Canadian Heritage Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2009

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

To the witnesses, I just want some clarification. Providing somebody gets in an application in October, say, for an approval that they're hoping for in March, that's not necessarily a fair way to determine how Canadian Heritage is doing their job. Aren't you waiting based on receiving the total number of applications on a project before you begin to make approvals?

As such, it may not make their deadline. You're actually working toward receiving all of the applications on the file before you can really determine how much you're going to award to any project. Isn't that how you do it?

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

That occurs in many instances. I'll give the example of the endowment project. We have a set amount of money that we will match at the same percentage to everybody who's managed to get private sector funding, but you have to find out what the total amount is before you can apply that.

Once you have all the files, it's actually quite easy to do the analysis, but you're right, there are many programs. There are publication programs and others, and when you have a certain amount of money available, you have to make choices. You can't give to everybody. There are just not the funds available, and some projects have less merit. So you do have to batch them. However, we try to batch them in line with the business cycles.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Just in--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Make it very short, Mr. Del Mastro, because I might have to let someone else have some say too.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

That's fine. I appreciate that and I appreciate the indulgence of the committee, Mr. Chair.

In the case of groups that you have a fair amount of experience with and so forth, it has become the practice, under the blue ribbon panel suggestions, where you move quite quickly in those cases, but you do undertake due diligence because you are overseeing taxpayers' dollars in other files. That's just being responsible, is it not?

[Jean-Pierre Blais]

It's a risk management approach whereby you're trying to balance it, depending on the facts on any given case and the track records of players. Even if you did decide to go multi-year with somebody if you've dealt with them year after year, every day we're balancing risk analysis and proper stewardship with service to clients. We're trying to have a mature risk analysis system in place in the department.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you very much.

I thank our witnesses very much for their presentation today and for answering the questions so candidly.

The meeting is adjourned.