Public Accounts Committee on May 14th, 2014

[Tina Namiesniowski]

Many of the business risk management programs that we refer to: AgriStability, AgriInvest, AgriInsurance—those are actually federal-provincial programs in many—

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Again, going back to what triggers an assessment in the first place, it did seem to be that 45 days seems to be an issue here. Can you give me an idea what triggers that? Is it a provincial inspection, when they come to you and say, “We may have a problem here; we may have a disease that's breaking out and we may not know until the end of season how bad it is, or we may have a drought and we're not sure what the conditions are going to be”?

Mr. Chair, I know in my area, conditions can change quite rapidly. If you ever want to visit, you certainly can come out.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Be careful, I might take you up on that.

A very brief answer, if you don't mind please. Thank you.

Mr. Lloyd, do you have a comment?

[Rosser Lloyd]

There's no formal criteria when a request for an assessment comes in. It's generally as you say: you end up with a negative situation someplace out there; there's some sense that it's worthy of an assessment; the request comes in; and we then launch into a formal assessment of the situation.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Great. Thanks very much.

Moving over now, back to Madam Jones. You have the floor, ma'am.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you.

Regarding programs related to disasters, you said earlier that the AgriRecovery program is not the first line of priority for your department. When there are such disasters and a need for a program like this, are there additional human resources deployed to do that work? Or do you do it with the in-house staff you already have?

[Tina Namiesniowski]

Maybe I could just back up for a minute and simply say, Mr. Chairman, the AgriRecovery is not a program; it's a framework, and it can lead, depending on the results of an assessment process, to the establishment of a specific initiative to deal with a particular situation.

I can tell you we have dedicated staff that support the AgriRecovery program, so we do have staff in-house that work to deliver, that work as part of the assessment process, and engage regularly with provinces and territories and affected producers. They would be implicated in the decision-making process that the federal and provincial governments would make with respect to any particular initiative, which would then subsequently be delivered by a province or territory, as the case may be.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Also, do you have a process within your department to ensure that the work is getting done? That the targets are being met? That there is a level of accountability? Who within your department would be responsible for making sure that those things happen?

[Rosser Lloyd]

That's Tina and I. As the OAG indicated, there's not a formal reporting system and we have now fixed that with that recommendation number 3, I believe it was. We had taken those steps to do so.

On the earlier point, when we do those assessments, the individuals involved in those assessments make sure that the other programs are coming to bear as well. We implicate the AgriStability people, either our own delivery or the province, to make sure that the producers are getting access to AgriStability, AgriInsurance, and AgriInvest, of course as well.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

The department had established a performance measure framework to complete all of the assessments within 45 days 90% of the time. That's correct, right? Obviously this number came from somewhere. It was an attainable goal that was obviously set by the department to be used, or at least a guide that you could work towards.

So why is it there's such a large discrepancy between the 16% that we saw and the 90% target that you set, and yet you tell me that you have dedicated staff, that you have people who are responsible for ensuring that these targets are met? I'd like to have an explanation for that.

[Rosser Lloyd]

The 45 days was set very early on when we were looking at the framework with the provinces. It was naive. The first error we made was exactly the point that was made earlier: the request doesn't come in when we know the situation, which is basically what we were assuming when we set the 45 days. The request for the assessment tends to come in as soon as we know there's a negative situation out there. That's one of the fundamental reasons why we have to look at that 45 days. We have to understand when it starts and when it stops. In situations like drought, when you get a situation where it starts raining, you have to wait until you can understand that.

So the 45 days was set early. There wasn't a full understanding of how the thing worked at that point in time, because it was a new framework. We are learning lessons as we go along.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

If you're looking at a disaster like this in the country, or you're looking at a flood that's impacting a lot of people who are in the agriculture business, what would be the role of the minister, the governance role, in this process to ensure that targets are met, that people are not waiting, that applications that are supposed to be assessed within a timeframe are not being delayed by three times that? What's the accountability role for the minister and the governance level here?

[Tina Namiesniowski]

Ultimately the minister is accountable to Parliament for what happens within his department, but we are also very accountable, as public servants, in terms of the effective delivery of programs that fall within our sphere of influence. Because agriculture is a shared jurisdiction, you definitely have a similar set of accountabilities in other jurisdictions.

As we've underscored today, we do work very closely with those jurisdictions in the context of responding to particular disasters. I can tell you that our minister is quite interested in our ability to provide effective and efficient responses in relation to dealing with the concerns of producers, as we are as well.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Sorry, ma'am, the time has expired.

Mr. Carmichael, you have the floor, sir.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon to our witnesses.

I'd like to start with Mr. Ferguson, and then, as officials feel appropriate, please jump in.

I'm looking at paragraph 8.35 in the report, where you talk about a guide to developing performance measurement strategies, and about the latter being both valid and relevant. In 8.36 you go further to outline some timeliness targets that you referred to in 8.14. You say in here that 80% of the expected producers affected apply for assistance. Somewhere, then, 20% of those who were affected went elsewhere. Did they meet their needs, or were their needs met under AgriStability or AgriInvest?

You also state in here that “...70 percent of producers surveyed are still farming one year after the disaster payment, and 75 percent of producers surveyed believe that the financial assistance provided under the program played a role in their recovery.” In your report you talk about the two-thirds and the one third, where two-thirds were somewhat satisfied or thoroughly satisfied, completely satisfied, with the timeliness.

When you did the survey, was the survey done in highlighting the timelines of 45 days to ten and a half months and looking for their feedback on those timelines, or was it done on the basis of a crisis, a disaster, that was in place, and they've met certain financial constraints and significant issues, and their response on somewhat timely and completely timely was based on the moneys that were paid out of the AgriRecovery or one of the other agri programs to meet their need in the midst of that crisis?

I wonder if you could answer that one, sir.

[Michael Ferguson]

I think to understand the surveys, we need to go to what we say in paragraph 8.31:

The Department’s performance measurement framework states that surveys should be undertaken to assess how well AgriRecovery assists producers. We found that the Department has not ensured that such surveys have been conducted for many initiatives and therefore does not have the information to determine whether AgriRecovery is assisting producers.

So under the department's performance measurement framework, there was the intention to do these surveys, but we didn't find that they had been done in all the cases. We went out and basically, I guess, dealt with two sort of high-level questions. One was around whether the amount was satisfactory to deal with the types of problems. The other one was to deal with whether they felt the payments were received in a timely fashion.

We didn't ask if they were received within the timeframe of the department, or if they were happy with the timeframe of the department, because the program objectives were about providing quick, targeted assistance to facilitate the return to work as rapidly as possible. That's why we were asking the question about whether or not they were satisfied with the timeliness of the payments.

To your question on the 80%, the 70%, and the 75%, originally those measures were set by the department. They're the target levels, they're not the actual levels. The department would have to speak more to that.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

As I understand the two-thirds and the one third, two-thirds see it as completely or somewhat timely. That's not necessarily a bad number, depending on what you're measuring. What I'm trying to understand is that as we measure both the timelines of the programs and the various levels of complexity that are built into three different programs, the amounts of money that stream out of those....

I mean, clearly, losing one farmer, one producer, is one farmer, one producer too many to lose. So I understand your empathy and your focus in trying to ensure that these guidelines are met throughout. What I'm trying to understand is this: how many numbers of farms are we in fact talking about here, or producers? I don't understand, within the producer groups, how many farms are contained within each producer group.

Again, from my understanding, I'm finding this very difficult to work my way through the effectiveness of the program. I appreciate that you've come up with a tracking device for March 2014. I think that's critical. I look forward to the next time we have an opportunity to review just to see how effectively we're doing it.

But I want to understand; we talk about the ten and a half months, we talk about two-thirds who are happy, we talk about the amount of money and three different levels of complexity, but how effective are we? Are we getting the job done or not? Obviously we don't want to lose any farmers, but what are we accomplishing here? Is it working or is it not working?

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Very briefly, please.

[Michael Ferguson]

I think what we've said in here is that those types of performance measures aren't at the level that they should be, and there are some things that would cause you to sort of ask questions about whether the program is operating at the level that it should operate.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Good. Thank you.

Monsieur Giguère, you have the floor again, sir.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It is rather upsetting when one looks at old files and sees that the same problems systematically arise. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada have stated in the past that they accepted all our recommendations. Yet, the problem persists.

You stated that in the case of AgriRecovery the timelines and performance measures were respected, however you also noted that previous audits had identified the same problem, particularly in the department's risk management programs. Could you please expand on that?

[Michael Ferguson]

We have found problems in past audits with timeliness of payments.

I think, though, to make sure everybody understands, in paragraph 8.54 we were referring to a 2011 fall report that we produced. The time period for this audit covered the period from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2012. By the time we had reported in the fall 2011 report on some of the problems, we were already into the period of this audit. You wouldn't expect them to be able to put all of those things in place in a time period that ended up to December 2012. We understand that.

That said, in both types of audits we were finding the same types of problems, which were with timeliness of payments.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Is there an explanation? Could you tell us why these problems are systematically raised from one audit to another with no apparent satisfactory solution?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, the department has indicated that they have been trying to work on this, and they have said they feel they've made some progress with some of the other programs. I'd have to let them speak to that. We haven't done an audit of that. The only thing I can speak to is that we did find issues with timeliness in the past report, and we found issues with timeliness, in some cases, particularly with smaller value payments, in this audit. But as to why that problem has been consistent in the two audits, I think the department would have to speak to that.