Government Operations Committee on April 3rd, 2008

[Marc O'Sullivan]

It would be impossible for us to do that for all the government's activities. The dilemma of a central agency is that all government initiatives that must have cabinet approval go through the Privy Council Office because it is the secretariat to cabinet and its committees. That's all the major activities of government. But we don't manage all government activities; that would be impossible. That is why our business plan does not include indicators and timetables for all government initiatives. That would be a very thick document.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

However, you understand that the plans and priorities that we receive are yours. They are sent to the public and to parliamentarians, but we can't do our job properly because we can't evaluate them. It's possible for you to evaluate the work done by the departments, because you probably ask your departments for time and performance indicators, and so on. You tell us parliamentarians that, in the space of three years, you will do such and such a thing. However, we can't evaluate what is planned for those three years. That results in a shambles. Or else we simply forget that our work is to supervise you a little.

I imagine you'll soon be presenting your plans and priorities over three years. Moreover, the Auditor General of Canada requires it. I hope you'll report to your boss that we would like you to include time and performance indicators, as well as information on planned funding, necessary human resources, and so on. It's so vast.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you, Ms. Bourgeois.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Mr. Kramp.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome, witnesses. Like you, we've had little time to prepare. There are a number of concerns we all have, but I'd like to keep my focus on the main mandate and purpose of this committee, which is basically oversight and accountability.

We're committed to assess or evaluate the efficiency or credibility of governance, whether it applies to departments, commissions, or agencies. We have a broad mandate, as you are well aware. We also have a responsibility to assess or comment on your assessment. I'm particularly concerned today with PCO's internal management practices. The efficiency and effectiveness of this is naturally a concern to all parliamentarians, to government, and to the people of Canada.

You mentioned a number of initiatives and practices that you perform either on a recurrent or occasional basis. I'd like you to expand a little more on them, maybe piece by piece. You state that you are implementing a risk-based integrated business planning process, a performance measurement framework, an internal audit policy. I think it's important that we know what stage these are at. Have they been ongoing? Are they new? Have you had measurable results? Have you had conclusions reached that could affect the operation of government? I know that's a bit of a broad question. The response could take hours, because it's very complex. But I wonder if you could give us an overview of your internal practices on oversight.

[Marilyn MacPherson]

I'll give you a thumbnail sketch, and then if I've left any blanks you can question me.

With respect to the risk-based integrated business planning process, last year under the direction of the clerk we put into place our strategic HR plan for PCO. It was the first ever done. It was launched in March 2007. In the clerk's last report, the 14th report, to the Prime Minister, he challenged departments to formulate a strategic HR plan, as well as an integrated business plan that would include the HR requirements with the business requirements. The report challenged departments to do an integrated business plan for this year. Inside PCO, we went through this process, and we published it. I have a copy of it here. We sat down with all the secretariats and looked at all of the challenges. Out of that, we prioritized a number of things. Probably the most important was our HR renewal. It makes sure that we have the appropriate capacity, defining how we are going to recruit so that the PCO operates efficiently and effectively.

We also looked at our IT. We have a good IT system, but we have to continue to update it and make it more relevant. We have younger people coming in as analysts, and we want to make sure that we have the best systems for them to use.

We also highlighted information management. We are a knowledge organization with a fairly high turnover. Many decisions are made and a lot of information is collated and analyzed. We wanted to make sure that we're capturing all of that information, so that new employees are able to access all of our documents.

Last, but certainly not least, we have our emergency management and business continuity planning. We had a business continuity plan in place after 9/11, and we are now doing a new business impact analysis. We are updating all of our business continuity plans. We are also ensuring that we have an appropriate emergency management program in place.

With respect to audit and evaluation, until last May we did not have a full-time auditor in the Privy Council Office. We hired a chief audit executive. She has been doing audits, and we now have a risk-based audit plan in place. So that's where we are at this point.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you.

Obviously, that's a fair bit of activity.

When you're approaching this, I'm interested as to the direction of how and why you're acting or reacting in the manner in which you are. Is it from an executive authority suggesting that this is exactly what has to happen, or have you done almost some form of SWOT analysis? As such, if you have done that kind of analysis, what were the perceived highlights, either in weaknesses or in strengths? Obviously, if you have a weakness and it's a particular area in the administration, then more attention has to be paid to that.

I'm concerned whether you feel there's a level of comfort in moving forward, or that it needs tinkering, or if there's anything standing out that says, hey, we really have to move on that.

[Marilyn MacPherson]

First of all, to answer your question about the process, we did actually put in place a risk-based analysis process. We've done a risk profile for the department, and we continue to refine that to make sure we're identifying those areas where we really do need to put priority.

Out of that whole process is where we came to the understanding that our human resource capacity is by far our greatest challenge, so it is getting a great deal of attention and emergency management audit and evaluation. The reason those items are actually mentioned here is that they were identified by the department as being weaknesses for us that we needed to strengthen, whether just for internal business or because it was being guided by greater or broader government policy.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Just for your information, this committee, of course, has heard testimony from various groups, organizations, and departments regarding HR problems. The turnover in the public service, etc., has been an ongoing problem. It's problematic not only, of course, for the individuals involved, but for the departments and constitutional memory and corporate memory, etc.

I'm wondering if your department has given any thought to or has any plans about how to deal with your particular method of solving this. Is it a question of money? Is it a question of job security? Is it the nature of the business? Is it the fact that we just don't have people qualified? Could you give us some...? Do you have an overview regarding your own situation?

[Marilyn MacPherson]

Inside PCO, when we did our strategic HR plan, we actually identified four separate communities that are in different states of disrepair or have different needs. We identified the analysts, the executives, the administrative support group, and corporate services. There are challenges in all of them.

For example, with our analyst community, we always need to be bringing into PCO people who are not necessarily recruited from university but are people who have been in departments, so that when they come into PCO they can bring a certain level of understanding around files. These folks tend to stay for two or three years, get the experience at PCO, understand how PCO operates and how we support the cabinet committees, and then go back out to departments again. They're considered to be quite valuable. We are looking at opportunities to actually bring folks in from departments, in a coordinated way, to actually do the analyst function.

In the administrative support area—this is not unique to PCO—it is extremely difficult to keep really good administrative support at the AS-1 and AS-2 levels, for example. We are going to increase the amount of staffing we do, trying to create inventory pools of people. We're also trying to put in place a little bit more of a developmental program so that, when people come in at the AS-1 level, we'll be able to give them development so that they can go to AS-2 or AS-3. This will not only increase their capacity, ability, and contribution to the organization, but it will also help us to retain them.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Madame Chair.

Thank you for coming this morning on such short notice. I think all of us are working almost from the same page at this time, because we were not expecting your presence and it is a complicated file.

At our last meeting we passed a motion calling upon the government to act upon its commitment to institute the public appointments commission. The public appointments commission was meant to be a patronage watchdog that was accountable to Parliament. It was an independent agency that actually had teeth, that had a budget. It's very different from the role of a secretariat, and that's been pointed out a number of times.

There was a March 7 Canwest article that said the public appointments commission has been undermined by the fact that we've created something sounding very similar, a secretariat, but a secretariat works through the PCO and reports to the PM.

If a commission is to be set up, will that money be transferred to the commission? What is the role the secretariat will continue to play when we're looking to have an independent commission set up?

[Marc O'Sullivan]

With the establishment of the commission, the secretariat would be a stand-alone department. When the commission was established, first of all administratively, by order in council, the secretariat was established as a full-blown, stand-alone independent department, exactly for the reasons you mentioned, namely, to ensure that support for the commission comes from its own entity and not from a secretariat attached to any other entity.

Because the creation of the commission is in abeyance, for administrative purposes the secretariat is functioning within PCO, in the sense that there's an agreement for shared corporate services. It made no sense in such a small entity to establish an HR shop, an access to information shop, etc.

There's such an arrangement with PCO for administrative services. But the way it would be established by order in council would be for the secretariat to be an independent stand-alone department. It would continue under a commission established under the Federal Accountability Act.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

When the commission plans were put on ice, did the secretariat continue to do any work? Was it preparing for the commission? What was its role? This is what I find confusing.

[Marc O'Sullivan]

Yes, I understand. It's not obvious when there's a secretariat supporting a commission that doesn't exist yet. But the scope of the work is enormous. We're talking about more than 3,000 positions, from members of the freshwater fish marketing board to Canada Post to major crown corporations, quasi-judicial tribunals, and international organizations.

There's such a wide scope of organizations that the staff have to sit down and go through each organization, one by one. They look at the positions and ask themselves, what selection process would be appropriate for these positions? It's a massive undertaking.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Was it doing this work last year?

[Marc O'Sullivan]

Yes, it was working on it. The staff started with two, went up to four, and then gradually went down to zero. Then we staffed it back up again.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Sometimes our friend Pierre Poilievre sits in on this committee. He was interviewed in the Toronto Sun on March 28, 2007, and he explained the role that this secretariat, under the Prime Minister's Office, would assume.

Under the headline “Only Tories Need Apply: Looking for a government job? New commission says lean to your right”, the article said:

Conservatives have no plan to cleanse partisanship from the government appointments and will the use the promised Public Appointments Commission to ensure that their qualified friends get jobs, says an Ottawa Conservative MP.

MP Pierre Poilievre, parliamentary secretary to the Treasury Board president Vic Toews, apparently said that the government wouldn't be appointing people who don't agree with its agenda—this in reference to a secretariat directed by the PM and not accountable to Parliament.

Given that we've had a thousand appointments, many of them openly partisan, what accountability is there to the taxpayer? Should the taxpayer continue to put $1 million into this fund that one of the sometime members of this committee says is there to ensure that Conservatives only need apply?

[Marc O'Sullivan]

First of all, the headline says one thing, but the quote you gave from Mr. Poilievre is slightly different.

Mr. Poilievre—don't quote me, I'm just going on the basis of what you just said—is talking about appointing people who are ready to implement the government's agenda. When there's a transition in government, especially after a long period of time, it's not surprising that an incoming government has a certain tack it wants to take—an agenda, a program, a Speech from the Throne—and that it expects some of the commissions to move forward in line with that agenda. It's the government of the day, the democratically elected government, and it expects the whole of the government apparatus to move in the direction of the government's program.

So saying that they want to appoint people who will advance their agenda is a legitimate comment from a new government in the midst of a transition.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Certainly governments want to do that, but the commitment was that this was going to be accountable to Parliament to ensure that we weren't just filling the place up with partisan appointments. If the government is committed to partisan appointments, then the secretariat certainly will remain in place under the PM, accountable only to the PM and not to the people of Parliament. That's different from the commitment that was made for a public appointments commission.

So I return to the question: if we ever see this independent public appointments commission that is actually a watchdog, that is accountable to Parliament, as this committee has asked for, will the money be transferred from this existing secretariat to that independent commission, or are we going to have to wait and go back to estimates?

[Marc O'Sullivan]

No. The money would be transferred.

The whole way it was set up when the order in council was passed, establishing the secretariat as well as the commission, the whole notion was to have that secretariat support the commission as an independent body. It was established that way; it was set up that way. Under the terms of the Federal Accountability Act, the independence of the commission and its role is clearly set out in the legislation. Its mandate is clearly set out, and it's hot-wired into the legislation. So the government won't have much choice in terms of the mandate of the commission. It's set out in the legislation.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I'm going to ask a question here because I have a particular interest.

Last year, and I believe we're continuing now, we were looking into the issues of pay and benefits. A lot of our employees are not getting the pay they should be getting; if they have a transfer, it's incredibly difficult; and there's a backlog.

I believe there was some work done, and I must say, last June in particular, this particular committee was very frustrated with the lack of answers and the lack of coordination. It was as if we were unable to find who in the system was responsible, and at that time we asked that the Clerk of the Privy Council appear before the committee. Of course, he did not, because the House adjourned, but there was some work done afterwards. I realize that.

What kind of role are you playing in the coordination of the response to this really big challenge within the public service? It's not something you hear about every day, but if you're the one who's not getting paid on time or getting paid the amount you're supposed to be getting, it's a very serious thing. If you're a member of the pay and benefits community actually trying to catch up the backlog, it's very serious, as well. Perhaps you could explain the coordination role that you may be playing at this time--I'm not sure.