Government Operations Committee on Feb. 27th, 2012

[Joe Jordan]

Now I'm nervous, because I'm trying to remember if I was on that committee or not, because I certainly don't agree with allowing committees.... The current rules are “no, yes, or less”: you can reject it outright, you can approve it, or you can reduce it. You can't have parliamentary committees increasing it. I would see nothing good coming from that.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

You wouldn't even see reallocation?

[Joe Jordan]

I'm not sure how that differs from increasing, if you're talking about this envelope to that envelope. I'm not sure what problem that solves.

One of the things I am a bit concerned about is that I think the system forces the numbers. It's like an egg carton; a lot of effort is in making sure the eggs go in the carton properly, and then people think they have done a great job. As I said, I don't know where that gets us.

Our current system doesn't necessarily allow multi-year allocations and projections. I know why they don't like them; I know finance doesn't like it when current governments commit future governments to expenditures. However, if we can get the bar raised on transparency, the trade-off to the bureaucrat might be a little bit more flexibility on the timeline in terms of multi-year planning. I can't believe, with globalization and technology, that the budgeting process fits nicely in a 12-month cycle. I don't believe that. I think we need to try to come up with ways of providing flexibility, provided the level of transparency is there.

In the current situation, I think we're just overwhelmed with data, and even though somebody could point to every single authority sought and probably find every penny, it takes so long that it just isn't practical.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

I have a quick question. About two-thirds of the budget is statutory-allocated, and one-third is.... It's about $90 billion we deal with. On statutory allocation, is there any way we can more quickly...?

[Joe Jordan]

It's an hours in the day issue. You have to go back, I suppose, and figure out exactly when those authorities were granted and ask whether conditions have changed.

You make a very good point. If those things are done automatically every year without any scrutiny, or very little scrutiny—

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

It's because that's the way we've always done it—

[Joe Jordan]

That's the way we've always done it. It goes to the concept of zero-based budgeting. Maybe we need to revisit those things, but let's not kid ourselves about the extent of the work that would involve. I don't mean to scare you off doing it, but it would be a pretty....

Over some of the stuff they have no control. Some of the stuff is purely legislative and the numbers are set, but some of it is variable, and it's treated as if it's not, so it's certainly an issue you might want to look at.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thanks very much for your wisdom.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Next is Monsieur Blanchette.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here with us, Mr. Jordan.

We are facing quite a huge problem. On the one hand, we say we don't have enough details; on the other, we say that we are up to our ears in information. But what we really want is to have the presentation simplified so that everyone can understand it.

Can you suggest a starting point, a way to get such an enormous task done?

[Joe Jordan]

Well, I think I touched on it a little in the sense that the Treasury Board has done a good job in the last 10 years in trying to make the data more usable in terms of putting in multi-year information. We never even used to have that; you used to have to go and look at previous years.

I think the DPRs and the program architecture and strategic outcomes template they use is actually not a bad way of explaining what they're up to. The piece we don't have is any kind of reconciliation between the numbers—the votes that are sought—and the architecture. Now, you're getting the random musings of a political junkie, but I think we need to look at how the costing and the votes that Parliament approves directly align with the program architecture and outcomes. If a certain department says it's going to do something, then all costs associated with that are grouped in a vote, as opposed to, say, the foreign affairs department, where half of their voted allocation is called “operating expenditures”. Where does that get you? I'm not criticizing them, but you can't extract anything useful from that.

Again I would suggest you consult with people who know more about this than I do, but I think that if you can work backwards from what government's doing and cost it, you're going to have a better idea of what they're spending. You're also going to be able to compare things by asking, based on ratios, why one department can do it for this amount of money, while another department's spending that much more. You'll get some best practices being shared, potentially.

Right now it's very hard to get anything useful out of the mountain of information that's plopped on MPs' desks once a year, or three times a year if you include the supplementary estimates. It is a difficult task.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you very much.

So there is a whole lot of clearing out to be done. The templates and the reference frameworks need to be standardized so that the data presented can be compared. You also briefly mentioned the idea of open government and the extent to which online tools can provide raw data.

Could you give us some more details about that?

[Joe Jordan]

In terms of process, you probably want to pick small departments and try this approach, as opposed to making a complete change. I think there are certain departments autonomous enough that you could use them as pilots for a couple of different models.

Rather than having data forced into this current template, there could be a website where people could access as much data as the government would be comfortable putting online. There'd be certain reasons that some information wouldn't be there, but I don't think there's any reason that a lot of it can't be there. In fact, I would suggest that I can get better information about the government from Google than I can through the estimates, and I don't think it's because the government's trying to hide anything.

If you put up more information as opposed to less and also provided analytical tools, people could go in and do ratios. They could find out about what kinds of efficiencies we are getting in terms of outcomes versus number of employees, or about expenditures on IT compared from department to department to department. Right now that type of analysis is just so cumbersome that it's not being done.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

First, we are going to need public data to be presented in a more standardized way, department by department. Do you have any suggestions as to how to achieve a result like that?

[Joe Jordan]

I would suggest you've already got it. If you look at them by reporting agency, the department performance reports list the architecture and the strategic outcomes, and it's very good. It falls apart when the costing information doesn't continue consistently with that approach; it is listed in the estimates, and then you have to take a bit from here and a bit from there and speculate about what may or may not be in there.

The votes you're required to make in Parliament correspond to the way information is presented in the estimates. In terms of accounting, is it accurately reflected? Yes, it is, but in terms of your having to make a yes-no decision, it's very difficult to be in a position to make any kind of judgment on whether this is a good use of money. We're so far from that capability that it's no wonder $262 billion goes through the House in two hours. What else would you do?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Okay, that's all the time. Thank you very much for that answer.

Next is Kelly Block from the Conservatives.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'd like to welcome Mr. Jordan here.

As you've already mentioned in your opening remarks, this is a huge and complex machine. I am a fairly new member to this committee since this Parliament began. Understanding all of the elements and the number of reports that may be available, as was mentioned by my colleague, is a challenge. There is a lot of information. Knowing where to go to get it and how to make it fit is often an issue.

I want to ask you a bit about the budget. You mentioned three significant reports—the DPRs, the RPPs, and then the estimates. We haven't really talked about the budget itself. Perhaps that itself is a strategic document in that it and previous budgets provide an understanding of the priorities of the government. Where do you see the budget fitting in, in relation to the three documents you referenced?

[Joe Jordan]

I touched on it briefly. I think the estimates, DPRs, and RPPs deal with the nuts-and-bolts funding of the various departments and agencies that make up the operation of the government. The budget is a political document, and I don't mean that in any negative way. It's where the government identifies and funds the priorities over the next year, and, in some cases, over multiple years. That's the government's job. The government proposes, and Parliament disposes. That's the model.

An MP, at a partisan level, may think that's a waste of money, but that's not necessarily my job as an opposition MP: my job is to make sure that the money spent is spent effectively and efficiently. That should not be a threatening conversation for anybody. If anybody can come to the table with ways of saving money or getting more service with the same money or less, that person should be listened to.

In terms of the resources we have in the House of Commons, if you look at the background of the various MPs, we pretty well cover all of the bases. The perspectives we could get if the process allowed for that level of input and discussion would be.... You hear about the issues. If there's a problem with EI processing, you hear about it. If you don't directly, you do in caucus. You're in a unique position to know what is and isn't working. Improving that should be in everybody's interest.

The budget is, by definition, a confidence motion. The opposition MPs can make their own decision on the policy. The real concern is whether the sometimes large expenditures allocated to accomplish certain objectives, and the policies that are put in place, are actually doing that. That's a legitimate discussion.

The government is not going to necessarily entertain criticism of its direction—they're the government—but are we getting value? That's where we need to maintain our focus.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

I want to follow up on something you said in terms of flexibility and spending for future years, and how current governments can't tie the hands of future governments in terms of what we may put in place. The reality, as I've understood it, is that we may be seeing expenditures in supplementary estimates that were budgeted from previous years. I don't know whether that is just from a current government or whether it was something previously budgeted and allocated that we will see a year or two down the road.

Would you comment on that?

[Joe Jordan]

If it's found its way into the supplementaries, then it must be an adjustment against what they said they were going to do. I'll go back to the point I made earlier and say that the thing that concerns me is that I don't believe this random 12-month period necessarily fits and equips professional managers in the civil service to spend their moneys as efficiently as possible. What you get is this end-of-the-year spending spree. It's a use it or lose it kind of thing.

I understand the principle of not tying future governments and I wouldn't suggest that you do this independently of raising the transparency bar. I think you have to do both. We already do a pretty good job of allowing them to move money around envelopes within a current year. I think everyone would agree that such flexibility is probably needed. I think we need to look a little bit at multi-year too, as long as we don't lose control of the transparency.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Our next questioner is Mr. John McCallum from the Liberal Party.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I welcome to my former colleague.

I think we're working on an implicit assumption that might be wrong, which is that any kind of information you want about spending exists somewhere. I remember that when we were a government, if you asked a simple question, such as how much the federal government spends on IT or how much the federal government spends on communication, often you couldn't get an answer because different departments did different forms of accounting. I think it's more than just figuring out how to put it in usable ways. Often that information doesn't exist.

Maybe things have improved over the last six or seven years. Have they, do you know?

[Joe Jordan]

My sense—and, again, I'm an amateur—is that it probably exists, but it doesn't work its way up into the higher levels. As an example, when half of the voted authorities for a department are just simply referred to as “operating”, I've got to believe that if I drill down, I'll find they came up with that number for a reason. I think the data that drive those numbers exist, but the point you make is that in some cases it's apples and oranges: different departments calculate things differently, and you can't simply take the numbers at face value and compare.

I think that's where the Public Service Accounting Board may be very helpful to the committee in terms of explaining how it should be done. If everybody does it the same way, we get around the issue you've identified.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Yes, I think that would have to be part of the effort.

This question is on a totally different issue. One form of accountability is in trouble when funds are appropriated for X and used for Y. Now we did have that issue with the G-8 legacy infrastructure fund, which was money taken out of the border infrastructure fund. We had similar issues with the green infrastructure fund. I gather such moves are not illegal, but do you know—and perhaps this is too technical—whether there's a way to end that, so that money allocated for X is spent for X, unless the government comes back to Parliament and requests a change?

[Joe Jordan]

I think it's a judgment call when you talk about how a government's got its hand on the levers and it is making these sorts of decisions. Speaking about it politically, what's important is that if the government has the authority to reprofile, it also has an obligation to address that change in the supplementary estimates. They have to go back and seek the proper authorities in exchange for the flexibility to allow them to do that.

The Treasury Board vote, the contingency fund, Treasury Board vote 5, is an example. In this case the government had to deal with things in a timely way and didn't necessarily have the capacity to go to Parliament. However, surely major changes in spending that are obviously allowed—because they were—have to be reconciled with a certain degree of respect for Parliament.