Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on June 1st, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You guys opened this up, so let him finish, please.

You've finished?

[Steven MacKinnon]

I think I've succeeded in drawing the ire of the committee, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We appear to have come to an end. The clocks have all gone off. Thank you all for coming. We'll break for a couple of minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I will call the meeting back to order.

We have with us as our next guest, David R. Zussman, who is with the Faculty of Social Sciences in the School of Medicine at the University of Ottawa.

Good morning, sir.

We normally give 5 to 10 minutes to have some introductory comments and then we proceed with questions from the caucuses. Each has about seven minutes. That's how we work.

We thank you for coming and welcome you, and we look forward to your comments.

[David Zussman, Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management, Faculty of Social Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

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.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Professor Zussman.

Mr. Owen.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you for being with us and bringing your very wide range of expertise from a background in a number of important areas of this statute.

I have just two quick areas I'd like your opinion on. One involves your comments on the Public Appointments Commission. From my take of people's comments around this table, there is a lot of support for that. It's how it's structured and where it's housed.

I wonder if, with appropriate amendments to the Public Service Employment Act, the president of the Public Service Commission would be appointed as an agent or officer of Parliament with the necessary criteria and purposes put in that act.

Would the commission have valuable skills and a broader mandate that could be brought to bear on this important process?

My second point is with respect to legislating a code of conduct for members of Parliament and whether that can open up a protective connection between members of Parliament and the courts. If that is in legislation, an alleged breach or a decision of a breach may be subject to judicial review, and I wonder whether that in some way offends the constitutional independence of those branches.

[David Zussman]

To answer your second question, I don't think that's a problem. I think you can just go ahead and do that, as far as I know. But I think you're going to be getting advice from others who are more knowledgeable than I am.

When it comes to the acts of the appointments commission, I think you raise some interesting questions. The current bill suggests the Public Appointments Commission would be part of the Prime Minister's Office, or at least would probably be housed in the Privy Council Office, which of course is equivalent for the purposes of this discussion.

It is correct I think that the Public Service Commission, which already is an independent organization that does merit-based appointments, could in fact take on due responsibilities of ensuring the processes, as envisaged in the bill, were properly followed.

I think I can correct you. I think Bill C-2 also points out that part-time commissioners of the Public Service Commission will go through the same appointment process as the president, that is to say, be appointed by Parliament through a vote. I think that is the suggestion the commission has made as well. So there would be some symmetry around that.

But yes, I think there are lots of machinery options, and the commission is a very viable one.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Tonks has a question.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Zussman, thank you for being here this morning.

I think those of us who sat on the public accounts committee during the sponsorship investigation would agree that dismantling the Comptroller General, the role of audit, and what you have described as program evaluation all led to the unintended consequences of having issues fall between the cracks in terms of systemic accountability.

You made the statement that the government has been trying to provide more information resources to members of Parliament, and--I take it that you mean through the committee structure--bring more investigative and inquisitorial capacity to bear, but you go on to say that not enough is used.

You've seen the recommendations in Bill C-2 with respect to whistle-blowing and with respect to internal audit. Where does your experience tell you that capacity should be entrenched? Should it be through the Privy Council Office? Should it be through the management board? Should it be through the accounting officer? I lean toward the accounting officer concept, even though you have said it hasn't changed anything. I would hope that isn't true.

Could you just expand on that? I think the role of the accounting officer is really something on which the government is hinging a great deal of our accountability hopes.

[David Zussman]

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it's really Parliament and the committees of Parliament that dictate how successful any of these models will be. That is to say, if you make use of the information, if you bring forward the data in a venue like this, to debate and discuss the merit of programs around the table, then the new system will work.

Just creating a new office that collects more information won't make any large difference to improving the two objectives of this legislation: increased accountability and restoring trust in public institutions. That's what the government says is the purpose of this whole exercise.

According to my accounting in this exercise, we are going to create eight new agencies. The creation of new agencies alone does not necessarily guarantee that we are going to have more accountability. For your purposes, it's the use of the information that these agencies are going to collect that will be the measure of success down the road.

After some reasonable period of time--five years from now, for instance--it will be useful to look back and say, “Okay, with all of these new agencies and new mechanisms we've put in place, is it in fact true that the government is more accountable?” Frankly, I don't want to call it the weak point, but the point to which we've paid the least amount of attention is the way in which the members of Parliament will use the information.

I know there have been some fascinating pieces of work done by, for instance, the Treasury Board in recent years. These department reviews are submitted to you every single year. They list the intentions of every department, and then performance reports on what they accomplished the previous year are given to you. You got 91 of them last year from 91 different departments and agencies, but I suspect that Parliament has spent very little time holding the government to account for the success of any of these particular programs.

The data is there. More data isn't necessarily going to make the Government of Canada more accountable, so we have to find another way. I hope in your deliberations, as you work through clause by clause, you'll be inspired to find a way to make use of the information, both old and new.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Tonks.

Madame Guay, go ahead, please.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, sir.

A few years ago, when Parliament appointed the Ethics Commissioner, we asked that he be accountable not to the Prime Minister, but to the House of Commons, so that we could analyze his answers ourselves. That didn't happen, and that had an undesirable impact on public trust in parliamentarians. So we need a process that is open in order to restore public trust, as you said, in the work of parliamentarians and the institution of Parliament itself, in the wake of the sponsorship scandal.

You said earlier that we should proceed with a great deal of care in the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill. I believe we'll move a number of amendments to correct a number of conflict situations.

I'd also like to talk to you about the $1,000 reward, since we talk about it with all our witnesses. I'd like to know what you think of the fact that a whistleblower could receive a $1,000 reward. We're opposed to that—I'll tell you that at the outset—because we believe that's like a witch hunt, but I'd nevertheless like to know what you think of it.

[David Zussman]

Pardon me for answering you in English, but that's easier for me.

Simply to say, I think this is exactly the type of issue that should stimulate some very important discussion. Paying people to report on others is a dramatic departure from the way we traditionally administer public institutions in this country. There's nothing inherently wrong about paying people and offering up rewards to encourage certain types of behaviour, but in my view, this is a precedent that deserves a whole lot of consideration. In my own personal view, this would be a severe and dramatic departure from past practices. In Canada, we have always relied on self-reporting, for instance, and encouraging individuals to do the right thing. Offering up cash rewards and creating perhaps a mini industry around whistle-blowing would be an important change.

When you consider this particular aspect, I think you have to think about it in the larger context, that this is precedent setting, and that if we do it in the case of whistle-blowing, we should consider doing it for other types of government-related activities. This is an important aspect of the bill.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Yesterday, the committee received a document from the legislative drafters informing it that, since Bill C-2 affects a number of acts—including Canada's Constitution Act—it poses serious problems and major adjustments will have to be made to it in the clause-by-clause consideration to prevent major legal problems. Have you studied Bill C-2 from that perspective?

[David Zussman]

I just heard that myself a few minutes before I appeared. This doesn't really surprise me, given the massive range of the legislation. I guess that simply means that as a committee you're going to have to work through the constitutional and other types of aspects of the bill.

You certainly don't want to pass legislation that will be challenged in court the day after it's adopted by Parliament. I think this would certainly not add to increased accountability or restoring trust. To the extent that it's possible, if you can work your way through these in advance of passing the legislation, I think you'll be very well served by that.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

So it would be in our interest to take the time to work on this bill properly to ensure that we don't find ourselves in the Supreme Court or Superior Court at every turn, which would cost a fortune and would mean the bill would not be serving the public as it should.

[David Zussman]

I entirely agree.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Monsieur Petit.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Zussman, I have two questions to ask you so that I can clearly understand your explanation and the presentation you made earlier.

In the last problem we had, which was the sponsorship scandal, you examined an aspect that seems important. That was the public opinion research for which contracts were oral, rather than written. The pollster provided results orally to the person who had commissioned the report from him and sent him the bill. The money was always there.

You said earlier that Bill C-2 would require a written report, but that was already the case in 99.9% of instances. However, the sponsorship scandal showed us that this occurred in zero percent, not 99.9% of cases. They entered into oral contracts, gave each other the answers and happily helped themselves. Do you think that creating this obligation in Bill C-2 will prevent this situation?

[David Zussman]

I think, if I may, I'll just say that in my own experience, having done many public opinion surveys for the Government of Canada over the last 25 years, I have never heard of an instance of people giving verbal reports and not written reports.

What I'm saying is that I think in this particular instance, these are, as in fact Justice Gomery has said, an aberration. The common practice, and I was arguing that it's in 99% of cases--I'm not referring necessarily to sponsorship, which I know nothing about--overall, written reports are provided, and you would have absolutely no trouble receiving them today from all the people who are contracted to do public opinion research for the Government of Canada.

Having said that, that is an operating principle I would have thought already existed and functioned very, very well.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Zussman, the bill that you read will become what we call an omnibus bill and will back the accountability regime. It amends 45 other acts. After reading the sections of the bill of interest to you, do you think that Bill C-2, as a result of the amendments it makes to all the acts to make them effective, is strong enough and meets the needs created by its introduction, that is to say accountability? All the other acts exist, and we're only amending them. In your view, is Bill C-2 strong enough to implement what the government wants to do, that is to say to create accountability and all the necessary factors to give government more honesty, efficiency and integrity?

[David Zussman]

One of the points I'm trying to make in this presentation is there have been so many new changes brought in over the last two or three years to improve accountability that we already have a very strong accountability regime at the federal level. This will just add more to it.

There are many unique elements in this bill; for instance, political party financing is quite new. However, when it comes strictly to administration of government, Mr. Alcock alone brought in 200 new measures regarding accountability. So my word of caution is that we have to make sure that the new ideas contained in Bill C-2 do not in any way overburden the system, to the extent that you end up with so many new rules and procedures that the time expended by public servants and others to comply will sometimes cost more in terms of effort than the outcome.

I don't really know at this point. I'm not referring to anything in particular; it's more of a general statement. So as you consider the clause-by-clause, I think you have to ask yourself what other kinds of regulations do we have when, for instance, it comes to whistle-blowing or conflicts of interest, and do these add marginally more value than not? In that case, you may decide that the current regimes are sufficient, at which point you may decide that you don't want or need to go any further.

In other instances, when it comes to the Public Appointments Commission, you may say that we don't have any regime similar to what is being proposed. So this is new, in my view. But when it comes to changing the accountability regime for deputy ministers, I would argue that much of what's contained in the legislation already exists.

You may want to see a value in having a special title around it, so that the public gets a better sense of what's intended. But in terms of actual practices, deputy ministers in this city are extremely accountable to Parliament today. They have been appearing on a regular basis as financial auditors—or responsible for financial activities—for at least 10 to 15 years, and they have been accountable to you for those activities for that period of time. The fact that you want to make this more formal adds to the conversation, and perhaps packages it a bit better, but it won't substantially change their behaviour.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Owen.