Public Accounts Committee on May 8th, 2023

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I am now calling the meeting to order.

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to meeting No. 62 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(g) the committee is meeting today in consideration of the Main Estimates 2023‑24: Vote 1 under—

Are you getting translation?

Mr. Clerk, I'm told the translation is not functioning.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Cédric Taquet]

I'm on it.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Excuse me, everyone. I will pause for a second.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

My apologies.

I am told we are ready to go.

Again, welcome to meeting 62 of the House of Commons public accounts committee.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(g) the committee is meeting today in consideration of the Main Estimates 2023‑24: Vote 1 under Office of the Auditor General.

I'd now like to welcome all our witnesses.

From the Office of the Auditor General is Karen Hogan, Auditor General. It's nice to have you with us again. We have Andrew Hayes as well. It's nice to see you, sir.

They are deputy auditor general and Auditor General respectively.

Also with us is Paule-Anny Pierre. Bonjour. It's nice to have you with us. She is the assistant auditor general.

As well, we have Vicki Clement, acting assistant auditor general and chief financial officer.

Ms. Hogan, you have the floor for five minutes, and then we'll go to questions from the members. It's over to you, please.

[Karen Hogan, Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General]

Mr. Chair, we are pleased to be here today to discuss the work of our office, including our most recent departmental reports.

I would like to acknowledge that this meeting is taking place on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

The Office of the Auditor General of Canada serves Canada through leadership and partnerships in audits that support trust in public institutions and continued public service excellence. We do this by providing Parliament and territorial legislatures with independent and objective information, advice, and assurance about government financial statements and the management of government programs. The Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development assists me by conducting reviews and audits according to his areas of expertise. We also support the development of legislative audit methodology and accounting and auditing standards, and we contribute to improving public sector auditing internationally.

I want to first provide you with some of the highlights of our accomplishments in 2021–22, as presented in our departmental results report. We provided this report to Parliament in December 2022. Of significance in 2021–22, my office dealt with a long and difficult strike.

As shown in our financial statements, our net operating cost was $126.1 million, and we employed the equivalent of 727 full-time employees. With these resources, we reported on 12 performance audits and three special examinations of Crown corporations. In addition to some performance audit reports, the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development delivered the annual report on environmental petitions, the review of departmental progress in implementing sustainable development strategies and a report on lessons learned from Canada's record on climate change.

In addition, we launched our “Update on Past Audits”. This interactive dashboard provides a snapshot of the progress that selected departments and agencies have made in areas we previously audited. You can find it on our website.

We also audited the financial statements of 90 federal and territorial government organizations and Crown corporations, including those of the Public Accounts of Canada. We issued clean opinions on 86 of these financial statements.

Finally, we also presented our annual commentary on our financial audit work.

In our departmental results report, you will find indicators of the impact of our work. The level of parliamentary engagement with our performance audit reports is one of these. Overall, parliamentary committees reviewed 80% of our reports in 2021‑22, up from 61% in the previous year. There were 34 committee appearances focusing on the work of our office. I want to thank the Standing Committee on Public Accounts for reviewing all of the performance audits that we referred to it during the year, as well as two reports of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.

During the year, we also continued to review and renew how and where we work. For example, we launched modernization efforts and started laying the groundwork for our transition to a hybrid workplace, including converting some of our existing office space to follow a hotelling model.

I would like to turn now to our main estimates and departmental plan for the 2023‑24 fiscal year. In this plan, we introduce our updated departmental results framework. This framework provides revised departmental results and the indicators we will use to measure our progress in delivering these results.

Our total budget is $122.6 million for the 2023-24 fiscal year. With these resources, we plan to employ the equivalent of 765 full-time employees.

During this period, we plan to issue 89 financial audits, six special examinations and 25 performance audits. This includes the audits that Parliament has requested on the government's ArriveCAN application and on the use of contracts for professional services. We will also deliver all other reports that are required annually in the environment and sustainable development portfolio.

In addition, we will also be working on several large initiatives that are already under way in our office. They include our transformation journey, and adapting our workspaces and systems. Managers have been back in the workplace for at least 37.5 hours each month since January 2023, and other employees will return as of June 1.

Enhancing the value of our audits and better understanding stakeholder needs remains a priority for us.

Mr. Chair, I could not be prouder of everyone in my office. My colleagues are engaged and motivated to make a difference for Canadians.

We thank the committee for its ongoing support and use of our work. We would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

I know members are anxious to ask questions. I'll begin with Mr. McCauley.

You have the floor for six minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Chair. Welcome back, everyone.

I'll just put you on notice that as you did not say “Go, Oilers, go”, I will be putting through a motion to defund your department entirely.

There's very little in the estimates—one line—so I'm not going to bother with anything from the estimates page.

I just want to go through your departmental plan. I'm going to flip through it and ask questions as I go, if you don't mind.

Starting off with the hybrid work model, can you explain what your department is doing? I think Treasury Board has stated a minimum of two or three days back. Is that in effect right now with your department?

[Karen Hogan]

That requirement for the Treasury Board applies to the core public service. We are not part of the core as an independent agent of Parliament, so we can follow the spirit. We were asked to follow the spirit of that return to office.

Back in 2021, we had already announced to our employees, well before the public service had made its announcement, that we would be bringing everybody back into the workplace for a minimum of 37.5 hours a month. We wanted teams to do it with a meaningful intention—not come in and sit on MS Teams, but to come in to work collaboratively, because we valued that face-to-face interaction as a culture. We rolled that out as of January this year.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What are you averaging right now for in-place work?

[Karen Hogan]

Right now we have only our management team in. We were delaying the return of all of our employees as we were trying to modernize our workspaces. However, unfortunately, with supply chain issues, converting our offices to be more conducive to hotelling for a hybrid workforce has been delayed, so we decided to just bring everybody back in June.

On average, everyone is doing their minimum and then some, because some of our auditors are out at audit entities much longer than that in—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Are you able to measure your productivity?

[Karen Hogan]

We measured our productivity even prepandemic. We measure how many hours it takes to deliver certain audits. We always challenge auditors to be more effective and efficient at their audits. Then internally, we track things like sick leave and milestones of key projects in order to see productivity on that front. The rest of the productivity you see as we deliver audits to you that involve communications, contracting and so on.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

How is it affecting productivity? Is it the same? Has it increased, decreased? Is it too early to say?

[Karen Hogan]

Coming back into the workplace, do you mean?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Right now people are still working at home, not in the office. How is the productivity compared to prepandemic?

[Karen Hogan]

I think I'll ask Andrew whether he wants to add a little bit more on that.

We definitely saw a dip at the beginning of the pandemic. We saw gains in efficiencies because we weren't travelling but inefficiencies because of delays in getting information from audit entities.

You might have some more to add to that, Andrew.

[Andrew Hayes, Deputy Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General]

I might add that as other organizations are also still facing a hybrid working environment and some people are not in, it does take longer, as Karen mentioned, to get information.

As you can imagine, a face-to-face discussion about the information we need could resolve an issue a lot faster than a back-and-forth of emails. Likewise, as our financial auditors are working with other organizations and may not be seeing people face to face as often as they would have before, some of our audits take a little bit longer to do.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay.

On page 5, under “Our core responsibility: Planned results and resources”—and this is not a criticism—on the last line, you talk about “By building on a culture that emphasizes respect, well-being, inclusivity, and continuous growth, the OAG expects to increase employment engagement”. Why isn't “competency” in there as a focus?

[Karen Hogan]

Why isn't...? That might have just been an oversight. Obviously our workforce is incredibly competent. We have professionals all across the organization, whether they hold professional designations or are professionals in HR and communication—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Did you say an oversight, as a financer?

On the next page, when you talk about “OAG FLEX”, this gets back to the hybrid model. You're saying 37.5 hours a month. Was any of that changed by finally settling the contract issues that were ongoing, or is any of this affected by current negotiations? I realize that you don't follow the Treasury Board.

[Karen Hogan]

Not at all, but we keep a really close eye on what the core is doing. While we've adopted a motto of coming in for a minimum of 37.5 hours, we've implemented a hybrid work policy that should cover the majority of people. If you want to permanently telework or have a different arrangement, then you get a telework arrangement, instead of our ensuring that every employee has a telework arrangement.

We'll watch what goes on in the core to see what changes might be made. We try to adopt the main principles of Treasury Board.

For example, with the kinds of rules that Treasury Board has for giving permanent telework, we adopt—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm going to interrupt because I just want to get one last question in on this round.

On page 7, in the section on the UN agenda for sustainable development, you say that you're committed to aligning your audit work to support this agenda. Why? Is this a direction from the government? Is this a personal objective?

[Karen Hogan]

It's a personal objective that the office adopted a while ago, and it's in line with the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development's mandate. We believe that we should walk the talk to ensure that we hold every audit entity to adopting sustainable development strategies, as we will do within our own organization. It really is something that we wanted to do.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That is your time, Mr. McCauley.

Was there another comment?

Go ahead, please, Mr. Hayes.

[Andrew Hayes]

If I can just make a 10-second comment, the United Nations sustainable development goals were committed to by Canada in 2015. They contain goals, targets and measures that we use as criteria to hold government to account.