Public Accounts Committee on April 2nd, 2009

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome. It's nice to see you again, and thank you for coming.

Regarding the Passport Canada audit, I note from the other areas of concern in the 2007 report that the agency's progress had been satisfactory and you were pleased with progress made in processing delays and contingency plans, but you had concerns with gaps.

We all bring different experiences to this committee. I used to work at Bell Canada, and we had service standards for answering telephones. Sometimes they were higher and sometimes they were lower and we had wait times on telephones and we had wait times to greet customers, etc.

The plans they have implemented here are fairly impressive. They brought in 76 new agents. They opened a new processing plant for mailing, which is a big part of their business. They expanded their regional offices. They broadened access to passport services. So these were all good things. And this is one that would be close to my heart, which is that they streamlined processes for walk-in applications, because nobody likes waiting in line, whether it's at a government agency or a bank or anywhere else.

Something that I thought was particularly interesting was a communications plan, because communication plans can be very powerful. Instead of waiting for everybody to come in at the last minute saying they have to get their passport--the Americans want to see one if they fly into the States, or if they arrive by land or sea--they reached out to the public and told them this was coming. They wrote to a lot of people, especially in border cities, and told them this was coming, so if they thought they were going to be travelling, they should get a passport. It could save a tonne of money on the operational side, because Passport Canada doesn't have the overtime hours and they don't have to rent new space and all that kind of thing. So the lineups and the delays in the turnaround times are in much, much better shape.

With regard to the gaps you wanted to identify, you said they had not established at what level of applications the actions should kick in, that there was no estimate on how much each contingency plan would increase capacity, and that it wasn't clear who should initiate the plans. My business experience is that when you're in an environment like that, there are some decisions you want to make on the front line, on the day, or within the week, etc., and they would normally go to the vice-president or the president. But you asked them to have something in writing. That makes sense, and the agency agreed with your recommendations.

But it struck me that by the time you did this audit, they had done all the heavy lifting. They'd made all the changes they needed, or most of the changes they needed to improve the service, and you were identifying things that, if you sat down at a senior management meeting, you could probably make those decisions based on the productivity analysis you already had.

Does that make sense to you?

[Sheila Fraser]

Chair, I'd just add that we were very pleased with the progress Passport Canada had made in addressing the issues from 2006-07. It's obvious from the audit that they took that very seriously. They put a number of contingency plans in place.

But what we found missing, as the member has mentioned, was, in a sense, the triggers. They can have people work longer hours in an office; that would probably be fairly easy to manage just by seeing lineups. But if they have to bring in more people and train them--

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

It's a longer cycle.

[Sheila Fraser]

--you can't wait until you need them, because there's a time lag.

So we said they had to identify what would trigger the various contingency plans and who would be responsible for making those decisions. If they're ever invited to committee.... It's my understanding that has now been completed. It wasn't completed at the time we completed our audit, so I can't really talk much to it, but just through conversations with the Passport Office, we understand they have developed the various triggers to be ready for a potential surge in demand.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

That makes sense to me because, as I said, these strike me as being management decisions they could do in a half-day or one-day planning session and say, these are the triggers; these are the ones they're going to use. They have to make sure the front-line staff and the management teams know.

But I think, for the record, it's important to note that it appears Passport Canada is resourced and is ready to process sudden spikes in demand and large volumes of passports.

[Sheila Fraser]

That is our understanding, but again, to be fair to them, if Canadians all wait until the last week of May to ask for a passport to go to the United States, I would guess it's very likely there will be very long lineups. I think they have tried very hard to communicate with Canadians not to wait until the last minute. That's where they got caught last time with the western hemisphere travel initiative, around which there was a lot of uncertainty. Then it came in and there was a space of two months, and I think people woke up at the last minute and realized they needed that passport to get on the airplane. So I hope Canadians will respond and file their applications early.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Young.

Mr. Wilfert, for five minutes.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Fraser, it's nice to see you again. It's been a while, given my responsibilities.

On the issue of the Olympics, we had the defence department before us to talk about preparation. We know that since 2001 the goal has been to eliminate many of the barriers and walls in terms of information sharing. We know the importance. We saw the report on public safety, the interoperability issues, a way forward. You commented in this report on some of those issues--conceptual strategy--but how far has it gone?

Through you, Mr. Chairman, on the Olympics, we keep hearing from National Defence, for example, that the RCMP is the lead. Well, what kind of information are we sharing here? Well, we're not really at that stage yet. We have this information. What about Passport Canada in terms of watch lists dealing with Canada border security and things of that nature?

My question is this. How confident are you with regard to the present situation in terms of the government's commitment on the issue of interoperability, particularly in light of security concerns with the Olympics? Where should we be in terms of moving this file forward to ensure Canadians that when the Olympics come we will be the best prepared, not only in the sharing of information domestically, but also, in particular, with our cousins south of the border, who obviously are also playing a role?

[Sheila Fraser]

That is a very difficult question, Mr. Chair.

I would just caution that we did not look at any of the arrangements or at any of the security that's been put in place for the Olympics. I do understand that a separate organizational structure has been put in place to deal with that.

We note in the report that we have seen progress made in information sharing. I'd use the example of watch lists. When we did the first audit of this, it was actually very disappointing to see how poor the communication was. Though there are still some gaps remaining, there has been significant improvement made in that area.

The main concerns we've raised about information sharing are really in the airports and around potential criminal activity. So there are still issues. We note in the report too that several departments and agencies cite obstacles or barriers--legal ones. I think it's really important that the Department of Justice complete their review as quickly as possible to determine if those barriers are in fact present and then how to resolve them. We do know there is certain legislation that does preclude agencies from sharing information. That needs to be addressed, and agencies have raised this actually quite consistently. So I would say that's one of the major areas that really need focused attention.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

The concern I have, through you, Mr. Chairman, is that there needs to be a clear, designated lead, because again, although you didn't look at the Olympics per se, the issue is that everyone is pointing the finger at somebody else to say, “Well, no, we think they're taking care of it.” They will share information if they think it is appropriate, and I'm not sure always what “appropriate” means.

My understanding is how they lead in terms of security, and yet the defence department has to be clearly involved, and obviously public security agencies, etc. Again, interoperability has been clearly designated as a key since 2001. We live in silos around this place. If we could blow them all up, we would be much better off, because people don't want to share; they're all worried about their own little turf. When it comes down to it, then, they blame someone else and we were getting, “In the event that something happens, you really have to talk to them.” We want to know certainly as policy-makers that we have the right tools in place.

In my view, this isn't a partisan issue. This is in terms of security, to make sure who's coming into this country...that this is dealt with effectively, and now we have about less than a year to go.

I appreciate your comment with regard to the Department of Justice. They have to move on that, and that should be signalled as a major priority so that we can move the yardsticks. If not, we will again have the same issues we've been plagued with before.

[Sheila Fraser]

I agree with you. When we did our first audit of this whole question of national security, the whole question of interoperability and information sharing was the major finding. There were significant problems there. Now, we have seen some progress, I would say, over the last five or six years, but there are still issues, and I would suspect, quite frankly, that a lot of them are cultural. These are organizations that just through their training do not share information, and it takes time to resolve that.

Other than that, I really can't say much more about the Olympics in particular.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I think there's no question, then, that we as parliamentarians are going to have to look very seriously at getting the right players in the same room and, really, to get an action plan in terms of the progress.

We were dealing today, at the special Afghanistan committee, with the issue of how we deal with sensitive information. As a member of the Privy Council, I can use PC, but beyond that I don't get any information anymore. Even though this committee can empower for top-secret documents, any documents we want, if a department decides or a minister decides not to give it to us, we know the wrangle we have to go through, and by the end, probably the issue will be over.

So we want to make sure we have that in place so we can assure Canadians and, obviously, visitors coming that these are in place.

[Sheila Fraser]

Well, it's an interesting issue you raise, because we raised that in our audit in 2002, and then again in 2005, about the ability of members of Parliament to effectively oversee national security when they were not able to get secret information. It has come up even, in fact, in some of our audit reports, where we have had to redact or were unable to provide information that was classified, which we could see but we couldn't talk to parliamentarians about because they did not have the necessary clearances.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

We're reviving Bill C-81 to try to deal with that, but again, for parliamentarians on either side of the aisle here it's a major issue.

[Sheila Fraser]

Absolutely.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Wilfert.

Mr. Fast, you have five minutes, please.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Fraser and your team, for helping us understand your report.

I've had a chance to review the news releases you issued coming out of this report, and reading them and reading the reports themselves, I'd like to know if it is safe to say that you're generally encouraged about the direction in which our government is going in addressing the recommendations you've made.

[Sheila Fraser]

I would say we are pleased with the progress government departments have made. I will be quite honest in saying we don't look to see which particular government has done things. Many of these audits will, of course, be in recent years; others have been in progress over several years.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

All right. Well, thank you.

What I'll do is be a little specific. First of all, I want to focus in on the GIC appointment process.

You had some criticisms of the process. Is it fair to say they focused on the timeliness of the appointments, not the qualifications of the individuals who were being appointed?

[Sheila Fraser]

We had two main concerns in that audit. One is timeliness, and the other is the communication with GIC, either appointees or people who are not being reappointed. We did not look at the qualifications. It would be, I believe, inappropriate for us to assess the qualifications of the people being appointed.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

So when the chair, Mr. Murphy, suggested earlier that the political affiliations of some of these appointees should prevent them from sitting in these positions, you responded by saying a political party affiliation shouldn't disqualify someone, provided it's not a prerequisite for the appointment. Correct?

[Sheila Fraser]

That's correct.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

All right. I'm glad to hear you say that and to clear the record on that.

Ms. Fraser, there was also the issue of the treaty land entitlement obligations. While you were, I think, generally fairly supportive of the progress we're making in converting lands to the reserves, there was one issue you raised that had to do with the resolution of third party interests. Now, one of the jurisdictions you looked at was Saskatchewan. Am I correct in assuming you were fairly impressed with the progress that was being made in that province with respect to these third party interest resolutions?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes, that is correct. In fact, Saskatchewan works quite closely with first nations and third parties to try to resolve these issues. One of the points we're raising is that the region of Manitoba does not have the same kind of efforts.