Government Operations Committee on March 9th, 2017

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

The RCMP has fallen. I think they're ranked 70-something out of 80-something now. The pay council said they should be in the top three or the average of the top three comparator police forces, so we're a very long way away and this is hardly quibbling about details. This is really an issue of principle at this point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We'll have to curtail the discussion until the next round.

We have Mr. Peterson for seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Minister and staff, for being here today. It is appreciated.

If you go back to the election in 2015, I think we were the only party not making the false promise of a balanced budget. If any of those parties had been elected, there would be no new money for the RCMP. We're fortunate to be in a position in which we can fund some of these policies and this great police force.

On the RCMP, I think there is a request for $76 billion towards the shortfall in the disability insurance plan. Can I get some more details on that? Will that amount put it into surplus? How big is the deficit on that?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

There are a couple of things.

A lot of the insurance plans, like pension plans today, are under a significant strain. We have historically low bond yields right now, so that imposes a real challenge on both insurance and pension plans. That's part of the factor here.

There was also the White decision for the RCMP, and a separate decision in the Manuge case for National Defence, which also had an impact on this. This investment is to fortify the prudential strength of the plan, to render it stable and solid, so it was important to do so. Again, the two factors were the White decision...and it was $76 million, actually. But the bond yields interest rates are a significant factor as well.

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

I want to thank you for your commitment to the RCMP. I know that $76 million to the RCMP will be well received. I have an RCMP detachment in my riding. I know they'll be very appreciative of this effort, so I want to thank you for your commitment to the RCMP.

I have another quick question. You mentioned in your opening remarks about the plan to reduce spending on partisan government advertising. Can you talk to me a bit about that new process? How are you going to measure whether it's effective or not as we go forward?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Sure. We have reduced government advertising in terms of our spend on government advertising. A round figure is that it's around a $200-million reduction in advertising and some other areas as well. We've asked the advertising standards council, which is the non-profit organization that helps govern advertising in Canada, to work with us in terms of defining what is partisan and what is not partisan, and we submit our advertising to them to give an opinion. We're seeking to make sure that government advertising is focused on public interest.

There is a clear need for legitimate government advertising. Health promotion is one of those areas as well as public safety and security. Our government comms policy is very clear in terms of what is not partisan or partisan.

The other thing is that the advertising council will hold us to account, as will Canadians. It is important as we move forward and it's part of a broader commitment we have to greater openness and transparency. We want to apply these principles across government in terms of what we're doing. I think the advertising changes have been well received. They're in their early stages, but I think they've already had some traction and are making a difference in terms of the kind of advertising we as a government are using.

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

Thank you for that.

An important characteristic of the new approach is this external review process, and I think I join with all members in lauding you for your efforts in that. It's well received.

I just want to follow up for my colleague, Mr. Whalen, and ask some questions about the greening of government and the new system in place, and how it's housed in the Treasury Board, and the metrics. It's being rolled out through the Treasury Board. I know you didn't get a chance to answer that when he asked the question, so maybe you could take a couple of minutes.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

There has been a lot of work on greening government operations in the U.S. One of the things we learned in our discussions with the U.S. is that the officials there recommended to us that it made sense to house this in a central agency. Treasury Board reaches across every department and agency, whether it's regulatory changes, regulatory policy, or expenditure approval, and as such.... For instance, there are Treasury Board submissions. We can look at Treasury Board submissions through the lens of the greening of government. Everything that comes in we can consider from that perspective.

Looking at other governments it made sense for it to be in.... When I was at Public Works, now Public Services and Procurement Canada, in Paul Martin's government, we established an office of greening government operations at that time. It made a difference because Public Works or Public Services and Procurement Canada plays a really important role and will continue to in terms of procurement. Government procurement is very significant, and when governments buy green they help build markets for green products, which ultimately helps commoditize those products and the prices go down so that the broader market of citizens and consumers can benefit from a lot of that. Plus you create green jobs.

The Government of Canada has I think about seven million square metres of office space. Half of it I believe is leased; half of it is owned. A lot of those buildings aren't exactly examples of avant garde energy efficiency, but when we green those buildings we do not just cut greenhouse gas emissions, but we cut the heating and cooling costs.

There are some really interesting...in other governments in other places, but also including the Government of Canada. The Department of National Defence has done great work on this in Canada, where if you finance the cost of the renovations, you can actually pay for those costs through the delta between the energy costs before and the energy costs after.

I'll make just one last point on greening government operations. Do you know that the U.S. government that made in some ways the most significant progress in recent years in terms of greening government operations was that of George W. Bush, in the DOD? The reason they were doing it was on the basis of operational efficacy of defence in terms of strengthening their missions and the ability to do more with less energy requirements.

This is a non-partisan issue. This is something we all embrace.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. McCauley, you have five minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

That's why we should go with the F-35. There's one engine; it's more energy efficient.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Just very quickly because I only have five minutes, I want to go off the topic a bit into transparency. We all agree we need to align better the estimates with the budget and have better transparency.

I would like to know if your office can provide the supplementary estimates in an Excel format for the entire supplementary estimates to make it easier to compare work, etc.? It's a suggestion. You can say no, or you can say, “Yes, we can later”.

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

Right now all of the technical annexes are provided in an Excel format on our website, but if you're looking for the actual items and the explanations of requirements of individual departments, that's certainly something we can look into doing.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Great. Thanks. I understand Infrastructure has done it.

Is it possible as well in that same vein that we can get a breakdown of what's going into the supplementary estimates? For example, I'm looking at the supplementary estimates and every single department has a horizontal line with $3 million for advertising, $20 million for advertising, etc. Can we actually get the breakdowns? Obviously those numbers come from something. They are not just made up out of the blue. Can we actually get a breakdown of everything?

Again, it's something that Infrastructure has provided for our colleagues in the Senate. It would certainly go a long way to answering questions and making things a lot more transparent for us.

[Brian Pagan]

Again, as you know, we look forward to working with the committee for the conversation and ideas about how we can make the documents more coherent, more accessible—online and for the written document—and more transparent. Your suggestion of additional detail by item is certainly something we're interested in.

As you know, the documents as they are tabled now will have a line with some descriptive elements to it. We believe this may be more useful if it's presented by program purpose, and that's certainly something worth looking at. The minister has also mentioned InfoBase and our interest in attaching real results indicators and real measurement of performance against those indicators.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Would you be able to provide a breakdown by department? Again, if you go through the advertising, there's I think $100 million in the supplementary estimates. These numbers aren't just pulled out of the blue. There's justification by department. Can you not just simply provide that? Does it have to be in the supplementary estimates? Could it be a separate form, going forward?

[Marcia Santiago]

We could look into providing that as an additional online annex.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Wonderful. Thanks very much.

I have a couple of quick questions.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. McCauley, on that as well, the purpose-based reportage is a step in that direction. This is going forward, and I would share with you the importance of that.

The other thing is that we had, in our new communications policy last spring.... One of the things we were doing in terms of information that we were providing to people through access to information was providing it in more user-friendly formats. That is slightly separate from this, but it's important to provide it in Excel spreadsheets that are shareable and more usable.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I just have two quick questions. We're down to two minutes.

In the supplementary estimates, there's an $18-million writeoff for a loan to the Government of Cuba. What was that loan originally made for? Do you know why we wrote it off?

You can provide information later, if it's not top of mind.

[Brian Pagan]

If I can recall, the loan was made to the Government of Cuba in 1975 to support development purposes. They made regular payments up until 1986, at which point there was about $1.8 million outstanding in principal on the loan. There's been accumulated interest.

There is an initiative run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called the Paris Club, which works with countries to provide debt relief as they meet certain conditions.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Who would decide to write that off? Does that come from the PMO or Global Affairs, or is it just that we're not going to get that money back?

[Brian Pagan]

The process is essentially governed horizontally by this Paris Club. There are a number of donors, the U.K., Australia, etc. If they meet the conditions, if they are making progress in terms of transparency—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay, it's not even our government deciding that.

[Brian Pagan]

Correct.

We contribute to that. We are very active in the Paris Club.