Evidence of meeting #150 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was million.
A video is available from Parliament.
President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government
—to ensure good value for tax dollars and that our procurement practices are maintained at the very highest standards.
Louis-Saint-Laurent, CPC
I can tell you, Mr. Chair, that it was a really good value, the Asterix and the Resolve project.
It was done on time and on budget. That is a great source of pride and honour for the workers at Davie. It is quite a feat. We are very proud to have done that while we were in power.
Louis-Saint-Laurent, CPC
Mr. Chair, it is unfortunate that the President of the Treasury Board is refusing to answer such a simple question: did he halt other projects to analyze them, as he did with Project Resolve?
For the third and final time, minister, I am giving you the chance to answer. Did you do your job with other projects as you did with Project Resolve, yes or no?
President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government
I'm not going to violate cabinet confidences, Mr. Chair.
President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government
What I am being very clear on is that on an ongoing basis, day in and day out, Treasury Board has a responsibility to oversee expenditure management for the Government of Canada. We do that as Treasury Board Secretariat at the public service level.
Louis-Saint-Laurent, CPC
Mr. Chair, it is unfortunate that the President of the Treasury Board is willing to comment publicly on a specific file, but will not answer my question.
President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government
And I do it as the minister responsible for Treasury Board.
Louis-Saint-Laurent, CPC
Mr. Chair, let me say again that it is unfortunate that the President of the Treasury Board is willing to comment publicly on a specific file, Project Resolve, which by the way is a huge success for workers and taxpayers in Canada, but is unwilling to say whether or not he halted other projects.
Now, here is what I would like the minister to tell us. With regard to this specific project, he said that he had just one contact with a private company and that it was disclosed. I assume he is referring to a copy of the letter that Radio-Canada obtained and reported on on November 20.
As a member of Parliament, did he have any contacts in August 2015 when the previous government announced Project Resolve?
President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government
Mr. Chair, I can tell you that what the honourable member is doing, what the Conservatives are doing, is shameful.
This is a case that is before the courts, and to be engaged in—
President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government
—mudslinging compromises the ability for that case to be tried effectively.
Louis-Saint-Laurent, CPC
The reality and the facts are anything but mudslinging.
President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government
This is very important, Mr. Chair.
My colleague, the Minister of Public Safety, has repeated in the House quite clearly, and he's right—
Louis-Saint-Laurent, CPC
In your 16 communications with Irving, did you or did you not talk about Project Resolve?
President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government
This is known as sub judice. It has been cited in the House by governments of different stripes over the years.
Louis-Saint-Laurent, CPC
In your 16 communications with Irving, did you or did you not talk about Project Resolve?
President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government
This case is before the judiciary [Inaudible-Editor] extended, and the prosecution—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Colleagues, the chair is having great difficulty with two people speaking at the same time. I appreciate the fact that you have the ability and the right to ask questions, just as the minister has the ability and the right to answer questions. My job is to try to ascertain whether or not courtesy and all of those elements of committee work that go into this committee are respected. I take my responsibility very seriously. I would suggest that in the future, if there are answers that I think are being a little too long-winded, I will interject myself and ask the minister to wrap it up or allow the next question to be posed.
In this particular case, I found that the minister, in my opinion at least, was attempting to answer a question.
Monsieur Deltell, you were interjecting; I couldn't hear what your question was and I could not hear what the minister was attempting to answer. I would encourage all members to try to work together. You may not like the answer, as the Speaker of the House often says, but at least we should afford the witnesses the opportunity to provide an answer.
Unfortunately, Monsieur Deltell, your five minutes are up. We will now go to Mr. Peterson for five minutes.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, officials, for being here.
Mr. Pagan, good luck in the future. We appreciate your contribution to the Treasury Board and your public service over those years, so thank you for that.
Minister Brison, thank you for being here with us once again. I just want to touch briefly on vote 40 and this process. I've spoken about it in the House before, as well as here in committee. One way of looking at the new process, and at vote 40 specifically, is that, in my opinion, it provides a better quality and a better quantity of information for parliamentarians to review. Do you agree with that assessment?
President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government
Well, I think that's one of the wisest things I've heard in a long time. I wish I could have summed it up as well as you did, Mr. Peterson.
In terms of the detail of the information, but also in terms of the accessibility and the usability of it.... I recently became Minister of Digital Government, in addition to being President of the Treasury Board. The ability for us to put information out there in real time today, for parliamentarians but also for all Canadians, is unprecedented. We're doing that. In fact, we're moving toward more proactive disclosure, as an example, writ large in government.
Over time, I think that strengthens not only the ability of members of Parliament to do their work but also the ability of Canadians themselves, as citizens, to hold government accountable. I think that establishing the clear link between the budget and the main estimates is an important step. Making the tracking of public expenditures and investments more transparent is extremely important for Parliament and for accountability writ large.
November 1st, 2018 / 4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you.
You also mentioned that there were four components to the improvement: Generally, the sequencing has improved, and we have the main estimates after the budget now; there's the accrual basis versus the cash basis, which has been improved; you piloted the vote structure; and then the fourth pillar is the policy on results.
I want you to maybe let the committee members know what form that takes, this policy on results. Why is that important? Is that public information that Canadian taxpayers can access as well?
President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government
Well, one thing we're doing for investments we're making is establishing, through the new departmental results frameworks, indicators that will help us measure results and help Canadians track results. We're focused not only on the investment but also on what the investment actually achieves over time. The departmental results frameworks have actually had an impact, I think, within the public service, in terms of focusing both ministers and officials on tracking the results of government investments.
Brian may want to speak to that in terms of the experience, but over the last two years, we've seen a significant change in terms of the transparency around the results achieved by investments, not simply on the expenditure but in terms of what is actually achieved as a result of the expenditure.
Brian, go ahead.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
Thank you, Minister.
Thanks for the question, Mr. Peterson. As the minister says, the results policy is aimed at helping parliamentarians understand how programs fit with the broader mandate and objectives of the department and the specific indicators that will be used to measure progress.
Above and beyond these departmental results frameworks, we have regular reports to Parliament. In the spring, we have the departmental plan. This year, it was tabled on the same day as the main estimates. It lays out the specific targets or objectives of the program, with the indicators. In the fall, in the coming weeks, we will be tabling the departmental results reports, which conclude the reporting exercise and show what was actually achieved with the money spent.
We have had these sorts of reports for some years and we've made some efforts recently to make them more readable and lighter. The real advance over the last three or four years has been TBS InfoBase. We were at this committee in the spring. We showed you not only how InfoBase exists for all of spending, but how we were going to be using it to follow the budget implementation vote—a budget tracker.
Again, I commend the tool to the committee and to anybody watching this appearance, because it contains a wealth of information about the structure of programs, the amount of the spend, the personnel delivering the programs—