Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the opportunity of being here this morning.
I know that all of you have spent many hours in the last week debating and discussing this bill, and I have very much been looking forward to having a conversation with you about it.
I'd like to mention, too, that I might be here for a number of different reasons. As the chair has pointed out, I'm a professor of public management at the University of Ottawa. In fact, I occupy the Stephen Jarislowsky chair in public management and governance at the university. I'm also the former head of the Public Policy Forum, which in fact did a considerable amount of work in recent years trying to bridge the gap between the public service and elected officials. I also am a former vice-president of EKOS Research, a public opinion research firm that does a considerable amount of work with the federal government, and I look forward to talking to members of the committee who might have some interesting questions about the public opinion research aspect of Bill C-2.
Mr. Martin has, on a number of occasions during the hearings, talked about program review, and I just want to point out that in the mid-1990s I was assistant secretary to the cabinet in the Privy Council Office for program review and machinery of government, and I would very much look forward to answering any question he or any member might have on program review.
Lastly, I just want to point out that about two years ago the federal government restructured a lot of the activities around staffing and human resources and created a new Public Service Commission with one full-time president and two part-time commissioners. I was appointed two years ago to a seven-year term as a part-time commissioner of the Public Service Commission.
You would have heard already from Maria Barrados on the commission's position regarding Bill C-2, and I'm really here in my capacity as an academic to talk about the bill.
I've already spent a fair amount of my time just introducing myself.
I will try to give you some idea of the issues that I'd like to talk about. I'd like to just give some context to the legislation, since many of you members of Parliament are fairly new to Ottawa and might not have fully appreciated the place where Bill C-2 finds itself these days.
The last decade has been a remarkably important one in terms of governance in this country, and particularly at the level of the federal government. As I mentioned, program review in 1995 had enormous impacts on the country in many different ways, but there's an aspect to it that is important for the committee to be aware of, and that is the fact that in our efforts in those years to downsize government, one of the functions that was heavily affected, but really unknowingly by us in those early years, was to downsize two important activities. One was the audit function in the federal government and the other was program evaluation. Over time, many of the activities that were normally associated with audit and program evaluation disappeared as a consequence of program review. To a large extent, the auditing side is being rebuilt, but program evaluation has not yet had the same effect.
I suspect that Arthur Kroeger may have touched on this when he was here a couple of days ago. Many of you are aware of some of the massive so-called management improvements that were introduced by the government in the last couple of years. By my accounting, there are at least 200 major initiatives that were implemented by the federal government post-sponsorship program and post-HRSD. In particular, additional programs and policies were put in place in terms of auditing and financial controls and reporting to Parliament, and the results, frankly, have been additional burdens, clearly, on all of the affected institutions, which has at times made it particularly difficult for Canadians and for interest groups to deal with government. You are arriving at a time when we've already added at least 200 new activities in terms of management improvements.
In a recent speech just a couple of days ago at the APEX conference, Minister Baird talked about the fact that he is going to do what he can to streamline so many of these new management improvements that were brought in.
I also want to tell you that the Government of Canada has been very active in recent years in trying to provide members of Parliament with more information. In fact, I think one of the real challenges that they do have in thinking about Bill C-2 and its implications for governance going forward is the fact that there is already a huge amount of information that has been provided to you as members of Parliament. Parenthetically, I want to say that not enough of that information has been used by you on an active basis to further the governance of the country.
Let me then move quickly, Mr. Chair, to some of the issues around the specifics of the bill itself. I would simply say that this bill is possibly the most massive attempt in at least a generation to restructure the governance structure of the government and of the institution of Canada. To a large extent, of course, as the Prime Minister I think quite rightly identified, it's an attempt to restore confidence in our public institutions.
As you consider it clause by clause in the coming weeks, I think one might ask oneself whether the changes that are being introduced in each of these rather important areas will in fact add to the contribution toward restoring trust. In fact, I think this is going to be a huge and interesting challenge for you as you look at the 13 sections of the bill, which, as all of you know, amends over 100 different federal statutes.
I would now like to talk specifically about a couple of sections, in particular those that I have spent some time researching over the last few years, and then I'll stop, and I will certainly field as many questions as you have.
The Public Appointments Commission I think is a very exciting and welcome addition to the governance structure of Canada. There are lots of machinery options around which one can organize it, but I think the principle is such an important one, where you are proposing to have a uniform approach to appointments and to create an organization of one kind or another that will ensure that the process is explicit, public, and available to Canadians. This is a very important departure from existing norms and would represent I think a very exciting new opportunity.
When it comes to the issues of public opinion research, and there are some suggestions in the legislation of moving forward, particularly insisting on written reports and posting of the results in six months, I would say, frankly, that this already exists. This will be a welcome addition, but in fact it is common practice today. Ninety-nine point nine per cent of public opinion research is reported in a written format, and it certainly finds its way into the public domain in a typically reasonable period of time. So a six-month time limit won't put any particular burdens on practitioners.
I've also been intrigued with the notion of the accounting officer model and introducing more responsibilities for the deputy ministers. There, I think, we have some interesting possibilities, but I would say that already the existing practice in Ottawa has been for many years to see the deputy minister as the chief accounting officer, so making explicit what's already implicit would probably strengthen it but not make any dramatic changes in the way in which things function.
Lastly, I'd like to applaud the government for deciding to go ahead with making the conflict of interest guidelines and policies an act of Parliament. I think this is an important signal to Canadians. It makes more explicit again what has been implicit in terms of the general guidelines as to how one should operate.
Jumping to my conclusions, then, I'd say that this particular legislation is massive in size. It's not likely to be touched again for another generation, so I would invite all of the members involved in this exercise to take the necessary time you need to debate each of the clauses, to ensure that it measures up against and complements existing and contextual issues that are going on today.
I think one of the things one has to look out for is the so-called unintended consequences of legislation, in an effort to solve problems rather than creating new ones that sometimes are larger than the ones you've set out to address. So taking the appropriate time for deliberation I think would really enhance the effectiveness of this legislation and will require people to come back in a few years' time only to fix up those parts of it that aren't working.
I would also like to say that while you're at it, you might want to look at some way of increasing the resources for various parliamentary committees.
As I suggested earlier, members of Parliament have more information available to them now than ever before. As you know, for at least the last five years, the Government of Canada has been seen around the world and noted by Accenture to be the most effective online government in the world. So you don't have a shortage of information, but you do have a shortage of analytical skills to make use of the information provided to you.
I would suggest then, Mr. Chair, if it is at all possible to expand the scope of committee work at least in terms of staffing, you might find this bill will provide you with some additional resources. Thanks for the opportunity to speak.