Information & Ethics Committee on May 6th, 2013

[Mary Dawson]

Yes, it is what it is. The legal branch spends a lot of time working with the investigations section, assessing where we are. The investigations take the time they need to take. A lot of that time is waiting for documents to be submitted, waiting for the setting up of meetings for testimony. Sometimes you have to wait a couple of months before people are available or make themselves available. That's what takes the time in an investigation. There's uptime and downtime, usually.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

When you're requesting documents for your investigations, do you have much trouble getting them from the different departments? I know you ask the individuals for them, but sometimes you have to go beyond that to the departments. Do you have much resistance? Does it take some time to get access to the documents you're looking for?

[Mary Dawson]

No. We get very good cooperation from the departments and the individuals. Sometimes it takes a while for them to gather the documentation.

The only place—and I have it in my various five-year reviews—where we've had difficulty was with the documents under the control of the House of Commons. We have also had some delays in connection with cabinet documents. But I suspect those won't be too bad in the future.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

I have a final question. You talked about the recommendations under the act. You said most of them will be revenue neutral. Are there any that you recommended that would look at significant expenditures or resources?

[Mary Dawson]

There are three or four that come to mind. The gift provisions we have suggested, I'm not sure how much that would add, but it would be one of the ones that would add some work. There are two aspects to that. One is lowering the reporting requirement, which would be a good thing if it adds to our workload. It would mean we're finding out about things that we didn't find out about before. The other aspect is expanding the gift provisions' reporting requirements to include not only the reporting public office holders but also the plain old public office holders. There are a lot more of them than there are reporting public office holders, but I don't think they get that many gifts. So I'm not sure that it would be huge.

The other one that strikes me as one that would add to the resources to some extent is that we have proposed that the public office holders, the non-reporting ones, report to us on their outside activities. That would require a bit of looking at. We don't hear a lot from the ordinary public office holders, because there are no rules that apply to them at this point.

On the other one, which I think Mr. Angus raised, there may be a slight increase, depending on what we go to with respect to compulsory meetings.

Those are the three that come to mind.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you very much.

I now yield the floor to Mr. Butt, who has seven minutes for his questions.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Commissioner Dawson and your team, for being here today and presenting to us a very thoughtful and reasonable main estimates for 2013-14. I see that you're recommending a slight decrease, and I think we're at a stage now where we're trying to look at how we're spending and making sure we're hitting the right balance between what we are allocating to spending and getting the job done. I was pleased to hear in your presentation to the committee that you feel you can continue to get the job done with the funds you're requesting.

I did find it interesting, though, that your agency operates a little bit differently from some other departments in that your office doesn't need to negotiate with the Treasury Board Secretariat. You present your estimates to the Speaker of the House of Commons and then the Speaker, I guess, submits them to the Treasury Board.

Can you explain that process? What role does the Speaker's office play in reviewing your recommended budget, and how do those discussions take place to make sure that what finally gets submitted meets those aspects? Can you explain how that works, because it is a little bit different from what other departments and agencies go through?

[Mary Dawson]

Yes. The reason, of course, is that I'm appointed under the Parliament of Canada Act. My mandate is very deliberately and clearly made totally independent of the government, which is why there's no direct relationship.

You know, I really can't tell you very much about what happens in the Speaker's office when we send our estimates. We send them and they're always sent forward to Treasury Board, and I don't know what happens in the interval. We have never had any push-back of any sort, so I've never had occasion to deal with problems.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

You mentioned you are overseeing 3,000 individuals, including members of Parliament, etc. I have to admit last week was our two-year anniversary of being here. You learn as you go, and hopefully you know the rules and hopefully you're doing the right thing.

Are you generally finding that the public office holders you are overseeing who are reporting through the process are getting better at it and are understanding the system better? When things are brought to their attention, are they able to react fairly quickly? I would suspect most, if not all, want to comply. Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of what the rules are. People want to make sure they're acting appropriately.

As we move along, would you say it's getting better, whether it's a full investigation or simply advising a member? I know I submitted some documents a couple of weeks ago and the person in your office responded very quickly. It was done and things were registered properly and I was thrilled because it was done fairly quickly. I think that's because I know more and I appreciate the role of the office.

Would you say that's generally what you're finding, that most of these 3,000 people you have to work with to ensure compliance are getting better?

[Mary Dawson]

Yes, the only thing about it is that there is quite significant turnover in the 3,000. So there are always new people to deal with, particularly in ministerial offices, for example.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Right. Good point.

[Mary Dawson]

I think that's the biggest one that changes quite frequently.

There are always new people to deal with, but as individuals are here for a longer period of time, they get to know the system.

Would you like to comment, Lyne?

[Lyne Robinson-Dalpé]

I think we're doing a lot of outreach to people. We tend to explain the rules to them and we meet with them, and by doing that I think they're more cognizant of their obligations, and of course, they do want to comply with the rules. So whatever we tell them or whatever advice we provide to them, they tend to follow and they tend to want to submit the information in a timely fashion.

So I would say yes, as time goes by, people are more informed.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Have you set any new priorities for the new—well, we're already into it—fiscal year that we're presently in that would be different from what you've done in the past? Have you set one or two additional priorities in what you're doing? Are you putting more of an emphasis, let's say, on the public education side with the public office holders, rather than sitting...? I know you're not sitting and waiting for something to happen, don't get me wrong. But you know what I mean, being more reactionary than proactive, is that kind of the priority?

Are you setting some of those newer priorities to focus more on the proactive side to make sure you're keeping us out of trouble, rather than seeing some of us, perhaps, getting into trouble?

[Mary Dawson]

Yes. This past year, we've been pretty busy, actually, between putting the five-year review document together, and in the previous year, putting together the code five-year review.

But we do try, to the extent that we have the time to devote to it, and that's why we have a separate policy section, of course, just so there is some designated area that will devote some time to that. We do try to put out information notices as we see necessary.

As I say, there has been a fairly significant bit of work on the investigations issue, too, so the office has been pretty busy over the last year, but to the extent that we can, it's always our priority to get those information notices out as well.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Okay.

Do I still have some time, Mr. Chair? Okay?

I know that we've had some of the other commissioners here, and they've talked about shared services among other departments and agencies. I know that one of them is going to be moving, and that's going to be part of a new shared services kind of arrangement.

Is this the same thing that you're looking at on an ongoing basis? Are you looking at where you can share resources, whether it's with offices of other officers of Parliament, or other similar departments, or simply because you're housed in a particular—I'm not sure where your offices are, to be completely honest—building where you can maximize your ability to share resources with other agencies and departments?

Is it a kind of ongoing plan to look at those things again and say that maybe you could be sharing with this group or that you're on the same floor as this other office and maybe you can be sharing some stuff? Or because of the nature of your office, do you have to keep things a little more separate?

[Mary Dawson]

Yes, it doesn't work so well for us. Our office is actually a designated parliamentary precinct, so we're under the parliamentary security systems, and it really would be very difficult. Maybe we could live close to somebody, but we can't really share the facilities, I don't think. The extent to which we do make use of other facilities is as we mentioned, in that we get some support from Public Works on certain aspects and some support from the Library of Parliament and whatnot.

The other thing, as I understand it, is that the reason why there is a move happening with some of the agents of Parliament is because their building was closed down, so they took advantage of the opportunity to kind of rejig their facilities. That has not happened to us, so I don't see that as being a particular item for us.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

We will now have our five-minute question period. Mr. Boulerice, you have the floor.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Ms. Dawson, for being here with us today.

Thank you very much, ladies, for this presentation. Your presence here is appreciated.

I'd like to raise a matter which has already been broached. It concerns your budgetary process. Yours is different from that of other organizations. You do not negotiate with the Treasury Board Secretariat. You submit your budgetary requirements directly to the Speaker of the House of Commons, who then submits them to Treasury Board.

How do you determine the amount your office will need for the next fiscal year?

Does the Speaker of the House of Commons conduct a critical analysis of these amounts, or does he simply transfer your request?

[Mary Dawson]

I'm going to ask Ms. Benoit to answer your question.

[Denise Benoit]

Unfortunately, we are not very well aware of what goes on in the Office of the Speaker of the House. We submit our budget every year.

We determine the amount we will ask for by carrying out an internal exercise, of course. We first determine the financial needs of each directorate and then we compile that information.

The fact that we have asked for the same amount over the past five years may be one of the reasons why there has not been much opposition from Treasury Board.

If we asked for additional funds, we would have to do so through the main estimates and this would have to be tabled with you, or we would have to do so later in the course of the year, using the same process. We would also do that for the supplementary estimates. We can't just ask for any amount of money and expect to obtain it. There is a process in place. There would also be preliminary discussions with Treasury Board. We would not ask for a larger amount without prior notice.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

You have been remarkably frugal over the past few years. However, there is inflation to contend with, and this implies that employees' salaries go up, as do the cost of office supplies such as paper, and so on. In 2008, $7 million was worth more than the same amount in 2013. What did you have to eliminate or abolish? Did you have to tighten your belt? What services do you no longer offer? What are the consequences?

[Denise Benoit]

As Ms. Dawson indicated earlier, in past years, we had budget surpluses at the end of the year. They were in the amount of approximately $1.5 million the first year I worked at the Office of the Commissioner. A lot of money was returned to Parliament. At the end of the previous year, we returned close to half a million dollars. However, we do always set aside a contingency fund for unexpected expenditures.

In addition, as Ms. Dawson mentioned earlier, we carry out an internal exercise. We studied our internal processes and tried to identify possible improvements or initiatives that would allow us to save money. This year already, we are seeing results, as Ms. Dawson mentioned earlier. We are using email increasingly frequently to communicate with our clients rather than regular mail service. The difference this makes is incredible.

We decided to reduce our expenditures by eliminating individual printers. In fact, we had observed that we were spending a lot of money on paper.

We have a small budget, which allows us to identify potential savings.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Earlier, you mentioned that you oversee 3,000 individuals, which is enormous. These are not only members of Parliament, but many other people as well. Moreover, there is a high turnover. It was said that you meet a lot of people individually.

Can you tell me how many individual meetings you conduct in a year, on the average? I am not only referring to the commissioner, but also to all of your team.