Environment Committee on Jan. 31st, 2007

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

If there were an independent commissioner or independent office, perhaps that function might add to the Commissioner's mandate.

[Sheila Fraser]

As I said earlier, it's very important that the audit function remain independent. We cannot give advice on policy development on the one hand, and audit those same policies on the other. Those are incompatible roles. The auditor's role must be independent, and a role of advising on policy and program evaluation is something else.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Isn't it a bit dangerous to create a policy evaluation role?

Doesn't the role of evaluating performance against policies proposed by the government fall to the opposition, not to an office?

[Sheila Fraser]

That's a question that we're raising in committee. Would there be grounds for considering that? We submit that question to your attention. It's not up to me to say whether you should do it or not. It's really up to parliamentarians to decide whether this is a question that should be examined in greater detail.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

All right. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Harvey.

Mr. Regan.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Like Mr. Warawa, I certainly respect the autonomy of the Office of the Auditor General—and our party respects that autonomy, as we should. Obviously, the public has a great deal of admiration for the Office of the Auditor General, for you personally as Auditor General, and I think also for the office of the Commissioner of the Environment and for Ms. Gélinas personally, which I think is one of the reasons why there's public interest in understanding what's happened here.

Obviously, as we are a standing committee of the House of Commons and members of Parliament, we have our own responsibilities to consider what's happened and to make sure we make our decisions and Parliament makes decisions on the basis of good information.

Let me refer to your statement of yesterday to this committee. As you know, the committee has now passed a motion that this should be public, and with your concurrence. In paragraph three of yesterday's statement, you said:

...I wish to advise you that the current Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Johanne Gélinas, will be leaving the position to pursue other opportunities. She will be announcing her specific plans once they are finalized.

It was your wish to come before us to inform us of this. It seems when you say she “will be leaving the position to pursue other opportunities”.... I get the impression from this that it was her wish, that she was leaving so that she could pursue other opportunities. I'm trying to understand whether that's accurate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Regan, I believe that Mr. Cullen approached that a couple of times, and the Auditor General made it clear that she can't talk about those personal issues. If she cares to answer.... Otherwise, you could go on to another question.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Chairman, the problem is that it was talked about yesterday before the committee and in the way I just described. The question is, do we have a responsibility to assess that? I guess, really, I want to get on to the question of the reporting structure, and that's really what we're here for and want to talk about. If she wants to answer this, it's up to—

[Sheila Fraser]

I cannot answer the specifics, but what I will say is that everything I said yesterday I believe to be true.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

And I accept that; I'm not going to argue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Let's get on with the reporting.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Let's go on to the question of the nature of the role of the commissioner and when the reporting should be. It seems to me that when Parliament passed the legislation to create the role of the commissioner, Parliament could have said, “We'd like the Auditor General's office to do more in terms of the environmental area”, but it specifically created the role of the commissioner. As I understand it, the act actually refers to the commissioner having an advocacy role.

Is that right? Is there no provision in that regard in the bill that was passed by Parliament? My understanding was.... Well, I'll have to have a look at it.

[Sheila Fraser]

Would you like me to...? I have the act with me, if you would like me to quote what the actual—

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

You have it with you? All right, that's fine. That's what I heard, and I haven't had a chance to look at it directly.

It seems to me that rolling the report of the commissioner into the report of the Auditor General on a quarterly basis.... My concern is that it would diminish the impact of that report in itself. I understand what you're saying, that in past years it perhaps hasn't always received the attention it should receive; however, it certainly received a lot of attention in September. We've seen in recent polls and in what we've seen this week in the House of Commons that it is receiving a lot of attention these days. Whether that's a result of a cumulative amount of effort by the commissioner and other people as well.... I don't know how we attribute it exactly, but perhaps that's part of it.

I guess my inclination is to say that it ought to remain as a separate, stand-alone report. I think it's incumbent on us to hear.... We've heard part of your argument on this, and maybe you'll help us a little more to understand why you feel...because it's important to understand and respect your opinion.

[Sheila Fraser]

What is unfortunate is that we really did start this as a consultation process. No hard, fast decision has been made, and we wanted to come before the committee to consult.

One of the advantages that we saw was reporting more frequently throughout the year—not to have one report at the beginning of the year in September, but to have reports in October, April, and possibly in February.

Having said that, it became an issue that there wouldn't be five, six, or eight chapters. Would we then table those reports concurrently? At the same time, it doesn't necessarily have to be in the box with the Auditor General's report. It could be a separate commissioner's report; it could be volume 1, then volume 2. There are different ways of packaging it.

What we had hoped was to give more visibility and quite frankly to get it in front of more journalists. The other advantage—and I say this with all due respect for this committee—is that we think there would be an advantage to having certain reports, which deal with management issues, go to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, in addition to this committee. That committee really holds the government to account for management issues.

If any of you have been there...they have a very different role and procedure from all of the other House committees. They bring witnesses forward from the departments, ask them for action plans, follow up on what they are doing, and issue their own reports. By tabling at the same time as the AG report, we could then say that this report is really about the management of a program; could it not also go to the public accounts committee, rather than just to this one?

Quite honestly, that was what our thinking was. If the members say no, we really like the way it was working, then we will stay with that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Regan.

Mr. Vellacott.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Thank you for being here, Ms. Fraser. We appreciate the work you do and the manner in which you do it. The thoroughness of your work is much appreciated as well.

My question relates to a comment you made in point number eight in this statement. You said that the performance audits on the environment and sustainable development issues don't appear to have the same impact as other performance audits.

Off the top of your head, can you give us some general percentage over the years of how many recommendations from your office have been implemented, compared to the recommendations from the CESD?

[Sheila Fraser]

I do have a bit of a breakdown. I caution that this may not be a perfect measure. I would say that the reports from the Office of the Auditor General average somewhere around 45% to 50%—which we find unacceptable and have been trying to improve. On the commissioner's report, the rate of implementation since the beginning is certainly under 20% and might even be under 15%.

Some very important issues were brought up about management, and those recommendations should be put into place. We need to find a way to ensure that this is done more effectively.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Right.

Do you have any idea why there's this big difference in terms of recommendations, or would you speculate?

[Sheila Fraser]

I suspect that some of it may be due to the recommendations themselves. They may be too general and not specific enough. Some of it may be because of the kinds of areas we looked at. Quite frankly, some of it may just be due to a lack of commitment to deal with some of these issues.

That's what we need to study further. We need to go back and probe around specific recommendations to see how we can improve that practice.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Okay. thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Bigras.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to go back to the statement you made yesterday before the committee, particularly since it's now public. Paragraph 13 reads:

According to some of our advisors, there is a gap between the expectations of certain persons regarding the Commissioner's role and the mandate [...]

I must tell you I fell off my chair reading the example that you then gave:

[...] to what extent can or should the Commissioner defend a cause with respect to a government policy issue?

And you nearly suggest that the committee look into this matter.

So I would like to ask you two questions. First, who are these people who communicated with your advisors to point out this gap? Second, do you think that Ms. Gélinas was perhaps a little too militant in favour of the environmental cause relative to the mandate that was given her under the act?

[Sheila Fraser]

As the committee perhaps knows, we have a number of advisory committees at the Office of the Auditor General of Canada. Among others, we have what are called the Panel of Senior Advisors and the Panel of Environmental Advisors. The people who are members of these advisory committees are very well known. Their names are all on our Web site, but I'll name a few. For example, Mr. Stuart Smith, Mr. Caccia and Ken Ogilvie are members of the Panel of Environmental Advisors. Our Panel of Senior Advisors consists, among others, of Mr. Broadbent, Mr. Clark, Mr. Ritchie, Mr. Gorbet, Lorna Marsden and Elizabeth Dowdeswell.

These are people with whom we discuss strategic issues of the Office. In the context of our discussions, they often tell us that there are groups that would like us to go further. I believe you only have to see the statements sometimes made in the newspapers to understand that some would like to see a more independent commissioner who is able to comment on policies.