Government Operations Committee on Nov. 21st, 2006

[Yvan Roy]

I've been in the area of policy development for 15 years. Do you know that it is more complicated today than it was 15 years ago? If I thought I had all the answers to those questions, I would be kidding myself.

The idea here is a very simple one. Let's bring together those who may have an impact on these things and let's come up with something reasonable and see if, once tested, we have come up with the right thing. We're accountable for those policies that are put together.

What the clerk is trying to do, even at the most senior level, is to have that kind of expertise present. When you're talking about the environment, you're not only talking about a department, you're also talking about the whole of the government. When you are talking about transport, it's not only about transport. It's exactly the example that you were giving me.

That's all the government is trying to do, and the clerk is trying to implement something like this at the most senior levels. I think it's worthwhile. We were producing good results.

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

I'd just like to go on record as saying, on behalf of this committee, or at least for me, that I think from a political perspective as well as at an executive level, it is important for Canadians to know that this kind of dialogue happens, because too often I receive the criticism that this department isn't.... To me, it's encouraging to hear your presentation. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Okay, we will go to Mr. Bains.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

I'm not sure if this has been discussed, and I don't believe it has: public service neutrality. We talk about Bill C-2, the increased accountability of deputy ministers and the impact it would have on the public service and on their ability to make decisions, and specifically the neutrality. Ministers are obviously partisan. They represent government. They have a political affiliation and they make policy and they're held accountable in a different light, and the buck stops with them. With Bill C-2 and the proposed changes to the Accountability Act and the increased accountability for deputy ministers, does that impact, in your opinion, the neutrality and their ability to function in that fashion?

[Yvan Roy]

I have looked into Bill C-2 quite carefully. I'm not one of the architects of Bill C-2, but in my job I've had to be careful with it and to analyze this carefully. I can only give you what my view is of the matter around this. In my view, the neutrality of the public service is not, in any way, shape, or form, jeopardized by this piece of legislation.

I will go back to first principles. The public service is there to serve the government of the day with respect to the policies that this government wants to put forward, but never, ever in a partisan way. What we're doing is providing options, providing advice on those options, providing different variations on themes, but it is always the government that makes those decisions. That is the reason the policy development on that side of the operation remains something that takes place between the bureaucracy and the government of the day.

What Bill C-2 is saying is that we are going to get the deputy ministers, who are not political actors, to go before parliamentary committees and explain how they manage the resources that have been given to them. That, to my way of thinking, sir, has nothing to do with politics. It has a lot to do with good management, and there is, therefore, nothing partisan that would, in any way, shape, or form, infringe on the neutrality, so to speak, of the public service.

That is what this piece of legislation is doing. Let's face it, it is putting into legislation what has been the practice for the past 100 years, and it's good that it's now in legislation. Once called upon, deputy ministers will appear before committees and will explain how they manage the resources, not the advice they have given to ministers because that falls into a different category, and rightly so, in my humble estimation. With respect to the resources, we'll come to tell you how they have been spent.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Mr. Warkentin.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I'm good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Ms. Thibault.

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

No, it's okay. Thank you.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

In the estimates there's a transfer of $6 million to Treasury Board Secretariat and $3 million to HRSDC. Can you describe the restructuring? For example, in HRSDC, what policy research initiative has been transferred?

[Patrick Borbey]

The organization that was transferred is called the policy research initiative.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

What does it do?

[Patrick Borbey]

It was created a number of years ago to provide a space where public servants can talk about public policy trends, look at the future, bring people from other levels of government and other countries together to have discussions on things like, let's say, aging of the population, equality, diversity--big social trends, as well as some economic, even issues of water management. That then produced conferences, reports. There's a quarterly publication that's produced by the organization.

It was felt that PCO needed to be there at the beginning of the initiative a few years ago because we felt we had lost some of our capacity in terms of policy development, especially the longer-term prospective policy development. We nurtured it for a number of years and then we felt that it was no longer really a core responsibility for PCO. We've now asked the HRSD department to take it over. We've also created a board of deputy ministers to be the advisers in terms of guiding the organization into its future.

So that describes it. There were about 35 or 40 employees involved in that transfer.

The transfer to the Treasury Board Secretariat relates to the government regulations secretariat. Basically, a few years ago the responsibility for approving regulatory changes was transferred from PCO, from a committee that was called Special Committee of Council, of ministers, to the Treasury Board. This basically just allows it to catch up to the new reality, which is that the Treasury Board is where those decisions are made; therefore, the secretariat supporting that should be there.

There's also a group of communications advisers or coordinators that are present in every region, and we felt again that this fit better with the Treasury Board Secretariat than with PCO. Having a network of regional offices for a very small and focused central agency is not part of our core mandate, so again we transferred that responsibility. There are about 35 employees involved there across the country.

Then there was also a smart regulation initiative that had been going on for a number of years, and we provided a secretariat for that. Again, we felt it was the same argument as before, that the responsibility for regulation is Treasury Board; therefore, that small secretariat and the work associated with it should go with Treasury Board.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

What about aboriginal affairs? That secretariat also has been moved?

[Patrick Borbey]

Yes.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Perhaps you can describe it, and then I can question why.

[Patrick Borbey]

There was a special secretariat created a couple of years ago by the previous government to ensure, again, coordination of an aboriginal agenda. There are dozens of departments and agencies that contribute to the government's aboriginal agenda, INAC being the biggest one, but there are many others. So it was felt there was a need for some coordination work at the PCO.

It culminated in all of the work that went into the Kelowna agreement, and after that it was felt that it was mostly implementation issues. We were also diluting, again, the responsibility and accountability. We've asked INAC--Indian and Northern Affairs Canada--to play that lead role using committees, whichever way they can, to bring all the other departments together. So again, there were 15 or 16 employees, I believe, who were involved in that transfer and who are now employees of the Indian and northern affairs department.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

What would water management have to do with HRSDC, for example? Wouldn't the policy framework, whether it's aging or environmental or economic, be the foundation from which a lot of decisions of many different departments would follow? Therefore, wouldn't it make more sense in the aboriginal situation...? Again it does cross a lot of departments, and we just spent a bit of time talking about cross-department coordination and trying to execute a government's policy agenda.

With respect to the transfer of those areas I've mentioned, and there are a few more that I can talk about, wouldn't that in fact decentralize it in a way that it no longer would have the coordination that you're seeking, especially on the policy front, such as socio-economic trends and water management? That absolutely connects with many different departments. Why would it be in HRSDC, or why would it be aboriginal affairs that goes completely into Indian Affairs? It does connect with other departments. For example, it connects with HRSDC in their spending on children's services, for example, especially aboriginal young people and children. It connects with their budget and their implementation of their policies. Wouldn't having this pulled out from the PCO impact on other departments, so that in fact there would be even more silos rather than a clear coordination?

[Patrick Borbey]

Having it at PCO does not necessarily automatically mean that we get better policy research. What counts is that you have the right program with the right governance and the involvement of the right people around that governance. As I mentioned before, there's a board of deputy ministers that now helps guide the policy research initiative such that it is investing its resources in the right kinds of research areas. They don't have to be necessarily only linked to the HRSD mandate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Mr. Roy.

[Yvan Roy]

If I may, I would like, Madam Chairperson, to put this on the record. I would not want to leave the impression or convey some perception that a group is taken out of PCO because it is not sufficiently important, or that these people were not doing anything useful. It's quite the contrary.

The logic that presided over that reorganization, it seems to me, is fairly simple. The clerk asked what primary role is PCO supposed to be playing. The role is one, as we say, of challenging. Well, you cannot challenge something that you have produced yourself, because by definition you will think that it's the best thing in the world. So what he was trying to do was to bring those organizations that were helpful and were doing good work in PCO to the place he thought they would be clearly--what I will call for the sake of the discussion--at home.

When we're talking about social trends, HRSDC is where they should be, and they're supposed to work in collaboration with other departments in a horizontal fashion. There is no need for these people to be in PCO in those circumstances, because we cannot challenge what they're doing. PCO in its current incarnation is then in a position, with respect to that group that you're talking about or the secretariat that was dealing with aboriginal issues, to play its true role, which is to challenge their policies for the purpose of making sure we have the best product possible.

That is the logic that presided over this whole transfer. It was no more and no less. They are good people who are doing good work that is valuable for Canadians, but their home is elsewhere. Perhaps when they were brought into PCO earlier, there was a good reason for it. But looking at the circumstances of the environment as we saw it, we thought that it would be better for them to go back to where they're supposed to be and for us in PCO to play our traditional role, which is to coordinate, be coherent, and challenge. That's the reason these changes were made. It was not with a view to cutting positions or anything of the sort, but rather to make this a little closer to what the PCO role ought to be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you very much.

Are there any other questions that you wish to ask of our invited guests?

Mr. Merasty.

[Gary Merasty, Liberal, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

On the point she just made concerning challenging and coordinating, I can understand the arguments given there; however, you have Health, HRSDC, Justice, Industry Canada, Indian Affairs, and so on all doing the work, as you mentioned, in their own areas. What kind of challenging, then, is being done by PCO to ensure that they are performing the right type of policy discussion? They're so overlapping in nature; could you expand a bit on how some of that challenging is occurring?

[Yvan Roy]

I'll give you an example that is close to my heart. I was at Justice for 20-some years. I'm now someone who is not a Justice lawyer but is rather working in PCO. My job as counsel to the clerk is to challenge the views that Justice brings to the table, just to see whether they are what we think they ought to be.

This goes back to how lawyers operate, frankly. We like to have a debate, because out of the debate comes, we think, the best solution. That's the challenge function at its best—ask questions. What do you mean by that? Have you covered that angle? Are we in agreement with this? Once everybody is in agreement, we happen to think It has to be something that is pretty good.

Is it perfect? Never. But at least we have satisfied ourselves that we have elevated the debate to the level of having the kind of discussion that produces good, sound policy, which we then bring before Parliament in the hope that you will agree with us.