Government Operations Committee on June 19th, 2018

[Marcia Santiago, Executive Director, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat]

The CFMRS, the central financial management reporting system, is a system that the Receiver General uses to collect transactional information from all of the departments. From that, they build monthly trial balances and they build the public accounts at the end of the year.

CFMRS is quite an elderly system. I think it is at least from the early 1980s. A lot of things, including the basic financial coding blocks, are basically hard-wired into this thing, and it's very hard to change.

On a small scale, from one department or a small handful of departments at a time, introducing another element, the program, into the control structure for the votes is difficult, but not a huge deal. On the scale of this pilot project, we were able to do it by just allowing more time for lead-up. They have already expressed some concern at the idea that we would go even to an expanded grants and contributions vote across the board, just because the system...they can't deal with it.

In fact, their initial costing was some extraordinarily high figure for how much it would take for them to engage in a full-out purpose-based control structure. Most of it was based on the idea that it's prohibitively expensive to do that scale of change in CFMRS at this point, until they actually update CFMRS itself.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Are there plans on the books to do that anyway?

[Marcia Santiago]

It's PSPC. I couldn't tell you. Sorry.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

That's fair enough.

There was also a reference made to potential legislative amendments in order to implement program control on a wider scale. What kinds of legislative amendments would be required, and why?

[Brian Pagan]

Again, it would depend on the specific structure of the purpose-based votes going forward, but we've identified two issues that would likely be required to balance that control and ongoing latitude to manage programs. Those are the issues of year-end carry-forwards and transfers between votes.

Currently, under the parliamentary control structure, a transfer of even a single dollar between one vote and another requires Parliament's approval. The Treasury Board has no latitude to approve any transfers between votes without the consent of Parliament.

When we looked at this model in other jurisdictions—I mentioned Quebec—the legislation would allow departments a certain latitude. Quebec uses 10%. Others use higher or lower numbers, and it's only once that threshold is breached that a department would come back and seek specific parliamentary approval to transfer amounts above and beyond what is contained in the legislation.

To our mind, it is a function of that balance between control, oversight, and better reporting and having an ongoing ability to deliver programs and services. For programs and services, think about programs and services for veterans. It is demand-driven. If there is a spike for a particular veterans grant or contribution and they can't take money from elsewhere in the department to satisfy that need, they would have to come to Parliament, and at certain times of the year it can be very debilitating for departments—at the end of the year, for instance, when we don't get Parliament's approval for the final supplementary estimates of the year until the last week in March and we don't get royal assent sometimes until March 31.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Isn't that a part of the function of the contingency vote, vote 5? It's $750 million to be able to supplement any existing grants or contributions.

[Brian Pagan]

We can only supplement existing authorities if sufficient funds or a grant does not exist in a department. If a grant exists but is oversubscribed, the first recourse would be to transfer from existing authorities.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Yes, but if you don't have that ability because you have more restricted votes, then that would make you eligible to access funds under vote 5, would it not?

[Marcia Santiago]

Yes, vote 5 is available as an option. It was one of the options we talked about to the Department of Transport when we were setting the stage for this project. We didn't know what their capacity would be to be able to manage within the smaller vote structure they have, so yes, in principle vote 5 is available.

The issue arises when we start to involve much larger departments. When you have a department like Indigenous Services, which has something in the order of $7 billion in voted transfer payments, then we're going to blow vote 5 quite quickly if something goes horribly wrong with their year-end situation.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

You'd mentioned two issues, and we've talked about one, transferring between votes within a department. What's the other legislative issue you've identified?

[Brian Pagan]

The other is that currently we have two models before Parliament. Most departments operate on an annual appropriations basis, but a small subset of departments, those being Canada Revenue Agency, Canada Border Services Agency, and Parks Canada, have two-year non-lapsing authorities. In a world where we would be taking a big number and breaking it into smaller votes, and where the final supplementary estimates of the year aren't approved until March 31, in some cases, having the authority to extend non-lapsing authorities to other departments is something we would want to test.

It seems to be working well, most notably with CRA—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you. I'm going to have to stop you there. I've got about 15 seconds left, and I want to move the motion I gave notice of the other day:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108, the Committee request that the Treasury Board Secretariat provide information no later than Tuesday, July 3, 2018, pertaining to the participation of employees of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories in the Public Service Pension Plan, in particular an “assessment of what the cost to government would be in terms of allowing them to remain in the plan”, as was committed to by Treasury Board Secretariat officials during the Committee’s meeting of Thursday, November 9, 2017.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Before we go to Madam Ratansi, who I think is raising her hand on a point of order, I will inform colleagues that the motion is in order and debate would begin on this motion immediately.

Madam Ratansi, did you have a point of order?

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

No. I would allow Mr. Blaikie to finish on why he wants to present this motion or if he wants to say any more on it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

He has the ability to present the motion when he is speaking, which he has done, and the motion is in order.

Mr. Blaikie, the motion has been received. Copies are being distributed as we speak. The floors is yours.

We are entertaining speakers if anyone wants to speak to the motion. Madam Ratansi, you can put your name on the speakers list. We already have a couple.

Go ahead, Mr. Blaikie.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm moving the motion now only because it's the last meeting before summer. Members who have been following this issue may know that it's effective in September.

These workers were essentially put on course to be kicked out of the public service pension plan by the Harper government. It was a three-year term, and that's coming to fruition, as it were, if you'll excuse the word, in September. I know the government has been talking with the folks who represent these workers ever since their election.

It came up at one of our committee meetings in November. In November, we had a commitment at the time to.... The question was, essentially, how much it would cost the government to keep these workers in the plan.

Under the new public-private model that's been adopted for ACL under the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories shell company, the private contractor is required to pay for a pension plan. For the last three years, for the workers who have been there—not the new workers, but the existing workers—the private contractor, as part of their contract, has been making the employer contributions on behalf of those employees to the plan. There's no cost to government in terms of the contribution; however, there are some administrative costs. That's what the folks representing those workers and the workers themselves have been wanting to know: what exactly does the government estimate, based on the last three years of the government doing that, would be the cost to keep those workers in the plan?

We did have a commitment going back a while ago to get that information; we just haven't got it yet. Before the end of the summer I was hoping that the committee might assist those workers by essentially reiterating our request for that information to the President of the Treasury Board so they have it with at least a bit of time to consider what that information means for them and to come back to government with a proposal. I know they've been talking to the PMO and Treasury Board, and they've been talking to Minister Carr's office because Minister Carr is ultimately responsible for CNL. They'd like that information to be able to see if they can work out some kind of deal so these guys can keep their pensions.

That's really the purpose of the motion.

I won't take any more of the committee's time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

We have three names on my speakers list: Mr. McCauley, Mr. Kelly, and Madam Ratansi.

Mr. McCauley, you're up next.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

In general, I support the motion. I don't see why this information should not be provided.

I'll just ask a question. If I'm reading it right, it says it was committed to the committee by TBS.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Yes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I think it's important that the motion go forward.

We saw a previous commitment made to this committee by the President of the Treasury Board to appear on the important whistle-blower study. Of course, here we are two days out before the end of the session and he's refused to show up or honour the request, even though he made the commitment to us in this committee. He has not bothered showing up. I think it shows the importance of having a motion such as this to compel the information to come forward for this important issue.

That's all I have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Kelly is next.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

I'd like a brief word in support of the motion.

It just comes to accountability on the part of the President of the Treasury Board. As Mr. McCauley pointed out, that accountability has been challenged in many ways, particularly in his failure to appear when he told us he would.

I'll leave it at that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Go ahead, Madam Ratansi.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have in front of me the question that was presented by Mr. Blaikie and received by the Treasury Board on April 12, 2018, and he received a response. The response was tabled on May 30. For the information of everyone here I will read it, and I quote:

On September 13, 2015, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited transferred Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) to a private sector company. As a result, following the transfer, CNL employees became private sector employees.

The Public Service Superannuation Act does not permit private sector employees to be members of the public service pension plan. Following the maximum period of transitional coverage under the Public Service Superannuation Act (3 years), under the legislation employees of CNL will not be eligible to participate as active members of the public service pension plan beyond September 13, 2018.

The Government continues to be engaged with the employees and their unions on this issue, and is committed to doing everything it can to offer the appropriate pension protections for the impacted employees.

I believe that the motion is really redundant.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Blaikie.