Evidence of meeting #24 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was programs.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Deputy Minister, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
...to leverage incremental investments by other levels of government and other organizations.
Bloc
Louise Thibault Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Madam Charette, allow me to interrupt.
You are saying that you evaluated the programs and that they should include better performance indicators, etc. Do those people who are illiterate, or nearly illiterate, and all of the players who are assisting them, believe that, even if they could be improved upon, these programs were working well? How do those people evaluate these programs?
You talk about an operational tool, and that is all very well, but what do the people in the field think? Did the people affected do evaluations? Were they satisfied with the program? Were the people in the field advocating for major changes because the programs were not working? That could happen, and these people could ,they too, reach these conclusions.
Deputy Minister, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
We spent a lot of time with those organizations that deliver literacy programs in the field. These consultations took place last year, in the context of 19 round tables on literacy. Participants talked of the impact of the program but, if the information I have is correct, they also accepted our improving the program.
I could provide you with some numbers in this regard.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Diane Marleau
You will be able to come back to this later, because we are now moving on to Mr. Moore.
Conservative
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
Merci.
My questions are for Mr. Hawkes. We can't leave you out of this fun. You've been quiet so far, so I thought I'd ask you a couple of questions, if that's all right.
My question is with regard to the term “revolving fund”. A lot of people have written and had questions about this. Could you explain to this committee exactly what a revolving fund is and how it works?
Chief Financial Officer, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I'll give you the definition, and then I'll try to make it more pertinent to the questions. A revolving fund is a continuing, non-lapsing authority by Parliament to spend funds for a particular purpose. It allows us to make program delivery payments out of the consolidated revenue fund for working capital, cash advances, and capital. It works very much like a line of credit, which most of you are familiar with. We're allowed the authority to spend up to a certain dollar amount to pay for the expenses related to a particular program. We cover those expenses from the program departments we serve.
An example would be the real property services revolving fund, which is a significantly large revolving fund for our department. When we provide real property services, whether it's an appraisal, a fit-up of a building, or an office accommodation, we incur the cost in this revolving fund against the line of credit, and then we recover the costs from the program that's asked us to deliver the service. It then becomes part of the full cost of the program delivery.
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
In this round of expenditure reviews, we found $40 million in surplus. How did we achieve that?
Chief Financial Officer, Department of Public Works and Government Services
We have had good management over the years. In delivering services to our customers, we have been able to take advantage of economies of scale and constrain our overhead costs relative to our throughput costs. I think four of the revolving funds we operate had a surplus, and that's where we went to set aside the funds for this reduction.
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
Minister Fortier, and prior to him Minister Brison, pointed out that the federal government needs to look into the size and scope of the real estate portfolio. Ultimately belonging to taxpayers, the portfolio is held through the federal government via the Department of Public Works. It is in need of recapitalization. Our government has contracted out advice on how to best achieve this. In the expenditure review, $100 million, later reduced to $75 million, was set aside for business transformation on this front. What should taxpayers glean from this, in terms of our approach to recapitalization and asset management?
Chief Financial Officer, Department of Public Works and Government Services
As a result of renewing real property, we propose to save the government $1 billion over five years. We intend to achieve this at a lower cost to the government by reducing the size of our investment fund. The study is in the works right now, and we expect to have the information from it before the end of the calendar year. We expect that none of the reductions we're doing now will further deteriorate the inventory of PWGSC. In fact, by using the advice of investment bankers to support us, we'll derive a better benefit for the delivery of real property for PWGSC and the Crown.
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
For the benefit of taxpayers, the $75 million that's been allocated, how is this investment fund being used?
Chief Financial Officer, Department of Public Works and Government Services
The fund has not yet been allocated to PWGSC. It's been set aside in the fiscal framework of the Government of Canada. It's intended to be used to improve the methods and management practices of the department. We are looking to spend a large portion of it on reinvestment in the IM and IT strategy for real property management. This will allow us to proceed with change management for our own employees and public servants generally, who use office accommodation to deliver their programs. So the funds are set aside in the fiscal framework, and our ability to access them will depend upon a submission to Treasury Board ministers, who will either accept or reject our advice to them.
Conservative
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
Canadian identity grants were eliminated in 2004 by the Liberals. The program ceased in 2004, but it's still on the books and is counted as an expenditure reduction. Can you tell us about the program and about that accounting?
Chief Financial Officer, Department of Public Works and Government Services
The $2.4 million was a very small grant program. As a matter of fact, it is our only grant program at this point in time. We had no intention to implement it. We had no direction to implement it. And we had no other use for the funds in the grants vote of this department. So when the request came to add different initiatives to this program, it was a very easy one for us, because we had no intention to make payments from those grants.
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
We are going to have Minister Fortier before this committee today. From your perspective, can you give us a bit of background on the procurement review that's going on at the committee?
Chief Financial Officer, Department of Public Works and Government Services
That's really an area that's a bit out of my--
Conservative
Chief Financial Officer, Department of Public Works and Government Services
That's correct. It's a government-wide initiative to renew the methods and measurement practices relating to procurement to save the government a significant amount of money, to the tune of almost $2.5 billion over a five-year process. We have launched it, and we are now two-thirds of the way through the second year of the program. At this particular point in time, I think we're pretty close to having achieved the targets that were set for us.
This reduction of $2.65 billion across all departments of the Crown was taken into consideration before this initiative was launched.
I believe the minister's coming to give you an update on that process and where we stand.
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
To Treasury Board staff, and I suppose to Mr. Hawkes, but principally to Treasury Board--of course I don't think this question is asked or answered often enough because of the human interest and concern--what impact will these expenditure reviews have with regard to employment in the public service?
Senior Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
The analysis we've done, and the advice we provided to ministers--I believe the President of the Treasury Board made the statement on September 25--is that by our estimates there would be less than 300 individual positions affected. Madame Charette spoke about a number of them. Those are affected positions, not individuals. This amount is roughly 5% of the annual turnover.