Government Operations Committee on May 28th, 2013

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Thank you.

[Sally Thornton]

If I may, for the supplementary estimates (A), for the first time we have an online document that shows supplementary estimates by strategic outcome and program. That's for information purposes only, but it begins to give you a sense of what that would look like.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Merci, Jacques.

That concludes the first round.

Out of interest, I'd like to hearken back to Bill's opening remarks when he said that the number of votes would grow exponentially in certain models, etc.

With the examples you gave, and perhaps we could flip to Fisheries and Oceans, which is a relatively small and straightforward one. There's no doubt in my mind that in looking at strategic outcome and program, it's so much easier to understand and to see, line by line, what you'd be doing in each of those categories.

In your opening remarks, did you mean that this is not just for the knowledge of the members, but for Parliament to give consent and you would have to vote on each one of those?

[Bill Matthews]

You would vote on the strategic outcomes. I'll give members a minute to find them.

Strategic outcomes for Fisheries and Oceans are things like safe and secure waters. That is the level you'd be voting on. Beneath that, you're getting information on fleet operational readiness, shore-based asset readiness, marine communications, and traffic services. That's the program activity level that we mentioned. That would be provided for information only under this model.

The vote itself would be—

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Under the model you've proposed, you're not saying we would have to vote on fleet operational readiness.

[Bill Matthews]

No.

In this model you're voting at the SO level, which is strategic outcome, and there are three, if I count correctly, and then internal services at the end. The strategic outcomes for Fisheries and Oceans are safe and secure waters, economically prosperous maritime sectors and fisheries, and sustainable aquatic ecosystems. Then you have internal services at the end.

What is here for information is program activity information for each of those, and a breakdown of where the spending is proposed. Again, the control for Parliament would be on the strategic outcome.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

How does that differ from the status quo?

[Bill Matthews]

With the status quo, you're actually voting on capital as one vote. Operating and maintenance is the second, and Gs and Cs is the third. When members typically think of departments, they don't think in those terms. They think in program terms.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Exactly.

I find this pretty close to what I was hoping for, frankly. The model you're proposing here under strategic outcomes and programs is the kind of graphic illustration I had in mind as a simpler outlay that a layperson could understand.

[Bill Matthews]

Mr. Chair, for those who were even more interested, you could then go online, and for each of those program activities get a further breakdown of programs and what the spending is. It's a question of the right level of information.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Mike would do that, but not the rest of us.

Okay. Let's start again. Mathieu Ravignat has been waiting patiently.

I'm sorry, it says Mathieu here, but it's Denis Blanchette.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You said at one point that it would be difficult to monitor the former horizontal programs. This immediately made me think of the controversy that arose when the Auditor General tabled his report. It concerned an amount of 3.1 billion dollars and the public security initiative. That is a good example of a horizontal program.

Considering that you already have in-house people who work on the government-wide reports, I would like to know why it was difficult to collect information on those expenditures?

I would also like to know how the measures you are proposing will ensure that such things never happen again?

[Bill Matthews]

There are a couple of things I would speak to.

One, there is greater information by program available right now without any changes. We've been augmenting what parliamentarians get, both in documents and online, in terms of strategic outcomes and program activities by program.

The other thing I will say is there is a horizontal database that is now used to track horizontal initiatives, and we do report on those horizontal initiatives. So there are improvements that have been made in that aspect as well.

There are other potential things that could be improved upon in terms of how we track spending across departments. You need to see all three together to get the whole picture, but the horizontal initiatives database is a key one.

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

I understand that very well. It is much easier for you to monitor the new programs. However, we both know that certain old programs will remain in effect for a number of years because they are very useful.

How are you going to proceed in order to monitor them better?

[Bill Matthews]

The trick around horizontal programming and reporting is to identify the programs as horizontal from the start, and actually put the reporting regime in place on a go-forward basis. It's very difficult to do retroactive reporting for any programs if you haven't built the structures to support them properly. What we've done in the last few years is an improvement around the horizontal database and what actually gets tracked as a horizontal program. That's really what you have to do, set your structures up in advance.

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

If I am talking about horizontal programs, it is because, in my opinion, the strategic results-based approach and the horizontal programs are very similar. At a certain point, the government will define very global objectives that will include the activities of various departments. This method of functioning is indeed a prerogative of the government. If you proceed by strategic outcome, the follow-up that will be needed will increase significantly in the case of horizontal programs.

Are you going to be able to face the music?

[Bill Matthews]

I'm not convinced there's an increased need if we go to strategic outcomes. That need exists already. We're actually tracking information by strategic outcome and program activity.

What I will say with the database, where you've got something that is common across departments—and it's a fairly innocuous example, but internal services is a really good example as every department has internal services, and that's things like finance, human resources, IT—is if you go to the database and click internal services, because it's common across all departments, you can see internal services spending for every single department with one click. That, to me, is a great example of how to report on something that's common across departments. Again, as the database gets additional information added to it, it becomes a useful tool.

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

In your letter of April 16, you say, basically, that in terms of accounting, the status quo will prevail. You are going to use accrual accounting in some cases, and cash-based accounting in others.

During previous meetings, you referred to the possibility of setting up bridges linking the two types of accounting, particularly to allow parliamentarians and the population in general to gain a better understanding of the figures in the main estimates and the budget as such.

Are these bridges still a part of your plans?

[Bill Matthews]

I think Mr. McCallum raised a similar issue in a previous meeting, where there used to be at one stage a crosswalk between the budgets and the main estimates, if I recall correctly. I don't want to improperly quote Mr. McCallum. That recommendation was not made by the committee to have such a crosswalk. If it is something that is of interest to the committee, that could be something the committee might want to study in the future, but it was not a recommendation made by the committee in its report.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Denis and Bill.

Next, for the Conservatives, Dan Albas.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Thank you Mr. Chair. I want to thank our witnesses for their testimony. As a relatively new parliamentarian—I was elected in 2011—one of the things my colleague, Linda Duncan, mentioned earlier is that for a new member of Parliament it can be rather vexing to be able to understand the scope.

One of the things I did informally was speak to people like Mr. Wallace and Mr. Braid and asked Mr. Cannan as well how best to read the estimates.

First of all I should point out that I really like the graphics that are starting to be included in the estimates process. You quickly find out 60% of the money that comes in to the federal government goes out in transfers to provinces and people. Fifty per cent of the money that comes in comes from income taxes. Those kinds of things I think are very helpful for the average person to understand.

I'm going to follow up on the line of thinking of that of my colleague Mr. Wallace. In fact, I like to call Mr. Wallace “Mr. Wow Us” because sometimes he wows us with his knowledge on the estimates.

Year one on your implementation plan you highlight a number of different things. Before I get to the implementation plan, it says that you surveyed and received a response from 80 out of 130 different agencies that are on the appropriations list. Is that correct?

Were there any informal discussions with the other remaining ones that had not included a response?

[Bill Matthews]

I'll start and let Sally follow up because she's been heavily engaged with the departments.

Where we couldn't or did not receive information back from departments—we did receive 80 of 130 as you mentioned, and we got all the big ones—we did an extrapolation because there are enough similarities in the departments we did hear from versus those we didn't that we could kind of extrapolate to what might happen.

There were some detailed discussions with departments about some of the questions they raised and some of the information. I'll let Sally speak about what some of those discussions were.

[Sally Thornton]

Your first question was if we actually talked to the ones who didn't respond. We did a bit of an outreach to make sure we had significant input from each cluster, or each set of similar organizations. It was probably the smaller organizations in some instances that we didn't hear from.

We did have some discussions with them in the context of the chief financial officers in different meetings. It was very informal.

It's very interesting that everybody gets the intuitive nature of having something, a vote structure along the lines of a strategic outcome to tell the story, to understand the vision, the mandate, what the organization does, and how to explain it. By and large, the people I am dealing with are accountants who are very comfortable with operating capital. They really understand intuitively the value in communicating and understanding, and are a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of having to manage that way, but they are able to go there.

About a third of the organizations are there. They're very small organizations. They have one vote anyway. They would only have one strategic outcome. An organization that only has $100 million, you probably wouldn't want to have multiple votes anyway.

About a third of the organizations are faced with serious systems and operations issues because they're anticipating a lot of change in how they manage financially and are really concerned about that.

There's another third where it's trying to understand the policies and the practices and what this means in terms of their internal practices, particularly if we start changing our definitions in how we approach.

Mr. Matthews did talk about the operations element. That is key for about a third of the organizations, but for many of the organizations it's actually the change in the policies: how they will have to do their practice, how they will have to train their people, and internal. They need some time, but they were very keen.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I'm glad we're having this discussion because it really is a two-way street. I understand what Mr. McCallum is saying, that if we go from the high level authority down to another level, we are actually opening up where it does affect other groups. A simple response would be going back to Ms. Duncan's example, that parliamentarians don't feel—I think I even heard from the chair that there seems to be an attitude of disconnect from the estimates process itself.

So to me, the logical choice would be rather than giving more information that people at some point are not engaged in, you focus that information so that it's in easier to understand, easier to access terms.

Again, I think, after reading it, that's what the spirit of the report from this committee was. There have been multiple reports through the last century. I think there are about six different swings at it. For me, I think about how we use what we already have and use technology to leverage that. That's why I appreciate that.

Getting back to the implementation plan, I can understand it's a five-year process because there are a lot of operational changes that are required. On this letter we have from the President of the Treasury Board, it said year one parties would include establishing a small project office to manage the implementation of this initiative, communicate the decision, review and identify legislative policy and definitional issues.

Have you started with establishing an office yet?