Government Operations Committee on May 10th, 2010

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

That's a lot of money for no action. I'll just point that out.

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have about two minutes.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Okay, great. Thank you.

I just want to go back for a minute to the amount of money that in your department has been increasing. I think in 2006-07--this is from the report on plans and priorities, not the mains--it was about $127.4 million, compared with today's current amount, which is significantly higher than that.

Can you account for the difference? Besides the EAP--we've gone over that--it's a significant increase in departmental requirements for PCO. Can you just describe, besides EAP, what other things you've needed this extra money for?

[Marilyn MacPherson]

One of the major causes of fluctuations in the PCO budget is with respect to commissions of inquiry. Those are put into place at the prerogative of the Prime Minister. We have had several since 2006, including Air India. We've also had the commission of inquiry led by Judge Oliphant on the allegations on business dealings between Karlheinz Schreiber and the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney. We have also just established the Cohen commission.

When the commissions are established, their costs can be quite significant, so they will cause quite a change in our budget. There's also the Afghanistan task force, which is also an initiative scheduled to change at the end of 2011-12. We have had EAP, and we had the coordinator for the Olympics and G8.

So we have various initiatives that come in at short periods of time, inflate our budget, and then disappear.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We now go to Monsieur Jean Dorion for eight minutes.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Ms. MacPherson, thank you for coming to testify before our committee.

According to the acting Information Commissioner of Canada, the Privy Council refused to respond to information requests made to it in one out of five cases. When it responds, it takes 157 days on average to do it, which is five times longer than what the Act provides.

Could you tell us what criteria allow the Privy Council to refuse to answer certain questions?

[Marilyn MacPherson]

In response to your question, we get a lot of ATIP requests at the Privy Council Office, and we make every effort to respond to those requests in a timely manner. Because we often will have requests that are fairly complex, there is a requirement for us to have consultations with other departments. Frequently we need to send those documents to the Department of Foreign Affairs or to DND. In doing so, extensions are required. Although we have a long period of time to respond to requests, we do use extensions because we want to ensure that the material is properly reviewed.

Am I responding to your full question?

[Yvan Roy, Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet and Counsel to the Clerk of the Privy Council, Legislation and House Planning and Machinery of Government, Privy Council Office]

Madam Chair, may I intervene?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Yes.

[Yvan Roy]

I would like to add this. One of the complex factors that the Privy Council Office has to deal with is the fact that Cabinet confidences are exempt from the legislation, as provided in section 69 of the Access to Information Act.

You will understand that Cabinet confidences, when there are consultations throughout the government, are produced within the Privy Council. To some extent, the times we are talking about result from that concentration. The demarcation lines around Cabinet confidences are governed by the legislation and require special attention. That does not explain all the time you are alluding to, but to a large extent, it is explained by that phenomenon.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

So we could say that it doesn't explain everything. Are there other factors that might explain it?

We are talking about very long times. We are talking, first, about cases where no response is given. Part of those cases can perhaps be explained by certain exceptions provided, because of confidentiality. When there actually is a response, and I don't think the reason it takes time is because the legislation prohibits a response, it comes after 157 days, on average. Do you understand that it is difficult for the public to understand how it takes 157 days to do what the law requires be done in 30 days?

[Marilyn MacPherson]

In response to the comment, again, I agree that there is a 30-day window that was anticipated by the law to be able to respond to these requests. Unfortunately, many of the files that come to PCO are quite complex. They involve security. They may involve solicitor-client privilege. When you have documents that have to be reviewed by several departments, it takes quite an extensive period of time to do that review.

We also are very mindful of trying to establish a reasonable time for the extensions. And we get back to the people who are asking for the access requests to explain the amount of time it's going to take. We want to be realistic. There's no point in telling them that we're going to get it back in 100 days when in fact we know that it's going to take longer. We try to be as ethical as we can be in giving people an understanding of when they might expect a response.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

In fact, 157 days is a very long time. What measures do you intend to adopt to improve this situation?

[Marilyn MacPherson]

I should mention, notwithstanding the comments by the commissioner regarding extensions, that every time we do an extension on an access request, we provide an explanation, a rationale for the extension, and the reason for the number of days. That is sent to the commissioner. We have not received any feedback that our rationales are in error.

We have resourced our ATIP office up to 27 FTEs. It's extremely difficult to keep good people. We've put into place our own program for training ATIP officers, starting at the junior level and proceeding up to the senior level. We are trying to do everything we can to speed up the process, as much as we can, inside the organization. We have put in place a process, and we've standardized correspondence. To the extent that we're able to control the process, we are making efforts to do so. But again, once those documents go for consultation to other organizations, we can't necessarily control the timeframe for those institutions.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

The President of Treasury Board recently announced that the Privy Council Office will be one of 13 federal agencies that will be the subject of a strategic review, during fiscal 2010-2011. Do you think it is possible that if the Privy Council's budget is reduced by 5%, that will interfere in its ability to give answers under the Access to Information Act?

[Marilyn MacPherson]

I don't want to speak ahead of the process, but I don't believe there is any lack of commitment to the access to information process in the Privy Council Office. The strategic review is really meant to be a strategic look at areas where we can become more efficient and go for higher priorities. I don't see in either of those circumstances that we would jeopardize the access to information area in the department.

As I mentioned, we've already done quite a bit of work to become more efficient with the workload.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you, madam.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you. Merci.

We now go to Mr. Brown for eight minutes.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Thank you for coming in today, Mr. Roy and Ms. MacPherson.

I have a few questions to start off with. I realize that there are some unique pressures on the budget this year, and I thought it would be helpful for the committee to allow you to elaborate a little bit on some of these unique pressures.

I understand that there are obviously significant expenses related to the G8 and G20 meetings. Could we start off with elaborating on those expenses and how they affect your budget?

[Marilyn MacPherson]

The increase in our budget from main estimates last year to main estimates this year is $15 million, but I would like to point out that $13 million of that was actually included in our 2009-10 budget through the supplementary estimates.

With respect to the various increases, as I mentioned we have $7.6 million in chronic underfunding pressures--for example, there is $1.1 million of that for the Prime Minister's tour group. This is a group of 13 people who accompany the Prime Minister on all events he participates in, both domestically and abroad. They do all of the broadcast--sound, lighting, recording services, flags, and staging. They also set up an office for the Prime Minister so he can continue to do his functions with secure voice and data transmission. We have had chronic overages in overtime, freight and cargo, and equipment replacement going back to 2006 and 2007, so we are looking for some additional funding of $1.1 million.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

How did the Olympics affect your budget in the last year? Are there any lingering costs associated with the Olympics?

[Marilyn MacPherson]

We had funding for the coordinator of the Olympics and the G8, and that was for an amount of $2 million in 2009-10. Ongoing into 2010-11, that amount has been reduced to $1 million. There will be ongoing activities until the G8 and G20 summits are completed.

[Yvan Roy]

Perhaps we should point out that the bulk of the costs associated with the G8 and G20 are to be taken care of by other departments; PCO only has the function of coordinating some of the security efforts. That's the reason Madam MacPherson is talking in terms of $2 million going to $1 million and eventually going to nothing once the function is not required. Obviously the security costs for the G8 and the G20 are much more extensive than that, but they are not within the PCO budget.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

But referencing the coordination costs--I think you said $13 million for the G8 and the $2 million for the Olympics--those are unique costs that have been pressures on the PCO. I think it highlights why there was a need, obviously, for a budgetary increase. I think no one would ever question the pride we have in having those events. Having the Olympics, and having the G8 and the G20, obviously are incredible opportunities for Canada. The coordination by the PCO is terribly important to having that done in a professional manner. That's why I can appreciate this being rightfully responsible for some of the increased budget costs.

Another thing that was mentioned in one of the questions--I thought you could draw it out a little--was the cost with advertising, with the economic action plan. I do think that was important. I remember sitting in this committee room a year ago, and there was an opposition question about why we weren't spending money on advertising how Canada was going to get out of this recession, why we weren't building confidence so that Canadians would be optimistic about their country's economy. One member referenced in a question why we didn't have a website like they have in the U.S., where you can pinpoint projects.

Well, here we are a year and a half later, and that's happened. I think we've actually seen increased confidence in the economy. We have a website where Canadians can see where projects have occurred in their own communities. Looking back a year and a half ago to now, you can see the success of some of the work that has been undertaken by the PCO.

Could you reference for us some of the costs associated with that advertising, what the costs were for building this confidence we've seen growing in Canada with our economy?

[Marilyn MacPherson]

First I will explain that while PCO has an overarching responsibility for the coordination of the communications strategy for the economic action plan, we do not actually have any advertising money. All of the advertising is done by the departments that have the programs.

However, we do have a coordination role to make sure that the branding is consistent and that the signage is consistent. We do all the monitoring of the media. We give advice to departments to ensure that everything they're doing is in line. For example, the website is a huge undertaking. We have about 22,000 web pages. We coordinate with over 30 departments, on 9,500 specific EAP projects. It is a very significant effort to continue to keep that up and running, to continue to provide advice to other departments, and to keep the whole EAP out there until the end of this fiscal year.