Evidence of meeting #66 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was money.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:10 a.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Canadian Heritage
I'll just state that it is a technical adjustment. When you look at it in terms of money that came in and money that came out, you have the same amount.
9:10 a.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Canadian Heritage
It's purely a technical adjustment.
9:10 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Right.
One other one that I found here was a small amount, but it's a little strange to me. It's the transfer of $605,000 from Shared Services. I thought we were sending money to Shared Services in most cases. Why is it coming back?
9:10 a.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Canadian Heritage
As you probably recall, all departments and agencies indeed transfer money to Shared Services Canada. In our case, when we looked at what was transferred, we saw that there was some money that had been counted twice for two specific things. We had discussions with Shared Services Canada. They recognized that an error had been made and they basically returned the adjustment to us.
9:10 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Very good. Thank you very much.
My next question on the estimates themselves is about the money for the CRTC and the do-not-call operation. It has a significant ask here, I think, if I can find it here. I don't know where it is...
9:10 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Yes. It's a 34% increase over authorities to date. Why is it so high?
Similar to that previous question, Denis, the no-call list isn't brand new. It has been around for a few years, I believe—and maybe I'm wrong—but why is there such a significant increase?
9:10 a.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Canadian Heritage
As you know, the National Do Not Call List was created, and money has been punctually allocated as a bridge until a cost recovery system can be developed. This is the last kind of bridging fund to this until the cost recovery is in place.
9:15 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Based on that answer, members of Parliament could anticipate that we won't see these kinds of transfers from Heritage Canada to this organization for that cause in the future. Is that correct?
9:15 a.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Canadian Heritage
That's correct. They have a cost recovery system that is coming into place on April 1, 2013. My colleague just gave me what the numbers were for the additional years, and that's pretty much the same number.
9:15 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
I'm turning to your plans and priorities document that you've produced. I know that it came out in June of last year, or whenever it was. I looked at these of the other organizations that we've had in front of us, and I appreciate.... It doesn't look like there's a big reduction in staff here, really. These are plans prior to the DRAP, so would you say this is accurate, or is this likely including your DRAP requirements?
9:15 a.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Canadian Heritage
On the evolution of the staff at Canadian Heritage, from the time of the Olympics, let's say, which was probably the highest, at about 2,300 people in 2009-10, we're at a current staff of about 1,753 people, and we're moving lower than that. We've had both an operational and a staff permanent reduction of 30%. When you include reductions of people who were affected by temporary projects like the Olympics and others—
9:15 a.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Canadian Heritage
—the reduction is actually much higher than that. We've had one of the most significant staff reductions in government.
9:15 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Okay. On the money side, on the financial resources, the overall planning summary shows this year, and then an increase for next year, and an increase after that. Is that mostly due to our funding the Pan Am Games or being a partner in the Pan Am Games? We go from financial resources of $1.3 billion to almost $1.4 billion to I think $1.45 billion.
9:15 a.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Canadian Heritage
You're correct. Indeed, $14.4 million of the adjustment up is for the Pan Am Games, and there was another $5 million for the Grey Cup celebrations.
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Thank you.
Welcome to all of you.
In terms of the money going to the Pan American Games and the $5 million for the Grey Cup, I'm wondering why you didn't know about that at the time of the main estimates and why it was delayed until now.
9:15 a.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Canadian Heritage
As the chief financial officer explained, it is not that we did not know, but we were doing a contribution agreement. I'm going to take the Grey Cup as an example. We were doing a contribution agreement and it was not complete on how they were going to design the use of the $5 million. The understanding would be between the department...on the fact that this would be done in the right way in providing the kinds of results that we expect. That's the reason for it.
We usually don't come to appropriate that money until the program, design, and implementation, if we need to go to Treasury Board, and until we've gone to Treasury Board and we have all the authorities in place, that's when we come for appropriations....
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Well, I'm thinking that it's a little late. The Grey Cup is over. Does that mean you spend the money in advance of parliamentary approval?
9:15 a.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Canadian Heritage
No. That means that, sometimes, because of the way the appropriation cycle works, we have to risk-manage some of these things.
November 29th, 2012 / 9:15 a.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Canadian Heritage
That means we have to bank on the fact that it's going to happen. If it were not to happen, then we would have to find the money in some of our other appropriations....
