Evidence of meeting #28 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
Mr. Page, I am sorry to see that your work is based on forecasts.
But does that mean that neither the Treasury Board nor Infrastructure Canada use cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analyses? They have no analysis plan to see what will happen in the short, medium and long term. Is that right?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Which situation are you referring to?
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
I am talking about both the Correctional Service of Canada and Infrastructure Canada. Is it safe to say that they have no forecasts?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
We have not received any forecast.
We have not received any information about the forecasts or analyses from Infrastructure Canada and the Treasury Board on the bill called the Truth in Sentencing Act.
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
As to Infrastructure Canada, we know that municipalities, including Quebec municipalities, have to meet the March 31, 2011 deadline to complete the work according to the stimulus package.
With no analysis, the government cannot establish that the infrastructure projects will be completed by March 31. Is that correct?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Yes. We assume there is a deadline for the infrastructure program and the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund.
We have done our own analysis on the lapse amount, the amount of money that will not be spent, the authorities that will lapse. We have not seen that analysis from Infrastructure Canada.
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
If you have not received a financial analysis or anything else about the deadline, how can the government say that everything has to be finished by March 31 and that it will have paid the amounts invested in the infrastructure plan by March 31?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
While we have not seen this information, it may be possible that Infrastructure Canada or the Treasury Board Secretariat is producing this analysis but just not sharing it.
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
Mr. Page, on page 5 of the English version of your brief, you raise a point as a consideration for parliamentarians. It says that “the claims datasets PBO has received from Infrastructure Canada include data inconsistencies that affect the relevance and accuracy of PBO performance analysis”.
What are those inconsistencies? Could they include scheduling disbursements without a result analysis and setting a deadline without really knowing what will happen? Could that be an inconsistency?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
It is correct. I'm going to ask Peter Weltman to provide a fuller description of some of the inconsistencies we've seen in the data, where we think—
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
—we've missed an opportunity.
Peter Weltman Financial Advisor, Expenditure and Revenue Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Very briefly, as it was explained to us, the data that Infrastructure Canada is providing is being used to validate any claims that have been submitted by projects. So if a project has spent a certain amount of money, they'll submit a claim to get reimbursed. Beyond that there's nothing else that alludes to or measures or tracks performance.
There is one indicator that asks projects to report on what percentage of the project has been completed. That is used by the department simply as a cross-check against the claims amount so that a project isn't claiming for 50% of their project, for example, yet only showing a 25% completion rate. We've used that project completion amount and applied that to the overall project timeline to give Parliament a very high-level sense as to how things are working out on the ground.
What we mean by inconsistent is that different projects are reporting in that field differently. There are no clear guidelines as to how to fill out project completion data, even though industry standards are fairly clear. Secondly, the government has said they're not really collecting any performance information. Thirdly, many projects have not reported, so--
Bloc
Diane Bourgeois Bloc Terrebonne—Blainville, QC
But sir, that means that when we are told in the House that 90% of the work has started and that the money has been allocated, the information is not completely accurate. We have no idea what the basis is for saying that 90% of the work has started and that the sums have been allocated up to now. There are no documents. We have no idea what the minister is relying on to say that.
Financial Advisor, Expenditure and Revenue Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Not entirely. When projects are about to start, there is certainly a starting date, which appears in the contract with the government. So we can consult the database to find out how many projects should have started. However, to find out if they have actually started or not, I am not sure how we can... We do not have that information. We only have the information about the anticipated starting date.
In addition, if project leaders submit reports saying that the projects have already started, we then know for sure that they have started. But, when a number of project leaders do not submit reports, we don't really know whether the projects have started or not.
Liberal
Conservative
Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen, for coming this morning. We appreciate your attendance.
I have some questions in terms of the infrastructure stimulus fund and the questions that Infrastructure Canada officials had in terms of the methodology your office was using to forecast lapsed figures. I wonder if you can describe the questions they had regarding your methodology. My understanding is that in developing your mid-case scenarios and your worst-case scenarios you had a methodology that the department was uncertain about. Could you describe that?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
I want to remind members that when we put out our lapsed analysis based on March 31 data we had data for one year into the program. We wanted parliamentarians to have different scenarios, so we provided three scenarios, effectively: a best-case scenario, a mid-case scenario, and a worst-case scenario.
I'm going to ask Peter to talk a bit about our methodology and some of the comments we heard from Infrastructure Canada on the methodology.
Conservative
Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB
Have your worst-case and mid-case scenarios changed as you've been able to receive additional information? Have you made any changes, or have you maintained that same methodology that yielded your first analysis?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
We are hoping to get the data for June 31 any day now. In fact, we've been told by Infrastructure Canada officials that we might get the information this week.
We have not changed our methodology. I'm going to ask Peter to explain our methodology, some of the comments we have received from Infrastructure Canada, and the extent to which Finance Canada is using similar type of information to what we are.
