Government Operations Committee on Nov. 21st, 2006

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Mr. Roy, you wanted to say something.

[Yvan Roy]

I can try to add to the answer given by Mr. Borbey.

One of your colleagues on the other side was referring earlier to Bill C-2, and we were talking briefly about the role of the accounting officer, who happens to be the deputy minister. That bill, if passed, will create in legislation the requirements for the deputy minister to come before a parliamentary committee when called upon and to answer questions having to do with the very measures you're concerned about.

If you wish to go back to the text itself, I would refer you to page 187 of the bill as passed by the House. That would become section 16.4 of the Financial Administration Act once passed. There is a legal obligation as opposed to being the practice. As I was answering the question I was indicating that in practice deputy ministers appear before committees and explain what they have been doing with the resources they have. It's going to be in legislation, and once a parliamentary committee wishes to see a deputy minister he or she will appear and will answer those questions for you.

[Raymond Bonin, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

At the same time as these committees are developing policy, our committees are also developing policies. The difference is that one is doing it in camera, and we, the elected people, do it publicly.

Is it not a concern to anyone that policy developed in camera—really, in secret—when it comes to a head, is fully debated by that sector and has more chance of being implemented than policy developed in a committee in public meetings that invite the public to react from the beginning of discussion, if they don't agree with the way our committee is going?

[Yvan Roy]

Madam Chairperson, may I try to make two points with respect to Mr. Bonin's question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Yes, please do.

[Yvan Roy]

The first point is that the policies developed by the bureaucracy are done on behalf of the government—that is, the executive branch of government—and these policies cannot be in contradiction with the laws that have been passed by Parliament. They have to be in accordance with them.

Point number two is that through the minister—and in the case of those I'm talking about here, as per what will become section 16.4 of the Financial Administration Act—there continues to be accountability, i.e. an obligation to answer questions.

If there is disagreement on the part of parliamentarians about what has been done, you have the means to remedy these things.

[Raymond Bonin, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

After it's done.

[Yvan Roy]

After it's done, but that's the accountability principle at play in those circumstances.

[Raymond Bonin, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Ms. Thibault.

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like a clarification. On page 30 of the Supplementary Estimates, Part III, Reports on Plans and Priorities, in the section regarding decreases, we see "$2.5 million decrease related to the sunset of funds for the operations of the Action Plan for Official Languages".

I would like to know what this refers to, because in an area such as official languages, a great deal can be done with $2.5 million. Does this decrease target minority groups or whatever it may be?

[Patrick Borbey]

These are special credits that had been granted for a one-year period, and which were to be used to conduct polls or studies by Statistics Canada. This was set up as a one-time investment. So, this is represented as a decrease, since these funds are no longer required but it is not a decrease in activities.

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

You are no longer conducting those polls or studies.

[Patrick Borbey]

The expected time period for this activity was one year. So this was part of last year's budget. The project is now completed, and the votes are no longer required.

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much.

My next question may be more for Mr. Roy but anyone at the table may respond.

Mr. Roy, I understand quite well that you are talking about the future and I greatly appreciate the fact that you're doing so with enthusiasm and energy. Earlier, we addressed the issue of demographic data which indicated that we need to be prepared because public servants will be hitting the magic age for retirement and will be leaving the public service.

I want to refer to the same document on your plans and priorities, this time on page 12. I want to read it:

Supporting the renewal of the public service to improve approaches to recruitment, development of management. Focus on leadership, including team work, mentoring, training, development and celebrating excellence...

Sir, things were also done in the past, quite major exercises within the public service whereby managers looked at everything. They took part in it. I remember La Relève task force under Mr. Peter Harrison, among others. But the way this is expressed here—and I don't think it's intentional—may lead someone to believe that this is a new initiative.

Amounts will be allocated to this, (inaudible). I would like to know how you intend, you and your partners in the departments, organizations and agencies, to use past experience. Over the years, there has been endless reference to best practices; this is the vocabulary being used. Surely this is somewhere, surely this was useful, surely there were some successes, and so forth.

How will you amalgamate all this, instill this so-called new momentum, since you are tying this to Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act. I am not criticizing the bill but even without it, things were done in the past. Some things worked well and some things need improvement. But how will you take that into consideration? That is my question.

[Yvan Roy]

Mr. Borbey is dying to answer that.

[Patrick Borbey]

Improvements are really the result of continuous work, initiatives for example such as the one you mentioned called the La Relève task force. Yes, many goods things came out of programs in order to train the next generation; I talked a little bit about this earlier. The Accelerated Executive Development Program is another one of them. Between 200 and 300 executives, including myself, took this program and benefited from internships at other departments and worked in other capacities. Added to this is the whole aspect of learning. We call this learning bags: six or seven executives meet, talk about a problem in a safe environment, so to speak.

We also do more coaching and mentoring than we did 15 or 20 years ago. La Relève task force gave us this; other reforms were undertaken in the past. We all realized, too, that the human resources management framework in the public service had to be modernized. It's thanks to exercises such as La Relève that we realized that we didn't have the tools needed. So, new legislation was adopted giving managers greater flexibility and greater capacity to face challenges. I think that what we want to do is to build on our past successes and, as you said on best practices, and there are many. We invented the learning bags for this program; a method that is now used at all levels within the public service. Even assistant deputy ministers meet from time to time to engage in this kind of exercise.

What we want to do is benefit from past successes and face new challenges.

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

And such improvements continue—I understand that some activities cost nothing: for example, when a small circle of five or six people meet for lunch or an evening, it doesn't cost taxpayers anything—have you determined the cost of this? There will be some costs, that's expected.

[Patrick Borbey]

I don't have any details about this. Perhaps the public service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada would have answers. As you say, there are costs associated with training.

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Under your plan, the plan of the Privy Council and its partners, you're confident that you can fill any anticipated void at any given time. When you say that we no longer have enough qualified resources, I think it's fair to add that we no longer have enough qualified, bilingual resources representatives of all groups in our society, meaning minorities, the handicapped, men, women, the Aboriginals and so on.

Ultimately, you're confident in saying that there is no shortfall, that you have succeeded in eliminating what could have been a shortfall.

[Patrick Borbey]

There are no guarantees, but we can certainly say that time will allow us to meet this challenge. However, we are no more scared of this challenge than of any other. Canadian society as a whole must face such a challenge. I recently took part in work in this area along with my international counterparts, and I noted that we are all facing similar challenges.

[Louise Thibault, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I agree with you when you say that this is a challenge facing society as a whole. However, with the thousands of employees that make up the public service and with Treasury Board as a mega employer, past shortages were anticipated quite some time ago. So, steps should have been taken a long time ago to ensure there would be no such shortage. Taxpayers expect nothing less from any business of this size.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you, Ms. Thibault.

Mr. Albrecht, please.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to follow up for a few minutes on this idea of cross-departmental coordination. I think I see it slightly differently from my colleague across the way. One of the criticisms that I feel, and that I've been guilty of making myself, is that there are so many individual ministries that are almost like silos doing their own thing, but there's not enough cross-departmental cooperation. I want you to confirm for me whether my thinking is correct on this because, for me, it would seem a great advantage to have those departmental deputy ministers discussing, at an early stage, the implementation or the production of some new policy matters that will eventually come up. Obviously one department may take the lead on an issue, but for example, in the area of bioproducts, that issue could affect agriculture, it could affect health, it could affect transportation or the environment. So for me, this idea of cross-departmental deputy ministerial committees is a good one.

I would like you to help me understand if that's the kind of negotiation or discussion that goes on in those committee meetings, as opposed to actually developing a hard and fast policy that will be implemented tomorrow.

[Patrick Borbey]

Well, I'm not a member of the committee, so I can't tell you from my own experience, but certainly I think it is a mix of all. Those committees need to look into the future, to look at the needs not just for today or tomorrow but for 10 years, 15 years, into the future of the country. They also need to look at today and the immediate issues that are confronted, whether it's BSE or some of these other crises. A pandemic is a good example. How are we all going to work together to deal with a pandemic crisis? The only way you can do it, I think, is to bring in all the experts, the people who have the individual expertise who can contribute to a whole-of-government solution. Some of it is probably short term, but hopefully a lot of it is also prospective into the future.

Yvan, I don't know if you've had experience working with the committees. You may be able to add to that.