Thank you, Mr. Chair.
With me is Mr. Brian Berry, who is the assistant secretary and chief financial officer.
We welcome the opportunity to appear before this standing committee. Because of the rather unique nature of the Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat, with your permission, I would like to give the members of this committee a brief description of who we are and what we do.
The Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat was created pursuant to a first ministers' conference, in May 1973. It was then made a department for the purposes of the Financial Administration Act, by an order in council dated November 29, 1973.
We report to Parliament through the president of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada.
Although the secretariat is a federal department, in practice it is an intergovernmental agency whose operational budget is co-funded by the provinces. Our full-time employees consist of federal, provincial, and territorial public servants. The secretariat reports to all governments annually.
The secretariat is a single-program agency whose mandate is to serve federal, provincial, and territorial governments in the planning and conduct of senior level intergovernmental meetings. The organization's primary objective is to relieve federal, provincial, and territorial clients of the numerous administrative and technical tasks associated with the planning and conduct of such conferences. This enables government departments to concentrate on the substantive issues.
These meetings are a key instrument for consultation and negotiation among governments, and are a critical component of the workings of the Canadian federation.
The agency serves conferences in virtually every sector of intergovernmental activity, and its services are available across Canada.
I would also add that the Secretariat is responsible for a unique collection of intergovernmental documents from all the meetings it has helped organize for over 40 years.
Its value as a unique archive has been recognized by Library and Archives Canada.
It is important to note that the secretariat does not convene conferences. We respond to decisions taken by governments to meet on national or specific issues, as we were asked to do with respect to the recent first ministers' meeting which was held in Vancouver in early March.
Decisions concerning the location of such meetings, their frequency in a given year, their timing, and their duration are all factors beyond our control. These factors, however, have a direct impact on our level of expenditures for every fiscal year.
The secretariat served 114 conferences in 2015-16, of which 40 were teleconferences and two were by video.
The Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat 2016-17 budget of just under $6 million remains approximately the same as in the previous year.
This funding will allow the secretariat to address the following priorities: enhance and expand strategic partnerships; continue to ensure a client-focused, responsive service delivery model, in step with rapidly evolving technologies, for example; maintain the effective and efficient use of resources; and cultivate a continuous learning environment for our staff.
The agency is very much in line with the transformation agenda of Blueprint 2020. We are proactive in evaluating and implementing efficient and innovative conference solutions that help contain or reduce costs.
The Secretariat continues to transform its back office by consolidating human resources and financial systems to increase efficiencies.
Security is a priority for the Secretariat, both physical security and with regard to information technology. It is an integral part of the organization's strategic frameworks, its daily activities, and the conduct of its employees.
In closing, the agency, by skilfully executing the logistical planning and delivery of senior-level intergovernmental meetings across Canada, not only relieves governments of an administrative process burden, but more importantly, allows them to greatly benefit from significant cost efficiencies and economies of scale. Thank you.