Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 19th, 2013

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you for that. That's extremely helpful.

Could I go back to when you were set up? There obviously had to be a downscaling of the existing in-house administration and an upscaling of your new organization. Were the employees transferred over? In terms of the operational level, do you have the same set of employees? Were they moved over, and if so, was it on the same terms as their previous work?

[John Sills]

Yes, that's exactly right. Under employment law, people can transfer, and on their same terms and conditions. I forget the exact number, but initially probably around 20 to 30 operational staff from the House of Commons did transfer over. Obviously, some of those have moved on now, but quite a lot of them are still with us. The senior team on the whole didn't transfer. Most of the senior team is new, and in fact, to make one other point, I think the vast majority of those ex-House of Commons staff have now transferred over to exit terms and conditions.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

And those terms and conditions are comparable to those before? Are they somehow different from the rest of the civil service?

[John Sills]

Yes, they are comparable, if not better.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Okay, that's great.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You have less than 30 seconds.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I have a very quick question.

In terms of news coverage, now that you're four years in or whatever, apart from old scandals, and the MP who was just convicted, has there been any noticeable effect on the news coverage of this issue?

[John Sills]

Yes, we are still regularly in the news.

It's often attached to a particular announcement we're making—pay and pensions, for example. When we proposed a pay increase, as you can well imagine there was a strong public reaction and media reaction to that. When we published the annual data on MPs' expenditures in September, that created a lot of interest this year.

The interesting thing is that what we've found is the regular publication of expenses at a national level attracts very little interest now. But it does still attract interest at the local level. MPs find that their local newspapers do pick up on their expenses and often use that against them. That is quite painful for them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Scott.

Mr. Lukiwski, four minutes from you, please, and we'll finish there.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Sills, I want to get back to a question or an example that my colleague Monsieur Bellavance raised before. It's with regard to the egregious examples in the U.K. of incorrect expenses for anything from flat screen televisions to the dredging of a moat, those types of things. You mentioned that it's because the rules and the policies of the in-house operation allowed that to happen. In Canada, in our Parliament, the rules and policies we have governing expenses for members of Parliament would never allow those types of expenses to be approved in the first place. Similarly, the in-house administration set-up that we have, the operation called the Board of Internal Economy, seems on many levels to be remarkably similar to your operation, inasmuch as they work by consensus, they do not publish verbatim transcripts of the meetings, and most of the meetings are not held in public.

My question to you would be, if there were an in-house administration in the U.K. that operated in precisely the same manner that IPSA does, do you believe there would be a need for an independent outside operation, like IPSA, under any circumstance? Or do you believe that simply because you're independent, from a transparency standpoint, it is required to have an outside operation rather than in-house?

[John Sills]

The question for you is always going to be what the problem is that you're trying to solve.

In the U.K., parliamentarians felt the scandal was so big that we needed a wholly external independent operation. The question then is whether you can be truly independent if you're in-house. That's always the exam question, isn't it?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Yes, and it's a very good observation.

We've heard from our Auditor General that 98.5% of all expense claims made by members of Parliament are in compliance with the rules. Based on that, that's something our committee has to examine, whether there's a need for an outside operation, an outside audit, or I shouldn't say audit, but an outside independent operation to deal with members' expenses.

That's just an observation.

[John Sills]

Yes, that's exactly right. As I say, it's quite a turbulent process. Getting the legislation through, setting up a new body, establishing it, the transitional processes. So you do have to ask yourself if your problem is big enough to make that kind of change.

I can't answer that for you, obviously. That's what you're doing in your review at the moment. All I can say is that I think our system now works extremely well, but it was created for a purpose, which was that we had a very big expenses scandal in 2008.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Luckily, so far at least, there hasn't been that similar type of activity in the Canadian Parliament. But your point is very well taken. It's our job to determine whether or not there's a need to go to the kind of system that you have created there. And let me say, based on what I've heard today, congratulations. It sounds as if you and your fellow board members are doing a job and you have solved a problem that had been occurring. Hopefully the job that you and your colleagues are doing will continue to represent the taxpayers well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Lukiwski.

[John Sills]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Sills, for being our guest today. It's been very informative. We're happy that you shared your experience with us.

[John Sills]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you for coming and doing that today.

[John Sills]

Thanks a lot. It was a pleasure. I enjoyed it, actually.

If you have any further questions in the future, I'll be very happy to help.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much.

We are adjourned.