Government Operations Committee on Nov. 19th, 2009

[Marilyn MacPherson]

I wouldn't think so. We don't get to bring these amounts forward to the committee or to Parliament until they have actually been reviewed by the Treasury Board Secretariat and approved by the Treasury Board ministers. So there is always a lot of scrutiny with Treasury Board with respect to the dollars we come seeking. It does go through that level of rigour.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

All right, thank you.

Mr. Kennedy, there was a question made by a member opposite, just a question about surveys, wondering whether it might be a partisan survey. That was a fair question. I'm just wondering whether, from your perspective, that is your impression. Could you elaborate on the survey a little bit more, please?

[Simon Kennedy]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.

Certainly my experience has been that the survey work that's been undertaken by the government, by government departments, has followed strict protocols and is staying well within the bounds of what would be considered acceptable in terms of non-partisanship and so on. As I noted in my earlier testimony, there's a fairly standard rigorous process to go through with regard to public opinion type of research. It requires vetting and so on. There are competitive processes and so on that are managed by Public Works to select the firms that do the work. There are quite a few checks and balances to ensure that the work that's undertaken and the firm selection are done in a way that has transparency and so on built into it.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Thank you.

Another member opposite rightly brought up the question about the investigation of the bombing of the Air India flight 182 and I think that was an important point to bring up. The interesting thing was the reduction from 6,000 to 4,000 pages. That's still a lot of pages, but I first thought that if we're going to reduce the pages without reducing the quality, somehow that should reduce the price. The more important question to me... This has been going on for an awfully long time. Could you imagine that this will be last time costs associated with this inquiry might come before us?

Thank you. That's my question.

[Marilyn MacPherson]

I think we're down to looking at the final report and doing the revisions on it.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you, Mr. Holder.

I now want to turn things over to Ms. Mendes of the Liberal Party of Canada.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I, too, thank Mr. Kennedy and Mrs. MacPherson.

I would like some clarification regarding the questions asked by Ms. Hall Findlay. The Committee needs that clarification before the study of the Supplementary Estimates is finished.

Can you be sure to provide us with that information in the next two meetings? We specifically need information on companies which submit...and how the figures of $7 million for operations and $4 million for advertising were determined.

[Simon Kennedy]

I think I can send all that information to the Committee in the next two weeks. If any information is unavailable, because of a Cabinet confidence, for example, I will be able to explain.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Kennedy, both in your testimony and in several of your answers, you talked about maintaining the Web site and the fact that it had to be updated frequently so that Canadians know what is happening with the Economic Action Plan.

There is something I have a problem with. Whenever you go to the site, there is very little information and the information is not very detailed. I really don't see know Canadans can get proper information about the Economic Action Plan. The information isn't there. In the United States, people have access to ivery specific information about the way money is spent; there is information on real initiatives and the numbe rof jobs created. That type of information cannot be found on our Web site

How would you justify the amounts allocated to that site?

[Simon Kennedy]

Thank you for your question.

Mr. Chair, I am going to make two observations.

We are doing a bit of analysis of use of the Web site. We want to know what Canadians are looking at when they visit the site. One of the most popular features of the site is the guide to programs and services. We spend a lot of time putting it together. I can send the Committee a hard copy. The idea was to extract all the information contained in the action plan, in the budget, that was sorted by department and reorganize it by client. If I am a student or an Aboriginal person, for example, I can visit...

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

I understand that perfectly well, Mr. Kennedy, but that constitutes use of the plan — in the end, the budget. I was actually talking about current use by the various departments and the way that money is used.

[Simon Kennedy]

We tried to meet needs and queries by creating the Google map and information on each project. The objective is to enable Canadians to visit their community or other regions, check which projects are being carried out in their region and how much money has been spent on them. There's a bit of information on each project.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Again, there is a slight nuance. It's not necessarily the money spent that is posted on the Web site, but the money announced. There is still a difference between the two. To ensure Canadians a measure of transparency in terms of the way the action plan is carried out, it is important to focus a bit more on the way that information is presented on the Web site.

[Simon Kennedy]

Yes.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

It is not so much the amounts announced that people need to know, but the amounts spent, that is, the results of the action plan which the communities were able to see.

[Simon Kennedy]

Thank you for your question.

The government has said that Parliament asked it to report every three months. That is the framework in which the government reports on the status of the action plan. We post those reports on our Web site.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you very much.

Now we go to Mr. Warkentin, for the Conservative Party of Canada, for five minutes.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate your testimony this morning and your attendance here at our committee meeting. Obviously there's interest in the supplementary estimates, and we appreciate your answering the questions.

I'm going to divert a little bit away from the actual estimates and ask a follow-up question to the last one.

There is this manual that has been produced. You suggest that you'd provide the committee with a paper copy. I think this is a manual that might serve some purpose in many of our constituency offices as well, to direct certain constituents towards it. If you would provide that to our committee, I think many of us might use it, and it might be something we can distribute to other members of Parliament.

Does that only reference action plan initiatives or is it cross-government services?

[Simon Kennedy]

Thank you for the question.

The guide I was referring to was produced fairly early on in our efforts respecting communications with Canadians, and so there may be a number of newer elements that don't feature in the document. I think members will find the document useful in the sense that it actually describes for each program the terms and conditions of the program, who the actual clients would be who are eligible, and then, for virtually all of the measures, it gives a web address or a telephone number for the individual or the place you can go to get the form or to learn more information. The idea was to have a guide....

As I noted before—clumsily, I didn't recall the word—it's a concordance. There's a concordance in the document so that you can search through it by client group, by department, by the name of the program, etc. The idea would be that people could very quickly get a sense of what would be of benefit to them.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I appreciate that. I think that's a fantastic way, to have a concordance. Often people will come in and explain their particular situation, and I know that folks on the front lines will appreciate this guide.

Is there any discussion that you're aware of within PCO to update this guide so that it would be a compilation of all additional services that may have been added?

[Simon Kennedy]

Thank you for the question.

As I mentioned a little earlier, and maybe to elaborate a little bit, the thinking was that it had been a good initiative to try to pull this guide together, because it's a very client-focused way of explaining the measures in the plan. Certainly a lot of work went into producing it. In effect, this guide and the logic model that went into producing it is now available on the website. If one visits the website, you can click through—for example, “I'm a home owner”—and then get an electronic list of the measures. The website will then send you in many cases directly to the online form or the website of the program so that you can apply.

Because the website is continuously being updated, the most recent version of the guide is on the web, so I think we probably—

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

So that's the best one for us.

[Simon Kennedy]

—at this point are not contemplating doing another paper version. But there is an online version, which is up to date.