Government Operations Committee on Feb. 29th, 2012

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mr. Page.

Thank you, Ève.

For the Conservatives, we have Kelly Block. Five minutes, please, Kelly.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I would like to join my colleagues in welcoming you here today.

I just want to follow up on the comments made by the previous questioner. Just for the record, it's important for us to be clear that this was not the minister who gave the directive to not provide Parliament with information, as is being inferred by the members opposite. You referred to that in your opening comments, but I think they're misrepresenting them.

I do think, though, that your earlier point has been well made, that this system has been in place for a very long time, and perhaps that's why from time to time you have a committee like this one. After they've wrestled with understanding everything involved in the whole estimates process...we need to do a study to try to figure out what is keeping us from being able to do our job well and what needs to change.

I want to refer to a comment that was referred to by my colleague, just in terms of the Auditor General. In 2003 she stated that to facilitate the estimates review it was more productive to concentrate on a particular program or an organization of a relatively small size. In your opening comments, you referred to having some focus on perhaps 5, 10, 15 activities within a department. My question is, if we do that, would not other program activities receive less attention or not be paid any attention to, and how would you see us balancing that?

[Kevin Page]

The government organizes information already on a program activity basis, so this information already exists, and this information is provided in a parallel fashion in the way you vote this supply process. It's actually not a new thing.

We're ready to launch this. We've been working on this for some period of time. I was at the Treasury Board Secretariat when we launched this exercise, and we did it because we wanted to have more transparency. We wanted to give government an opportunity to do strategic review, not on a high level basis but on a gritty basis.

If you organize that information differently and you change the control gate—you could argue it could be used in a proper way, not just by members of cabinet but also by deputy ministers in some sense too—and if you don't go to a U.S.-style system where you're dealing with appropriation bills that are this big, so something like 10 or 15 per department, I think it would incentivize people. I think people would just understand it more than voting on a grant and contribution for $8 billion that exists, say, in Aboriginal and Northern Affairs Canada. If you were voting on aboriginal education, or water, or health issues, or economic development, you would understand that. It would make more sense for people in the ridings, and I don't think it would be overwhelming.

It already exists now. We provide this information, but you just don't vote on it.

You could move that system. Could you actually launch it with one or two departments to test it out? That was the context in which the Auditor General talked about financial reform. Could you try that? It's possible, and if you're interested in doing it, tell us to do it. Tell the bureaucrats to do this and we will do it for you. We could work collaboratively. I'm saying that perhaps not just as the Parliamentary Budget Officer, but as someone who has worked in all these central agencies. We are actually here to work for you. It may not always seem that way, but we are here to do that for you, and if that's what you want, we can do that.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

They don't always seem very grateful.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Just to follow up, you mentioned in response to my colleague's earlier questions the need to change the control gate. I really want to understand. My first thought was whether this was really a question of either/or, or is it both/and? You said we need to move from voting on inputs to program activity-based systems.

Shouldn't we be paying attention to both?

[Kevin Page]

Absolutely. I still think the control gate, and you could have some variation around the expenditures on an activity.... I'm not picking on the coast guard—I love the coast guard—but you could look at their operating and their capital vote, say, within search and rescue, or within oil spill response, or within icebreaking, and they could provide that information. They have it already and they could put this in the docket. That is the kind of information you need.

You do need both, but I think the control gate should be the activities.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

That is five minutes right on, Kelly. Thank you.

Alexandre, for five minutes, please.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Page, I could relate when you said that you could scarcely imagine how a new parliamentarian would feel on the day he gets the big blue book containing the main estimates. I can certainly speak to the terror I felt. I was pretty much scared stiff and in a panic when I saw that extremely complicated book.

Then today, I realize that it may have nothing to do with the budget presented in the same time period. This series of budgetary approvals that spirals over 18 months keeps us completely in the dark. It is a complete and utter shambles and we have no way of knowing what stage we are at, what is supposed to have been spent, what has actually been spent and if it is part of this year's budget or last year's. The system is extremely poorly put together.

You say that, for clarity, the estimates should be linked to the budget in a small chart. I feel that really is the basic question at the root of the current problems. I come back to the question of timing and the calendar.

Do you think that bringing down the budget in the fall is a good solution that would bring the two together? What other interesting options could be considered in order to achieve that objective?

[Kevin Page]

Mr. McCallum asked the same question. It is not really a solution, but it is an option. But I doubt if it is an option for the deputy minister in the Department of Finance, because he prefers the budget to be in the spring. But in the past, we have had updates that were almost real budgets in themselves.

It is still an option. It is not really a solution. It is possible to arrange the work of the cabinet so that…

publishes at the same time the main estimates and the budget. It's possible. Other countries do that.

I am sorry.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

That's fine. I know that Mr. McCallum asked the same question in English. But it was the same question that I had asked in French about the G8 summit. He wanted it on the record in English, so I am just doing the same thing.

Let me refer back to Joe Jordan, who was here in a previous session. He had some interesting proposals for us. Just now, there was a sudden interest in your purchase of some software, the cost of which seems to me to be very reasonable, and, I assume, completely justified given your work.

Would it be possible to imagine an Internet resource that would let people, meaning parliamentarians, Canadians and civil society groups, to conduct research into government estimates and into budget expenses, and where data could be cross-referenced and compared between financial years? Can we get a system that is really transparent and accessible to Canadians as a whole? Do you think it would be worthwhile to invest in a system like that, and is it possible that it would provide results? We hear a lot of talk about open government. Would that not be a way to make data available? It is feasible? Is it desirable?

[Kevin Page]

I think so. But it is important to start with a vision. Is it possible to create a tool like that, to realign the information about the program activities of all departments with the information on supply matters? Yes, it is possible to make a lot of progress along those lines.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

You have 90 seconds, Alexandre.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

A little earlier, you made comparisons with other countries. You mentioned Australia and New Zealand. In terms of government practices, transparency and the ability of legislators to verify and keep a good eye on government expenses, of the 24 OECD member countries, do you feel that Canada is ranked as one of the good ones, the very good ones or the mediocre ones?

[Kevin Page]

I think it is better to look at the various aspects of our system of budget expenditures and revenues in general. But if you want to know whether Canada deserves an A, a B or a C for its level of transparency and analysis, I would say that the Department of Finance is, in general, doing a good job in terms of transparency and the reconciliation of accounts. Is it possible to improve its performance in that area? Of course it is.

For example, in New Zealand, the deputy minister is responsible for signing off on all estimates. It's not the minister who says he is satisfied, it is the deputy minister, the public servant. So it is possible for Canada to improve in all areas.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Time is up, Alexandre. Thank you.

Ron Cannan, you have five minutes, please.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you very much.

It's always a pleasure to see you, Mr. Page, and your colleagues.

My colleague, Mr. Jean, mentioned the history of deemed. Is there some genesis, or has it been like that since day one? Or is there some other history that we're not aware of as far as the deemed process is concerned?

[Kevin Page]

I'm not a historian—I try to be an economist—but I think it goes as far back as something like 1968, when it was brought in. What would be the context back in the late sixties, and why did they decide that this system had gotten to such a state where if they didn't look at estimates, they would say, let's just approve them? Obviously it was a sad state back then, which I think speaks to Mr. Brian Jean's comments that this is an ongoing process that we need to continue to improve.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

You mentioned there could be a more symbolic or symptomatic testament than the deemed rule. What are you recommending? I know at the last committee we talked about this being such a big issue. It's almost like, “How do you eat the elephant? One bite at a time.” It's overwhelming for some people, so the easiest thing to do is to say, well, go for it, we trust you.

I really appreciate some of the names of other countries. We're going to study this, and hopefully we can get a video conference to those gentlemen in other countries, to get their expertise. Our goal is to make this much more accountable and open, if not for us, for future generations, as well as parliamentarians.

A colleague who served for seven years, from 1997 to 2004, was at our last committee meeting and he talked about some of the recommendations, but nothing has really been carried through.

What would you say is the starting point in the process? What can we say is a first step to move to a much more easily understood...not only for new members of Parliament but for veterans as well?

[Kevin Page]

If we had to start with one thing, I would go to structure more than process. I see deemed as just symptomatic of failure: I can't do this, I give up. If you change the structure and you go to an activity-based...that becomes the control gate. I think you actually bring in a lot of simplification overall. It won't be an easy job, but again, in terms of making that change, it would need to be studied. Other countries are already doing this. You can speak to the Australians. You can speak to New Zealanders. You can speak to South Africa. You could bring in these professors and they would tell you why and what the experience has been in those countries when they made the transition.

I would start there. I would focus less on let's just get rid of the deemed rule. I see that as a symptom, not a cause.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

My colleague Mike Wallace has been great on this committee in just trying to sit down and understand the numbering. We both came from local government backgrounds. Even from the private business sector, it's almost, as you said, set up to be so confusing that nobody wants to take.... We're so busy doing all of the other things we do that we don't have time to really look at it in-depth.

Two-thirds of the budget is basically statutorily allocated, so we're looking at about $90 billion. On the capacity to assess government-wide planned expenditures by program activities of a high level, what do we have in place right now?

[Kevin Page]

You have literally thousands of public service employees, where I worked in these departments, who do this type of analysis in the Treasury Board Secretariat, in line departments. You need to get access to that information. That information actually exists right now. We just need to make it available to you. This has been a problem for many years. If you go to the websites now, you don't find that analysis. I don't know if we've stopped producing it or we just decided it's not a good thing to make it available and it creates too many problems. I think you need to get access to that information. Again, that's why we feel like we're actually here. It's to give you access to another data point on projections and analysis around projections. It's another data point around costing. Some of these bigger, high-profile cases are out there.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

How many years have you been working in the public service?

[Kevin Page]

At this point, sir, I'm in my 31st year.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

This has been systemic for a number of years, then.

[Kevin Page]

Yes, although I think it's getting worse.