Evidence of meeting #8 for Canadian Heritage in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was telefilm.
Auditor General of Canada
I would have to check the correspondence. That may be so. We receive thousands of letters every year, and I don't remember that one. I could enquire with the office and give the committee that information later.
Bloc
Maka Kotto Bloc Saint-Lambert, QC
The Minister of Canadian Heritage, Ms. Oda, directed Telefilm to prepare a report on the circumstances surrounding all those irregularities. In Quebec, the same thing occurred in the case of SODEC. Telefilm and SODEC worked together to develop this festival project. In Quebec, an exhaustive report, the Vaugeois report, was sent to Ms. Beauchamp. Have you heard about that?
Auditor General of Canada
Unfortunately, I'm not aware of that. Perhaps the department is more aware than I am.
Bloc
Maka Kotto Bloc Saint-Lambert, QC
Fine. I invite you to read both reports. They may help to restore a certain amount of confidence. I won't impugn anyone's motives, but, based on the information we have, this may give us some idea of what happened. For our part, we'll try to determine all the ins and outs of this fiasco. For the moment, we're prevented from inviting Telefilm to come here because there may be cases in the courts. So I'll stop there.
I'll come back to Bill C-18. I believe you heard about it the last time you were here. Ginette Moreau was with you, and she said she was satisfied with Bill C-18 because it would make Telefilm operate in a modern manner. The problem is that that bill has prevented Telefilm's board from sitting since March 2005. Do you know why? Because two its members were in an apparent conflict of interest. That didn't prevent Telefilm from making decisions by circumventing the board of directors.
Do you think that's right? I'm simply asking you the question.
Auditor General of Canada
In 2004, we raised certain problems. Telefilm's mandate was very limited at the time. Telefilm was carrying on activities in the audio, audio-visual and multimedia fields, and those activities were not part of its mandate at that time. So we pointed out to Parliament that that matter should be resolved, and Telefilm's mandate was expanded.
We raised another question, which I also raised in my opening remarks. The department has a lot of contracts with Telefilm, and Telefilm acts as an agent under its agreements with the department. We assume that was partly because of its limited mandate and that was one way of enabling Telefilm to do things.
However, since the mandate has been amended and expanded, we note that very rarely—this may be the only case—are the activities of a Crown corporation directed by contracts with the department rather than it being the Crown corporation that determines on its own how it will carry out its mandate.
Has that since been resolved? I don't know. I don't think so. However, that creates a governance problem and calls into question the Crown corporation's ability to determine on its own how it should carry out the mandate that has been given it by Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Schellenberger
No. You've taken a long time; you always have long questions.
Ms. Nash, please.
NDP
Peggy Nash NDP Parkdale—High Park, ON
Thank you.
Welcome again to the Auditor General and to the other members who are making presentations today from the Department of Heritage.
My question is for the Auditor General. Are you familiar with the program for Canada Day funding? Is it something you specifically looked at in your review?
NDP
Peggy Nash NDP Parkdale—High Park, ON
An article was drawn to my attention that came out a little while back in the Ottawa Citizen looking at the distribution of funding for Canada Day. It seemed to be quite disproportionate in terms of how some of the funding was spent, at least according to the newspaper article. Eighty percent of the money was in ridings of the governing party at the time—which would have been the previous government—even though they held only 43% of the ridings. I'm wondering whether that kind of thing is something you look at when you do your reports, whether it's something you review.
Auditor General of Canada
We don't generally look at that kind of aspect. We will look to see whether the funding being given meets the conditions of the program and is in accordance with it, but we don't monitor or try to assess whether it's distributed according to certain ridings or not. You might ask the department, but I think in many departments that kind of analysis is not done either.
The department might have more information.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Cultural Affairs, Department of Canadian Heritage
I don't want to be bureaucratic in the answer, but it's not my program, so I have absolutely no idea how it works out. I can bring it to the attention of my colleague, but I personally have no knowledge of it, so I wouldn't want to mislead by providing any answer I'm not an expert on.
Executive Director, Heritage Group, Department of Canadian Heritage
It's not mine either, but we will bring it to the attention of colleagues.
NDP
Peggy Nash NDP Parkdale—High Park, ON
Okay, thank you.
Maybe I'll ask a more general question, then. When you did your review with the heritage department, how did it compare with other departments you have audited? How did your findings compare? Did you find the results basically on a par with other reviews you've done, or did you find there were more problems here? How did it compare?
Auditor General of Canada
It's hard to answer based on simply two audits, but I would say the issues we found here were probably not atypical of other departments. I don't think we found any really serious management issues, which we sometimes see in other departments. The kinds of issues we saw here tended to be more the strategic issues.
In the case of the question of heritage properties—the “built archival”—I think the major question is that the protection regimes are at their capacity and are having difficulty. The government has to find new ways of doing things and has to probably prioritize. Are we able to maintain all of the historic sites we have? There's already a strain on the system, and there'll be more added every day.
I think there's a gap between the funding that's being allocated and the expectations. There are obviously two ways to fix it. One is to put more funding in, but the other one is to redefine expectations, or perhaps find new ways with partners outside the federal government to do some of this. So there has to be, I think, a more strategic look.
For the cultural industries, I'd say the main issue was, as we discussed, what we are trying to achieve with the $800 million being spent, and the performance reporting and objectives of all of these programs, and the strategy overall. I'd say, then, it was more on the strategic issue.
There were some questions, obviously, with the verification of the conditions for Canadian content and how.... The framework was good; it was the rigorous application that wasn't always there.
Conservative
NDP
Peggy Nash NDP Parkdale—High Park, ON
Okay, I'll be quick.
Given Monsieur Blais' presentation, talking about results-based and trying to move quickly on this, are you satisfied with the follow-up action that's being taken, given that the report has been out less than a year?
Auditor General of Canada
We certainly see that the department is taking it seriously, that they are addressing the recommendations we made. They agreed with us at the time and we do see that actions are under way. I guess we are cautiously optimistic. We like to wait to actually re-audit before we say if things are resolved or not.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Auditor, to our meeting.
I enjoyed our time with you earlier this week, in which you gave us a bit of a primer on what your department does. Also, thanks to the rest of you for spending the time with us this afternoon.
First, I'd like to focus in on the archival heritage, your 2003 report and the protection of that heritage.
Am I correct in assuming that your audit only addressed those archives that are within the federal purview? In other words, you didn't deal with community archives across the country, did you?
Auditor General of Canada
That's correct, only under the purview of the federal government.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
All right.
When I look at some of the main points in chapter 6 of your 2003 report, there is one concern raised, which is that archival heritage is at risk because federal departments have given little attention to information management in recent years.
I'm assuming that involves determining what our inventory of archival heritage is, also the protection of that heritage. Is it correct to assume that we still haven't completed a full inventory of what that archival heritage is?