Government Operations Committee on Oct. 1st, 2024

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Okay.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

That's why we don't give many grants, to be honest. The majority of our agreements aren't based on grants.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

That still surprises me, because we are talking about public funds. We agree on that. Grant money comes from taxes paid by people. People have a right to know what these public funds are being used for.

In my humble opinion, even if we say that we are handing out $2 million for a project, knowing that the project could possibly have a positive impact on other companies, we will not receive any confirmation to that effect, because there is no accountability. I see a problem there. Accountability could also just be an acknowledgement that the money was used in such and such a way, but that the results were not what we expected. It could be done that way as well. That is what research entails.

When we don't give ourselves an accountability tool, aren't we somewhat hindering the sharing of knowledge?

[Linda Drainville]

That's a great question. If we had the final reports, we could have a better overview.

We will provide an answer in writing, since I do not have the information with me at the moment. That said, I don't know if that information is available.

It must also be said that, for us, grants represent a very small percentage of our total grants and contributions budget, just 1%. When you think about the whole year, it's a small percentage. I may be off by a few percentage points, but I would say that half goes to international institutions, such as the United Nations, the OECD or Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or the World Bank. Automatically, the result becomes a tiny contribution to something much bigger.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I don't have any time remaining, but….

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That is our time.

You mentioned that it's a small amount by number. Can you provide for us what the amount is as a percentage dollar-wise, please? I notice that a lot of the ones you mentioned, like the World Bank, are quite significant compared to the other ones. I'd appreciate that.

Mr. Garrison, it's over to you, sir.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Of course, I'm always going back to where I left off. We were talking about the accountability and reporting requirements for smaller organizations. Your audit found that indigenous applicants are more likely to be labelled high-risk, and my understanding is that this automatically imposes additional reporting and monitoring responsibilities.

I guess I have two questions here. One, have you looked at why indigenous organizations are consistently being ranked as higher-risk? Two, doesn't that create a kind of vicious circle where organizations with less capacity have increased requirements placed on them?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

In most of my career, including my study, I've worked with indigenous groups, and I'm always concerned by that, so I really appreciate your question.

In our case, I think it's also due to the fact that it is a new partnership. It's not because they're an indigenous organization. It's also because they're a new organization that we were not working with necessarily in the past. You know, I mentioned Ducks Unlimited and other organizations or provinces. We have track records of decades of work with those organizations. When our people come and say, “I have a contribution agreement with them,” the question of their capacity to deliver or not is quite easy to answer.

When you go with a new organization that is an indigenous organization, there's an issue. That's why we need to make a special effort on this. I mentioned that we have a director general who's in charge of engagement with first nations, Inuit and Métis. It is something we need to do with organizations, as well as working with Indigenous Services Canada and other organizations—because, at the end of the day, they're sometimes the same groups—on how to better assess the level of risk and how the level of risk should impose more on us and not necessarily on them. Some of it is also on us. It's up to us to do our homework, not necessarily asking them to do more on their side. How do we use capacity funding to actually eliminate some of the burden that could come with proposing something new?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

A lot of the audit seems to focus on the question of documentation. I'm not saying that documentation is not important. Obviously, in order to prevent fraud and conflict of interest and to get good use of funds, you need documentation, but the audit doesn't seem to focus on why there are problems with documentation.

Is it lack of training? Is it lack of capacity? Why do we have so many documentation problems with these kinds of grants and contributions?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We'll have just a brief answer, please.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

I would say that it's all the above, particularly because people are sometimes used to including the documentation, and sometimes they keep it at their own place. You have different applications, not necessarily just one. I think it's mostly due to that: training, culture and inconsistency from place to place.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you, and thank you for the work that you do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you, gentlemen.

Mrs. Kusie, you have the floor.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

The report indicated that there were errors and inconsistencies found when the audit was completed. Can you please provide some examples of the errors and inconsistencies that were found?

[Linda Drainville]

Yes, I can start, and my colleagues can beef it up.

It went from lack of documentation, which we've already mentioned, to the way the evaluation risk of each recipient is done at the beginning. We also have mandatory documents that need to be filled out properly, and we realized that some were not necessarily filled out entirely, and that needed to be added to the file. It's all those observations that we realized had created some inconsistency across the board.

Mr. Tremblay just answered with some of the observations we have, like the training that comes with it. It's like people are trying to do their job at the same time as they manage grants and contributions, because sometimes they have other roles to play. It then brings that inconsistency across the board in making sure that all documents are filled properly.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

The report also indicated that some project files were removed. Can you provide any information as to the project files that were removed, please?

[Linda Drainville]

I don't have a specific answer for you on this one, as to why they would have been removed, but what we realized is that the access to the shared drive where all the documents are kept is not necessarily protected access. Internally, a lot of people would have access to the same file, so people can go there.

What we realized is that there is also a link between different agreements. Sometimes the documents were there, but then they were moved to another agreement, because they saw a link there from the program manager's perspective. We are looking into restricting access when documents are filed on a specific folder so that they are not moved anymore.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you for that.

Of course, we have concern about that in this committee relative to another study of ours, on ArriveCAN, where a key character was found to have deleted thousands of files. Obviously, it's very important that access is monitored and that these restrictions are in place. When I saw that, it reminded me of the situation with ArriveCAN that we have at this time.

In 2019, the Treasury Board put forward their report, a horizontal review, where they found that there were many different problems with files at that time as well. Can you speak to any of the lessons from this 2019 report and whether they have been implemented? It would seem to me that there was this Treasury Board report five years ago, yet things seem to be getting worse and not better. Would you perhaps like to comment on that?

[Linda Drainville]

I'm sorry. I know of a review that was done by Treasury Board, but not on grants and contributions. It was mainly on fixed assets.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

It was a 2019 report by Treasury Board, as indicated by the recent Blacklock's article, if you'd like to go and perhaps reference that to evaluate.

My point is that there were recommendations, and things seem not to have improved, unfortunately; they've gotten worse. Given that, would you be open to and co-operate with an audit conducted by the Auditor General, perhaps, to further evaluate beyond the 5.5% that this audit had the opportunity to evaluate? Would you be open to a larger report completed by the Auditor General?

[Linda Drainville]

That's a very good question. We always welcome the Auditor General. There's no doubt about that. I think, though, that the work we have been undertaking internally will definitely give us the result we are looking for. If there were to be any value in having the Office of the Auditor General come, it may be when we have done the internal work first to add value on what we are currently doing.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

It seems, then, that this committee could benefit from a study done by the Auditor General to further evaluate these grants and contributions from ECCC.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

One thing you may want to consider is that we did ask our internal auditor to come with regular reports on the progress. We would be pleased to share them.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Wonderful. I think the committee would appreciate your sharing that with us.

Mr. Kusmierczyk, please go ahead, sir.