Canadian Heritage Committee on June 15th, 2006

[Sheila Fraser]

There was a new management of government information policy that came in at about the time of our audit, which was to address many of the questions of what documents should be conserved, for how long, the relationship with Archives Canada, but we found in this, I think, that certainly at that point this wasn't top of mind for departments. Archives Canada could probably tell you a lot of stories about very old historic documents that they've found in kind of unusual places in federal government departments.

There was the also the capacity of Archives Canada to be able to deal with all of this. I can't remember offhand, but their delay in actually cataloguing information covered decades, in some cases. So there is a major challenge and a major backlog in dealing with this and in the recognition by government departments of the importance of this and how it all needed to be managed.

We haven't.... Obviously, we will have to go back—I believe we're going back next year or sometime in the future—to see how this meant new policies being implemented and whether it has helped to improve the situation.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Are you suggesting that we still do not have a complete catalogue of what we have in our archives?

[Sheila Fraser]

While we haven't audited, I would be pretty sure that all of the documents have not been. There was a backlog, quite a significant backlog at the time.

[Richard Gaudreau, Director, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

We have to be careful with the notion of inventory. Certainly Archives Canada has account of their inventory. The question, and what we said, is for the departments to put in place the processes to develop the material that will become archives. In that sense, there is no inventory. It's a matter that it takes resources, persons dedicated to do this work, and that was not the priority of departments at the time we did the audit.

[Sheila Fraser]

May I give you one example we noted in the report? We said that the backlogs included a number of ministers' records from the last 35 years. So there are records of ministers from 35 years ago that have not been completely catalogued and put into the archives, and I would be very surprised if the backlog has been dealt with in the last three years.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Do we have a game plan, at least, for that backlog?

[Sheila Fraser]

You'd have to ask Archives Canada.

[Daniel Caron, Director General, Corporate Management Branch, Library and Archives Canada]

Yes, we have a plan. In view of what Ms. Fraser mentioned regarding the Treasury Board policy on information management, we have reviewed all our procedures and are updating all our instruments and tools in order to help the departments work with us, as Mr. Gaudreau mentioned, since this is a joint responsibility. In particular, there will be round tables with the deputy ministers during the summer in order to examine the issue of the abilities of the departments and to work together more to address this situation.

With regard to ministers' archives, which we call private archives, we're developing a plan to address this delay.

But it's a backlog, so it's a question of resources. So we're going to have a plan so we know how much we can do, and when, over a certain period of time.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

We don't yet have a timeframe, though, as to how long.

[Daniel Caron]

We don't have it yet, no.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

The second question has to do with the actual storage. I understand that at present, we don't have enough storage. But there was some discussion about the Zellers building being made available or being acquired. I'm assuming that Treasury Board has already authorized those plans.

[Daniel Caron]

Yes. In fact, the building was bought by Public Works two years ago. What we've been able to do is maximize its utilization by going to Treasury Board. We're going to have what we call two tiers, which is two levels of shelves, because it's a high building. So we're going to be able to store more documents, which will move from areas you've seen to a more friendly environment.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I understand that it's only a temporary solution.

[Daniel Caron]

The condition of that building will allow us to go for at least 15 to 20 years. That's what we mean by interim. This will give us the time to work on our long-term infrastructure strategy, which we are currently working on, and to finalize it and go through the various steps to present it.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Scarpaleggia. I'll get this right yet.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Schellenberger.

Thank you for being here, Ms. Fraser.

What is a risk-based audit?

[Sheila Fraser]

This is how we determine which areas we're going to look at. We do a risk-based plan. So we will go through, actually, a pretty extensive exercise to determine the major risks to a department in achieving its objectives, in close consultation, obviously, with the department, but also with outside stakeholders. Then we will look to see which of those risks can be subject to audit. Some could be issues of policy, which of course we don't get into. Then we do our plan for three to five years.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Have you, at any time in the process of doing these two reports, looked at the issue of the portrait museum?

[Sheila Fraser]

No, we haven't looked at that.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

May I direct a question to Ms. Sherwood?

I read headlines from time to time about the portrait museum, which is to be housed, actually, in an extraordinary piece of built heritage. What is the status of that? I seem to have read somewhere that the new government is calling the project into question. Maybe you could just brief us on what is happening.

[Lyn Elliot Sherwood]

What is being looked at, at this point, are details of the proposal to make sure that as the plan goes forward, it's taken forward in the most effective and cost-efficient way possible.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

So it will come to fruition.

[Lyn Elliot Sherwood]

That's my understanding, sir.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

There's another issue that perhaps you could comment on.

I recently met some individuals who are creating an extraordinary database of Canadiana factoids, if you will, and historical dates having to do with the achievements of various Canadians in the area of sport, for example. This is relevant, I guess, because Canada is about to celebrate its 100th year of participating in the Olympic Games. They said that there was nowhere in the government a collection of information or a book that describes Canada's achievements in Olympic sports since the beginning of our participation.

I would think, as a consumer, as a Canadian, as a citizen, that I should be able to go to the Canadian Heritage website and just click and get detailed information on things like that.

Is this the kind of thing that captures the imagination of officials like you, and then possibly the minister? It seems to me that it's a shame that I would have to buy a book privately, put together by people who have a passion for history and heritage, to get information that a billion-dollar department should be able to package for me.