations may be at.

Mr. Reimer.

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Mr. Warren Reimer: At MTS we've actually had our internal corporate audit department work with the project over the last several years. It's been an ongoing auditing process. We conducted an external audit, engaging Deloitte and Touche to come in and perform an external review of our program. That was completed in March of this year.

The Chair: Mr. Toews.

Mr. Reg Toews: A steering committee has been advisory to the staff in the Y2K central office. In fact, at recent meetings we've had considerable discussion regarding the necessity of certain forms of auditing. We are engaging in certain kinds of audits at the present time. I guess it remains a question as to how broadly we will feel the need to do audits province-wide, but clearly at this point we're doing selected audits.

The Chair: Mr. Warden.

Mr. Vince Warden: Similar to MTS, our internal audit department is very much involved in the project. We also engaged an outside consultant, KPMG, to come in and do a best practices review. That was completed in January of this year.

The Chair: Thank you.

My last question is for either Mr. McMichael or Mr. Ruberg. Earlier today we heard from one of the provinces that one of the things that has come out of the problems with Y2K is the fact that there seems to be an absence of regulations to protect the public from bad software design.

As a committee, we've heard that there are other dates coming down the pipeline after January 1, 2000, and February 29, 2000. Earlier testimony at our hearings—this was more than a year ago—suggest there's another problem with 2016 and then, I believe, 2030. I'm not a techno-wizard, so I don't know exactly what those problems are.

I'm just wondering if in Manitoba you have any legislation or if you think this is also an area of concern.

Mr. Calev Ruberg: I think software design is generally a concern. Given the ability of any vendor to actually deliver software based on contracts, both federally and provincially or anywhere in the country, the risk of developing software is an extremely high risk. That's been proven in project after project both across the country and across the province.

The issue right now is one of pragmatism. We have contracts with vendors, and we do have a difficult time establishing liability and warranty provisions based just on Y2K, much less on any other provisions based on something further out. In fact, what would have served us well in the beginning of this effort generally is that the federal and provincial governments together could have established at least some type of standardized clause for Y2K liability and provision. That would have served us all very well, because the vendors then at least would have had to comply to some standard. As it is now, we are all very captive in the vendor's court as to that liability provision.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Just to let you know, as members of Parliament we are doing our own Y2K readiness in our Hill and constituency offices. It's our responsibility. My office was supposed to be Y2K ready, and my schedule jumped to the year 2099 a week ago.

I thought I would add that little tidbit in there as a point of information. It's not always what it appears to be.

Are there any final comments before we let you go?

If not, I want to thank you all on behalf of the committee for your frankness and for your presentations. We'll let you go now. We hope you'll enjoy the rest of the day.

Voices: Thank you.

The Chair: We'll suspend until 3.30.

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The Chair: I'd like to reconvene our meeting. Mr. Jaffer has given us permission to reconvene.

I'd like to welcome our witnesses this afternoon. We are very pleased to have with us the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, Mr. Mac Maidens, the area maintenance superintendent; and, from the Government of Nunavut, Ms. Karen Hecks, assistant deputy minister of federal-Nunavut relations, and Mr. David Smith, previously acting chief informatics officer.

I propose that we do opening statements first, and unless you have another agreement amongst yourselves, I propose that Mr. Maidens begin.

Mr. Mac Maidens (Area Maintenance Superintendent, Northwest Territories Power Corporation): Thank you.

I have a brief statement that basically covers the power corporation's aspects.

The Northwest Territories Power Corporation is a crown corporation established by the Northwest Territories Power Act of 1988. It is owned by the Government of the Northwest Territories and is responsible for the generation, transformation, distribution, and delivery of electrical and thermal energy throughout the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

The corporation is composed of 47 separate power systems, of which 25 are within the territory of Nunavut. The corporation supplies electrical energy to the communities of Nunavut through independent diesel generation stages, DGSs. The DGS range has a capacity from 10,800 kilowatts in Iqaluit to 465 kilowatts in Grise Fjord. None of the Nunavut DGSs are connected to a grid system or to external sources of supply.

The corporation employs approximately 85 utility professionals throughout Nunavut to operate and maintain these DGSs.

In March 1998 the corporation established a Y2K project team with a mandate to investigate, identify, and rectify all potential year 2000 issues. Members of the team were drawn from all departments of the corporation, including MIS, engineering, and finance, as well as representatives from the three operational regions of the corporation.

To reflect the corporation's concern with the issue, the present CEO of the company, Leon Courneya, chaired the project team. To assist the project team, a comprehensive year 2000 action plan has been developed by the corporation's information systems department. The plan provides certain guidelines, objectives, and schedules, which the team followed and continues to follow to achieve its objective.

The first stage of the program was to identify and assess the risk of all systems or devices susceptible to the year 2000 issue. A corporate-wide inventory of all potential problems was undertaken, with equipment being placed in one of the following three categories: computer hardware, computer software, and embedded logic systems. All equipment was given an assessment, from one, critical, to four, non-critical, in either an operational or business risk category. This inventory of approximately 1,600 items was substantially complete by June 30, 1998. Of the total corporate inventory, approximately 300 items were located within Nunavut.

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The second stage of the plan was to test all inventory items for Y2K compliance. A standard test sheet was developed, which involved known critical dates from December 31, 1999 to February 29, 2004. Halfway through the testing, September 9, 1999 was added as a result of information received from other utilities.

Within Nunavut, all devices were function tested to verify Y2K compliance. In other words, the clock functions of every device were advanced to just prior to critical dates and the device was allowed to actually operate through the critical time period. After all tests were complete, the devices were to return to the actual date and time. Testing of all critical components was substantially complete, as per the schedule, by December 31, 1998.

Within Nunavut, four critical devices failed to meet Y2K compliance standards. As well, numerous BIOS systems in older personal computers were not considered as acceptable. The four critical devices were as follows: telephone system in Iqaluit; telephone system in Rankin Inlet; a programmable logic controller in Iqaluit; and a programmable logic controller in Kimmirut. All four of these systems are in the process of being upgraded or replaced, with a scheduled completion date of September 30, 1999.

In the case of personal computers, the majority of these had been scheduled for replacement prior to testing, and the rest will be replaced early in the 1999-2000 fiscal year.

The third stage of the team's mandate was to develop contingency plans for all the plants within the corporation. In February 1999, a generic plan was drawn up and circulated to operations for input and revision. The plan establishes guidelines, responsibilities, and communications procedures for each individual community. As part of the plan, all power plants in the corporation will be fully manned on New Year's Eve 1999, and the status of each plant will be reported to a central location throughout the day and into January 1, 2000.

In Nunavut, these plans are scheduled for completion by June 30, 1999. Training and familiarization with the plans will occur for all Nunavut employees from July 1 to October 31.

With the NWTPC year 2000 action plan substantially implemented, the corporation decided that an independent assessment was in order to evaluate the efficacy of the plan. To that end, an independent firm, KPMG, was contracted to investigate and report on the effectiveness of the corporation's Y2K activities. This assessment was conducted from April 12 to 23. The draft version of this report was received on May 4, 1999, and is presently being reviewed by the project team.

In conclusion, the corporation has spent considerable time, effort, and resources addressing the Y2K issue. Consequently, the corporation anticipates minimum impact to our operations within Nunavut.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Maidens.

I'm now going to turn to the Government of Nunavut.

Ms. Karen Hecks (Assistant Deputy Minister, Federal-Nunavut Relations, Government of Nunavut): Good afternoon. Thank you for having us here today. Although our new government really only came into legal being on April 1, work has been going on to set up the government for a good year and a half—actually before that—under the aegis of the interim commissioner of Nunavut.

As we set up the machinery of government, obviously one of the key elements was the computer systems—an obviously key element. Mr. David Smith, who is here with me today, was acting as the interim chief informatics officer and was responsible for planning and implementing the building of those systems. He will speak to you today about that.

Mr. David Smith (Previous Acting Chief Informatics Officer, Government of Nunavut): Thank you, Karen.

As Karen mentioned, the Government of the Northwest Territories, until April 1, 1999, had the mandate for year 2000 activities for both the western portion of the territory and the eastern portion. Since the division did not occur until April 1, about six weeks ago, the entire mandate was managed out of Yellowknife and managed by the Government of the Northwest Territories at the time. Under that mandate, that government, of course, has made significant progress, and I believe you'll hear later today on that issue. They will report separately for the period up to April 1, 1999.

The office of the interim commissioner of Nunavut had been established under the Nunavut Act to prepare the new government on a number of issues, of course year 2000 being one of them. Over the last few months, the interim commissioner has deployed several new systems to get ready for April 1. I can report on those systems at this point.

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Those new systems included a financial system for the new government. It is operational. It began operations on April 1, 1999, and is year 2000 compliant. So our entire financial system being a brand new system is not an issue.

There were several other new systems installed by the interim commissioner. There is a records management system, which is year 2000 compliant because, again, it's a brand new system. We installed a number of computer hardware, network, and operating system items, including servers and workstations. As those have been purchased in the last 12 to 18 months, they are compliant and there's no concern about those systems.

The other major activity the interim commissioner undertook was to build and to test a new system for income support for Nunavut. That system has been tested. It will begin to go live, community by community, in the next few weeks. It will be completed by January 1 and that will ensure that Nunavut is year 2000 compliant in the area of income support and related activities.

Those are the activities the interim commissioner carried out on behalf of the new government.

Those two things, of course, came together on April 1, and because we simply didn't have time in the few months that we had to build entirely new systems for the Government of Nunavut, we have contracted back to the Yellowknife government many other systems. Of course, the Government of Nunavut is accountable for those systems and accountable for the year 2000 status, but the fact is, they are operated by the government in the west on our behalf on a contract basis.

For those systems, we continue to work with the government in the west and are jointly completing the projects that they undertook to make those systems compliant. Again, later today, you'll hear a report from them on those systems. Those kinds of systems were things like student financial assistance and certain of the health care systems that fell into that category.

Having described all that, in summary I'd like to say that our world is a little more complex because of division. We first had a government of the west and the east and an interim commissioner, and now we have two separate governments. But despite the additional complexity and despite having to describe who is accountable at any point in time, I believe we are in good shape, and I believe the year 2000 activities are under control. Where we have not completed it 100%, we have appropriate contingency plans for the Territory of Nunavut.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Smith and Ms. Hecks.

I'm going to turn to questions. Mr. Jaffer.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I know that you've mentioned, especially in regard to Nunavut, that you'd been working on a lot of these things for maybe a year and a half in advance of the creation of Nunavut, but it's great to hear that in such a short time you're on track with that. Congratulations.

My question is just simply with regard to the report to Mr. Maidens, where you outline the four critical devices that needed to be replaced: (a), (b), (c), and (d), the telephone systems in the areas and the programmable logic controllers. I see that the scheduled completion date is the end of September—approximately. Is there going to be enough time, then, to test these critical areas to make sure that they are up and working and ready to roll?

Mr. Mac Maidens: Yes. There'll be no problem with that.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: Okay.

Mr. Mac Maidens: That's a conservative date, but due to the construction season and everything, we would like to say that it'll be completed by the end of August, but that gives us a four-week leeway. The commissioning will include all the normal year 2000 compliance testing at that point.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: Also, I would imagine that the power corporation in the Northwest Territories is quite self-reliant when it comes to maintaining its own power sources and, depending on who relies on their services or where they get their services from, who you would rely on. For instance, we talked to some of the other people involved with power supply today, and in the case of Quebec they're on their own power grid, and others too I think said that they're pretty much feeling secure, that they're not worried too much about how they're going to provide services.

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But the one question I was asking is this: How confident are you that some of the people you deal with in the Northwest Territories or elsewhere will be able to be Y2K compliant and won't affect your ability to provide your services at the time of the changeover?

Mr. Mac Maidens: Within the Territory of Nunavut, I guess you could say we're in a rather nice position with regard to the Y2K issue. The majority of our critical materials come in once a year during annual sealifts from August to October, and that material will last us until the following year. So in that sense we're almost entirely independent of external sources of supply for that one year. That doesn't hold true entirely across the Northwest Territories any longer, but for Nunavut it still does.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Jaffer.

Mr. Murray, please.

Mr. Ian Murray (Lanark—Carleton, Lib.): Thank you.

Mr. Maidens, I wanted to ask you about the supply of diesel. You just mentioned that essentially you get a shipment and you won't have to worry about supply because it will already be there as of January 1. But how do you distribute diesel fuel around the whole area? What mode of transportation do you use?

Mr. Mac Maidens: Once again, we receive an annual resupply once per year. In the case of the larger communities, obviously that may be four, five, or six tanker loads. Each community is a little bit different, but normally we have a storage tank of about 90,000 litres capacity on site on every plant site. Depending on the size of the plant, that will last anywhere from two weeks to six weeks. Those tanks are supplied either by a pipeline from a remote tank farm or by truck delivery from a local supplier who takes it out of a remote tank farm.

Mr. Ian Murray: So other remote communities would be served by ship. Would most of them be on water and have access to ships?

Mr. Mac Maidens: Of the 25 communities within Nunavut, they are all resupplied by ship.

We have one community where ice conditions can get a little tricky. For the past two years it has been resupplied by the Canadian Coast Guard with the Terry Fox icebreaker. Prior to that it was resupplied by air. That community is Pelly Bay.

Mr. Ian Murray: That's expensive fuel.

Mr. Mac Maidens: I believe that one ran around $1.40 a litre.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: That's not much.

Mr. Ian Murray: Actually, that's less than I thought it would be.

Mr. Smith, when it comes to finding the human resources to do this work, is that a problem? Do you have to import people? I don't mean this in any insulting way whatsoever, but you have a wide territory to cover and I don't know how much actual technical expertise resides in the north when it comes to fixing problems like the Y2K computer problem or the embedded chip problem. Is it a major concern for you to try to find the right kind of people to work on this?

Mr. David Smith: It has certainly been an issue. Much of the work has been done from Yellowknife up to this point. I believe most of the contractors and people involved are public servants in Yellowknife. Up to now it hasn't been too much of a difficulty, although we used outside consultants for some specialized devices like health care devices. It is increasingly difficult when we move into Nunavut, because of course it's smaller, more decentralized, and more spread out. Throughout the period of getting ready for the new government, we've employed consultants wherever we could find them, and so far we've been able to manage.

Mr. Ian Murray: Is there perhaps a sense in the north that people are used to being more self-sufficient than people in the south, so that therefore this is not seen as so much of a threat as we see it down here?

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Mr. David Smith: I think things are less sophisticated simply because of the size and the volume. In Nunavut there is a health centre in each community, but there is only one hospital and it's a 40-bed hospital. It certainly does not have the sophistication of an Ottawa hospital or a Toronto hospital. To that extent, because of the smaller volumes and because of less complexity, it is more self-sufficient.

Mr. Ian Murray: Thanks very much.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Murray.

Mr. Dubé.

[Translation]

Mr. Antoine Dubé (Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, BQ): Thank you, Madam Chair.

I know that in the North you are accustomed to the cold and you don't need me to tell you about the importance of emergency plans. Although it may be thought that all the computer problems in a public organization have been dealt with, problems may occur in the private network. You made particular reference to the coast guard. You depend on a number of suppliers of goods and services and problems may result because of the year 2000 bug.

Have you set up emergency plans, through your municipalities, to be able to come to the aid of persons requiring assistance? We hope that everything will turn out all right, but problems could possibly occur in a particular village, for example.

[English]

Mr. Mac Maidens: With regard to the power corporation, yes, we do have emergency plans in place. They're almost standard for us. If the power goes off on January 1, 2000, it's not much different from it going off in the year 2005 or when it went off in 1995.

As I said, with regard to the power corporation, our emergency plans are in place. I'm not comfortable speaking with regard to the Nunavut emergency response committee. I am a member of it, but it's also only six weeks old. Speaking with regard to the Government of the Northwest Territories emergency response committee, it was very effective when required. That's where all my experience is. Six weeks with the Nunavut one is just a little too soon to say how effective it is.

[Translation]

Mr. Antoine Dubé: You said that food and most supplies arrive by boat. If there was some sort of failure, would you be able to use another means of transport in case of an emergency?

• 1555

[English]

Mr. Mac Maidens: Yes, again we would resupply by air in almost any instance. It's a fairly standard practice across the north to resupply by Hercules transport. It does add tremendously to the expense, but it's a standard practice.

[Translation]

Mr. Antoine Dubé: After food, I suppose that health care is the most important service, the most pressing one. Although I was late in arriving and you may have already dealt with this matter, I'd be interested in knowing whether you have conducted an assessment of all the health services in relation to the year 2000 bug and if everything is in a state of readiness in the territory.

[English]

Mr. David Smith: Yes, there's a program that has been carried out in each of the health centres, and it's just being completing in the hospital, to evaluate each of the medical devices against standards that have been set in Yellowknife. We're just completing those plans now, so we'll be in good shape on the health care front.

[Translation]

Mr. Antoine Dubé: Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Dubé.

Mr. Lastewka, did you have any questions?

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Thank you, Madam Chair.

One of the questions I wanted to pose to you is this. In case something does happen across the country, and all of a sudden, whether it's the Canadian Forces or emergency measures in each of the areas of the country deploying and doing things, what tie-in is there with the Canadian Forces for the territories? How does it stand on the priority system? I'm really concerned about the decision-making on the emergency priorities.

Mr. Mac Maidens: Basically, the military are heavily involved with our emergency planning throughout the entire north. They are supplying, I think, five or six levels of communications. I've been at meetings with them, but I'm not fully up to speed on this today because I wasn't prepared for it.

The bottom line is there will be a command centre based in Yellowknife, with regional command centres, I believe, in Iqaluit, Cambridge Bay, Rankin Inlet, and I believe at least one other community. They will be setting up levels of communication to provide emergency communications across the territories and to Ottawa, as a matter of course. Their on-ground personnel will be limited to... I don't want to get into numbers, because it was—

The Chair: Excuse me, Mr. Maidens. As you know, our next meeting is via satellite with the Northwest Territories, so we'll be getting into those discussions. I guess some committee members maybe didn't catch earlier that the Northwest Territories is still going to be... You're working together with Nunavut now and still going to be controlling a lot of these aspects as we go into the year 2000.

Just to let members know, our next meeting is at 4.15.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: The reason I am asking the question, Madam Chair, is that as I got through the agenda, it dawned on me that when the Canadian Forces were here, we didn't specifically ask about the north area, and I don't think they reported on it either. So I'm hoping that as a result of getting it recorded, the next time the Canadian Forces report to us we do have a better understanding of what's happening right across the north. That was my concern.

From the Northwest Territories Power standpoint, I understand you have contingencies all the time because of the situation, the demographics. What are your priority areas on the changeover to Y2K? Is there anything specific that is still outstanding?

Mr. Mac Maidens: Not that we're aware of. The plants in Nunavut really have a fairly simple method of generation and distribution. Up until ten years ago we had no computers involved whatsoever.

• 1600

So no. Talking to the Northwest Territories, the western part of our operation, there will be more concerns over there with regard to software. Our headquarters is also in the west, where they are dealing with the financial end on our mainframe. Software issues in the western part of the Arctic are of considerably more concern than the actual operation, I believe.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Madam Jennings, please.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Thank you.

You mentioned that in one of the communities, because of its geography, there are times when the regular supply of fuel is interrupted and has to be delivered by the coast guard on the Terry Fox icebreaker, something like that. That just sort of rang a bell for me.

In terms of your suppliers, I understand that the majority of the supplies will come, as a general practice, through the summer into the early fall. So you've got your supplies to take you right through until the following spring. However, for those supplies that do have to come in, either by air on a regular basis or as a part of a contingency, those suppliers—have you been able to... I do understand that the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife, has been handling most of it prior to the coming into force of the new territory, Nunavut, but for that part of it that would still come under Nunavut, have you been able to determine whether or not their Y2K preparedness plan is adequate?

Mr. Mac Maidens: Again, we have a Y2K compliancy aspect to any of our purchasing agreements. That was implemented April 1, 1998. But I also have to say we are taking that at face value. If a supplier promises to deliver and says he's Y2K-compliant, we accept his word.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: So you're not doing independent testing? Because we've had, for instance, Nova Scotia Power Corporation come, and their plan is 99.9% completed: they're actually running all of their generators on, they've already pushed the clock forward over this past year past the year 2000. Everything's running fine. But one of the points they made was they did not take anyone at face value. They were very democratic, and they required any supplier to certify that their equipment or machinery or service they were supplying was in fact Y2K compliant, but then they did independent testing. And they found there were a significant number of these applications or equipment that were in fact not Y2K compliant.

Mr. Mac Maidens: That is an issue we've discussed extensively. We're aware of it. I believe it was identified by KPMG as a weakness within our plans. At this point in time we do not have the staff to effectively—

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Deal with that—

Mr. Mac Maidens: Deal and test with all the various components we bring in.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Okay. Would it be within the realm of possibility that it be something you contract to Yellowknife, as you've done with other services?

Mr. Mac Maidens: We have used outside contractors when required. Again, we have not required them in Nunavut, basically because our operation is so much simpler. I suspect in the western part of the Arctic they will be looking at utilizing consultants in a more extensive manner.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Before I ask my other question I'd just like to say I'm really pleased you're here. This is my first experience as a parliamentarian having the new government at Nunavut appear at a committee meeting I've attended, so I'm very pleased. Congratulations.

Nunavut is part of Arctic-based territories. There are other countries that are Arctic-based, whether we look at Russia or Greenland. Has there been any comparison made between the Y2K preparedness for Nunavut and preparedness in some of your brother and sister territories in other countries?

• 1605

Mr. Mac Maidens: We have ongoing discussions with Greenland Power. I do not recall whether Y2K was specifically brought up. We have memos of understanding with Canadian utilities such as EPCOR, Manitoba Hydro, Saskatchewan Power. I don't think anybody really thought about Greenland Power at this point in time.

Ms. Marlene Jennings: The reason I ask is because one of the questions we have asked various industries is how does Canada rate in terms of our competitors or countries we have significant trade with—are we in fact ahead, or not? I was just wondering if this was an issue that had been addressed by Nunavut. But I can understand that given the short period of time that Nunavut's been in existence, this may not have been a priority. Thank you very much.

The Chair: Ms. Barnes.

Mrs. Sue Barnes (London West, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome.

One of the fears of Y2K is that people stockpile everything, and with the distance you have to travel, I'm wondering, has there been any stockpiling of any supplies or equipment specifically because of a Y2K concern that you are aware of in your systems?

Mr. Mac Maidens: Not specifically Y2K. As a long-term resident, I bring in a year's supply of dry goods every summer, so it's normal.

The Chair: Mr. Smith, do you have anything to add to that?

Mr. David Smith: In terms of the computer systems, no, I'm not aware of any... Since we're refreshing many things anyway, and much of it is very new in any case, it simply hasn't been an issue in the computer part of things or in the health care.

Mrs. Sue Barnes: You said you had a 40-bed hospital. Are there any embedded chip situations inside that 40-bed hospital right now?

Mr. David Smith: There were some devices. They are being cycled through a series of tests. Given that it is a very small hospital by southern standards, and not very sophisticated in terms of its computer systems, it's not a concern there, and those things have been dealt with. In terms of the medical equipment, it really is very basic, and the things that have been located have been corrected or they're being replaced. It really is a very, if you like, low-tech operation.

Mrs. Sue Barnes: Okay. Continued success. Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Shepherd.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: I would think you're heavily dependent on communications. Maybe this is something outside of your hands—satellite communications and satellite receivers. Are you confident that it is all Y2K compatible?

Mr. David Smith: On the issue of the telephone company, and this is back a couple of levels, that's who is supplying our network equipment. We're buying from a local consortium called Articom and they in turn buy it from the phone company. Those issues of the phone company were addressed in the presentation Mr. Maidens did, and the equipment that's going in in September does address the network issue. At this point in time, the networks are not compliant; the plan is that they will be.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: And the September acquisitions will replace all of the defective equipment? Or do they try to correct, or do they need to be tested after you install them?

Mr. David Smith: It is essentially a new switch in one of the locations that is at issue, and it is being addressed. And the rest of it will be fine; it isn't an issue once that switch has been addressed.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: Pardon my ignorance, but there must be many communities spread out in the north and they must all use a similar type of receiving device of some kind. Is that fair enough?

Mr. David Smith: Yes, and the receiving devices do not have any Y2K issues. It's the main switches in the phone company premises that are at issue. They are a known issue and there's a known and approved plan to address those.

• 1610

Mr. Alex Shepherd: I think of even satellite communication in the sense of picking up the CBC or whatever the case may be. You're satisfied that those communication devices are compliant?

Mr. David Smith: It's all coming over the same network.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: I see.

Mr. David Smith: The phone, the cable, the data traffic, it's the same dish at the other end.

Mr. Alex Shepherd: Okay.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Shepherd.

Mr. Smith, I'm wondering if you can give us some timeframes. I'm hearing a lot of “we expect to be ready”, but do we have any ideas when Nunavut will be fully Y2K compliant?

Mr. David Smith: I can directly address the issue in regard to the systems the government itself is running, which are now compliant. The new systems are ready and we have no further work, no further activity, to do.

For the phone company, which we just addressed, we have that date in September. The remaining systems are joint systems we're operating with the government in the Northwest Territories. Those are joint agreements, and they vary, based on which particular system it is. I think you'll hear from the Government of the Northwest Territories that they will all be completed by the fall and those changes will serve both the west and the east population.

The Chair: Having been up to Grise Fjord last summer and knowing that they were supposed to have satellite communications put in for the students there to have access via satellite to the Internet, I'm just wondering, who is testing that equipment in Grise Fjord?

Mr. David Smith: All the communities are now hooked up.

The Chair: But who's testing the equipment in that community?

Mr. David Smith: It's part of the telephone company's activity to test the equipment.

The Chair: To test the computer equipment?

Mr. David Smith: No, to test the networking equipment.

The Chair: What about testing the computer equipment itself to make sure it's compliant?

Mr. David Smith: Yes, within the computer equipment itself there is a plan within each department, so for the schools it would be the department of education.

The Chair: Where is their plan at? Is it Y2K compliant? Do they have a timeframe?

Mr. David Smith: They have a timeframe. In the case of education, again, it is the fall of this coming year when they will complete either replacing the equipment that is not... or fixing the boxes that have a problem.

The Chair: Who is reporting on the status of the satellites to Nunavut in terms of them being Y2K compliant?

Mr. David Smith: On the networking, again, in any part of communications it's the telephone company.

The Chair: It's all through NorthwesTel then.

Mr. David Smith: Yes, whether it's cable TV or data or all the forms of communications.

The Chair: Just so I understand, is it the new Government of Nunavut that's responsible for health care in Nunavut, or is it still under the old system for Y2K? I'm trying to be consistent here.

Mr. David Smith: Clearly the Government of Nunavut is accountable for health care within the territory, but those systems have been contracted back to Yellowknife.

The Chair: Okay.

Mr. David Smith: So they are actually the operators of it. That doesn't remove our accountability, but it does mean we have to work with them jointly and work at a joint process.

The Chair: So your responsibilities basically are the new offices with their new equipment and where everything is brand new.

Mr. David Smith: That's right, and I have a much easier time, therefore, than perhaps some of the other governments.

The Chair: I would also think that some of the challenges of the north, such as the fact that you do have the sea between August and whenever... They bring in everything by sea, and you have to plan a year in advance anyhow.

Mr. David Smith: Yes.

The Chair: So for a lot of quantities and things you would need, you're obviously not going to be running to the store a couple of days before January 1, 2000, the way some of us will be.

Mr. David Smith: That's right.

The Chair: That being said, we want to thank you as a committee for joining us. We know some of you came a great distance, and we do appreciate it. And if you have any further information you could supply us in writing, we'd appreciate that as well. Thank you.

Mr. David Smith: Good. Thank you.

The Chair: We're going to suspend for about sixty seconds while we hook up to the Northwest Territories.

• 1614

• 1621

The Chair: I will call the meeting back to order and welcome our witnesses from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories.

I'm very pleased to have three witnesses with us this afternoon. From the Government of the Northwest Territories, we have Mr. Fred Ruthven, financial management board secretariat; from the Emergency Measures Organization of the Northwest Territories we have Mr. Eric Bussey, director, emergency services division; and from NorthwesTel we have Mr. Mark Needham, the director.

I propose that each of our witnesses give us an opening statement of not more than five minutes, if that's okay, or just some opening comments, whatever you prefer. We will begin with Mr. Ruthven.

I should tell you that I'm Susan Whelan, the chair of the committee.

Mr. Ruthven, we'll begin with you.

Mr. Fred Ruthven (Spokesperson, Financial Management Board Secretariat, Government of the Northwest Territories): Thank you very much.

I just want to give a few comments about the overall status of the Government of the Northwest Territories year 2000 preparedness and some very brief background information on where we've come from with this and where we currently are.

The GNWT has been working on the year 2000 problem for two and a half years now. Due to the decentralized nature of the IT environment in the GNWT, each department of this government has responsibility for the development and implementation of their own year 2000 strategies.

The overall supervision and monitoring of this is done under the aegis of the informatics policy committee, which is our senior IT policy committee comprised of five senior deputy ministers. Supporting the informatics policy committee is the financial management board secretariat, and I have been designated as the Government of the Northwest Territories' year 2000 coordinator.

Needless to say, the GNWT has made the year 2000 a top priority, with special emphasis particularly on those services deemed essential. We have compiled a comprehensive listing of all systems considered essential by the government, and in a few seconds I'll explain approximately where we are with those particular systems at this time.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, the GNWT decided to adopt industry best practices in dealing with year 2000. This comprises a six-step program for remediation, consisting of discovery, evaluation, correction and testing, supplemented by contingency planning and disaster recovery. This is applied to all GNWT systems. We are also cognizant of the need for compliance on the supply side, and we have in fact been in touch with all key suppliers of the GNWT, to ensure that they are also compliant.

We also have responsibility for various boards and agencies in the Northwest Territories, such as health boards and boards of education. We are in touch with those organizations and have status reports on the state of their compliance.

I can report that as of April 30, the GNWT is 78% compliant on major corporate systems, especially those deemed mission-critical. In smaller systems, personal computers and local area networks, we are 84% compliant.

• 1625

Our latest completion date for mission-critical corporate systems is October 31 of this year. That only applies to four systems that are currently in the stage of being replaced, as part of our year 2000 compliant strategy.

We have established a special working group to deal with embedded systems, and of the systems that have been identified to date, 98% are fully compliant.

We are also looking at areas such as emergency measures planning and the legal issues and risk management issues associated with year 2000. Our department of justice has undertake a significant legal review, and our department of finance risk management experts are also undertaking a review of year 2000.

That is a brief synopsis of the current state of our year 2000 preparedness in the GNWT.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Ruthven.

I'll now turn to Mr. Eric Bussey from emergency measures.

Mr. Eric Bussey (Director, Emergency Services Division, Emergency Measures Organization of the Northwest Territories): Thank you.

As director of the Emergency Measures Organization, my interest is in dealing with the contingency planning aspects of year 2000. From our point of view, year 2000 is being treated as just one more emergency. So we are using our normal arrangements, which involve a territorial emergency planning committee that has been activated for year 2000 planning since last May. So we've been meeting for one year now.

At this time we are meeting monthly as a territorial emergency group. That group involves territorial government agencies but also private sector and other associations, such as NorthwesTel, the Canadian Armed Forces, the RCMP, chambers of commerce, the association of municipalities and various groups across the spectrum who have an interest in year 2000 planning.

We have seven working committees established that are dealing with contingency planning aspects of year 2000 in various sectors—telecommunications, utilities, transportation, public information, emergency services, and health and social services issues, for example. So we're dealing with all those aspects of possible consequences from the year 2000 problem.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday. We'll be continuing that process right up until December 31, and onward as required. We plan to have alternate emergency communications in place using various technologies, such as high frequency radio systems and satellite communication systems, as backup to normal telephone communications.

We will be conducting exercises to ensure the ability of these alternate systems to provide communications links at critical dates. In addition, all our regional and territorial headquarters offices will be activated on an emergency standby basis, to deal with any issues that may arise prior to, during or after the critical December 31 date. We will be exercising those capabilities prior to the fall.

So our planning continues. The activity varies. It depends upon the area of interest and the issues that arise. But we are being very active with year 2000 preparedness and we will continue to do so until the critical date.

That's a synopsis of what we're doing with year 2000.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Bussey.

I will now turn to Mr. Needham, the director from NorthwesTel.

Mr. Mark Needham (Director, NorthwesTel): Thank you, Madam Chair, for this opportunity to address the Standing Committee on Industry.

I'm pleased to be here today to share our progress to date on the year 2000 battle. For your information, NorthwesTel is Canada's largest telephone company in geographic territory. We service the three northern territories of Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, as well as northern British Columbia. Although I'll only be appearing at today's session, if there are any other questions that arise from the other regions, I would be more than pleased to address them.

• 1630

In conjunction with the Stentor companies, NorthwesTel views the resolution of the year 2000 problem as a top priority. Customers assume that the high level of reliability we currently have will continue through the critical dates in year 2000 and the leap year rollover. We're committed to meeting these expectations.

In 1997, we began to research the year 2000 problem and formed a cross-functional team in early 1998. Internal groups from network, information systems, building and facilities, legal, purchasing and other departments joined together, as well as members from our subsidiaries of the cable company and our mobility company. This team meets on a biweekly basis, and to date progress has been excellent.

The overall approach we took was similar to many other companies. We broke down the project into a number of phases, such as inventory, assessment, conversion, testing and deployment. The first two phases of inventory and assessment were completed in 1998.

To date, on the network side of things, which we classify as mission-critical, we're at over 95% in the upgrading, testing and deployment. The remainder of work to be done is minor in nature, and in some cases involves retirement of the system. The final piece of the project for network will be completed in the third quarter.

Internal systems are also proceeding very well. We're currently at 80% complete for both upgrading and the testing of those. The lion's share of work remaining to be done is internal—our service order and billing system, which will be completed and turned up in August 1999.

Throughout this project, NorthwesTel has recognized the crucial role we play in the north in providing telecommunications service as a partner in each of the communities we serve. Given this, communication is seen as a major initiative to both increase the Y2K awareness and share progress we're making to date. Therefore, we've worked closely with our suppliers, customers, and local government agencies to ensure information is shared, duplication of effort is minimized, and appropriate planning is undertaken.

Customers have been kept informed, through our customer newsletter and updates on our website. Business customers have been sent three rounds of letters to date, and our account directors continue to work closely with business customers, to make sure they are aware and their systems are compliant. Vendor management is seen as crucial and pivotal in the project. Rigorous follow-up continues and will continue throughout the remainder of this project.

NorthwesTel is represented in the EMO committees of Nunavut, Yukon, and Northwest Territories. Wherever possible, we also attend the industry and trade functions and regional government functions, such as the Association of Yukon Communities.

The common message we're delivering is that NorthwesTel is taking Y2K very seriously, and it is seen as a top priority in the organization. We've implemented a rigorous program and we're monitoring it closely. In addition to this, we're building on our existing emergency operating procedures, to ensure risks are minimized and plans are in place, in the unlikely case that Y2K problems are encountered.

We feel that by building on our current high level of network reliability and aggressively planning and managing our Y2K program, we will continue to meet our customer expectations of having a highly reliable system.

Thank you, and good afternoon.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Needham.

We will now turn to questions. Mr. Jaffer.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: I have just one or two quick questions.

I believe when we were listening to you, Mr. Ruthven, you said the evaluation of the mission-critical preparedness was currently at 78% ready. I think you said you hoped to have that completed by October. I'm just curious whether you are confident you will have enough time in the one or two months after October to test everything again. Will there be enough time to have everything in order before the changeover?

Mr. Fred Ruthven: Yes. October is the latest date for any of the outstanding systems. There are only nine systems that are currently being replaced. Most of them will be completed well in advance of the October deadline.

Two systems are scheduled for replacement by October 31. They are mission-critical systems, but they are relatively small database applications. We don't anticipate it will be too difficult to ensure adequate testing prior to December 31.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: Okay.

• 1635

The only other question I have is for Mr. Needham, I believe. I've been trying to get an idea of this from the various services we've been discussing with, whether it be power or telecommunications. We talked to some of your counterparts today. It seemed like most of the bigger companies are well on the way to being prepared, if not finished all their testing.

In regard to some of the businesses you deal with and some of the services you rely on, or vice versa, was there any work being done with some of these other companies or services to make sure they are still on the same track as you are and that there won't be any external factors causing problems to services leading up to the changeover? Do you feel confident that those people you're dealing with are taking as seriously the problem of Y2K?

Mr. Mark Needham: Part of the program we have in place is vendor management, and from that we have very large suppliers to smaller suppliers. In the case of the large suppliers, we have taken a very detailed approach where we ask them what their program is, how they are testing the products they supply us, and if possible to provide to us test results.

That's just in general. We've sat down and had meetings with the large service providers, such as the power companies and some of the pipeline and gas companies. As well, we participate with them on the EMO committees throughout the various territories.

So to answer your question directly, we're taking a very vigorous approach to this. We have sat down several times with each of the large suppliers we have, and we feel comfortable that they are working diligently to provide and ensure that service will be available come the rollover into 2000.

Mr. Rahim Jaffer: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Jaffer.

Mr. Lastewka.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being with us today.

I thought I'd ask three questions. First, to the NorthwesTel, I wasn't clear on the date when you'll be telling your four areas—the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and northern B.C.—that you are year 2000 ready. When will that publicity come to those people?

Mr. Mark Needham: We have been sharing information all along as to the status of our program. To date, we have been telling folks that we will have all our systems Y2K ready, to the best of our knowledge, by the end of the third quarter of 1999. We will have in the fourth quarter, as well as the first quarter of the year 2000, a communication plan where we will be sharing the information as to where we are, both with the December 31 to January 1 rollover and the leap year rollover.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: From having the earlier discussions with various other provinces, many of them are getting into that type of publicity much earlier.

What is your critical item to get done before the fourth quarter?

Mr. Mark Needham: The major item we have—and it's actually not that major—the last remaining piece of work we have is the retirement of one of our networks. We have approached the CRTC, as well as our customer base, and have informed those parties that the system is not and cannot be made year 2000 compliant and that we will be migrating customers to a new service. To date, we're in the process of rolling them over, but we will not get the last remaining 30 customers or so done until later in the third quarter.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Thank you very much.

For the Government of the Northwest Territories, could you explain to me where you stand with mission-critical items and what is left to be done?

• 1640

Mr. Fred Ruthven: Certainly. The overall status of our mission-critical, as I had indicated before, is that in total, of 120 major corporate systems within the GNWT, 49 have been designated as being mission-critical by the owning departments. Of those 49 systems, 38% are currently compliant. That includes seven that were already replaced as part of the year 2000 compliance strategy. Nine are in the process of being replaced, and two are non-compliant and are currently in the process of being corrected. Those mission-critical systems are the responsibility of the departments that run them on a daily basis. We have their assurances that... I don't have the exact numbers, but I believe the majority of the nine outstanding, seven of them, are due to be replaced and tested by the end of July 1999, with the remaining two being replaced and tested by October 1999.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: My third question is concerning any items that might have to do with health care or long-term care facilities, where there had to be a lot of work done with Health Canada and manufacturers to make sure the identification of devices or systems by the manufacturers was done. Do you have any problems with either Health Canada or manufacturers in getting the data on the devices so you can do whatever has to be done?

Mr. Fred Ruthven: No. Our representatives from the Department of Health and Social Services have indicated that they are not having any particular problems in obtaining that type of information. Unfortunately, they weren't able to attend today to speak to this issue specifically, but I was talking to them this morning, as a matter of fact, about that very issue, and they indicated that work is progressing well on the issue of medical facilities and long-term care facilities. So no, I don't believe there are specific issues in obtaining information on such systems.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: When we previously had the provinces in, a number of months ago, this was a key item that had to be overcome. We're getting reports from right across the country that this has been satisfied, which is good news. I just hope we're getting the answers from actual data, that there are no problems.

I want to thank the witnesses for being so frank and forthcoming on Y2K.

The Chair: Mr. Bellemare, do you have any questions? No.

Mr. Murray.

Mr. Ian Murray: I have a quick question to Mr. Bussey. It relates to the military's role in emergency preparedness. How close would the closest group of military personnel be to any population centre in the north?

Mr. Eric Bussey: Physically from here, about two blocks.

We work very closely with the Canadian Forces northern area. As I mentioned, they're a member of our territorial emergency response group. But outside of Yellowknife, the military presence in the north is very small. They have a liaison officer in Nunavut.

Maybe I should back up and say that the CFNA, the Canadian Forces northern area, serves the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Whitehorse. I shouldn't be speaking for the military, but they have a small contingent in Whitehorse of about ten personnel, and one person in Nunavut, a liaison officer.

Throughout the north, I think they have up to fifty ranger patrols, which are similar to reservists. They are community residents who do have a military function. But the major presence is in Yellowknife, serving the entire Canadian Arctic, and they are major players in our emergency preparedness.

In fact I mentioned that we have monthly territorial emergency response meetings. We use the Canadian Forces northern area headquarters as our venue simply because it's available and it's a good facility to do that. But they are a standing member of our team, and we work hand in hand with them on this and any other emergency where there is a need to have support from our Canadian Forces friends.

Mr. Ian Murray: Who makes up the rest of your team? Do you have volunteers? I can't imagine that you have hundreds of people who are on standby for emergencies. Is there a mix of people in the community who have volunteered to help in times of emergency?

Mr. Eric Bussey: Yes, and as territorial director, my role is at the territorial level.

• 1645

Emergency response is generally handled at the community level. The communities are the local authority. They're invested with the responsibility and the authority to respond to emergencies through our legislation. So the first line of response is at the community level.

In 99% of emergency situations, the local authorities' response is sufficient to deal with the event. Our role is generally that of support to the communities in terms of providing information, guidance, and in some cases action, but in only a particular area where a request is made. So most emergencies are handled locally.

After saying that, in year 2000 we have been much more active in terms of planning. I mentioned one of the groups that is a member of our year 2000 team is the Association of Municipalities. They have a consultant who is hired through funding support from our department as well, and that person's role is to work with communities on their Y2K preparations. Y2K is a little unusual in terms of the types of emergencies we deal with, in that we have a lot of lead time, and we are much more active in this event than most emergencies in terms of ongoing preparations.

To answer your question, we're on the ground, where most of the events will occur in terms of the community level. The actual first line of response is the local government and our role is to support them and to respond as they request assistance.

Mr. Ian Murray: Thank you, Mr. Bussey.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Murray.

I have a couple of questions. My first question is to Mr. Ruthven.

We talked briefly a few moments ago about health care. I'm wondering if you could give us a timeframe to have health-care-critical systems or embedded chips compatible, or what the status is.

Mr. Fred Ruthven: Certainly. The indications that we have for health show that for complete compliance across the entire department, the latest date for any given system is August 31 of this year. Obviously this embraces quite a large amount of equipment and facilities across the Northwest Territories, particularly the embedded systems that we know are so problematic with health care facilities and long-term care facilities, but the indications are that August 31 will be the latest date by which all systems will be made compliant.

The Chair: Can you tell me as well... My understanding from our previous meeting with Nunavut is that they've contracted back that responsibility to the Northwest Territories for their health care as well. Would those same dates apply to the hospital in Nunavut?

Mr. Fred Ruthven: That's correct, yes. As a result of the creation of the Government of Nunavut, the Government of the Northwest Territories will be providing, for the course of at least the next year, many services to the Government of Nunavut under contract. We have assumed responsibility for the Y2K compliance of any systems that support the services being contracted back. Those deadlines will be in effect also for the Government of Nunavut. So yes, August 31, 1999, will be the latest date.

The Chair: Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Bussey, you talked about the fact that you already have a number of emergency preparedness operations in place and this is one more emergency. I guess I look at it—and I agree that it's another emergency—in a different light, because I'm assuming that there's a high dependency on air traffic in the north, especially in the winter months. I'm assuming that's your only way in and out of most communities, especially in certain parts of Nunavut. I'm wondering who is ensuring that the equipment at all these airports is working. How does that fit in your emergency plans?

Mr. Eric Bussey: In terms of our emergency planning group, again, we do have our department of transportation, and that is the agency primarily concerned with transportation functions.

I mentioned the working groups we've established to deal with year 2000 problems, and one of the working groups is transportation. So our Department of Transportation has assistance from the other members of that working group, such as the Canadian Forces, Public Works, and other agencies that have an interest in the transportation mode. DOT is the primary agency that has first line of responsibility for transportation-related issues.

• 1650

The western territory, which is the area I'm responsible for, not Nunavut, does have communities that are fly-in only, but there is a highway system in the western territory, and many of our communities are serviced by all-weather road or in the winter by winter road. So we will have a fairly good road coverage in the western territory on December 31.

The Chair: So you're quite confident that the airports in the Northwest Territories will be Y2K compatible? Is there a deadline or a timeframe for that?

Mr. Eric Bussey: I can't speak for that specific point. My colleagues in Arctic airports and the Department of Transportation would better address that.

I know there are some questions we're looking at with regard to airport operations, but generally, from the last report I received from DOT, we are fairly confident that much progress has been made in dealing with the issues.

The Chair: Okay, thank you. I apologize. I had thought you were also still handling emergency measures in Nunavut, but I've been corrected now.

Mr. Needham from NorthwesTel, we had a conversation earlier about the whole satellite communications system in both the Northwest Territories and in Nunavut. As an example I used in the previous session, in Grise Fjord, which is one of the northern-most settlements, aside from Alert in Nunavut, who is responsible for ensuring that their hook-up, for example, to the Internet via satellite is maintained? I was left with the feeling that it was NorthwesTel that was going to ensure that happened. I'm assuming there is an equipment problem as well. Maybe you can expand on that.

Mr. Mark Needham: I'm not sure whether Grise Fjord has the Internet even today, but they are serviced by satellite, which we provide. We are the telecommunications provider over there.

I guess the first point is that we need to ensure that we've done due diligence and that the current system works. We've worked with Hughes and Telesat to make sure the system is compliant. Should that fail, there is a backup system: that is the MSAT units. There is an MSAT unit in Grise Fjord, so they then have a secondary form of communication, another satellite system. Then after that, they would have to rely on HF, high-frequency service, as the third backup system.

The Chair: So that I understand, are you testing the receiving equipment for telephone service as well, or is that up to the individual communities?

Mr. Mark Needham: Our responsibility is to ensure that the telecommunications network works. So that would include the equipment we would have here in Yellowknife as well as the equipment we own and have in Grise Fjord. Now, between us in Yellowknife and Grise Fjord there is a bird in the sky that we don't own. So our responsibility is to make sure that either we test it—which we can't, because we don't own the bird... We have to make sure that Telesat and the owners of that equipment have gone through due diligence, have done the testing, whether live or in a test environment, and then provided us with the test results.

The Chair: And my last question is with regard to audits and whether or not you've had an independent or an external audit.

Mr. Mark Needham: To the best of my knowledge, nobody is doing audits any more, because of the legal implications. But Deloitte Touche, when they did our financials last year, asked me a number of questions and asked for supporting documents so they could pass an opinion as to whether or not NorthwesTel took the problem seriously and whether there were dedicated resources, both financial and human, to address the problem. So we have that as one issue.

The other issue we have is we are owned by BCE, or we were owned by BCE, and they have internal auditors who come up every quarter to ensure that we are following the due diligence. I'm actually getting on a plane in an hour to go meet the auditor for this quarter's review.

The Chair: Okay. This is my very last question, so you don't miss your plane. Northwest Territories Power Corporation just had a similar review and is still looking at its results. Is your operation dependent on power being available, or is it separate and apart?

• 1655

Mr. Mark Needham: In general terms, we do rely on power, the same as most companies do. However, it's been recognized through all the Stentor companies that NorthwesTel is probably a leader in not relying on power, because we have many sites that will run by themselves and indeed do run by themselves for a year to a year and a half on their own. So we refuel some of our sites every two years and we provide the primary power. We're in very, very good shape that way.

Where we have major locations that rely on commercial power, we have backup power, diesel. And we also work with the power corporations. If they run into a problem, they ask us at times if they can take us off commercial power and let us run on our diesels, if there is an overload or a shortage. So we have a very good working relationship with them. I meet with them probably every six weeks to have a discussion. We have plans to put out some joint press releases as time progresses. So yes, we are dependent on power, but to a lesser extent than some of our southern brothers and sisters.

The Chair: Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate all three of you joining us and for bringing us up to date and for your frankness and discussion about Y2K.

We know that you have a number of challenges to begin with, and they've added another one to you. One of the comments that came from one of the provinces earlier today was the fact that there seems to be an absence of legislation with regard to what type of software can be developed and who's responsible for design flaws down the road. As a committee, we're going to look at that. So hopefully we won't add any more problems to you in the future.

We want to thank you very much for joining us, and we wish you well.

A witness: Thank you very much.

The Chair: We're going to suspend now till 5.15.

• 1657

• 1714

The Chair: We're going to resume our meeting.

We're going to welcome our next witnesses. From Whitehorse, Yukon, we're very pleased to have three different witnesses. I see more than three people here, so maybe if I've missed anyone, you could identify yourself. Our witness list has, from the Government of Yukon, Mr. Bob Chambers, manager, client services, Information Services Branch; from Yukon Energy, Hector Campbell, director, asset planning and business development; and from Emergency Measures Yukon, Eric Magnuson, director.

• 1715

Ms. Marie-Louise Boylan (Communications Officer, Executive Council Office, Government of Yukon): I'm Marie-Louise Boylan. I'm with Communications, the Executive Council Office, Yukon Government.

The Chair: Okay. What I would propose is that each of the three witnesses would provide their opening statement and then we'll go to questions all together, because you may want to answer similar questions or members may have similar questions for all of the witnesses.

I would propose we begin with Mr. Chambers.

Mr. Bob Chambers (Manager, Client Services, Information Services Branch, Government of Yukon): Good afternoon.

I'm here to provide you with an update on the Government of Yukon's progress on year 2000 preparedness. I work in the Department of Government Services, in the Information Services Branch. I'm currently performing the role of year 2000 project director for the Government of Yukon.

I'm not sure we've been before your committee before, so I thought I would start with a quick overview of our structure within the government as it relates to year 2000 preparedness. For the past 12 to 14 months we have had a year 2000 challenge project in progress. The focus of the project is on ensuring that assessment, tracking and monitoring of the year 2000 problem is being adequately managed by program managers so as to minimize the risk to the Government of Yukon.

The project objectives include, one, to identify year-2000-sensitive technologies within the government. This includes application software, mainframe and PC operating systems, processes, network hardware and software, and other date-sensitive chip-based equipment.

Objective number two is to assess which items are assessed to be year 2000 compliant and which are not, and to evaluate, at a high level, the risks.

Objective number three is to ensure that strategies, action plans, responsibilities are assigned for dealing with any date-sensitive equipment or programs currently in place within the government on the date required. This must be a collaborated effort with all affected departments.

Objective number four is to ensure ongoing purchases of programs acquisitions are year 2000 compliant.

Objective number five is to assess progress of overall processes to make sure the Government of Yukon is year 2000 compliant.

Objective number six is to communicate progress and risk to program managers. This must be done to raise awareness but must also be done to make sure we're meeting specific targets.

This project reports to a steering committee. The steering committee consists of an interdepartmental group of senior managers that meets monthly and provides a forum for information exchange and coordination. The steering committee provides advice and direction to the project team, maintains overall responsibility for the project, and approves and signs off all project phases. The steering committee is also responsible for ensuring the Government of Yukon resources are available to work on specific tasks within the project as required.

The steering committee will be responsible for approval and final resolution of business issues brought to their attention and the committee provides a monthly report card on the status of year 2000 readiness to a senior deputy management review committee called the Information Resource Management Committee.

The Information Resource Management Committee is made up of deputy ministers that oversee the management of information, resources, and technology for the government. So we have senior management steering a project team and they report to the deputy ministers that have an interest in information resource management.

Further to that, each department has identified a year 2000 project coordinator that oversees their departmental year 2000 efforts. Each department has identified an inventory of information systems and prioritized them in order of criticality. These departmental coordinators also meet monthly—they are called a departmental working group—and they discuss common problems and report their department's progress for the month. This information is fed up to the Year 2000 Challenge Project Steering Committee and likewise up to the Information Resource Management Committee.

In addition, a year 2000 ministerial task force has been established to promote awareness of the year 2000 problem and to exchange information on progress and challenges among different levels of government, the private sector, and local communities. That is an external task force.

• 1720

I went through this structure to show that there's a common link to all of the above, specifically tied together by the Department of Government Services and Information Services Branch. The Information Services Branch is in the Department of Government Services. The Deputy Minister of Government Services chairs the year 2000 ministerial task force and is chair of the Information Resource Management Committee, while the director of Information Services Branch chairs the Year 2000 Challenge Project Steering Committee and the departmental working group. The director of ISB reports to the Deputy Minister of Government Services.

That's our internal structure. What I want to report on next was what we have accomplished.

The Government of the Yukon and crown corporations have made significant progress toward addressing the year 2000 computer programs. The progress has been steady and encouraging and I believe the proper priority has been given to the various efforts to ensure that the challenge will be met. Through our monthly departmental report cards, the department continues to report considerable progress in their individual year 2000 readiness activity. The government-wide percentage complete figures show steady progress in all four categories: mission-critical systems, 83% complete; work stations service and networks, 76% complete—this is government-wide; embedded chips, 79% complete; and contingency planning, while only really got going in the last month and a half or so, is 37% complete.

I mentioned contingency planning is the lowest of those figures. It has really only got going over the last month, but has shown a significant increase—21% to be exact—in the last month. All departments have identified their critical business functions and assessed the impacts of the Y2K-induced problems on their service delivery. That's significant progress from the month before.

In addition to the report cards this month—this is the internal report card—is the inclusion of Whitehorse General Hospital and the Yukon Energy Corporation. They have provided summaries in the government's reporting format of their year 2000 readiness. Hector will be speaking to the Yukon Energy Corporation's progress, but I might add here that the hospital is 100% complete in mission-critical systems, and work stations, servers, and networks are also 100% complete.

Departments that provide essential services to the public, such as health and social services and community and transportation services, are focusing their efforts on their emergency preparedness and business continuity and resumption planning. While contingency planning has shown good progress this month, it should be noted that most departments are working in cooperation with the business continuity planning team within their departments. This is being driven by EMO and they are developing business continuity plans. This is obviously much more than the year 2000 contingency planning, but we've identified how the year 2000 contingency planning fits inside that business continuity plan.

Assessment for some smaller departments may indicate that their business functions will not be negatively impacted by the year-2000-induced failures and their Y2K contingency plans are not complex. The year 2000 challenge project team is working very closely with EMO in contributing to a business continuity workshop and planning sessions. We did one in the last couple of weeks and the workshop was very well attended by a cross-section of management, business, and systems personnel.

A recent paper has been developed on staffing strategies for staff leaves through the year 2000 transition period. That's finalized and is currently, as we speak here today, in front of the Information Resource Management Committee for final approval. We have also developed a communications strategy and are working on its deployment. We currently have in place both internal and external websites.

In conclusion, then, I'd like to conclude that over the next few months the Government of the Yukon will continue to focus on our efforts of remediation and contingency planning, however, we cannot afford to relax. Contingency planning is a continuous process. There will be glitches, and we are committed to minimizing potential disruptions in provision of essential services to the persons of the Yukon. Being realistic, there will be some minor inconveniences, but we will be ready.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Chambers.

I'm now going to turn to Mr. Hector Campbell, from Yukon Energy. Mr. Campbell.

• 1725

Mr. Hector Campbell (Director, Asset Planning and Business Development, Yukon Energy Corporation): Thank you very much.

I'm responsible for all the year 2000 readiness activities at the Yukon Energy Corporation. Perhaps a bit of history is in order. Yukon Energy is a crown corporation of the Yukon government. We're primarily responsible for power generation and transmission in the Yukon. Most of the power distribution in the Yukon is done by a private company, Yukon Electrical Company Limited.

In order to put our readiness program into perspective, it's important to know that Yukon Energy is not a large utility; it's not a B.C. Hydro or an Ontario Hydro. We basically operate four hydro plants, four diesel plants, and the small transmission grid in the Whitehorse area of the Yukon. We serve approximately 1,400 customers. The significance of our size, for example, is that the number of embedded chip devices that have to be tested number in the hundreds, not in the thousands or the ten thousands, as would be the case for most provincial utilities.

Here's some history of our involvement with Y2K. Basically, in the first month or two of 1998, our board of directors instructed staff to form a project team and to make it happen, with myself as the project lead. I report directly to the president of the corporation and make quarterly presentations to our board of directors in terms of our status and what's planned for the future in year 2000 activities. At present, we have three full-time project team members, six part-time staff, and two consultants involved with our program.

In terms of the status of where the energy corporation is now, we will be ready. We take our responsibility to provide this essential service very seriously. In the north, where it's not uncommon in wintertime to have minus 40 degree Celsius weather, damage to our customer facilities can start to occur in a period as short as a two-hour outage.

In terms of our activities as to where we are to date, we basically have broken it down—being part of the government report card system—into a couple of key areas. With regard to the status of our computers, workstations, servers, and network systems, we're basically 65% complete overall. We're 100% complete in regard to testing. All of our PC hardware has been replaced. We identified two mainframe systems of concern. They were not compliant; they are our financial system and our billing system. We have just placed on order a new finance system with a September 1999 in-service date, and we are currently reviewing options for replacement of our billing system by the end of the year.

Probably of most importance to an electric utility in the north is the status of our embedded chip systems in the control systems of our power plants and our buildings. We're now basically 50% complete in all testing in these key facilities. I would note that as we test each facility, we leave them on the advanced date; we basically have about 25% of our facilities now operating time-wise in the year 2000. To date, we have not found a single occurrence of a failure due to year 2000.

We also have a program involved with our business partners, the Yukon Electrical Company, NorthwesTel, and our key suppliers, in terms of ensuring that both parties are not affected by year 2000 activities. Our critical supplier, for example, would be our diesel fuel supplier. Basically we're working out sufficient supplies of local inventories of diesel fuel to see us through in the event that there is a problem in some of our hydro facilities. In terms of our contingency planning, we're about 40% complete, and that is ongoing. That's basically our main area of focus over the next three months or so.

• 1730

Our current plan for the future is that we will have completed all of our testing of our embedded chips by June 30. We will have our first draft contingency plans complete by July 30. We will have the testing of our contingency plans complete by September 30. North America-wide, there is a planned electric utility test, a major Y2K test, planned for September 30, and we will be part of that.

On the human resources side, we've notified all key operating staff to not book leave on the critical dates pending the completion of our contingency plans, which will identify the resource needs for that.

That's all I have. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Campbell.

I'm now going to turn to Mr. Eric Magnuson, director of Emergency Measures Yukon.

Mr. Eric Magnuson (Director, Emergency Measures Yukon): Thank you.

Good afternoon. I thought I would give you a quick, brief background of the emergency measures organization's structure within the Yukon. The emergency measures branch, of which I'm the director, heads and coordinates the Yukon emergency measures organization in preparedness, response to, and recovery from major emergencies and disasters. We have divided into 13 geographical preparedness areas within the Yukon, and each area has an EMO coordinator in addition to a local area planning committee. This is mirrored by a territorial level planning committee that involves government and other emergency responders.

Under the Yukon government-wide emergency plan, the emergency measures branch has responsibility for the following: coordination of the Yukon government's response to an emergency; the general deployment of resources to respond to an emergency; ensuring that specific training courses in emergency preparedness and procedures are available to departments; and the coordination of assistance to other governments in accordance with mutual aid agreements.

The emergency measures branch works closely with designated EMO coordinators in each community to extend emergency preparedness activities and training to the local level. Here, the emergency measures branch serves primarily in a supporting role to the municipalities, providing advice in the drafting of their emergency plans and the developing of their response capabilities.

More specifically, under the Civil Emergency Measures Act, the government, through the emergency measures branch, may enter into mutual aid agreements, assist in preparation and plans for the meeting of any emergency in conjunction with any level of government or individual, make surveys of the resources and facilities within the Yukon, institute training and public education programs, and take any necessary steps to ensure the adequacy of training and the equipping of personnel to meet any emergency.

With respect to the year 2000 preparations, we have been given the lead within the Yukon government to do risk assessment and contingency planning—or what we call emergency response planning—for essential services. We have divided this responsibility within the Yukon government. Mr. Chambers heads the Yukon government task force on year 2000 with respect to systems and their preparation and remediation to ensure that my organization won't be needed.

But of course we are going to just be prudent and plan. We're going to plan for Y2K as a potential emergency risk in a fashion similar to that in which we would plan for any other potential emergency risk. We are utilizing the same emergency measure relationships, systems, and plans to ensure that we can respond adequately.

It was mentioned earlier that in the Yukon there is a Y2K task force, a ministerial task force that was struck and is chaired by the Minister of Government Services. On that task force, there is representation from the Yukon Energy Corporation, the Yukon Electrical Company Limited, the City of Whitehorse—our major municipality—NorthwesTel, the Yukon government, the Yukon Hospital Corporation, the Association of Yukon Communities, the Whitehorse and Yukon Chambers of Commerce, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, the Council of Yukon First Nations, Industry Canada, the RCMP, DND, and EMO.

Through this committee, we are able to interface with preparedness and remediation issues specific to systems as well as emergency planning and contingency planning. That enables us to do fairly accurate risk assessments.

• 1735

In our task with the coordination of contingency planning for emergency readiness, including community utilities, communication, transportation, systems, medical facilities and emergency operations centres, we have put together a paper and met with all of our EMO coordinators as well as the task force members and have developed a Yukon approach to risk assessment. It is similar to and it mirrors the same grading system the NCPG uses.

We have surveyed all of the essential services within Yukon for their readiness, and I have received reports back from all of those areas. Those areas are water; utilities, including electric, heating, oil, propane, water, and sewer; emergency services, fire, ambulance, police; transportation and communications. We are in the process of gathering local information on the fuel system and the food system within our boundaries. But as you know, there is a national assessment of the broader organizations being undertaken by the NCPG, and we will be relying on getting the national picture from them.

I think I'd conclude by suggesting that our state of readiness is high overall. We have a high level of confidence within the communities that our partners in providing emergency services and emergency response will be in a position to respond to any of the potential disruptions that occur, and we will continue to work diligently through the end of this year and into next year, as long as it takes, to ensure that plans are updated, risk assessments are kept current, and potential issues are dealt with as they arise.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Magnuson.

I'm now going to begin with questions. I'm going to begin with Mr. Dubé.

[Translation]

Mr. Antoine Dubé: I listened attentively to your presentation and I'd like to congratulate you for dealing so extensively with a matter of particular concern to me, that is emergency plans and measures. I think it is essential to ensure that should problems arise, the health of citizens and human lives are not endangered. You also talked a great deal about the co-operation or connection between different groups and organizations in the Yukon. Do your emergency plans include agreements concluded with the Department of Defence and other federal government services?

[English]

Mr. Eric Magnuson: Yes, I shortened up my brief a bit, but I can tell you exactly the organizations we've been interacting with. Since September 1998 the emergency measures branch has been taking part in a number of government-wide and inter-agency Y2K planning and preparedness activities. Specifically, the emergency measures branch has been working with the following groups and agencies: as I mentioned, the ministerial year 2000 task force, the Yukon government year 2000 challenge project, Y2K business context group, the Yukon disaster committee, the Treasury Board Secretariat year 2000 project office, the Department of National Defence within their operations for Operation ABACUS, the National Contingency Planning Group, the Auditor General—and we have submitted and replied to his Y2K surveys. We have also been involved in an Emergency Preparedness Canada working group and attended a consequence management workshop very recently. There's also a federal-provincial-territorial working group on year 2000 that we are part of, and a national Y2K communications group.

[Translation]

Mr. Antoine Dubé: I don't have any more questions. Your emergency plans strike me as being quite thorough and you appear to be well prepared. I congratulate you.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Dubé.

Mr. Eric Magnuson: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Mr. Murray, please.

Mr. Ian Murray: Thank you, Madam Chairman.

I'd like to ask you about your relationship with the federal departments and agencies you mentioned, such as Industry Canada and the Department Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Did you rely on them for expertise, for help, or personnel, or were they just there as another group to talk about the problem with? This leads to a second question, as to whether or not you were able to identify expertise locally that was able and prepared to work on the problem.

• 1740

Mr. Eric Magnuson: Why don't you speak to the expertise, Bob, and then I'll speak to what we got from the—

Mr. Bob Chambers: If you want, I can speak to the local expertise.

We have within the government a fairly strong technical expertise we're relying on. We have had to develop this because of our location, obviously. In addition to that, we have local contractors. And thirdly, for the transition period we have put in place contracts with our contractors out in B.C. to be on site over the transition period.

That gets away a little bit from your question, but it shows our preparedness for the transition period.

Mr. Eric Magnuson: With respect to the assistance we receive from the federal agencies we refer to, Industry Canada has a very small office in the Yukon. There is actually only one person present. We use basically that person on our task force to hook us into the national level of preparedness, and we queued into Industry Canada's information website remediation projects, their support to small business. It was basically an information flow. With respect to NCPG and Treasury Board, we have received a great deal of support and information from them. As well, we have provided a great deal of support and information to them in their national risk assessment. And we're really looking to the federal level to provide us with the national as well as the international picture. We have prepared what we think is a very complete local territorial picture within our jurisdictional boundaries and we're looking to hook that in because it's such a broad interconnected problem with the national level group.

Finally, with respect to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, they have been extremely helpful in interfacing with the first nation communities. As you know, there are 14 first nations in the Yukon, as well as an additional three transboundary organizations. Some of them are in self-government agreement situations. It's very useful to have the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development assisting us in helping them prepare.

Mr. Ian Murray: Is it correct to say that you're pleased with the level of cooperation you've received from the federal departments?

Mr. Eric Magnuson: Yes.

Mr. Ian Murray: Okay, thanks.

I have one final question... I'm sorry; go ahead.

Mr. Eric Magnuson: Maybe I should explain that. I don't want you to misread my smile. We have received so much cooperation from the federal government that it almost overwhelmed a jurisdiction of our size.

Mr. Ian Murray: Thanks.

Anyway, I want to ask a question about the disposal of equipment. Mr. Campbell mentioned that there are a number of PCs in the billing system that had to be discarded or whatever you do with them. I wonder if there was very much equipment that had to be essentially junked. If so, what did you do with it?

Mr. Hector Campbell: I'd be pleased to answer that. First off, in terms of workstations or personal computers, we tested about 70 within our organization, of which 10 failed the Y2K compliance testing. We've replaced about eight, and two we will be able to modify and put back into service. The other ones are basically older PCs that we are simply going to retire.

In terms of the more expensive items, like the billing system or financial system, we're currently outsourcing those two items to a company in British Columbia, so there was nothing to be discarded except for a contract that we are renegotiating.

Mr. Ian Murray: Those are all the questions I have. Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Murray.

Mr. Lowther, please.

• 1745

Mr. Eric Lowther (Calgary Centre, Ref.): Thank you.

Listening to your comments, certainly there were a great number of meetings, and cooperation and talking to one another, but I was listening closely for some definitive real work that was done on systems. I'm not being facetious or sarcastic here; please don't take it that way. But what about, beyond the meetings, things that actually got done? You refer to these computers that were replaced and upgraded. Can you give me a couple of thumbnail sketches, just so I have some confidence that we actually did something besides meet?

Mr. Bob Chambers: I'll speak to that.

The meetings were to make sure you understood that we had quite an infrastructure in place to make this happen.

I have in front of me here these monthly report cards I spoke to briefly, and they show our progress and what is really happening, the hands-on. We've identified 39 mission-critical systems within the Government of Yukon, and as I mentioned, 83% of them have been or are being currently tested for final compliance. So there's been a fair bit of work. We've had to actually replace a couple of the government systems. They are in place now and working.

On the workstations, we have major work going on around inventory assessment and remediation. Again, we have a detailed plan in place to visit all those workstations that aren't compliant today and that will be done by the end of the summer, both for hardware and software.

On embedded chips, we continue to work forward. Each of the departments is handling these. There are small working groups within the departments to move these various pieces—

Mr. Eric Lowther: So are you still quantifying the problem, or are you in the final stages of testing? When I listen to you, you remind me of some of the conversations we had with groups a year ago: we've identified mission-critical stuff, and we've done a little bit; this needs to be looked at. From your own assessment, are you still quantifying, are you at the wrap-up stage, or where are you?

Mr. Bob Chambers: We're at the wrap-up stage. If I'm giving you too much of that kind of stuff, I can certainly get into more detail. As I said, in simple terms, we have 40 applications that are mission-critical in the Government of Yukon: 27 of those are year 2000 compliant today, and the final 13 are in the final testing stages today and are due to be complete over the next two or three months. All hardware and software have been identified and are being worked on. We are purchasing hardware if required. That bulk buy, as we call it, where we go out and buy a number of PCs is in progress as I speak.

Mr. Eric Lowther: I'm sorry, I don't want to take too long on this. So the key indicator for me here is 40 systems critical and 27 are up and you're confident of 27. That's an indicator of where you're at.

Mr. Bob Chambers: Right, okay.

Mr. Eric Lowther: A little over halfway.

Mr. Bob Chambers: No.

Mr. Eric Lowther: It's 27 out of 40.

Mr. Bob Chambers: This is those that are absolutely guaranteed 100% compliant. The other ones are in the final testing stages for compliance.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Okay, thank you for that.

I have another question on a different track. You're in the Yukon, or Whitehorse, so it's pretty cold the first day of January in Whitehorse. What's the attitude there on this issue among the people? Is it even on the map? Do they care, or are they out stacking firewood and buying generators? Where's the public perception at on this thing?

Mr. Eric Magnuson: If you want to talk a little bit about the public perception, we have some plans to deal with assessing that. At this point in time it's a non-issue. The public interest in this issue has waned significantly. There is an anticipation, and our communication strategies identify an anticipation, for further interest later on in the year. But we figure by September, when this problem maybe comes back into the media attention again, we're going to be able to speak unequivocally to the fact that systems have been totally tested and we're completely confident in their ability to carry on with respect to Y2K.

We're not stopping there. The reality is that we can lose electrical power at any given time, and we have from time to time because of our remote and independent nature. We need to have emergency preparedness plans in place at all times. There are a number of other disruptions that can occur, let alone Y2K.

• 1750

Mr. Eric Lowther: Do you see a day when you will tell people in Whitehorse that everything is fine with Y2K, that we do not have any Y2K issues here, those kinds of assurances?

Mr. Eric Magnuson: To the extent that our liabilities allow us to make or not make guarantees.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Okay, thanks.

The Chair: Thanks very much, Mr. Lowther.

Madame Jennings.

[Translation]

Ms. Marlene Jennings: My name is Marlene Jennings and I am the Member for the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine riding on the Island of Montreal. My questions are directed to all the witnesses present.

Previous speakers told us that external audits of a plan aimed at dealing with problems related to the year 2000 bug were a key element of a good plan. Have your plans been subject to such external audits? I'd also be interested in knowing whether you have insisted on your partners or suppliers submitting their plans to external audits to ensure that their products and services are Y2K compliant.

Thank you.

[English]

Mr. Bob Chambers: On external testing, we have discussed it on two or three occasions at the steering committee level and have agreed that we are not going to employ external testers. We are quite confident with the people we have. If we need to do an audit on it, we will use our internal people to do that. We find that the cost we will incur for this is not worth the money at this point in time.

As far as our partners are concerned, our main partners are other jurisdictions, and we are working on the interfaces with the federal government and the provinces, as we speak. In fact we were involved in conference calls with the federal government here in the last week on interfaces with our other partners.

[Translation]

Ms. Marlene Jennings: I gather that you were satisfied with the internal audits you carried out. Did you ask your partners what type of audits they are doing? If I were dealing with a person or company claiming that its products or services are Y2K compliant, I'd also like to take advantage of the opinion of an independent auditor. I would not be satisfied with just the word of this person or company. That is why I asked whether you have insisted that your suppliers, organizations, departments or crown corporations that do not come under your government submit their plans to an external audit.

[English]

Mr. Eric Magnuson: Thank you very much for your question. Perhaps some of the confusion is because the translation comes across a lot less clear than when people speak directly, so I apologize for that.

With respect to external testing, some of our key service providers—for example, Yukon Electrical Company, which are not represented here today but are a very key essential service—had an outside auditor come in and check their entire Y2K readiness, and that has been signed off by that auditor.

I believe Mr. Campbell can speak to that audit a bit more, because they're looking at getting that same auditor to come in and do the Yukon Energy Corporation sign-off.

With respect to NorthwesTel and our communications infrastructure, Stentor Canada is involved. They are doing an audit and are looking at the communications aspect.

• 1755

Specific to the Yukon government, we are not employing an outside auditor specifically. From a government preparedness level, most of our systems are in good shape or have been repaired. With respect to the essential services on the emergency measures sides, we are getting collaborating reports on the readiness, and we are backing those up with contingency plans.

[Translation]

Ms. Marlene Jennings: That's good news and I was expecting to hear that kind of answer. I'd like to thank you and congratulate you.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Madame Jennings.

Mr. Lowther, do you have any more questions? Not at this time?

I have one question, with regard to the status of the health care system in the Yukon. Maybe someone could clarify for me, do we have a percentage that's Y2K compatible for health care?

Mr. Eric Magnuson: Yes, we actually can submit to you by secretarial means our latest report card. I believe it has been forwarded up to you as well. Our hospital corporation, which provides health care services to the community and basically all of the territory as the largest hospital in the territory, is reporting through the Department of Health and Social Services. I believe Bob has the report card there, and he can read it off to you.

Mr. Bob Chambers: Whitehorse Community Hospital is reporting 100% complete on mission-critical systems; 100% complete on workstation, service, and networks; 84% on embedded chips; and they are currently over 50% complete on contingency plans. So that's the hospital system.

Within the Department of Health and Social Services, the only system they have outstanding at this point in time is their client index system. They are actually rewriting it, and it is scheduled for completion in August. That's the plan.

The Chair: I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

Mr. Bob Chambers: I'm talking to plans. Their plans are on schedule at this point in time.

The Chair: Okay. We would appreciate it if you could forward that to the committee. We don't have a copy of it as yet.

I have one other question. I'm not sure if it should be directed to Mr. Chambers or to Mr. Magnuson, but it's with regard to your airport system. Who's responsible for ensuring that it's Y2K compatible?

Mr. Eric Magnuson: I can answer that question.

With respect to the airport operating systems on the ground side, passenger handling and the provision of those services to the airline companies, baggage, and so on, those are Yukon government responsibilities. With respect to the navigation, they come under the authority or the role of NAV CANADA, and they are dealing with that. That's a federal corporation, and you folks probably know more about those things than we do. But we are dealing with our ground responsibilities and the operation of the facilities.

The Chair: On that, we've met with NAV CANADA several times, and we know they've sent out kits to airports to ensure that they're Y2K compatible and Y2K ready. Forgive me, but I'm not sure where your airport falls, whether it's national, regional, or local, and in the end, what responsibilities you have.

Mr. Eric Magnuson: The thing to remember—and I can appreciate the earlier concern and perhaps frustration to some extent—is that the Yukon is a very small jurisdiction and population. Interconnectivities and complexities are very minor here compared to what you folks in the big cities are facing.

The Yukon has only one international airport. It has only one airport with air traffic control. It has only one airport that is fully licensed and operational for night and day IFR, instrument flight rules. As I said, those responsibilities are being dealt with on the ground side by YTG as the operator of the airport and by NAV CANADA on the air transportation support side.

The Chair: Would you know if those are complete already? I know several airports in Canada that are being dealt with by NAV CANADA are complete, Y2K compatible. Is there still a timeline to go for that?

• 1800

Mr. Eric Magnuson: The information we have received is that the air traffic control navigational support systems here are Y2K ready.

The Chair: Okay.

We know you do have a number of challenges because of your geographic size and your smaller population, as well as the weather, and we do wish you well as you move toward Y2K compatibility and compliance. We want to thank you for joining us here today and for being very frank and open. If you have any further information you can provide us in writing, we would be very happy to receive it.

Thank you very much for joining us.

Mr. Eric Magnuson: Thank you.

The Chair: We are now going to suspend while we change witnesses.

• 1802

• 1808

The Chair: We're going to reconvene.

I'm Susan Whelan, and I am the chair of the committee. We're very pleased to have you join us from Edmonton, Alberta, today. We have, I believe, seven or eight presentations. I count seven people. I'm not sure if that means one is missing, but we'll just start anyhow. I would propose that everyone gives their opening statement and then we'll move to questions.

I don't know if you have the same list in front of you, but I'll just let you know what my list says. It says from the Government of Alberta, Ms. Lisa Bowes, director, policy coordination; from Alberta Transportation and Utilities, Mr. Ron Wolsey, executive director, Disaster Services Branch; from ESBI Alberta Ltd., Sean McGoldrick, vice-president, technical services; from ATCO Electric Ltd., Greg Walker, manager, Y2K project, and Dick Frey, president; from TransAlta Corporation, Jim Paton, manager, Y2K project; from BCT-TELUS, Marwyn Ratke, manager, information services, Year 2000 Program Office; from Alberta Health, Malcolm Steele, senior team leader, information management.

I propose we go in the order of the witnesses as I've read. If someone's missing we'll find out. We'll start with the Government of Alberta, Lisa Bowes, please.

Ms. Lisa Bowes (Director, Policy Coordination, Government of Alberta): Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chairperson, ladies and gentlemen. I'm pleased to appear before you today as a representative of the Office of the Chief Information Officer with the Government of Alberta.

• 1810

As you mentioned, my name is Lisa Bowes. Our CIO, George Samoil, has asked me to pass on his regrets for not being able to attend today.

My comments will follow up on the information provided to your committee by Mr. Samoil when he appeared before the Standing Committee on Industry in November of 1998 regarding the government's year 2000 plan.

As he mentioned previously, the Government of Alberta, through the office of the CIO and the Department of Public Works, Supply and Services, developed a formal plan in 1996 to address year 2000 readiness for our government departments. With the support of senior management, a cross-government year 2000 project office was established in PWSS to assist all government departments with common initiatives.

The office of the CIO provides regular status reports to senior management on the progress of their department. In addition, the Minister of Public Works, Supply and Services has provided updates to his colleagues.

I'd like to refer to the February 8, 1999, Standing Committee on Industry's news release regarding the second interim report on year 2000. Recommendation number three was that provincial, territorial, and local governments publicly disclose details of the year 2000 readiness of their essential services and of the relevant contingency plans.

On April 19, 1999, the Government of Alberta provided a news release and a status report on the year 2000 readiness of our mission-critical systems across government.

As Mr. Samoil pointed out last November, we have classified our systems into four categories, from most important to least important; they are mission critical, mission important, process critical, and process important.

Mission-critical systems are those deemed by the government department to be vital to their government operations. We currently have 161 mission-critical systems identified across our 17 government departments, and as of April 1999, 84% are deemed to be Y2K ready.

As mentioned last November, our goal was to achieve 100% readiness of our mission-critical systems by March 31. We recognized, however, that departments might encounter some unexpected delays in areas such as purchases of new equipment or software.

We also appreciate the dedicated work that's under way in the government departments to achieve Y2K readiness, and we anticipate that all mission-critical systems will be ready before the end of the year.

The Standing Committee on Industry also mentioned contingency planning. The Alberta government agrees that this is an important issue. Although we anticipate all mission-critical systems will be Y2K ready, all departments are also working on contingency plans to deal with any unexpected developments.

As well, Alberta government is continuing to work with our government counterparts across Canada through a federal-provincial-territorial year 2000 committee and also with a communications subgroup. By working together we are able to share best practices and processes in order to reach our goals.

In addition, we've been working with the federal government and other jurisdictions on the issue of system interfaces. We'd like to thank Guy McKenzie, assistant secretary of the Treasury Board year 2000 project office, for his leadership.

We're also very supportive of the work under way by our government colleagues, namely Ron Wolsey in Alberta Disaster Services, and Malcolm Steele of Alberta Health. I'm sure you'll find their presentations very interesting.

I'd like to conclude my remarks with that. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I look forward to any questions.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Bowes.

We're now going to turn to Alberta Transportation and Utilities, Mr. Ron Wolsey, executive director.

Mr. Ron Wolsey (Executive Director, Disaster Services Branch, Alberta Transportation and Utilities): Thank you very kindly, Madam Chairman.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure to be able to speak to you this afternoon with respect to the contingency planning mechanisms that are being put in place in the province.

The Alberta Disaster Services Branch's major concern is to ensure that our local authorities are prepared to respond effectively to any contingency that may result from the Y2K problem. The emergency response model in Alberta is based primarily on the ability of local authorities—that's municipalities and first nation communities—to respond to virtually anything that comes up with respect to natural disasters or man-made disasters that may confront them.

• 1815

In order to address the particular concerns we're facing here, last fall we put together an organization that's become known as “Y2K Alberta”. Very simply stated, it's comprised of about 60 essential service providers and includes representation from private sectors that actually provide utilities.

In addition, we have non-governmental organizations, municipalities, first nation communities, emergency response organizations, and key provincial and federal government departments involved in either service delivery or the planning process.

Y2K Alberta has proved to be invaluable, serving as a forum for these organizations to share information in an open and mutually supportive manner. Analyses to date suggest that only minor service disruptions, if any, may be experienced in the delivery of essential services on January 1, 2000. It's been suggested that the risk of essential service disruption is not likely to be any greater than that which might be expected on any other given date of the year.

Our knowledge of the situation beyond Alberta's borders is less clear. In that respect, that's one of the main reasons we appreciate being able to participate in the National Contingency Planning Group.

Alberta will publish a Y2K-consequence management plan this summer, and we will participate in national exercises currently being scheduled for later in the year.

Thank you very much. I look forward to any questions you may have.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Wolsey.

From ESBI Alberta Ltd., Mr. Sean McGoldrick.

Mr. Sean McGoldrick (Vice-President, Technical Services, ESBI Alberta Ltd.): Good afternoon, Madam Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen of the committee.

I'd like to make a short, unscripted statement with regard to the role of the transmission administrator in the electric industry and more generally the electric industry's preparations for the Y2K-relevant dates facing us over the next year.

The electric industry has developed a defence in depth strategy toward Y2K. That can be characterized as having three different legs. Initially, the asset owners, ably represented today by Mr. Walker of ATCO Electric, are examining their equipment for any Y2K problems that may emerge and are putting in place mitigating strategies for those.

The second leg in the defence in depth strategy is the preparation of a province-wide contingency plan that will place the electric industry in a state of readiness to respond to any unscheduled outages of significant portions of either generation or load in the province.

The final leg of the defence in depth strategy is a power system restoration plan. Always in place for the electric industry, it will be drilled and tested during the coming year so that should we be in a position where we lose portions or all of the electric system, we will be able to restore that service rapidly.

The Alberta electric industry interacts with a number of external agencies. I would mention the Western Systems Coordinating Council and the North American Electricity Reliability Council. Both of these are reliability organizations. They have mandated, and in Alberta we have participated in, a number of drills coordinated by the transmission administrator.

One of these drills has already taken place to test backup communication systems. It is very essential for the electric industry that communication be maintained between all its different elements during critical times. That drill on April 9 was a success. We're delighted to report that there was significant participation from all elements of the electric industry in Alberta.

• 1820

There is a drill being planned for September 9. That is one of the Y2K priority two dates, when the whole electric system will be put in a state of readiness similar to what will take place over the year-end transition. This drill is going to take place all over North America, and we in Alberta will be fully participating.

Finally, I'd like to say that NERC has requested that all its member organizations complete Y2K preparations by June 30 or have detailed plans for the completion of these preparations at that date. I'm pleased to report that our analysis is that most, if not all, of the electric industry participants will be in a position to meet that June 30 date.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to questions.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. McGoldrick.

Next on my list is ATCO Electric Ltd. I have two individuals on my list, Mr. Greg Walker and Mr. Dick Frey. I'm not sure who's doing the presentation or who's there with you today.

Mr. Greg Walker (Manager, Y2K Project, ATCO Electric Ltd.): Madam Chairman, my name is Greg Walker. Dick Frey sends his regrets. He's not able to be here today. I'll be representing ATCO Electric.

I would like to say that I'm here in support of Sean McGoldrick, as one of the two Alberta power companies here today. The other is Jim Paton from TransAlta. My remarks are short and, as I said, in support of Mr. McGoldrick.

ATCO Electric is on track to complete its Y2K program, which began in 1995 and includes experts from across the company. It's headed by me. I report to the president. Our goal is to have critical and high-priority systems ready by April 30, 1999. I'm pleased to report that we have a news release coming out tomorrow to say that we have met that goal. Our remaining medium- and low-priority systems will be ready by June 30, 1999.

We're following the generally accepted industry approach of identifying, remediating, testing, and placing back into production equipment that has Y2K sensitivities. Part of our program includes having major systems operating in 2000.

To this end, we now have six coal-fired generating units to be operating in 2000. Our transmission system is to be operating in 2000. This includes our supervisory control and data acquisition system, otherwise known as SCADA. In addition, we have devices on the distribution system, known as “reclosers”, that are to be operating in 2000.

We're working with key suppliers and contractors and industrial customers to minimize the risk of unexpected problems. We're also working closely with other utilities—for instance, the city of Edmonton's EPCOR, the city of Calgary's ENMAX, the transmission administrator, and Power Pool of Alberta—to address the province-wide, regional, and national Y2K perspectives.

Although there are no guarantees, we do not expect there will be significant problems affecting service to customers. We're advising our customers to make the usual preparations in case of unexpected service interruptions, and we are preparing in case there are unexpected events on Y2K dates. This includes manning critical sites and developing operational plans to respond to service interruptions.

That concludes my remarks, Madam Chair. We look forward to your questions.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Walker.

I'm now going to turn to TransAlta Corporation, and Mr. Paton.

Mr. Jim Paton (Manager, Y2K Project, TransAlta Corporation): Good afternoon—or good evening.

In our submission, contained in the letter of May 5 to Ms. Kingston, we outlined the status of our project. What I'd like to do is just hit on the highlights, particularly any that might look somewhat different from what has already been listed by ATCO Electric and ESBI.

Our program began some time ago, in May of 1997. We have adopted the terminology used in Report of the Task Force Year 2000: A Call For Action. Similarly, we have gone through a program where we've completed inventory, assessment, and mitigation of our activities and devices, and then followed them with end-to-end system tests—rollover tests, if you wish.

• 1825

To date, if we include the parts of our equipment that are outside of the Alberta borders, so that our units in Ontario are included in our report, 90% of our generating capacity is operating in the year 2000 mode today. We expect to have completed all of our mitigation activities by mid-1999. We have been engaged in embedded system research with more than 100 utilities, including some represented here today through the Electric Power Research Institute, to address concerns that there may be devices out there that don't give up their secrets that easily. We report monthly on our status to North American Electricity Liability Council and the Canadian Electricity Association, and in each of those we've been consistently reporting that our progress is on track and we will be completed for June 30.

Our current activities tend to be in the areas of key partner preparedness. That would include our customers' awareness and contingency plans and our clean management policy. Similarly, we are involved with the other utilities and the other organizations within Alberta to test our plans in the September 9 drill and in a number of smaller drills leading up to that time to ensure that in the September 9 drill we're testing completion.

I think those are the key issues that might be somewhat different from what has been said by others. I look forward to any questions you might have.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Paton.

I'm now going to turn to BCT-TELUS, Mr. Marwyn Ratke, manager of information services.

Mr. Marwyn Ratke (Manager, Information Services, Year 2000 Program Office, BCT-TELUS): Thank you, Madam Chairman and the committee, for giving this opportunity to us.

There are two of us here from TELUS. There's myself, involved with the year 2000 program, and another fellow by the name of Al Shankowski, who leads the TELUS year 2000 program. During the Q and A, certainly we'll partner in answering questions.

I'll give you a brief background in terms of our approach, and I'll talk about our status and what we think the most likely scenario is from a telecom point of view. TELUS, in this case, is the Alberta scene, because we've just branded our name to be TELUS both in B.C. and Alberta. Tomorrow you have the session that will give the B.C. province story.

Our approach in TELUS has been to deal with Y2K as a business problem, with the business units themselves taking accountability to deal with the problem. We started back in 1996. We have a senior-level executive sponsorship. We have in excess of 20 different project teams under way and over 100 full-time people involved in this work.

We focused heavily on working together with partnerships, both with our Stentor alliance and with the telecommunications industry forum—that's Canadian-wide—and also cross-border to the United States. We have worked jointly, as the other folks have mentioned, with Alberta Disaster Services and with the electricity and gas utility forums here in Alberta.

One of the other strategies we've really had to deal with was sustaining compliance, and that was once we've got the problem fixed that we keep it fixed. That's an interesting challenge unto itself.

Right now a majority of our remediation work is a done deal. We're basically saying the public network is at 96% done deal, so to speak, ready to roll. From a testing point of view, we've tested. We've tested interoperability within ourselves and with other members across Canada and the United States. I'm glad to report that those tests to date have been very successful.

We're focusing a lot of our energies for the remainder of the year on the business continuity planning. We're at about the 50% level on that right now, and certainly we're not doing that alone. That has to be done with Alberta Disaster Services and the other disaster recovery groups.

• 1830

In terms of communication, we've communicated with all of our customers, both the business and the everyday at-home customer, through billing inserts, updates, sessions in community groups, and so on.

Our business continuity planning—we certainly have plans, and will have an operational emergency operations control centre. We are practising and exercising the disaster continuity plans. Leading toward the end of the year, we're composing within ourselves rigorous year-end embargoes to change.

Our transition scenario as we expect it for year 2000—the failures should be very minimal, if there are any at all. We're making sure our response facility and capability is ready to deal with those failures if there are any. What we feel is the most likely scenario is there might be some dial tone delay due to local load conditions and traffic.

The bottom line, to summarize, is we feel confident that our essential processes and systems and business functions will be ready for the year 2000 transition.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Ratke.

I now have on my list Alberta Health, Malcolm Steele.

Mr. Malcolm Steele (Senior Team Leader, Information Management, Alberta Health): Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Thank you, members of the committee, for this opportunity to speak to you today.

I am the year 2000 coordinator for the Department of Health. That role extends to overseeing the activities in our 19 regional health authorities and boards.

The Government of Alberta has played very much a leadership role in the health sector. In the late fall of 1997 an assessment was done of all 19 health authorities, and the results of that assessment led to the government granting $170 million to assist the regions and boards in addressing year 2000 activities.

It also led to the establishment of a year 2000 health secretariat. This was a group set up to coordinate provincial activities to provide advice and assistance on compliancy information, testing information, and also on methodology information—things such as contingency planning guidelines and training, clean management guidelines and training.

The $170 million was made available to the authorities contingent on their developing a detailed plan. Those plans were delivered in the summer of 1998. The secretariat worked with the health authorities, particularly concentrating on key issues such as critical medical devices and critical premise equipment. At the end of 1998 a reassessment was done to identify what the estimated costs were. As a result of that, the government in February of 1999 made a further $33 million available to the regional health authorities.

Currently the regional health authorities are targeting September to have both equipment remediated and contingency plans in place, and they're progressing toward that date.

I'll be pleased to take any questions.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Steele.

I'm now going to turn to questions. Mr. Lowther.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Well, it's a pretty comprehensive overview. Thank you, everyone, for a job well done, I'd say.

I have a few questions. I just want to test a little bit of what we heard and do a little probing, which I think is incumbent upon us to do.

Ms. Bowes, you said that 84% of mission-critical systems were, I think you said, complete, which means 16% not complete. Is there a threshold? When are we in trouble? If it's 17% we're in big trouble, or if it's 10% there's no trouble—is there a crisis mode of percentage here? I know you said these 16% will be ready before the year 2000; we're about six months away. So I'm just wondering, 16%, how serious is that?

• 1835

Ms. Lisa Bowes: In addition to the news release of April 19, we released a background document of each department's mission-critical systems. Of the ones that were not ready as of April, we asked them to identify what month they would be ready. The majority of them stated that their systems would be compliant or year 2000 ready by May or June of this year.

We feel it's manageable on that basis. The departments are also developing their contingency plans in case there are some concerns with equipment or software not arriving on time. Based on our assessment and the information provided by the departments, we're comfortable that we will be able to reach 100% by the end of the summer.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Okay, that's good. I was reading in a press release from the Government of Alberta here, Mr. Samoil:

This is a problem we have never faced before and there are no guarantees how computers or systems with embedded microchips will behave once January 1 arrives.

So we still have a risk factor here, I would say, based on that quote in your press release. I'm trying to get a sense of how big it is. You're telling us 84%, 92%, everything's looking pretty good, but there's still that caveat there—we don't know what's going to happen.

Are you very comfortable and are there no real substantive issues here? We've been asking this question for two years and I know it's getting to be a bit redundant, but it's sort of testing the waters. Two years ago, everybody was quite concerned. Now everybody seems quite relaxed. Where are you in that continuum?

Ms. Lisa Bowes: I would say that from a government perspective, we are quite confident. We certainly recognize there is no 100% guarantee. I think everyone around this table would agree that until we actually reach January 1, we're not sure what potential problems may crop up.

One of our concerns has to do with system interfaces, specifically with other governments. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we've been working with the federal government and other provinces to identify the system interfaces between Alberta and the federal government or other provinces, because that is a concern for us. Our systems may be year 2000 ready, but if for example they're interfacing with another piece of equipment from another government that is not ready, we're going to run into problems. So we're relatively confident from the Government of Alberta perspective, and we're working very closely with our counterparts to make sure the interfaces are working.

Mr. Eric Lowther: I'm the member for Calgary Centre, and two years ago in my riding I talked to some of the utility providers—the gas companies, etc. They were being very cautious about what they said to any customers who phoned in at the time and asked. They were concerned about liability. They didn't know how big an issue it was. I think they were taking the right course of action.

Has the message from the group of you—I'm not addressing any one, maybe ATCO, BCT-TELUS, etc.—to your customers changed over time? Are you now sending a different message when they call from the one of a year ago or 18 months ago?

Mr. Marwyn Ratke: I can certainly speak from a BCT-TELUS perspective on that. The answer to your question is yes, it has certainly changed from a year and a half ago. We were very cautious, as you said, from the beginning. We didn't know the nature of the beast, but through our real live testing and remediation work, we've proven otherwise. We have actually rolled the clock in some equipment and it has functionally operated—including switching equipment and transport equipment. So it has built our confidence that we've covered all the corners.

So I mention to customers, as I've indicated to you people, that you will have a dial tone, guaranteed. It might be delayed, but you'll have it. So that's how our message has changed.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Okay. Thank you, sir, for that.

What about the power providers, like ATCO?

• 1840

Mr. Greg Walker: From the perspective of ATCO Electric and ATCO Gas, a sister company, our message to customers has changed substantially as well, from a year and a half or two years ago. There are a number of reasons. They are similar to BCT-TELUS's reasons, in that we've pretty much finished with our critical and high-risk systems. Our remediation is finished and many of our key assets are already operating in year 2000, so we feel good about what we've done.

Prior to that, we didn't know how serious the problem would be, and we had the additional problem of being a publicly traded company on the TSE. That meant we had to make sure information got to investors before it got to customers, so we weren't guilty of any insider trading activities, based on what we might tell people about the problems related to Y2K.

We've solved that issue as well by having the appropriate disclosure to investors through our annual reports, management discussion analyses and news releases in the Dow Jones. That's enabled us to tell customers what you heard today. What I read today is basically the call centre script. That's what customers get if they call our call centre today.

Mr. Eric Lowther: That's very interesting and I thank you for that. I have one last little question before the chairwoman rips this mike away from me. You said local calls and calls to the U.S. on the telephone side would work, but I was curious about overseas calls. Does BCT-TELUS have any assessment of the reliability of overseas calls? It would probably depend on where you were calling, I suppose. Do you have any comments there?

Mr. Marwyn Ratke: Al's been working on the national scene, so he's more up to date than I am on that item.

Mr. Al Shankowski (Program Director, TELUS Year 2000 Program, BCT-TELUS): I would just comment that through the Canadian telco industry forum we have just completed extensive tests involving basically all carriers in Canada. That included the Teleglobe people, who provide the gateway service. Over 1,000 tests have been conducted, and they have confirmed basic call-connect activity. There were no Y2K failures. So as far as being able to hand off the calls internationally, we have now confirmed that will work.

On the status of other countries and nations, we're working through the U.S. telco forum and the ITU to participate in gateway testing. So we will have confirmation that the gateway switches will work. On the local service in other countries, we can only assure you that the calls will be handed off to the local carrier. I don't know the status of the local carriers, although generally we know that most countries are coming along well. The most recent report indicated the central African region may be somewhat behind.

Mr. Eric Lowther: Thank you very much for those good answers. It sounds to me as if you're tracking pretty well. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Lowther.

Madam Jennings, please.

[Translation]

Ms. Marlene Jennings: I have two questions. One is directed to Ms. Bowes, the Alberta government representative. I'd like to take up a part of the presentation of my colleague Lowther who mentioned the need for critical systems to be ready for the end of March, 1999. You have done the necessary audits and 84% of these systems are ready.

I've examined the document you provided. I note that for social and family services, the department identified 21 critical systems and that nine of them are not ready; of these nine systems, two will be ready in the month of May or June but seven will be ready only in September. If these nine systems were supposed to be ready for the end of March and seven of them will not be ready before September, there is some sort of discrepancy. Is it because the equipment was supposed to have been replaced and the supplier was unable to make the delivery in time for installation before the end of March? What exactly is the problem with these seven systems?

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My second question is for the telecommunications and hydro- electric companies. We've often been told that an external or internal but independent audit, namely one service doing an audit of another one, is very important to ensure the viability of an action plan to ensure that systems are Y2K compliant. I'd like to know whether such an audit was part of your plan. If so, I'd like you to tell me how it worked and if not, why. Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Ms. Bowes.

Ms. Lisa Bowes: I'll start on the questions on the family and social services systems.

You're correct in stating that some of these systems will not be ready until summer, or potentially late summer or early fall. This information has been gathered by each of the government departments. Each of the government departments has its own year 2000 coordinators and staff working on the specifics of each of its applications. So I'm afraid at this point I'm not able to give you detailed information; however, it is my understanding that major delays for these systems have to do with software that has not yet been provided by the vendor community.

The deputy minister of that particular department, as do all other deputy ministers, receives monthly updates on the status of the department. This issue has been flagged with senior management. They are currently working with the vendor community to address the issue and ensure that they also have contingency plans in place to address any unforeseen problems.

I hope that provides at least a partial answer for you.

[Translation]

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Yes, thank you. Now my question—

[English]

Mr. Sean McGoldrick: Perhaps I could reply on behalf of the electric industry initially, and ask the others if they want to come in later.

Certainly with regard to the contingency plans we have in place, in my company, ESBI Alberta, the transmission administrator is responsible for the preparation of a province-wide contingency plan for the electric industry. That places the electric infrastructure in a state of readiness to react should anything unusual happen. That is a matter of public knowledge. It's something we share with all the utilities. All the utilities participate with us in preparation of that plan.

Furthermore, when it is issued, it will also be issued to the Western Systems Coordinating Council, which is a reliability organization that basically stretches from Alberta all the way down the western part of the United States to Mexico. It will form an overall and integral part of the Western Systems Coordinating Council plan. So that certainly is something that's subject to peer review, and we welcome and have already received advice on how we should set up this contingency plan.

I think it is very important, and maybe I could take the opportunity to comment on something Mr. Lowther said. I believe good business people are always worried about liability, so there are always liability concerns, and everybody shares those. But my assessment of the position from the electric industry point of view at the moment is that we do not face a supply problem. Neither the generation companies nor the transmission companies, in my estimation, as an independent entity here, are going to have any major problems. Problems occur on a daily basis in the electric system, and we deal with them anyway.

I believe, however, a particular problem around the Y2K critical dates is going to rest on the demand side. That is, we're going to see some pretty unpredictable behaviour either from large industrial customers or consumers around these dates. Some of their systems may go off. We may see unusual loading patterns. People may voluntarily take critical systems and industrial processes off line. That's our challenge in preparing a contingency plan, in being able to respond to those unpredictable events. It is an unusual situation. Electricity users and the electricity industry are creatures of habit, so when we step outside this, we just have to be a little careful.

That's my assessment of what might be a risk. But again, we're putting plans in place to cope with that.

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Mr. Jim Paton: In response to your question about external audits, that same question was asked recently at a conference of predominantly power utilities, and it is fairly common. Certainly not everyone is having external people review their plans. Alberta utilities, perhaps not in all cases, but we and ATCO Electric, have had external reviews of our programs to ensure that we're not missing something just from being too close to it.

[Translation]

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Thank you. What was the result of the external audits?

[English]

Mr. Jim Paton: I can only speak for TransAlta.

[Translation]

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Yes.

[English]

Mr. Jim Paton: We've had two done, and in both cases they agreed that we were on the right track. They were eager to suggest ways we could improve our programs or places: Don't stop here; you're on the right track. There wasn't cause for alarm in either case.

The first one was done six months ago, when we were in the midst of our testing, and our last one was just concluded. So a lot of our testing was complete, and they were happy with what we had done in those areas. They were more concerned about what we would be doing with our external service providers and what we would be doing with our customers and contingency plans.

[Translation]

Ms. Marlene Jennings: Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you very much, Madame Jennings.

Mr. Lastewka, please.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your reports. I have two questions, one for the Alberta government, along the same lines as Ms. Jennings.

Maybe not today, but perhaps you could supply the committee the lessons learned on what happened in the family and social services area, since there are so many mission-critical items that will be in the September timeframe. I think you did mention earlier that it's concerning getting software systems from the supplier, and so forth. I'd like to understand that.

The same thing in the area of public works, the main two systems, the Calgary computing centre and the Edmonton computing centre: maybe you could provide us the lessons learned on that so that we can share with other areas across the country. Maybe you'd have some comments now. If not, you could provide the committee with the lessons learned.

Ms. Lisa Bowes: Absolutely. I'd be pleased to work with these two particular departments to provide further information on their processes.

As well, we have a cross-government team in public works that has been working with all of our departments on some common initiatives. We did have a review done of our project office back in 1997 by Gartner Group, a leading IT consultant company. They determined that several aspects in our office were classified as best in its class, and I'm sure we can provide some information on that as well.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Thank you very much.

My other question is on the 19 regions in the health area. Have any of the regions completed their work? When do you foresee the regions completing their work?

Mr. Malcolm Steele: No, none of the regions has completed their work. The estimated schedule for completing their work is September.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: As to a review by the health regions, have they had any problems concerning getting information from manufacturers or Health Canada or any of the areas so that they can do their work? I know that six or seven months ago this was an issue, and I'm just trying to find out what it is in your region. Do you have all the information that you need on devices and anything from Health Canada?

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Mr. Malcolm Steele: I think we have a lot of the information we need; I wouldn't say we have it all. Our health secretariat has been working very closely with Health Canada, which has actually been very helpful in dealing with issues where vendors have been slow in coming forward with information. I think the situation has improved. We have a lot of the information we need, but to say we have it all, I think, would not be the case. As I say, we are working closely with Health Canada to deal with those vendors that have not been forthcoming with information.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: This is an area that we've spotted across the country, still, in certain areas. Although it has improved a lot, there are still some areas, so if you could forward comments on any of the areas that are of concern, we could also share that with other people. We see that the health sector area, hospitals and so forth, as far as reaching conclusions, seems to be moving out further all the time. Could I have your comment on that?

Mr. Malcolm Steele: In terms of the vendors that we have not received information from, Health Canada has a list in the order of 160 vendors, I believe, that they are dealing with directly on a regulatory basis because that information has not been forthcoming. I don't think there are any key areas in our province where that's a major problem for us, but it is an outstanding one.

Mr. Walt Lastewka: Before I conclude, Madam Chair, I'd like to make the comment that the detail from Alberta is always very good for this committee, and we can always use it and share it with others. I want to compliment the group on a job well done.

Over the last couple of years, you've reported to us and helped us out in lessons learned that we can share with the rest of the country. I want to thank you for that.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Lastewka.

Mr. Peric, please.

Mr. Janko Peric: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon.

If you were sitting in our chairs, with your experience, your knowledge, and your awareness of the system and its flaws, and if we were sitting there, what question would you ask?

A voice: I would ask, have you tested it?

Mr. Janko Peric: Anybody else?

Mr. Sean McGoldrick: I would ask, if we know that a certain percentage is going to fail, what backup plans have we in place?

Mr. Janko Peric: Great. Mr. McGoldrick, I like your approach. You're not facing problems; you're facing challenges, and it seems to me that you are taking this positive approach and overcoming those challenges. It looks to me like you're handling your affairs under the motto “nothing can surprise us”.

Is there something that can really surprise you? What might that be?

Mr. Sean McGoldrick: The electric industry is a very interesting industry to work in. It's extremely dynamic. It's also international. We're connected, as I indicated earlier, all the way down through the western half of the United States, in the biggest geographic interconnection in the world. We've 150,000 megawatts of generation. Something is going to go wrong somewhere. On every day in that system, some generator, large or small, will trip. For 40 years, we have been coping with that reality.

What we are facing in the year 2000 is perhaps a slightly elevated chance that a few more generators will trip or a few systems will go down. The challenge is to make sure that the greater part of that system can help out anybody who gets into particular trouble and to make prudent arrangements should parts of the system get into trouble.

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For example, we're connected to our neighbours in British Columbia through a very significant tie-line, a 500 kV tie-line that's capable of importing and exporting upwards of 1,000 megawatts if required. During the Y2K rollover period, we will prudently schedule the interchange in that tie-line down to zero, but it will be there, ready to respond, should either party, either British Columbia or Alberta, require it for whatever reasons.

I think prudent steps like that are very necessary. As I said, the electric industry, by its very nature, has to deal with the fact that rotating machinery breaks down and that electricity is an essential service. Just because one particular rotating machine breaks down, it should not mean that people in a widespread area lose their supply. We've just taken the model that we've been using for the last 40 years and extended it to make sure it covers the Y2K period. I think that's a prudent thing to do.

I also think that the electric industry in the western part of North America was greatly helped by an elevated level of concern, given several serious outages that happened in 1996. That has put the focus on how important electricity is for social cohesion, for economic interaction. As a consequence, we have been well prepared for this situation.

That's not to say that things don't go wrong. Of course things go wrong, but the thing you must always have is a backup plan, and if your backup plan doesn't work, you must have another backup plan—and you must have the best backup plan for the worst situation possible. From the electric industry's point of view, the worst situation possible is a total system blackout. That is always something we face minute to minute in the electric system. What we must have is a power system restoration plan that is well tested and well thought out, so that if the worst possible thing happens, we can recover quickly. That's what I would say to you, a member of the legislature: are all the other systems in a similar state?

Mr. Janko Peric: That leads me to the last question.

Miss Bowes, to your knowledge, are the hospitals in Alberta prepared for a total blackout?

Ms. Lisa Bowes: I will pass that question to my colleague, Malcolm Steele, from Alberta Health.

Mr. Malcolm Steele: Thanks, Lisa.

Part of the key activities being undertaken in the health sector is contingency planning. Contingency planning includes the potential for loss of power. All the regional health authorities involved are now in the process of preparing contingency plans. The aim is to have tested contingency plans by the end of September.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Peric.

I want to thank you for your presentation.

We've heard from several witnesses in the past that one of the worst things for the electrical or power companies would be if all Canadians decide to be nostalgic on December 31 and just turn their power off and light up the candles. We've heard from some that it could create a power surge. Do you have any fear of that in Alberta?

Mr. Sean McGoldrick: Perhaps I could address that question and again invite the two asset owners to join in.

It's something we have recognized right from the start, and we're probably a little bit more exposed to it in Alberta than you are in most other provinces. There is a tremendous amount of industrial load in Alberta. Fifty-six percent of the electric demand at any particular period in time is made up of heavy industrial processes associated with the oil and gas industry in Alberta.

It has been one of our concerns that we would, either in an unscheduled manner through problems associated with the processes or deliberately because they switch off critical processes, face slightly unusual loading conditions, or what is known as light loading conditions. Primarily in Alberta that would create what is known as a voltage stability problem. We have set up a series of studies to examine this condition and to make sure that the electric system will be put in an appropriate position to deal with such a contingency.

Also, we're delighted to report that several of the large distribution companies, several of the large utilities, are surveying their customers to find out what their plans are for this critical period so that we will at least be in a position of information about what their deliberate intentions are.

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So yes, that is a problem that can occur. We have recognized it and we are going to cope with it.

The Chair: Okay.

Are there any other comments?

On behalf of the committee members, I want to thank you, firstly for your presentations and also for your willingness to participate in our questions and to be frank and open with us about your Y2K status.

We hope that all provinces and territories are ready, that as a nation we're all ready and we all pass into the year 2000 without any problems, but we know there's a reason we're all getting ready and we know the difficulties we all face in doing that.

We wish you well in your quest to become Y2K compatible and we hope that everyone is as organized as you are.

Thank you very much. We're going to sign off now.

We're going to go in camera for a few minutes.

[Editor's Note: Proceedings continue in camera]