Government Operations Committee on May 14th, 2012

[Bill Matthews]

That's the biggest one I would point to. The quarterly financials are a relatively new invention as well, but they seem to be getting some attention. People seem to be using them.

I'm going to turn to Sally and see if there's anything that jumps out at her.

[Sally Thornton]

From my perspective, it's a lot of the ancillary materials in the main estimates and the supplementary estimates. At a minimum, what you really need is the proposed bill. Pretty much everything else is optional, and it is there to help you in your study of the proposed bill.

So going through systematically, do you need the introduction, do you like the horizontals, do you like the top 10—which you'll see—do you appreciate the major items, do you need all these summary tables, do you need the different historical pieces? It's just every piece there. If there was an opportunity to sit down with a couple of you who are interested and just.... Even a quick vote—“I've used it; it's great.” or “Never used it.” You don't even have to say it's not useful, just never used it.

We can do things differently, but we can't do more. We're actually maxed out in terms of capacity and getting information out. We can get different or better or more useful information, but we also have to stop doing things.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

How large a team do you have? How many man-hours is this consuming?

[Sally Thornton]

My team for producing a blue book probably has about 25 people. Some are in production. Whether or not we go electronic, we still structure it that way.

The others do outreach to all 135 organizations. Each of those organizations has a team that works on this. I don't have a good sense of their number. Basically, I have about 25 people who are dedicated to this full time through the year, and that is paralleled in each of the 135 organizations, to a greater or lesser extent.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Mr. Ravignat.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you. I am happy to be back on this committee.

When I was in the committee, I thought this was a complex system. Now that I've left it, I still think it's a complex system.

My main concern, which was my main concern when I was sitting on this committee, is the point at which this very obscure process concentrates power in the hands of both cabinet and the PMO.

I'd like to quote something to you that was published today.

Say you want know how budget cuts are hitting Agriculture and Agri-food Canada. Basic stuff, right? Not so fast. The March 29 federal budget says the department will spend $169-million less this year. Less than what? The answer isn’t in the 498-page budget. For that, you have to consult the “main estimates,” released every year on March 1. According [to] the estimates, Agriculture and Agri-food will spend $2.4-billion in 2012-2013. But that is pre-budget.

Hold on a second.

And if you want to know what the department spent last year, that’s in another document – the annual financial statements. Last week, Mr. Clement’s office released its annual “reports on plans and priorities,” which converts the estimates into detailed spending plans for all 97 federal departments and agencies. Typically, these also reflect changes in the budget. Not this year. Mr. Clement...specifically directed departments to exclude the budget cuts, even though they have been known for more than a month. This latest report puts Agriculture and Agri-food’s spending at $3-billion this year, not $2.4-billion. The numbers should be the same, but they’re not.

This quotation goes to the very issue that concerns me. In the estimates process—and this is my question to you—do you routinely get directions from the minister's office to keep information out of your estimates?

[Bill Matthews]

Thank you for the question.

You said estimates.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

That's right. We're studying estimates.

[Bill Matthews]

What goes into estimates is basically everything that has been through Treasury Board and approved and that is ready for spending. This comes in from departments and is then used to make up the appropriation bill. That process is very much done based on what Treasury Board has approved in terms of spending items.

There is also in your question a link to RPPs. Reports on plans and priorities are there to support the main estimates. The link between the two is that RPPs are tabled in time to help committees study the main estimates. I appreciate that it has caused some challenges this year because of the timing of the budget. What I think this committee is studying is whether there are ways to fix that. RPPs, by convention, were invented to help support the study of the main estimates.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

All this information depends on one principle, and that's transparency. All the information we need, the financial information, should be included both in the estimates and the RPPs.

[Bill Matthews]

When you're looking at estimates, the Appropriation Act is an “up to” amount. It sort of sets the ceiling.

Sally referred earlier to whether there is a way we can better connect the dots. One of the ways mentioned was by publishing previous years' actuals to give a sense of what the spending has been in the past against the current year's forecast or the current year's RPPs. That's a great idea. It is easy to do.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

According to the Treasury Board Secretariat's 2010-2011 Departmental Performance Report, the secretariat “(must launch) the Open Government initiative to increase access to public information and make it easier for Canadians to provide their views on government activities.”

In terms of the vote structure, what are you going to do to make government more open? Is a plan in place? Are you aware of one?

[Bill Matthews]

Yes, I'm aware of the initiative. When I look at the estimates documentation—and I would make the same comment about the actuals in public accounts—the most frequent complaint we hear is that you can't manipulate the data. You can't bring data together, pop it into a spreadsheet, and do some analysis on it.

We have some fairly sophisticated users who are trying to look for trends in spending and plans. If there's one thing we could do to actually improve people's use of the data, it would be to put it in a format where they can actually pull data together and then drop it into a spreadsheet to let them do some real analysis. That would be the easiest thing to do.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Is that something you are going to do?

[Bill Matthews]

We are going through all the data we produce right now to assess what can be made open.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Okay.

Do I have any more time?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

I'll give you 30 seconds.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

I can't—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Okay, well maybe you can get it in later. Thank you.

I'm going to take a slot now, since it's an area of the study that I'm interested in.

Bottom line, when a minister comes to defend the estimates in front of us, is it the department, is it you guys...? The Treasury Board president is here. Is it you guys who get them ready for that? Who gets them ready for that meeting in terms of understanding what's in their estimates and so on?

[Bill Matthews]

When the estimates documents are produced, as I said, they are based on Treasury Board approvals but it's departmental content. If our own minister was coming, we would help prepare him, but if a minister from a line department was coming we wouldn't do that.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

It's the financial people in their own departments that get them ready.

[Bill Matthews]

Correct.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Okay. I've been here for six years looking at estimates, and when the ministers come in front of us, it's often that the opposition are political about it. I'm assuming that if we were on the other side of the table it would be exactly the same. We ask more questions on the estimates, or there are other questions for the minister that the minister may know the answer to.

My view after looking at this is that we would be better off having the minister here, not for estimates, not for the actual blue books, but for the plans and priorities document and maybe the performance documents at the end. Very few members of Parliament look at those documents, in my estimation. Obviously I can't speak for all of them, but I don't recall a minister ever getting a question from a report on plans and priorities, other than maybe from me.

If we left the estimates alone—we may change the system a bit—when we talk about programs, are we not better off as members of Parliament to be questioning the minister and the staff on the RPPs and the performance reports, without having to reinvent the wheel? Because programs are more highlighted in those documents that already exist.

How do you feel about that?

[Bill Matthews]

There is information in the main estimates on programs, but you are absolutely correct. In the report on plans and priorities and the follow-up departmental performance report, there is more time given to program plans and achievements. If you wanted a good discussion about the future of certain programs or the past performance, they are fantastic documents to use for that discussion.

The estimates are all about the upper ceiling for spending in this fiscal year. The main estimates set the initial bar and then you add to it through supplementary estimates, so it's not a great vehicle for that discussion.