Environment Committee on Feb. 8th, 2007

[Sheila Fraser]

Indeed, that is if the separate office had an auditing role.

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

I see. The crux of the matter then is to determine whether, at this time, the environment commissioner should no longer be under your watchful eye. But based on your answer, regardless of what happens, even if the position of environment commissioner wasn't created, specific environmental auditing would still need to be carried out.

[Sheila Fraser]

It would always be part of our role to conduct environmental auditing. Should the position of environment commissioner be created as a separate entity, a lot would depend on the terms of reference given to her organization.

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

When people try and use you or a commissioner for partisan purposes—try being the operative word—your response is that it is important you do not get involved for the sake of your credibility. Why do you say this?

[Sheila Fraser]

We must always remain objective, and be perceived as being so, in the work that we do. If we were to get involved in policy development and public commentary on a policy, we would no longer be credible and our work would suffer as a result. The Auditor General's independence is absolutely crucial to each and every activity engaged in by the auditor.

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

I see. So you walk a very fine line in your position.

[Sheila Fraser]

It is quite clear to us that we must never comment on policy. We can talk about its implementation, performance, measurement mechanisms to determine whether objectives are being met, but we must never comment on a policy.

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

How much time do I have left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

You have 20 seconds left.

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

This comment is addressed to Mr. Lussier.

The oil burnt in Quebec doesn't come from Alberta's oil sands, it comes from overseas. It's imported and refined at the Ultramar plant, which is located right near Quebec City. So when the Bloc Québécois makes the spurious connection between pollution in Quebec and what I've just referred to, it is once again engaging in somewhat biased rhetoric.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Harvey.

I'm not sure where that fits into this discussion.

Mr. McGuinty, for five minutes.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much, Ms. Fraser, and I'm sorry I'm late. I was in the House debating another motion on Kyoto and important issues related to a lot of the work we're talking about today.

Ms. Fraser, as a parliamentarian, I feel a strong sense of responsibility to come back to last week. I guess I would preface my questions to you by reminding you, and everyone who might be watching and following, that as an agent of Parliament, you are accountable to parliamentarians, and it is our job to occasionally ask tough questions.

I'd like to come back to some of the discussion we had last week. We met last week in camera, against my protests at the time, and we were told that you would be making an announcement later that day. There have been many questions raised since then by the public, by the media, and by my constituents, who are asking me if I can give them an answer about what has transpired.

I think you know that your testimony here in committee is protected by parliamentary privilege. You know that it has no bearing on any kind of legal matter that might be outstanding, and I don't think it would prejudice the outcome of any potential legal dispute. And I don't know what the state of that is at all.

As a parliamentarian, I have to ask you now, directly, for your full disclosure of what we discussed last week. I guess the question is whether, yes or no, in simple terms, Madame Gélinas was dismissed from her post as environment commissioner last week. And if she was dismissed, what were the grounds for her dismissal?

There were statements made last week by you about the effectiveness of the commissioner's reports. Some have come to me and said that obviously the Auditor General was not satisfied with Madame Gélinas' performance, to which I cannot reply. Did this contribute to your decision to dismiss her, if she was in fact dismissed?

So maybe we can start with that, if we could.

[Sheila Fraser]

Mr. Chair, with all due respect to the member, as I said last week, I cannot discuss these issues. It is a question of respect for individuals. I think it would be totally inappropriate for me to be discussing this in public. I am not trying to cover things up, but I believe very strongly in respecting individuals in this case. There are privacy issues, and I cannot discuss this here. I can't go any further than what I said last week.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. McGuinty, could you get on with your motion? I think you're stretching it a little bit. I believe you've heard that answer now at least three times, and pursuing it I don't think will accomplish very much. We can talk after about other options you might want to take, but if you could, just get to the motion at hand.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Well, the only question I would put to the Auditor General, then, before I come to the motion at hand, is this: If not here, then where? Where is this to be discussed, if it's not here with parliamentarians?

[Sheila Fraser]

Mr. Chair, I do not believe that discussing personnel issues at the Office of the Auditor General that involve people within that office is appropriate in any public discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Okay.

You may proceed, Mr. McGuinty.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

I will. I will proceed.

Ms. Fraser, as the Auditor General presently overseeing the commissioner's position, did you partly come to your position today because there was a difference in opinion on how the mandate ought to be exercised by the commissioner?

[Sheila Fraser]

Mr. Chair, I raise the question of what appeared to be an expectation gap for consideration by the committee because there have been two draft bills put forward that ask the commissioner to do work that is incompatible with the mandate. It is, I think, an issue that is worth consideration by the committee. Or at least the committee can give us an indication that, no, that is not a consideration and they don't think there is that expectation gap. That is why we brought it forward to the committee, to see if the committee felt that there was.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. McGuinty, we have two questions here. We have your motion about splitting the office, and then the Auditor General has suggested that we come up with parameters for that environment commissioner, either in or out. So I suggest we deal with that independently.

Your time is just about up, but I will give you one more question if you can make it fairly quick.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Can you help us understand the mechanism by which your office receives funding? How important is that mechanism for the independence of your office?

[Sheila Fraser]

Up until this past year, the funding went through the same process as any department. So we would put a submission in to the Treasury Board Secretariat, and it would go through the normal course. We raised the issue in the office for many years that we didn't believe that process was sufficiently independent, and that the people who were assessing and recommending the funding were the people we audited.

We are very pleased that there has been a change. There is a parliamentary panel now that reviews the funding requests of all officers of Parliament. It is a panel that is advisory to the Speaker of the House. We met with the panel just this past November, and we appeared with the Treasury Board Secretariat.

The Treasury Board Secretariat obviously conducts the usual analysis of the funding requests and submission. They were in agreement with the submission and recommended the submission we put forward. But the parliamentary panel also reviewed it and recommended it to the Speaker. The Speaker then transmitted that recommendation to the President of the Treasury Board. It does not have the force of automatic application; it's a recommendation.

All the officers of Parliament are in agreement with this mechanism. There's a two-year pilot, and we're hopeful that it will continue and give us a little more independence and parliamentary oversight.

Of course, the office also appears before the public accounts committee—in fact I just appeared on Monday. We review our report on plans and priorities and the departmental performance report with that committee as well.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. McGuinty.

Mr. Calkins, please.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to thank you again, Madam Fraser.

Mr. Thompson, I'm not sure if we can bestow on you an honorary membership to the committee, but I certainly appreciate the amount of effort you've made to appear before this committee recently.

I think I made it clear in the last discussions we had that I'm very concerned about the integrity of the Office of the Auditor General being threatened by adding the role of advocacy. I believe that as a parliamentarian it's my responsibility to advocate policies, and as a government parliamentarian it's my job to advocate the policies of the government. You've been very clear on that. I don't think we need to go down that road any more.

We've talked about duplication as well. You're concerned about splitting the office, and some of the duplication that would occur simply because you would still have some overlap in your office between an independent office, auditing environmental perspectives, and so on.

If we talk about the duplication from another perspective and look at the mandate of the national round table, it clearly says that it “acts as an advocate for positive change, raising awareness among Canadians and their governments about the challenges of sustainable development”.

From a Canadian taxpayer's perspective, I believe government funding is provided for the national round table. We're already funding advocacy using tax dollars, and my constituents have complained to me that the tax dollars shouldn't be used to fund advocacy at all. But that's from my constituents, and I'd like to throw that little plug in.

From a duplication perspective, it seems to me that creating an independent office that does more advocacy doesn't seem to be a wise use of tax dollars. In your experience, are there other government organizations that I'm perhaps not aware of that already get paid or receive government funding to advocate on behalf of the environment?