Government Operations Committee on Feb. 27th, 2012

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

I have a last question, if I have time.

We've had some discussion about changing the time of the budget to the fall. There's, I think, agreement this would be a good thing, in the sense of better aligning the timing of the estimates and the budget, and that strikes me as important. However, it's been like this for a hundred years or more, and that's never happened. I'm sure we're not the first to come up with this argument, so apart from institutional inertia—it'll be a pain one year to make the change, but from then on it will be better—are there any arguments against such a change in the date of the budget?

[Joe Jordan]

I'm thinking out loud, as I never really thought about it in that way.

I think it is a bit of institutional inertia. A great deal of private sector organizations structure what they do around the timeline. You're talking about a rather disruptive change to the way we've always done things. I don't see any internal institutional barrier to doing that, but I'm certainly not an expert on it.

You're absolutely right, though: this idea is brought up with exactly the same rationale over and over again, and for whatever reason, it isn't being done.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

I'll give you one more minute.

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

I think I'm almost out of time. I'll just make two points to conclude.

I certainly agree with you that allowing MPs to add money to estimates is a terrible idea. I think that's what they have in the U.S. I think they call them “riders”. There'd be a feeding frenzy to get money into everyone's riding. I don't think we want to go there.

The last point is I think the U.S. is way ahead of us in terms of having government openness on its websites and being able to drill down. Are you aware of that in the U.S.? Would you agree that they are way ahead of Canada in this respect?

[Joe Jordan]

I'm not that familiar with what they do specifically, but I can tell you there are private sector websites. There's one into which you can type the name of any company in Canada, and it will tell you if it's had any money under government contract for the last 10 years. If that information exists in the private sector, why isn't the government incorporating those things into its website too?

I think everyone is ahead of the government, John.

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

That includes the U.S. government, which is ahead of the Canadian government.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much.

Next is Mr. Bev Shipley from the Conservative party.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm really new. I'm just filling in.

I have to tell you, Mr. Jordan, that it's refreshing to hear you talk. You're being ordinary. I look at your background and I think it speaks to us about the complexity of what we have.

I think of my colleague across the way and I'm not so sure that I want to have the same accountability that the U.S. has right now. I'm not so sure it's that far ahead by being able to drill down.

I also sat on municipal council for 20 years and was mayor for most of that time. If you just did zero-based funding, it cleared all the rags out. We don't have that opportunity, clearly.

I hope that later, Mr. Chair, you'll give us some written direction regarding how you feel we could best engage some of those. You're not the only one who's talked about learning from the private sector. I said governments will never be a business, but they should be run like one, so I would be interested in having those comments come from you, because I have a lot of respect for what you're saying.

One of the problems, I think, is not only the complexity—you've said it, as have others—but the understandability of what we're trying to do. In writing, it's called “clear language writing”. I don't know what you call it in economics, with numbers and that, but I think we need clear language writing to understand this whole process.

In the public accounts committee we had Treasury Board come in just to try to explain the process to everyone. Everybody nodded their heads to say they were quite fine with it, but frankly it's very complex.

I'm wondering if you could help us clarify some of the changes we could bring into effect. I'm wondering, in terms of the control system my colleague across the way talked about, how we can fix.... I just do not understand. I think I understand why—and it's not a good reason—each department has a different way of doing its accounting. There needs to be a centralized way so that they can be accountable. If there isn't, then in fact one is competing against the other and trying to justify it. I think if would be helpful for this committee to have steps to help it realize how it can move in that direction.

[Joe Jordan]

I will certainly endeavour to supply the clerk with the names of some private sector firms, based on my experience. I don't want to say them publicly, but I think there are some good ones, and there are some good Canadian companies that have done a lot of work in this area.

In terms of clarity.... I have an MBA. Again, I don't want to embarrass the university that granted it to me, but I think I've got a pretty good understanding of financials. I can read and analyze accounting statements from the private sector. If you give me a balance sheet and an income statement, I can have a pretty good go at letting you know whether I'd invest in that company or not. Maybe we need to take a look at private sector practices. It doesn't necessarily need to get all that complicated, and I'll go back to the point of maybe starting with some autonomous agencies to try it.

The other thing is that one of the potential strengths of the committee system is that over time you, as committee members, gain a certain level of expertise about the area that you're studying. You have a responsibility to all the other MPs who aren't on this committee to undertake this sort of analysis and then report back. There's stability on a committee, and when you're not dealing with legislation and getting briefings on various aspects of the various departments, such as defence or transport....

I don't want to get into the politics of the Senate, but I find that senators who have been around a long time on the same committee are very effective committee members, and it's because they have the level of knowledge that comes from not having to deal with constituents and getting re-elected and things like that, which take your time away from you. Resources available for MPs is one of the areas that I didn't address but feel strongly about. You're kind of left hanging, or thrown in the deep end of the pool. They drop these books on your desk, and you've either got to tell them you don't know what you're talking about, which is unlikely, or pretend you do, which is a little dangerous, so maybe we need to look at better briefings on how to interpret the documents and read them.

Even so, I think you can only do so much with the way the docs are presented now.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Look at what's happening now to—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

You have 30 seconds.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

It's just a comment. When they come to do the estimates at some of the committees I've been on, it's an opportunity to get the minister in front of you and hammer him or her on an issue rather than deal with the estimates, and it likely follows through with your comments. That's easier than understanding the estimates, and that's unfortunate.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, sir.

[Joe Jordan]

I have a quick point. If committees would undertake to provide some of their questions in written form ahead of time to officials, you might get better answers than through the ebb and flow of what goes on with everybody being surprised.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Our last questioner is Monsieur Giguère.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Jordan, here is a problem we often come up against: it's when a number of departments are working to achieve an objective of the government. With the Kyoto Protocol, for example, or ordering weapons, or pension schemes, a number of departments are involved. The whole problem stems from the fact that departments have a number of objectives.

Let me give you an example. The Retire Your Ride program, which was intended to get old vehicles off the road, was an Industry Canada program intended to stimulate the automobile industry in Canada. But we found it recycled under the Kyoto Protocol as well. You might legitimately wonder about the environmental impact of the program.

The fact that no single department is steering the boat towards the objective is a major problem that we frequently encounter. Do you think it would be preferable at some stage to move some departments aside and keep just one in charge of the operation?

[Joe Jordan]

In terms of the management of the program, I suppose clarity is always good. To pick up on the point, what I was suggesting is that if we align the votes—the authorities to seek the money—with the outcomes, then it really depends on how you define the outcome.

A program like that is fairly stand-alone. You can say what you intend to do; for instance, you can say you intend to put a specific amount of money on the table to encourage people to take old vehicles off the road for the following reasons. I'm just making this up. Clearly there are environmental issues—older cars pollute more—and buying newer cars stimulates the economy.

Going back to what I said about baselines and benchmarks, you have to have some measurable, independently verifiable objectives to decide whether or not you're accomplishing those goals.

The way the process works now is that you're just asked for the money at the front end. Nobody is really reconciling whether or not it worked. There is so much to do that we never get around to that reconciliation. If the government or the bureaucracy has to outline what they're doing and why they're doing it and how you'll know if they've done it before you say yes or no to giving them the money, that's a step forward.

Anything that can work backwards from those sorts of things is useful. It certainly would be better if they put a price tag and some objectives on that program, rather than just lumping it in to operating costs or however they would do it under the transport estimates or Industry Canada, or whoever is running it.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

You have time.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

We saw another similar problem in the past with the firearms registry. The implementation costs had gone considerably over budget. The problem came directly from the fact that the Department of Justice was issuing the directives, while Public Works and Government Services was managing it and Public Safety was also involved, if I am not mistaken. Three players, one big mess.

Could you tell us how we can prevent that kind of unfortunate situation?

[Joe Jordan]

If you look at that particular file, I think one of the issues that drove costs was the fact that the government was changing the objectives of the program as they were developing the software. For example, the decision—I'm not necessarily saying it was a bad decision—that we need spousal notification: when you introduce that element 90% through the process and the software developers are told they now need to do this, you close your eyes and open your wallet.

That speaks to the problem. Who was in charge? Who is accountable at the end of the day for what happened?

We don't do that enough. We don't have that level of discussion enough. First, you have a hard time finding out who was in charge. It'd be one of these things. You're right. A lot of departments looked at that process and wondered what they could get out of that. How could they change that so they could get some benefit from that?

I'm not saying this was done with malice on behalf of the departments, but I think there is this notion that the bigger the budget, the more important you are. Those kinds of activities take place in the private sector, they take place in the public sector. I think you're absolutely right.

You have to have a lead on these types of things. They have to assume—they have to not only be accountable, but they have to be responsible and they have to have authority, otherwise you get into huge overspending situations. That's one example. There are many more.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Jordan.

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for coming today. We had an excellent conversation about the supply process and your knowledge is fantastic.

On our agenda for today, we did have committee business at 5:15. Let me explain. I had a discussion with the chair. We were hoping to have which departments to invite, but the estimates are not being submitted until tomorrow, I believe, in the House of Commons, so we don't know exactly when. Main estimates and supplementary estimates (C) are coming at exactly the same time, so the suggestion was that on Wednesday we have from 3:30 to 5:30 with the Library of Parliament, the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

We thought we would go from 3:30 to 5:00, and then the subcommittee on agenda and procedure would meet for the last half hour. Some of you will have to stay and some of you can go.

Do we have an agreement to that effect? Good; that's what we're doing.

Thank you very much. That's it for today. We're out of here.

Thank you. The meeting is adjourned.