Fisheries Committee on Feb. 20th, 2007

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I am.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I just can't believe you said it right the first time. I won't make you spell it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Well, I just did, but welcome to the committee. We'll go to our next questioner.

Monsieur Blais, s'il vous plaît.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, Ms. Fraser. Good morning gentlemen.

First of all Ms. Fraser, I must say that I'm rather impressed to met you and to be able to ask you questions, because I have a great deal of respect for you.

I would like to have a better understanding of how this really works. When the time comes to draft a report, for example on the coast guard, it starts somewhere. There has to be a beginning to this study.

Is that beginning driven by particular events? Is it launched by you, by your office, or following some complaint? How does this work? What is the point of origin?

[Sheila Fraser]

Almost all of the audits we carry out are choices we have made ourselves. In most cases, we do risk analyses of various departments and we set up a three- to five-year audit program.

In the case of this report, the Status Report, these are audits or follow-up audit activities of audits we have already done in the past. We assess whether or not the departments have made satisfactory progress or not in response to recommendations. As we said earlier, there had already been audits in 2000, in 2002 and even before that. We look at the recommendations, we re-check the issues and we give a progress report taking into account the complexity of the issues and the time that has gone by.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Is it possible that a member of Parliament, a group of MPs, a citizens' group or some organizations could call on your services and ask you to audit a particular entity? Could that also happen?

[Sheila Fraser]

We receive many proposals, but we do not accept to carry to an audit at the request of an individual or even of a member of Parliament. If a committee addresses a request to us, generally speaking, we comply with it.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

All right.

I have something in mind that I want to talk about right away, namely the small craft harbours file.

Regarding the coast guard, you said that if things are allowed to slide, maintenance costs go up. Due to a great increase in maintenance costs, the challenge becomes greater. Unfortunately, this can create problems with various aspects of the mandate for which the coast guard, for instance, is responsible.

However, I am specifically thinking of the small craft harbours file, because the harbours begin to deteriorate as soon as they are not maintained. Their deterioration causes safety problems as well as a great increase in maintenance costs.

If a house is not kept in good repair, a leaky roof can sooner or later cave in. I feel that this is more or less what happened to the coast guard, but I would like to understand this more clearly. You said that your studies and audits are done over a long period of time. Therefore, you produce audit reports, you make requests and recommendations. Obviously, your recommendations were not followed.

[Sheila Fraser]

In this case, in fact, the recommended measures were not fully carried out. We can see that the coast guard and the department began to work on this, but they did not ultimately resolve the issues that we raised.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

You mentioned underlying causes and various other aspects. Are the causes mainly due to the financial factor, or is there something more to it?

[Sheila Fraser]

The deputy minister should answer this question.

That is probably the case. Of course, if we say that the fleet is aging, it means that there were not sufficient funds to replace the craft. Nevertheless, we are still hesitant about making recommendations with regard to funding issues. We say that management must be properly carried out within the allocated envelopes. Part of our basic reasoning is that the coast guard tried to do too much, did not set its priorities and did not do the necessary a follow-up to make sure that the measures were fully carried out.

Therefore, this is partly the reason. Of course, the accountability system also comes into play.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

One of the coast guard's most important mandates has to do with marine safety. Therefore, do you think that the mandate for ensuring safety was affected by the fact that the coast guard did not carry out its responsibilities? Did this put people's safety at risk?

[Sheila Fraser]

We do not evaluate programs. We really need to do an evaluation before we can answer your question.

Mr. Chairman, we are told that there is a problem with the reliability of ships. The ships are often under repair, and they spend more and more time under repair. Therefore, they are less available. However, I think that they are compensating for this, perhaps by providing more vessels to certain sectors.

Perhaps the commissioner and the deputy minister could answer this question, but we have not seen anything that indicates this. Of course, some of the accidents or incidents that we mentioned in the report could create problems for coast guard employees.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

All right.

I will let Mr. Murray or Mr. Da Pont answer this question. Did the coast guard's deficiencies and problems cast any doubt or have any impact on its mandate with regard to marine safety?

[Commr George Da Pont]

In the first place, the coast guard is not directly mandated to ensure safety. Our role consists in assisting other departments that are directly mandated, mainly the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Clearly, our role consists in making sure that ships are available for their activities.

As the deputy minister mentioned a few minutes ago, we received funds, two or three years ago, to carry out a program with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River. We have already begun implementing it. We have received the resources for doing this work, but of course, we still have to acquire new vessels. In the meantime, we are using the ships that we have.

The first season went quite well. However, aging ships are similar to old cars. As time goes on, they need more and more maintenance.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Let me clarify my question because—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Excusez-moi, Monsieur Blais. Like Mr. Simms, you're out of time. We will come back to you, of course.

Just a point of clarification, perhaps, before we go to Mr. Calkins. You mentioned in your comments, Mr. Da Pont, that for 365 days of the year you had a patrol vessel in the NAFO area off Georges Bank.

[Larry Murray]

That was in my opening remarks. What I was referring to, Mr. Chairman, was the fact that we do maintain two patrol vessels on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks on an ongoing basis. That presence has made quite a difference in our ability to achieve real reform in NAFO and real enforcement. And those are, I don't have to tell members of this committee, some of the most challenging waters in the world.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Has that been consistent?

[Larry Murray]

Well, sometimes it's three, because of crew changes and so on. But I'm saying that since the funding was provided, thanks to, among other things, the recommendations of this committee, to the tune of $75 million over five years, we have generally been able to maintain a continual presence there and have usually had two vessels. I'd be happy to provide those kinds of statistics from over the last year or two, if you wish. And the navy is there when we have a problem, usually, to the extent they can be.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Calkins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd just like to thank the Auditor General for appearing before the committee. We're getting to know each other quite well. I think you've appeared before the environment committee three or four times since the session started up. I was glad to have you come before that committee, and it's good to see you doing good work on behalf of Canadians in the area of fisheries as well.

First of all, I had a question, out of curiosity, on the four vessels that are going to be built alongside the ones that are going to be strictly for DFO, the ones that are going to involve the RCMP as part of maritime surveillance and warning. Is that part of fulfilling our NORAD agreements? Is providing that maritime surveillance the maritime component of NORAD?

[Larry Murray]

At the moment, it's purely the Canadian contribution to maritime security in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway system, where we haven't had a presence strictly devoted to this.

In terms of bilateral relations on border security and all of that, it may evolve to that. Certainly the information from these vessels and in that system are feeding into an op centre that is part of the package, and that op centre certainly will be connected to other op centres, as they are on the east and west coasts. So at some indirect level, it does feed an overall intelligence or information flow. But it's not specifically for that purpose at this time.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thanks.

When I read through the report, and when I listened to some of the testimony here as well, Mr. Da Pont, the thing that concerned me was that you identified the business plan that's coming up as the vehicle you want to use to implement some of these priorities. A business plan identifies those priorities, and the Auditor General has been very clear on what some of those priorities are.

There need to be some priorities, or else we just simply spin our wheels. As a representative of taxpayers, of course, the last thing I want to do is throw more money into what I would call a swirling cesspool of mismanaged spending. I'm not suggesting that's what's happening, but it's certainly the perception that some people would have from the media reports and so on.

I'm getting myself into trouble here on my first day on the committee, I can just tell.

From reading through the Auditor General's report, something concerns me about these five priorities that you have identified as dealing most effectively with some of the problems identified by the Auditor General. When I read through the Auditor General's report, item 4.47 talks about the integrated technical services strategy project, whereby the material management system seems to be inadequate. If we look at some of the case studies outlined in the Auditor General's report, I think material management is a big deal. If you don't keep track of your assets and the management of your assets through the life cycle process, that's where costs start to get out of control. I don't see material management as one of your five priorities that you're going to outline for your business plan.

Maybe I'm just not reading it in there correctly. Could you just highlight for me where that would be found in your business plan?