Government Operations Committee on Dec. 5th, 2006

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

They have not yet done anything.

I am not accusing them of anything, I am just assuming that that is the case. I am going to move on to the relocation of Canadian Forces and RCMP personnel. Competitors of the successful bidder have gone as far as to say that there was a conflict of interest and that that might explain why the Société Royal LePage was chosen.

Do you have any indication as to whether this was the case, or is this too controversial an issue for you to address?

[Sheila Fraser]

We have not found anything. I think that everybody knows the story of the first bid. Somebody filed a complaint that a public servant had gone on a trip with Royal LePage representatives, a trip for which the real estate broker had picked up the tab. The government felt that there was an appearance of conflict of interest and asked for another bid; we only audited the second—

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

—bid.

[Sheila Fraser]

—and we did not find any evidence of a conflict of interest.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Fine. Nonetheless, if I am not mistaken, this situation dates back to 2002.

The longer you sit on this committee the more you find out. I wanted to talk about risk management, but when you look at the data we have, and the inaccuracy of the figures that are available to us and which you read before to you for making your recommendations, I think we need more than risk management.

Is there a need for the RCMP to further investigate this situation? It said that it provided service to 7,200 when the actual figure was 30. Is this indicative of a widespread problem?

[Sheila Fraser]

I do not believe that a criminal investigation is necessary. Everything suggests that it was simply a mistake. The error was also found in the first bid. When they submitted the second bid, they did so very quickly without having verified the information.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

On another matter—

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

You are already over your time, Mr. Nadeau.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Very well.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Mr. Warkentin.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chairperson, and thank you, Ms. Fraser, for coming in. We always appreciate your visits.

I just want to play a little bit of cleanup here. I just want to continue with one of the lines of questioning that Mr. Nadeau was involved in.

You commented that some of the members of the Canadian Armed Forces have been overcharged for services provided to them. I'm wondering if you could just update us as to what action has been taken thus far on that front.

[Sheila Fraser]

That is correct. Effectively on these management services, when the bid was zero, they should not have paid. They were actually charged. And this was not the department; it was the members of the forces, the individuals, who paid for these services. We brought this to the attention of the department. To our knowledge, they have not been reimbursed at this point. I think if ever the committee is interested in pursuing this further, it might want to ask the departments exactly what they are planning to do. Because while they agreed with us and said they would do a review, we're not aware that it has been done or that those people have been reimbursed so far.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Thank you very much.

I will continue on with the line of questioning that Mr. Alghabra had started. I'm wondering about the idea of moving forward on a performance measurement system, something that would accentuate or build up the process to ensure that parliamentarians and Canadians are finding out whether their civil service and the government in general is working effectively and whether a measurement system is in place that will give an accurate reading.

I'm wondering if you could give some idea as to what you'd like to see in that type of system.

[Sheila Fraser]

I'd be glad, Madam Chair, to refer the committee back to some of the previous reports we've done on performance measurement and to the performance reports that departments produce.

There is a system in place. We obviously have recommendations on how to improve it. There are areas that need improvement, and as I mentioned earlier, we saw that the government had made a lot of advancement. The improvement on that seems to have sort of stalled in the last few years.

The issue we're raising in this particular report is not so much the performance reporting of the departments as a whole. But when programs come in, when there's a review of spending, it tends to be only on the new programs. Existing spending isn't reviewed on a regular basis. Government has certainly indicated that they want to look at this, and they have done their own study and they've come up with the same conclusions as we have.

So there needs to be some sort of cyclical review of programs using good performance information.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Yes, I do agree, and I do believe that this committee will play an important role, I'm hoping, in that review system. I guess what maybe we should do as a committee--and I don't know if you would encourage us to--is look at ways, in this committee's opinion, that we might be able to move forward and ensure that there are effective measurements.

[Sheila Fraser]

Absolutely. And I'm sure the Treasury Board Secretariat as well would be more than happy to explain to you how they do the performance measurement system and the review.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Perfect.

In chapter 12 you talk about the issue of the foundation that was set up, in terms of the environmental foundation. Of course, we on the government side have been quite concerned about the train wreck that the previous government was engaged in, in terms of the environmental record. I know that you probably shouldn't comment, but I'm wondering if you were able to look at value for dollars. There was $550 million allocated to that foundation, and I'm wondering if there's any ability for you to go in there and find out the value for money for those dollars that were spent.

[Sheila Fraser]

In fact, that foundation was part of the audits done by the Commissioner of the Environment, and it's reported in her report that came out this past September. We found, in fact--and I'm just trying to remember offhand--that they had good performance measures. It was still early days, obviously, for some of these foundations, but generally, our report on the foundations' management was a positive one.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

I did read part of that report, and of course there was a lot of discussion in that report on whether or not some of these foundations were working well. The general consensus from that report was that the previous government was not any closer to implementing Kyoto than it had been when it signed on.

I'm just wondering if in the broader spectrum we can actually consider value for money if in fact we were never any closer to reaching that larger objective. As a matter of fact, the report said we were further away than we had been when we signed on to the treaty.

So in the broader scheme, is there any way to find out if there's actually value for money if in fact we're further away from the broader idea?

[Sheila Fraser]

The commissioner's report clearly indicated that the targets would not be met unless...or even with some serious action the targets would not be met.

When we get into issues of value for money, that's really a valuation, which is not work that we do. It's up to parliamentarians to ultimately decide if there was value for money there or not.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Sure.

Madam Chair, I think Mr. Poilievre has a—

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you very much. You've had your five minutes, sir.

Monsieur Bonin.

[Raymond Bonin, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Merci, madame la présidente.

I just want to clear something up with regard to what I said earlier, that we deal with errors and misbehaviour by promoting. I said that because if you look at page 448 of On the Take, the book about the Airbus investigation, the bureaucrat at that time was Chuck Guité. We know the rest of the story.

I have a short question with regard to the sharing of surpluses: what surpluses? I ask this because in the case that I had, the response to the complaint from the victim of crime read more like a form letter than the result of an investigation. If they cut investigations and end up with a surplus, and then share it with their friends, the victims of that are the victims of crime. If it's in the staffing budget that they shared the surpluses by keeping staff low, at the end of the year having surpluses....

I'm interested in finding out if you know which surpluses they were sharing.

[Sheila Fraser]

No, we don't have that information. All we know is that at the end of the year they were expecting a surplus. From what post or what account, we don't have that information.

[Raymond Bonin, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

In your eyes, then, it would be the department surplus.