Evidence of meeting #112 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was audit.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:15 p.m.
Director, Office of the Auditor General
I do, actually.
We were initially mandated to do a follow-up of the oil spills audit. When we started looking into it, we found that the departments were in transition at this point and it wasn't a good time. We were also following up on the tanker safety panel report that had highlighted this risk in terms of marine mammals not being included in the national oil spill response regime, which sparked something to dig a bit deeper.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Okay, I can see....
I would take it that the oceans protection plan was a bit too new to be factored in.
5:15 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
That's correct.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
We notice a pattern of reports from this committee or other committees going to Parliament and we get a reaction from the ministry saying, “We accept all of the findings.” Here, they agree with everything you say. That and two bucks gets you a big coffee at Starbucks.
Do you go back and look and say, “You agreed, so what did you do about it?” Do you do that?
5:15 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
Technically it's actually your job to do that, to hold the departments accountable. Parliament develops the rules and sends them down to the government. The auditor comes in and checks whether the government is doing their job and reports back to Parliament. Technically, Parliament holds the stick, if you will. I definitely don't hold it.
However, we do follow-ups. As Elsa was saying, we were actually looking at doing two follow-ups. We go in and we assess whether or not there is an issue, or whether or not there is a risk. Then if we don't find any big risks, we go to where we do find a risk, and in this case marine mammals was the risk. All the other issues were not so well.
In the past the Auditor General has done that. The public accounts committee, for example, requests an action plan from the departments and often follows up with the departments directly.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
You have done very interesting work here in discovering what's not happening, or what is happening.
On the what's not happening, we're looking at four of 14 recovery strategies required were completed; seven of 14 action plans were finalized, and the rest remain incomplete. You found that out, but did you find out why?
October 23rd, 2018 / 5:15 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
They're going to say, most likely, that it was a resource constraint issue, because everybody says that every time we go in and audit them. That's not necessarily an issue that we bring forward.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
You could audit many different ministries, and certainly many different parts of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. We've done a lot of studies since this Parliament began and it just seems that there are so many gaps, so many missing pieces. Are the things that we're asking the DFO to do far and away greater than they could possibly ever really do?
5:15 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
That's a great question.
I can only audit what you've asked them to do, and whether or not that's something that they can do or not is really something the department has to answer.
We do ask a lot of our civil servants. I would also say that in our audits, we tend to very quickly tell you that they are doing research. All the good things that we do tell you they're doing don't get a lot of space, but all the things where they need to fix things, that's what gets reported in our audits in a much bigger way.
When we find out that they're doing good things, we do indicate that and we try to be really fair. I don't think people in DFO get up in the morning and say, “What are we going to do today to kill some whales?” I don't think that happens. I think the civil service is a very dedicated group of people working in the public interest, trying to protect, and doing the best they can with the resources they have.
I am always finding the places and always telling you about the places where they're not doing well, but please recognize that they are doing some good work and they are doing their best. They're trying.
We identify the gaps and we recommend that they fix those gaps.
5:20 p.m.
Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)
Thank you, Mr. Hardie.
Now we go again to the government side, to Mr. Morrissey, for five minutes.
5:20 p.m.
A voice
It feels like a marathon.
5:20 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
I said it feels like a marathon.
5:20 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
There are significant implications for an east coast fishery with a department that may not have the resources to put in place a marine mammal protection plan that will meet the U.S. requirements.
I'm not sure if you addressed it earlier on, but were you able to get some indication from DFO on how they were planning to conform to the American standard?
5:20 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
We had some very senior-level, high-level discussions with the deputy on this issue. They were very aware of the issues. We were very careful in the use of our language in our audit to not add fuel to the fire. We indicated to the deputy that we very much understood the issue that they had to deal with. They understood it very clearly. I told her we could not change the facts—the facts were the facts—but we could be very careful in how we talked about this.
My understanding is the department is very aware of this and is working to ensure...because this has to be a high-risk, highly critical issue for the department. They are taking it very seriously, and we wanted to make sure that our audit was done in the most constructive way possible. That was our goal.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
It may not be partly in your report but I want to see if you can comment on marine mammals. One of my colleagues may have raised it as well.
One species that does not appear to be endangered is the east coast seal. In your audit, did you get any information from the department on how it's monitoring or planning to deal with the risk that the growth in this population will have on other mammals?
5:20 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
That's a great question. I don't know if Elsa has anything specific. We were looking at tools that they have to protect marine mammals. Those included the Species at Risk Act—
5:20 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
Is there a concern level within DFO? I'm going to have to ask Elsa—
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
5:20 p.m.
Director, Office of the Auditor General
We didn't speak of specific species during our discussions with DFO during the course of the audit. We spoke mostly of the tools—
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
Did they have a concern then of the population growth of any marine mammal on the east coast?