Finance Committee on May 17th, 2012

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you. Those are all my questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Jean.

Are there any further questions on this division? Okay.

Mr. Macdonald, I want to thank you very much for being with us here today and responding to our questions very clearly. We appreciate that.

We will bring the next set of officials forward for division 5, “Reporting Requirements”, which is on page 194 of the bill.

We want to welcome you to our committee, and if you have an opening statement or if you want to give an overview of the division for the committee, we invite you to do so at this time.

[Nicholas S. Wise, Excutive Director, Strategic Policy, Priorities and Planning, Treasury Board Secretariat]

I will. Good morning.

I do have a statement to read, just to indicate in more detail what we're proposing. Before doing that, I'd like to provide some context. These proposals are part of a generalized review we've been undertaking within the Treasury Board Secretariat, looking at reporting requirements and trying to find ways to reassess them in terms of the resources that are put into creating them and to try to eliminate where it seems appropriate to do so.

There are three elements here.

The repeal of section 12.4 of the Financial Administration Act and section 28 of the Public Service Employment Act would eliminate the requirement for the President of the Treasury Board to table the annual report to Parliament on human resources management. Effectively, the report duplicates information that is available elsewhere in a number of sources, and therefore the cost of producing and tabling this report is no longer seen to represent an efficient use of resources. Also, the information that comes to Parliament is often out of date by the time it reaches Parliament, and it is available in a more accessible and timely manner through other vehicles.

The next element is that a new section 151 would replace sections 151 and 152 of the Financial Administration Act. It would create a report that consolidates the quarterly financial reports of crown corporations and provide regular updates on the tabling of their corporate plan summaries and annual reports in Parliament. It replaces effectively the annual report to Parliament on crown corporations and other corporate interests of Canada, which provides readers with information that is often outdated at the time of publication. The new reports would include information on the composition of government and the businesses and activities of federal crown corporations, and the President of the Treasury Board would make it available electronically to the public four times a year rather than once through the annual report.

Lastly, the repeal of section 8 of the Alternative Fuels Act would eliminate the requirement to produce an annual report to Parliament on the application of the act. This section is being repealed because the report presents the same conclusion every year, in effect, and has done so for quite some time, namely, that the use of alternative fuels is not cost effective and is only operationally feasible in select areas of the country. Because of its repetitive nature, the report is of limited use to parliamentarians and Canadians, and the effort required to gather and analyze the data to prepare the report represents again a substantial burden on departments and on the agencies to collect that information.

Those are the three elements. As I say, they represent three legislative changes we're seeking as part of a generalized review of reporting requirements. Again, the idea is to make information more readily available through other means and not to have information duplicated annually in this manner.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you for your overview.

We'll start with Ms. Nash, please.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

I have just two quick questions. You said that the reporting requirement for the President of the Treasury Board's report was being eliminated because it was available elsewhere. Can you tell us where it is available?

[Nicholas S. Wise]

The source is the management accountability framework. It contains the information, which all departments make available on their respective websites.

The Clerk of the Privy Council's report to the Prime Minister, which is released every year, contains that information as well. There is also the Public Service Management Dashboard, which contains a lot of that information and can be accessed.

We're actually checking to see whether it can be accessed by the public. My understanding is that previously it could be, but this information is duplicated in a number of online vehicles, making this information more immediately available.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

So is there is no advantage to having this report? It doesn't keep in one place things that are in different places, or is it all available in one place?

[Nicholas S. Wise]

That's correct: information is available in one place.

The annual report was designed at a time when it was quite difficult to gather that information in an easy manner. Much of the information—in fact, all of it—now is available in a variety of online sources and can be made available, as I say, more immediately. So there's the accessibility question, but also, the annual reports tend to be a bit outdated by the time they're compiled and tabled. This would keep the information fresher.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

I have one other quick question on the reporting requirement under the Alternative Fuels Act. One of the objectives of the Alternative Fuels Act was that starting in April 2004, 75% of the motor vehicles purchased by federal departments, agencies, and crown corporations would operate on alternative fuels.

Has that goal been achieved by the departments and agencies and by the government?

[Nicholas S. Wise]

No, it's not a goal that has been achieved, and the growing sense that it's not a cost-effective alternative means that it's going to be a very difficult goal to achieve over time, particularly given other alternatives.

Hybrid cars, for example, are not included in that definition of alternative fuels. They seem to be more cost-effective, in terms of the efficiency of the vehicles, and also the availability of alternative fuels is quite limited.

So this is a goal that is unlikely to be reached soon.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Are saying that changing this to a requirement that hybrid vehicles be used might be a better alternative?

[Nicholas S. Wise]

We are looking into whether the act itself will be updated to reflect that alternative. As I say, in this instance it's really just focusing on this annual report, which doesn't present new or interesting information on an annual basis and does represent a bit of a misuse of resources, in the sense that there are efforts and resources deployed to put that annual report together but it doesn't bring any new information to Parliament or to Canadians.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have about two minutes, if you want to use them, or you may want to use a full round later.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

No, I have just one question.

I don't know whether you have talked about this, but is the auditor supposed to examine the accuracy of the comprehensive report? Is that authority or obligation taken away from the auditor?

[Nicholas S. Wise]

Yes.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Why?

[Christiane Allard, Advisor, Strategic Policy, Priorities and Planning, Treasury Board Secretariat]

In the consultations with the Office of the Auditor General and the Treasury Board Secretariat, everyone agreed that this requirement should be removed. The Office of the Auditor General said that it had other priorities. The audit was carried out only on the time frame. The new clause 151 suggests including in the report all the crown corporations that fail to meet the deadline for making the report public. That will be reflected in the reports. That is why the requirement has been removed. This way, the resources can be dedicated to other priorities.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

The Auditor General no longer has the obligation to verify the accuracy, but he may still do so voluntarily.

[Christiane Allard]

I assume that he has the authority to do so.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Let's go to Mr. Jean, please.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the witnesses.

I had an opportunity to work with Transport Canada for a while during the ecoAUTO rebate program. It was quite successful in some terms. It was taken up by about 170,000 Canadians—for about $200 million, I think. Is that correct?

[Nicholas S. Wise]

I honestly couldn't say.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

It is correct. At least the website says so, and so I hope so.

My understanding in relation to some of those vehicles, including hybrids, is that there are some reports out that indicate that the life-cycle cost of batteries is in fact much more worrisome—in landfills, etc.—than GHG emissions, so there is some dispute about whether hybrids would be more environmentally friendly than traditional automobiles or not. I know that automobiles today are 30 to 35 times more fuel-efficient and are more reductive of GHGs than they were 10 years ago, so we have come quite a way.

The definition of insanity is to do things over and over again with the same result. We've had this Alternative Fuels Act report over and over again, and it keeps coming up with the same result.

What would be the cost associated with producing a report like that? I know it's very difficult to itemize it, because each department collects the data and there must be a hundred people every day looking at the data they put into this report. But what would be the cost, in actual terms, that you're aware of?

[Nicholas S. Wise]

You're right that it is a very difficult thing to quantify. It would be hundreds of thousands of dollars, once you add up the people hours required to gather and analyze the data and put it together in a report. It's not a huge amount, but given the utility of the report, it was seen to be not a necessarily cost-effective way of presenting that information.