Finance Committee on May 12th, 2020

[Sylvain Ricard]

I'll answer in two parts. No, not in a formal way, because as you know, no budget, that I know of anyway, has been announced in terms of timelines and whatever. However, we've been talking to some players at some working levels—normal processes that take place—but we haven't got any answers or positive outcomes out of that.

As I said earlier, I am really getting concerned about the impact this has on this institution. I want to be clear. I had no choice but to mention it to the committee, in light of being clear about the expectations of the committee and parliamentarians. If I'm not transparent about this reality, I'm not doing anybody any service. I have to be transparent. If we suggest to organizations that they have to speak in a full and transparent way, it has to start with us. We've always done it that way, and we believe it now.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

I'll just say, sir, today you've done a great service for your country by telling us your story.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We'll go to Mr. Fraser, and then we'll follow up with a question from Ms. May.

We told the Auditor General 90 minutes, and that will probably sum it up.

Mr. Fraser.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you for joining us today.

I want to ask a little bit about best practices when it comes to the storage and disclosure of data. It seems to me as though we're going through what is perhaps, by no one's design, a very interesting economic and social experiment in order to respond to this crisis. There are probably categories of data that we may not ordinarily keep, in terms of both the way that money is spent, but importantly, the impact it's having as well.

Do you have recommendations or advice for the committee or the government that would allow us to achieve best practices when it comes to keeping as much data as we can for consideration on the back end of the rollout of some of these policies?

[Sylvain Ricard]

I'll ask Mr. Hayes to speak to this.

[Andrew Hayes]

Data has been a constant theme for our audit work over the last number of years. The importance of good data to support decision-making is paramount and critical to having the best results for Canadians, from our perspective anyway.

Obviously, we recognize—and the secretary of the Treasury Board has been clear with departments—that it's important to move quickly but to ensure that decisions and rationales are documented. We would start there, and we would hope that data is captured.

I would note, of course, that there may be other kinds of data that are being collected, and the Privacy Commissioner may have views on that collection, use and disclosure. I think particularly about health information that might be collected and that sort of thing. We would hope that personal information that should be protected is being protected to the degree possible.

The other thing I will mention is that obviously secret information, cabinet confidence information, is a challenge in the current environment. The security protocols are always important in terms of handling that data.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Can you point us to any international comparator or institutional organization that could shed light on how we can put record-keeping practices in place? It's frustrating on occasion when you try to dig into historical job numbers and realize that we didn't even keep track of some of these modern statistics until the mid-seventies.

Are there things we can learn through this experience, categories of data that we don't normally keep, that would make your work easier, and more importantly, improve the decision-making process for governments in the future?

[Andrew Hayes]

I think I'll answer that one.

I don't have any blinding insights for you right now. It might be something that our audit teams can look into. If we can get back to you with some ideas, we will.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I don't have too many questions, but I do like to tee it up for the witnesses on occasion.

To our Auditor General, if there is one takeaway from your time here that you would like the committee to hold after your testimony is complete, what is it that you hopes sticks with us all that will allow you to most effectively do your work?

[Sylvain Ricard]

I'll say that we will, as usual, provide parliamentarians with top-quality audit work. We will do our best to provide timely information, so maybe not just one report or reports in a year, there may be interim reporting. I thank the committee for the opportunity to have this hearing today.

At the end of the day, through all of this, something that is becoming clear through the pandemic is the importance of technology, that IT systems be up to date, for us, for audit tools and for departments. There is also the capacity for Canadians to have access to government services, especially in remote areas. That is an area that will be of importance for us, probably when we do the audit of COVID and/or infrastructure, because we are also living it. From an auditor's perspective, we believe that is one place where we could make a difference for Canadians.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Excellent. Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Ms. May.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for our interim commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, Mr. Hayes.

We're coming up to July and I think you'll have been interim for a full year. I know that a lot of Canadians don't always know when they hear the report from the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development that it's a position within the Office of Auditor General. I want to know from you whether the financial and budget limitations that we've heard about from the Auditor General equally impact our ability to, for instance, audit progress towards sustainable development goals.

[Andrew Hayes]

Yes, the work that is done on environmental and sustainable development matters within the Office of the Auditor General is part of the performance audit practice. The reduction in the funding available for performance audits has a consequential effect on the audits that I can deliver as interim commissioner.

As a matter of scale, in the past, on average, we would do about six per year. We expect that with the new realities we're facing with our funding, we're down to four. That said, we are obviously trying our best to ensure that sustainable development goals are incorporated into a lot of the work that the Auditor General does as well.

[Sylvain Ricard]

Mr. Chair, if I'm allowed, I will add something.

Very briefly, just to add to that storyline, it also impacts our capacity to do audit work in the territories. When we look at our past work and our future work in the territories, we're talking about mental health, correctional services and child and family services. Again, when I said earlier that I was getting concerned about our capacity to make a difference for Canadians, those are obvious examples that come to mind.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay.

I thank you for providing us the valuable information that you have today and also for appearing before this committee; I know that it's more traditionally the public accounts committee.

I will say this from a personal point of view. Not just the audits that you do as Auditor General and that a number of Auditors General have done, what I find to be an education, really, is that when you do an audit, you sum up what happens within the area that you're doing the audit on. For me, personally—and I've been an MP for quite a while—I find that very valuable in understanding the various tasks that a department takes on and the services that they provide or don't quite provide as well as they're supposed to, according to the Auditor General.

I want to thank both of you very much for appearing before the committee today. I think you have provided us with some valuable insight. We appreciate your constructive analysis.

For committee members, we have the meeting with the minister and officials on Thursday. We've now been informed by the whips' offices that we will be meeting on Tuesday and Thursday of next week. We will have a general panel on Tuesday, as well as the CEO of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Minister Ng has agreed to appear for an hour on the Thursday. That was your request, I believe, Marty. We'll also have a general panel there as well.

I would remind members that there are about 74 witnesses left on the list of requests to appear. Could the various parties have their witness lists to the clerk no later than six o'clock Wednesday? That's tomorrow night. You can go through that list or add to it if you decide to. Have your witnesses to the clerk by tomorrow at 6 p.m. so that he and his staff can get on the phones to get that job done and give witnesses plenty of time.

With that, I want to again thank the witnesses and thank the committee members for their efforts today.

The meeting is adjourned.