Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[Michael Ferguson]

It had some information about wait times, but that wasn't something it was monitoring, I guess, on a systematic basis. It does recognize that's something it needs to do in order to understand whether the veterans are getting access to those services or not, so it has agreed that's something it's going to start tracking.

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

I'll leave it at that.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

We are moving along.

Mr. Hayes, you have the floor, sir.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As a member of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs and as the son of a father who had a 37-year military career and sisters...cumulatively, I have over 100 years of direct military experience in my family, so I am acutely interested in the mental health services for veterans.

However, I think I'm going to shift the focus a little bit to chapter 4, which deals with providing relocation services. My first question is specific to performance measurement. I understand this is a follow-up audit to an audit that was done in 2006. In 2006, you noted that the Canadian Armed Forces had not developed the tools or indicators needed to assess the performance of the integrated relocation program or that of the contractor. That is what you noted in 2006.

What is your assessment now in comparison to what it was in 2006?

[Michael Ferguson]

I think in understanding whether the contractor is fulfilling his responsibility, certainly the Canadian Armed Forces have improved what they are doing fairly significantly.

They are monitoring the level of overpayments and underpayments under the contract. The total of overpayments and underpayments is supposed to be at about 2% and based on our review of the sample they were selecting, it seems as if the error rate is around that 2% for overpayments and underpayments.

They should be monitoring a couple of other things. One of them is member satisfaction. They are doing surveys to monitor member satisfaction, but we feel that the response rate they are getting is not sufficient for them to be able to rely on the results coming in from those member satisfaction surveys.

Finally, we talk about the fact that there's another performance target, that no more than 5% of the files they look at have incomplete data. Again, they are doing work to determine the number of files that have incomplete data, and we found that it does appear that it could be more than 5%.

The good part of that is it doesn't seem to be affecting the dollar error rate, which is at 2%, but it's a risk that it could result in more dollar errors, if you have that level of errors.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

How do you recommend that the response rate for satisfaction surveys be improved so the data can be more effective?

[Michael Ferguson]

I think that's always a challenge when you're trying to get responses to surveys. Our recommendation in paragraph 4.69 is that they should consider other approaches to tracking and determining member satisfaction. It may be that they need to augment the surveys they're doing with other things, perhaps focus groups or something else, to try to get a little more information about the satisfaction level of the members.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

You indicated that the Canadian Armed Forces review approximately 1,000 files per year. I sense that isn't adequate. How many should they be reviewing and has this been communicated to them?

[Michael Ferguson]

One of the concerns we had, particularly in the 1,000 files they're reviewing is in paragraph 4.53, in which we say, “Due to the Canadian Armed Forces’ sampling approach, only about 75 percent of relocation files in the previous year are included in the population for selection...”.

That means the way they are selecting their 1,000 files, because they are selecting from a certain period of time in the year, 25% of the files have no chance of being selected. That's a weakness in their selection process. They need to put in place a mathematically rigorous sample selection process, so they can rely on the results they're getting from the work they're doing.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Your crew took it upon themselves to review 30 of the 996 files reviewed by the Canadian Armed Forces. Can you tell me the results of your review of those 30 files?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again in general, I think what we found was the 2% error rate in overpayments and underpayments was supported by the work that had been done by the department. Again, understanding that we have some concerns about the way they selected their samples, but based on the work they did on the roughly 1,000 files they looked at, it seemed to support the conclusion that the error rate would not be more than 2%.

However, we had some concerns with the fact that the work they were doing was not giving confidence that the number of files with incomplete data was 5% or less. That's where we feel they need to do some more work.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Mr. Hayes, your time has expired, sir. Thank you.

Mr. Allen, you have the floor again, sir.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We can do it one of two ways. I've looked at my colleagues, and if they permit Mr. Bevington to take the round without a substitute for him, so be it. If he'd care for a sub, we'll enter the sub for him, and I'll be happy to step out for that period of time. I leave it with him.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Are we okay to have Mr. Bevington take this spot?

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

Usually the proper process should be followed.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

No problem. That's okay. I have to make a phone call anyway.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Let me clarify here. He just can't vote. Any member can come to a committee and any member can speak if they're given a spot by a duly recognized member of the committee. Correct?

[The Clerk]

Yes.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Mr. Allen, you can defer your spot to Mr. Bevington. You don't have to leave. It's just that he cannot vote.

Okay, we're understood. You're going anyway, and that's cool, as long as you understand you don't have to. Fair enough.

Mr. Bevington, welcome, sir. You're not a member of the committee, but you are another veteran of the House. You now have the floor, sir.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will not attempt to vote at any time.

Thank you to the witnesses. I'm sorry, I didn't catch your testimony, but I've heard a lot, and so have the people of the north. They're very appreciative of the work you did on the nutrition north program. This is something where people were really looking forward to understanding this program, and I think you cast a lot of light on it, and it's really appreciated by everyone I've talked to or heard from.

There are a couple of details that I'm wondering about. When you talk about the communities that are in line for this program, the fly-in communities, do you have a list? Have you created a list of those communities? I know you've given numbers for that, but is there a list available that we could look at? Also, is there a list that would give the rates for each community? I've heard from some people who are looking for that information.

[Michael Ferguson]

That information, really, should come from the department; it's sort of at the level of detail of all of the communities and the subsidy rates. It's not something that we have included in our audit report. It's certainly something we would have looked at that the department has, but I think the department is the best place to get that information.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

The next question I have is that you referenced that the department had not established a definition for “affordable food”, but I didn't see that you'd made a recommendation that they should do so, or did you make that recommendation?

[Michael Ferguson]

I'm not sure that we made the specific recommendation about that. I think, really, what we were looking at there was the overall idea of how they measure their performance under this program. To do that they need to understand what they mean by “affordable”, and what the goals of the program are. I think it's rolled up into that whole idea of how they should measure their performance and whether they're achieving their objectives under the program. Part of that would be to understand exactly what they mean by “affordability”.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

But they weren't able to give you any information in that regard on what they consider affordability?

[Michael Ferguson]

I don't have the exact wording right in front of me in the report, but certainly we did note that they didn't have a definition of “affordable”.