Public Accounts Committee on Dec. 4th, 2014

[Janet King]

We have a commitment in this particular exercise to increase by nine, writ large, for our Iqaluit office, so we're working with our strategic staffing planning on a variety of positions to achieve that.

In terms of moving positions north, we have to work with each position to make sure we can recruit for the north the particular expertise we need in the north, such as the chief financial officer. We will staff in Iqaluit, for example, with a senior financial officer when we're assured that we can identify the skills that we need to meet our accountability requirements.

We're staffing at the entry level, at the middle level, and at the senior level, keeping it a priority. Some of it will be opportunities pending finding the right skills to do the job, but with a determination to complete our headquarters capacity as soon as possible.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you.

Moving over to Mr. Hayes, you now have the floor, sir.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to focus my questions to Ms. King or to Mr. Bloom, whoever is most appropriate to answer them.

Specific to the Auditor General's second recommendation, which stated that—

6.25 The Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency should formally review the processes in place for the review and approval of projects so that decisions on funding to recipients are made in a timely manner. (6.21-6.24)

I notice that you have agreed to that. Can you please identify where you are with that process? What has been done and what is yet remaining to be done in order to satisfy that particular recommendation from the AG?

[Janet King]

I'll start, and I'm sure Mr. Bloom will fill in should there be more details.

As I mentioned earlier, significant work has been done to build the tools to enable our officers to be as efficient as possible in working with our clients moving forward. For example, a correspondence and project monitoring tool gives all of our economic development officers the tools they need to engage with clients and stakeholders, track, monitor, and make sure it's as timely and efficient as possible. We have service standards now that certainly give our economic development officers guidelines as to what the expected pace of their work would be, and would help each office determine priorities going forward as well.

We have mechanisms to track project performance and produce reports on the status of projects, so we now have across the agency the tools and the mechanisms to work with every interaction to make sure that it's moving along in as timely a way as possible. As I mentioned earlier, we have up-to-date training for our officers, so they can be as complete and effective and timely as possible.

Do you want to add to that?

[Mitch Bloom]

I would only add that we used the opportunity, when we were building new mechanisms and their online systems, to gather the results, to also measure standards that we now set for completing the work from when we receive a completed application to when a final decision is rendered. It was simply an opportunity, once we were building the systems, to make sure we had automated all of it.

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

These were developed, I guess, by April 1, 2014. At that point you were going to track performance against these standards, so what progress has been made thus far in terms of tracking performance against the standards you've developed?

[Janet King]

On April 1 we implemented a tracking tool, OpSTART, to start collecting the information from across the three regional offices and from each one of the projects. That capacity is now available to take in the performance reporting going forward. As I mentioned in my remarks, we are now at the point of learning to use these tools and implement them, so we're starting to query that as it gets populated, as results come in, and learn to use that in our decision-making processes.

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

You also mentioned officer training. At this point in time have all officers been trained, or are there still some outstanding training issues?

[Janet King]

All officers were trained in the comprehensive period of training at the time that these new tools were set up. What we're doing now is ensuring a training strategy going forward, so when we staff new officers or officers need refreshing, we have a continuous training program going forward.

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

I'm going to move on to recommendation three, in terms of how you've addressed that, and specifically:

The Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency should review its quality assurance processes to ensure that, before contribution agreements are signed, they do not contain inconsistencies.

I'm hoping you can expand on what you've done to rectify the inconsistencies that were uncovered by the Auditor General.

[Janet King]

We've developed a quality assurance tool which is a full checklist, if you will, of what's expected in the files and in the records pertaining to the projects. The economic development officers have all been trained in this, the managers are well aware of it, and our chief financial officer uses that to go in to do a spot check and make sure the records are correct, complete, and accurate.

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

The chief financial officer, would that be you, sir?

Could you comment on how you use that, please?

[Yves Robineau, Chief Financial Officer, Director, Corporate Services, Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency]

Yes.

We've developed our own monitoring tools. We've worked with the new templates and program guidelines that our operations people have developed, we've developed our own checklists and we've started to monitor how we're doing on our contribution files. We're starting that and to date we're seeing good results on the new processes.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

That does expire your time. Thank you very much.

Over to Monsieur Giguère. You have the floor, sir.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate having the witnesses appear before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

My first question is for Mr. Ferguson.

Point 6.61 addresses this federal agency's fairly significant staffing problems. Among other things, only 15 of 32 positions for that location have been filled. Do these major staffing gaps explain for the most part certain administrative shortcomings that you have seen elsewhere? Or is it a simple matter of poor management or a problem related to insufficient staff to carry out the tasks in a timely manner?

[Michael Ferguson]

The issue probably was mostly around two things. First of course there are the challenges in recruiting in the north that have been talked about, but also perhaps it was necessary for the agency to put more focus on trying to achieve its goals of hiring in the north.

We didn't do an actual cause and effect in terms of how much of an impact that had on the administrative issues we had identified. Even with a lack of staff it is important to make sure that the staff doing the job are following all the procedures in place to make sure the agreements are being managed the way they should be.

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

This also applies to the processing times. Obviously, 10 people cannot be asked to process as many files in a timely manner as 30 people.

[Michael Ferguson]

It would certainly have an impact on what the agency could handle, and they may be able to give you more information about how many people it takes to handle the actual intake of applications, but again we would expect the agency would have standards in place for getting these agreements signed, as the president says they have now, and that they do everything they can to respect the timelines of those standards.

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

My next question is for you, Ms. King.

Have your staffing issues now been resolved?

[Janet King]

As I said, I think that staffing in the north will always be a challenge because the labour market there is very limited and certain positions require specific skills. We have worked with all the managers to draft a strategic staffing plan that takes into account priorities and targets each position that is required to achieve our goals and carry out our mandate, which is necessary to succeed in this field.

I am proud to point out that, when I started working for the agency, 72 positions had already been filled. Now, that number is 95. We have made additional effort so that the staffing level enables us to carry out our mandate.

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

So you are quite hopeful that this increase in staff will resolve the minor problems that the Auditor General noted and that can be attributed to the recent creation of your agency?

[Janet King]

I'm sorry, I mixed up the two interpretation channels. Could you please repeat your question? I will remove the earpiece.

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

Yes, now you have sufficient staff to find a solution for all your problems of your agency?

[Janet King]

Not yet. I'll be frank with you. There are still gaps in certain areas for certain shortcomings. We are making staffing a priority.

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

Will there be a lasting solution for the problems associated with the agency's recent creation noted by the Auditor General with respect to file processing? The shortcomings related to processing that the Auditor General noted will no longer exist. Is that right?