Information & Ethics Committee on May 6th, 2013

[Lyne Robinson-Dalpé]

I have a statistic on that somewhere. In fact, it always depends on the number of people who are appointed. We contact all of the public office holders and all of the members at least once a year during the annual review. We also communicate with all those who are appointed for the first time. We offer to meet with them personally to explain their obligations under the act or the code. This can sometimes be done through a simple phone call.

This year, I think that people want to meet with us in person, more and more. We meet with them. I think that this year, there were approximately 50 such meetings. We have to make sure that these are meetings with new office holders. I think there were about 200 new public office holders appointed during the last year. Of these 200, about 50 asked for a one-on-one meeting.

You must also consider the fact that many public office holders are in different locations throughout Canada. Consequently, having to travel to meet them would cause us to incur much higher expenses. We try and balance the two. We often offer presentations to groups of public office holders.

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

What is the main priority of the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner for 2013?

[Mary Dawson]

Responding to what you decide on our proposals is what I see as probably a significant challenge coming. I don't know how long it will take. The code we're still waiting for. We submitted that a year ago, but I expect we'll have something to react to coming out of that, which would be the main preoccupation.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you very much for your answers.

Thank you, Mr. Boulerice.

I now give the floor to Mr. Carmichael for five minutes.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner Dawson.

Just following up on my colleague's question, the main priority is responding to what we recommend, and hopefully the response will be a good deal faster than the one you just referred to on the code. As a new member two years ago and having just gone through our two-year anniversary of being here, I think I mentioned to you once previously that I had the opportunity on a one-to-one basis to get a good education on my responsibilities under the act, and under the code for that matter.

I'm one who thinks these one-to-one meetings are very important. Clearly, with the number of areas that impact our lives on a daily basis, certainly for the 308 members, your people do a terrific job of turning around the information and helping to ensure that we're well informed, and when we do call they respond and the information is very strong.

I wanted to just quickly confirm that I have the five divisions of your commission correctly identified. You have advisory and compliance, legal services, investigations—

[Mary Dawson]

Yes, and reports.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

—and reports.

Corporate management—

[Mary Dawson]

Yes.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

—and policy, research, and communications.

[Mary Dawson]

Right.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

You mentioned that investigation takes about $800,000 right off the top of your budget. Would you be able to roughly summarize what the other groups are?

[Mary Dawson]

I'm pretty sure Denise has these figures.

[Denise Benoit]

I do.

The budget for advisory and compliance is $1.4 million. Actually, if you include the benefits portion, it's $1.6 million. We've already covered reports and investigations. Policy, research, and communications is $850,000. Legal services is $600,000. Corporate, because we cover all the costs of the MOUs of the shared services agreements, is $2 million.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you.

As I'm looking at the numbers, obviously we're going to impact your lives dramatically with the report, and I appreciate that you've commented on that already. I think that there is going to be some strong benefit for you and for those who are covered under the act.

Beyond that, what are the main challenges? You've talked about the main priority in the coming year just addressing it, and it could be it's the very same thing. What are the main challenges that your office would be faced with in the short and medium term?

[Mary Dawson]

I don't think they have changed at all. The investigations are always a challenge because there is a lot of commentary about the length of time these things take. They take the time that they take, as I said, but we do everything we can to move those along as quickly as we can. That's always a challenge.

Putting together our information notices is very important, but you have to be very careful to get them 100% accurate so that you don't have any loopholes there, so those are challenging as well.

What else? It's really more of the same, I think. We're doing the job as best we can, and I don't have an area that's particularly problematic.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Which is probably a very good thing. You probably get some good sleep at night with that.

But how do you measure your success or your progress at the end of the year? Do you do a report card internally, or does somebody measure that for you?

[Mary Dawson]

Go ahead, Denise.

[Denise Benoit]

If I may, we're currently developing a performance measurement framework. We had to put the policies and the processes in place before we could come forward and evaluate them. We're currently working on doing a performance measurement framework, as I mentioned, where we'll come up with some indicators and some measures to be able to come back and report to you on how well we're doing.

When the commissioner prepares her annual report at the end of the year, there are statistics there but they're quantitative, so they're numbers. You can see how many initial compliances were done, so you'll get some statistics. But to do some true performance measurement, it's going to take at least one more year, if not two, to be able to come back with that information.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

So then, within advisory and compliance, as one division, would you plan to measure the performance of each of your officers, the people we talk to, in terms of the number of calls, the amount of information and support they're required to provide on a day-to-day basis?

[Mary Dawson]

We have, of course, performance evaluations every year on each of our individuals in the department. We do performance appraisals as a matter of routine.

We've certainly been cognizant of timelines. I know that in compliance and advisory there has been a lot of attention paid to how quickly we manage to go through various processes.

Lyne, would you like to add to that?

[Lyne Robinson-Dalpé]

Yes, exactly as the commissioner mentioned, evaluations of staff account for the number of transactions they've done, so basically how many people they've put in compliance, how many people they've dealt with on their annual reviews, and so on and so forth.

We've developed some service standards within this area as well, because there are some very tight deadlines for initial compliance, for example. Advisers need to be able to report back to the public office holder in a timely fashion, so there are service standards we've established there. Advisers are aware of them, and when they're evaluated, we look at everything, not just the numbers but also the quality of the advice that's provided.

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

I thank the commissioner for her testimony before the committee.

This concludes our proceedings.

I am now going to call the question. I am going to do so in English.

PARLIAMENT Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Vote 15—Program expenditures..........$6,234,980

Shall vote 15, under Parliament, less the amount voted in interim supply, carry?

(Vote 15 agreed to)

The vote carries.

We will now consider the second item on our agenda. This part of the meeting will take place in camera.

I am going to suspend the meeting for a few minutes to allow those who are not authorized to stay to leave the room.

We will resume in a few minutes.

[Proceedings continue in camera]