Evidence of meeting #11 for Public Accounts in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was framework.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:55 p.m.
Deputy Minister and Deputy Receiver General for Canada, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Well, you know, it's simply.... I made references to the review we carried out. It's a lesser number of cases.
People are driven by wanting to do the right thing for an outcome. They need some help and assistance, and they have to think it through. But it's not sufficient to think it through. My point is that you have to document what it is you're doing. You have to get the proper disclosure agreement if you need to have one. You have to have legal services review it. You have to make it in line with what Treasury Board is suggesting.
If you have the right parameters, probably it is less of an issue. When it is not with the right parameters, you do have an issue.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
March 24th, 2009 / 4:55 p.m.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
Mr. Chair, I was looking at more than $1 billion a year in contracts for professional services. I hearkened back to a time many years ago when I wore a different hat as an international lawyer working in Asia. I recall that we were contracting for a certain Southeast Asian country. We provided a report on work permits for foreign nationals in that country. I handed a report I had done very proudly to my colleague, who was from that host country. He took my report, held it for a minute, and said, “Not heavy enough.” I'm glad to see that you're not grading your professional services on that kind of one-instrument basis.
I listened closely to your opening remarks, Mr. Guimont. In English, you wrote, “We are pleased that the Auditor General found that PWGSC awarded publicly tendered contracts correctly in 95% of cases and sole-sourced contracts in 96% of cases.” In French, you were even more effusive. You said, “Nous sommes ravis.” I think there's a consensus that things are going very well.
To prepare for this meeting, I looked back at the 2003 report, which has already been referred to. In that report of November 2003, chapter 3 does focus on the sponsorship program, as you said, Ms. Fraser. In case there are some practices here that could be replicated, let me just quote something and see what we've done to move forward in such an astonishingly good way.
Back in 2003, it was written: “From 1997 until 31 August 2001, the federal government ran the Sponsorship Program in a way that showed little regard for Parliament, the Financial Administration Act, contracting rules and regulations, transparency, and value for money”. Skipping a little bit, we come to this: “Oversight mechanisms and essential controls at Public Works and Government Services Canada failed to detect, prevent, or report violations.”
So things have improved since. I would appreciate hearing first from you, Mr. Guimont, and then from you, Ms. Fraser. What has happened? What were the practices? Could you identify perhaps three things that have improved? It's a good-news story, and I want to make sure we understand the good news.
4:55 p.m.
Deputy Minister and Deputy Receiver General for Canada, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I'll start by saying that as a manager and as the accounting officer for the department, I always make a distinction between mistakes and wrongdoing.
Wrongdoing is not good, and I'll let Madam Fraser speak to that issue. I don't think we're dealing with wrongdoing issues here; it was mistakes. Some mistakes were made, and we want to learn from mistakes. We should be in a continuous improvement mode. That's the thing. If you find something, I welcome that. When we felt that the assessment she had carried out was complete, I didn't wait; we just started working on it. This is the continuous improvement mentality, and it permeates the organization. We're working on getting our fundamentals right. That's being best of class. It's a pretty simple philosophy.
The framework that Madam Meredith described is meant to put that together. It's almost like looking at a framework that had bits and pieces here and there; through her work, it has now been assembled.
The dog has a head. It's called governance. Then there's the body. It's the body of things that we have. I don't want to call it the tail, but we're going to be doing monitoring. I believe I have a very good framework, and I believe my people will want to do the right thing--I'm convinced of that--but the monitoring keeps things in perspective.
We're going to be doing, as she described, a sample of 200. That's not nothing; it's 200 repeatedly. We're going to find other things. We're going to go at it in a continuous improvement mode. I think this framework, with the employer-employee relationship guide, is a comprehensive as it can be. I guarantee we'll find bits and pieces, and we're going to go at them, correct them, and continuously improve.
I'm putting big emphasis on monitoring. Monitoring is a big deal because it allows you to see where you are in real time.
5 p.m.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
I was hoping Ms. Fraser might answer from her perspective.
5 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
As I mentioned earlier, I don't think the results of the 2003 audit should be extrapolated to the whole department. The system of management within that program was unique and very unusual. We mentioned in the audit at the time that it was outside all the normal processes of Public Works. If this audit that we've just completed had been done then, I don't know what the results would have been, but I'm almost convinced we would not have found the really bad results we found in that particular program.
5 p.m.
Conservative
John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
It wouldn't have been--
5 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I don't think an audit on professional services contracting would have had the kinds of results that we had in the audit of the sponsorship program. That's why the sponsorship program was so unusual at the time.
That being said, though, I think the government is paying much more attention to management than it did years ago. The deputy has already alluded to some of the things that are being done. There is much more training for people; there are self-assessments. There's the management accountability framework, which assesses performance in management issues. The requests for action plans by parliamentary committees, the efforts to find out what departments are actually doing, the introduction of departmental audit committees—these and other factors have put more rigour into management, and people are paying more attention to it.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
I'd like to ask a few technical questions of the Auditor General and then ask a few more of PWGSC's Monsieur Guimont.
Madame Fraser, the sample that you did of 43 contracts, do you know what the total value of the contracts was?
5 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I'm afraid I don't have that. If the committee wishes, we could get it for you.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
No problem.
With respect to sole source contracts, there were some categories required. Out of the 69 that were completed with conditions, do you know which category they fell into—whether they were the under $25,000, whether they were architectural engineering, whether they were CIDA, whether there was only one person capable? Do you have that breakdown?
5 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I don't have the exact breakdown, but we looked at all contracts over $10,000, and most would have been between $10,000 and $25,000, so these would have fallen into the first exception.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
My third question is to Madame Meredith. I think you brought to our attention that there is a MERX system that people can use. When that was a system that the provincial government also used, a lot of the bidders were complaining that it was a very cumbersome process. They couldn't go on to the system. They had to do a lot of paperwork. Has it improved? Do you hear about problems? Is the ombudsman now getting complaints? Is it his or her job to do that sort of investigation?
5:05 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I think it's primarily the job of our Office of Small and Medium Enterprises. We have an office that operates in Ottawa, in the national capital area, as well as offices across the country, in every province. This is a network that allows us to hear from businesses. Medium-sized enterprises go up to 500 employees, so that covers a good number of our suppliers. We hear when they are having trouble accessing our contracts, whether it's a problem with the public tendering system—which is MERX in this case—or other aspects of our procurement, and we work through those issues. I think I can say that there are improvements continuously being made. There are some things that we can't change in the short term, so we look for improvements over the longer term. But we are in constant communication with small and medium enterprises, and we're certainly open to making changes in the best way we can.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
With respect to sole source contractors, I believe you have a list available on your data bank. Is that how you access them, or can they register themselves on the MERX database?
5:05 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Typically, on that system, we inform suppliers of government buying opportunities. So it's us going to them with our intention to buy something.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
5:05 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
We have special mechanisms. There are different types of systems that can be used. One is called Professional Services Online, and there are other special avenues for gaining access to suppliers.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
I have one last question. You have a departmental action plan—the contract management control framework. Could you tell me how I read this? I am a person who knows Gantt charts. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm looking at your action plan, and I'm just curious to know how I should read it. This way? That way? How does the grid meet?
5:05 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I imagine that you're looking at a multi-coloured grid?
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Yasmin Ratansi Liberal Don Valley East, ON
No, I'm actually looking at a little asterisk, which says “Procurement oversight.” It would probably cover governance, control, risk management, monitoring, reporting, but I'm not comfortable as to what it would do and how it would do it and who would do it and...do you know what I'm talking about?
This grid in the action plan--I'm just curious as to how I'm supposed to read it.
5:05 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I think what we're saying is that we have certain actions or elements, whether it's our committee or whether it's the guide, and we're mapping it against each part of the framework. So if you read across the top, you see the elements of the framework. And I guess the framework—
