Government Operations Committee on March 18th, 2019

[Gérard Deltell]

Mr. Chair, I'll close by saying that it is always delicate to create this type of envelope, especially one with as large an amount as $7 billion, which can be both a catch-all or a fund the government can dip into to fix certain things that may not suit it.

We think we need to be much more transparent in this regard. We understand that temporary funds may be created to deal with contingencies. However, the existence of such a large fund to finance specific programs that were announced goes beyond the boundaries of sound management, in our opinion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Peterson, you have five minutes, please.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'm going to share my time with Ms. Yip. Maybe at two minutes, you could give me a thumbs-up. Give me two, and she can take three.

Thank you for being here.

I want to touch on vote 40 and more general questions about the transparency of it. We're kind of in the second iteration, second year of it now. Were there lessons learned last year? Have there been improvements made? Is the transparency there? Was there anything flagged last year that's been improved upon this year?

[Glenn Purves]

I'll go back to the report that the committee issued.

This is a two-year pilot. The committee has issued a report with 12 recommendations, including party-specific recommendations that we've taken note of. Specifically, there are a lot of views in terms of its effectiveness.

The one thing I would say is that with any pilot, it's evolutionary. It's something that we continue to digest and look at. I think the spirit in which the Treasury Board Secretariat and the government have approached this is to listen to the committee as well as to engage with the Senate and so forth to take advice as we go along.

As you said, we have a new minister today. We have a budget that's going to be coming out tomorrow. We have main estimates that require being tabled by April 16, based on the Standing Orders. Consideration of the views from the report is going to be made. It's something that we'll build into the approach going forward, for sure.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you for that.

That's probably my time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Ms. Yip, you have about two and a half minutes left.

[Jean Yip, Scarborough—Agincourt, Lib.]

You talked about a change in the process with respect to the alignment of departmental priorities with the budgetary process. How is this working?

[Glenn Purves]

In terms of the alignment of priorities to the budget process, I will actually go back to InfoBase on this one, because in fact, when you look at InfoBase, it's very clear in terms of looking through the lens of the financial information coming out of government, the human resources information as well as results. The results portion, which really flows out of the policy end results, introduced a couple of years ago, really provides a lot of information that's very useful, that links the resources the government is spending with respect to programs, initiatives and projects, to what outcomes they're seeking and the indicators that are being measured against those outcomes.

We had, I think, our first generation of these departmental results reports coming this past fall, which provide the results for the 2017-18 fiscal year. For 2018-19, those results will be coming out at the end of this calendar year, in the fall of 2019. Again, like any initiative, it's evolutionary. I think where we've come over the last two years, in terms of just presenting the information—and I'm speaking as a Treasury Board Secretariat official who has responsibility for the GC InfoBase site—is that it's actually working quite well. We're going to end up having 150,000 hits this fiscal year, which is way more than we had before. Our intention is to continue to make it easier for Canadians to access financial as well as results information for government spending.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Blaikie will have the final intervention, for three minutes, please.

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

I'll just start by saying thank you for committing to get back to us on the question I asked before. I appreciate that, and I look forward to your written response.

Three minutes isn't a long time, but I did want to ask a question about the money that's being requested under vote 10b. It's $3 million to advance the proactive pay equity regime.

[Glenn Purves]

Sure.

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

This is coming in the supplementary estimates. I guess the thinking is that the money's going to be spent between now, or when the supplementary estimates pass, and when the main estimates pass. I'm wondering what kind of work is foreseen as being done in that time period in order to make progress on the proactive pay equity regime.

[Glenn Purves]

That $3 million is going to a number of departments, particularly in terms of their work in getting ready to implement the legislation that was put in place in December. The next step, of course, is work on the regs.

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

Does that represent new staff years for those departments? What does that mean for a department that's going to be receiving some of that money? Do we already know which departments are receiving money, or is that going to be at the discretion of Treasury Board to decide once the money's approved?

[Glenn Purves]

That's something for the submission to Treasury Board that, effectively, will be made by a number of departments. Ultimately it's going toward supporting the development of regs as well as working with bargaining agents with respect to the pay equity plans that would be coming out. A lot of that work is ongoing work that's going to be taking place from 2020 to about 2024. It's a longer-term initiative, starting with regs and then moving into these plans.

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

Right, so are new people being hired, then, for those departments? How do you envision the money actually being spent?

[Glenn Purves]

Well, again, the submission is to come on that, yes.

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

Okay, so we can't say at this point whether it's a budget for photocopying, or a budget for new staff, or what the money would be spent on.

[Glenn Purves]

Effectively, it's going to support the development of regs and so forth. I don't have the object codes in front of me, so I can't—

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

Is that true for all of the items under 10b, then? On the government-wide initiatives, we essentially don't have an idea of how that money is going to be spent at all for the moment, and then that's dependent upon Treasury Board submissions yet to come.

[Glenn Purves]

Those are funds that have been identified as priorities for the government, with Treasury Board submissions to follow.

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

Okay, so their priority is—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Purves, Madam Santiago and Madam Cahill, thank you very much for being here.

We will suspend now, colleagues, to go into an in camera session to discuss committee business.

[Proceedings continue in camera]