Evidence of meeting #27 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was inquiry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
And hopefully the act—
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
Yes. The act or the code is the code you're supposed to follow.
In my experience, MPs are pretty honourable people, generally.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Thank you for coming, Commissioner.
I disagree with Mr. Martin on one thing. Whether on heritage or whatever committee I was on, I would be actively looking at what the estimates were, no matter how big or small they were.
I have some specific questions, but I appreciate your providing a more detailed outline of where the costs are than what is in the estimates book, where it is a couple of lines.
But let me start there, very quickly. I'll try to make these succinct.
You're asking on the operations side, not including capital spending, in round numbers for about a 38% to 40% increase. Isn't that right? In the budget that's presented to us, we have a new line called “inquiries”—it's new in that it wasn't there last year—and there isn't any money for communications or policy.
Is that a change in how you're structuring your budget? Or have you moved that money into a bigger pot? What have you done with it?
Commissioner, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
I'm going to let my new and wonderful corporate director take some of these detailed questions.
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
The budget, the way it is presented, is based on the program activity architecture, which each organization has to develop. In it we have to identify our main activities. When the office went through the process last year, they determined that there were two main activities for the organization. They were our operations compliance and inquiries.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
When you came to see us in November, you talked about there being a communications issue in terms of making sure people understood what you were about. Have that money and that activity been lumped into that increase?
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
Exactly. It is distributed between those two main activities, just as corporate services and any other activities would be.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
So when you were looking for this increase, and you said in your presentation it was mostly for salaries--it's a 40% increase or 38%, whatever it is--how many bodies is that actually?
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
It's for 50 positions.
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
We have 50 in total.
The last number of years have been pretty unusual, let's say, on the salary side. As an example, for 2007-08 we actually spent less on salary dollars than we did the year before.
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
We had vacancies. And when we finally decided to go ahead with our legal shop, that only took place at the end of the fiscal year. So obviously they only used a quarter of the salary.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
In your presentation, I think it was in November, you said that Parliament had allocated you $3 million extra, but you only used in supplementary estimates (A) $675,000 of it. So is that $3 million added to the $7 million that I see today?
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
Part of it is, because the base budget was $5.1 million. So the $3 million was added to the $5.1 million.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
How did the $3 million happen? Did somebody allocate that? How did that happen? Did TB send that to you or give you a note on that saying you had $3 million extra? How did that happen?
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
I think there were just assumptions made by the people who were at the office at that time in discussions with Treasury Board. So they put $3 million into the fiscal framework. That's how much they estimated the increase to be with the change in mandate. That would be the impact of the new mandate.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
So to spend the $7 million that you're asking for, you need to be fully staffed?
Director, Corporate Management, Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
Absolutely.
