Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 21st, 2013

[Mark G. Watters, Chief Financial Officer, House of Commons]

I might suggest, Mr. Chair, that if you look at the mandate that was given to the Auditor General with respect to the audit of the House, it was to see how the House administration supports members in their functions. You can imagine, then, that a performance audit of a particular member would be how that member particularly supports the constituents that he or she represents. That would be the kind of focus of the audit within the existing rules. So when we talk about performance audit, that's what you would be buying if you asked the Auditor General to do that type of work.

Members serve their constituents in a very different fashion. From coast to coast, with small ridings, large ridings, there are very, very huge differences. Frankly, as a former assistant auditor general, I don't know how I would start to audit that or what criteria I would use to make that assessment. I think it would be quite difficult.

From an attest perspective, our financial statements, which include members' spending, are audited, and they're audited by a separate firm. They're audited by KPMG. But KPMG, being auditors in Canada, follow GAAS, which is generally accepted auditing standards, the same standards that would be followed by the Auditor General. The Auditor General would not bring a different vernacular to that attest audit, which is already done.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I think one of the things that's quite upsetting to many people is the fact that the Board of Internal Economy meets in camera as often as it does. My understanding is that, under the IPSA model, it also meets in camera. So even the outside independent body—both meet in camera.

Is there not a compromise here? One of the suggestions is that you have a subcommittee, and that subcommittee is the one that meets in camera. Anything decided would then come to the full committee for discussion. Can you provide comment on that?

[Audrey O'Brien]

I realize that my former colleague Rob Walsh suggested that this happen. I suppose it could.

Frankly speaking, I just think it's a certain amount of window dressing if the subcommittee meets in camera and then they bring a report back to a full and public meeting. If that meets some species of transparency demand, then I'm sure we could do that. I'm just not sure it's.... I wonder if that would satisfy anybody, in a way, because would not the question of those people pushing for public meetings be that those subcommittees should meet in public?

Do you know what I mean? I'm not sure what people are after, to tell you the truth.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

But you see, the information discussed in the subcommittee ultimately would come in the form of recommendations for the entire board, where there would be a discussion about those recommendations, and you're able to bypass the sensitivity issues. Do you not think that would be helpful?

[Audrey O'Brien]

Well, if members were to judge that to be helpful, then we'd be happy to comply and to support that regime. As I say, I'm a bit baffled, to tell you the truth.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I think there is a great deal of pressure in terms of this whole in camera situation. There's this feeling that a lot of things happen behind closed doors, especially with politicians, in that sense. But having a subcommittee of sorts that's dealing with in camera issues, and then bringing them forward for ultimate ratification or decision, and allowing for some debate, that's always open to the public to participate.

Perhaps you can provide comment on this. If you had a mechanism like that, to what degree do you think it would change the amount of discussion within the typical board meeting?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Lamoureux. I'm sure we'll get to that answer under Mr. MacKenzie's questions.

Mr. MacKenzie, you have four minutes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I just have to clear up one thing. I keep hearing about all these people who are looking for the information.

To be perfectly honest, I haven't got anybody at home, when I go to Tim Hortons, who wants to know all this information. I assume that maybe my riding is different, and they understand the accuracy of the reports. They understand that Mr. Watters and his folks are looking for receipts.

My understanding is that there's no payment without a receipt. I think that's exactly what got them into trouble in England, where they could submit for £250 every day without receipts. That's $400 a day to supplement your income with no receipts. In Canada that doesn't happen. We have the rules, and you're ensuring that we follow those rules. I mean, this is a whole different situation.

I think I heard somebody suggest verifying the accuracy of the information. Mr. Watters, is there any way that we could tell anybody any clearer that the accuracy of the information depends on the receipts that are received?

[Mark G. Watters]

That's right. In my previous testimony, Mr. Chair, I spoke to the number of regret letters that are sent. I quoted a figure of just over 4,300. Those letters are sent to members when there is a difference between the payment we make to the member and the amount that was claimed. Out of that high number of regret letters, as I indicated, on average over the last two years, only seven requests have gone to the board for reconsideration. I can tell you that in all but one instance the previous decision made by the administration was held, so if you look at fourteen instances over two years, if you want to use averages, in one instance the decision of the board was different from the decision of the administration, so I think we're doing our job in terms of adjudicating claims according to the rules we have in place. Those rules do require receipts for all but a few items.

It's the same thing in government. To claim a per diem expense, you don't need a receipt, because you don't get a receipt for a per diem. It's an allowance paid in lieu of supplying receipts for meals. It's the same thing with mileage. If you drive so many kilometres, you're reimbursed for kilometres. We require a road travel log in which members complete the purpose of their travel, where they're going from and to, and the kilometrage claimed. When we get that claim, we verify with Google Maps to see whether that's reasonable. If it's reasonable, we pay the claim. If it's not, then we send a regret letter and we're back into that whole process again.

Clearly, we're inspired by what happens in government in terms of the regimes it has with respect to expenditures. The per diem we use is the one used in government. It's set by Treasury Board. The BOIE doesn't set that per diem. The kilometrage rate is also set by Treasury Board. We use that particular item as well.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you.

My good friend Mr. Scott was talking about the issue of consensus. If you don't have consensus there is only one other way to resolve it. My understanding would be that you would have a vote. You're still not going to have 100% support in that regard. It seems to me that consensus, the way it operates today, is probably the best solution. It's not in a partisan sense. There are no cameras, as we have here today, so you'll end up with consensus.

Do you see any way other than those two options—votes or consensus?

[Audrey O'Brien]

Frankly speaking, Mr. Chairman, through you to Mr. MacKenzie, I do think that the even numbers of government and opposition members provide a good basis, and I think that consensus is really the best way to decide things, because you're deciding things for the good of the institution in the long run. You put on a slightly different hat—I'd venture to say a very different hat—if you're sitting around the Board of Internal Economy, because you're doing something for the House of Commons as an institution and as the elected House of Canadian democracy, at the risk of sounding highfalutin.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. MacKenzie.

Mr. Julian, go ahead for four minutes, please.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I am quite amazed by some of the Conservative comments by Mr. Opitz and Mr. MacKenzie about expenses. Mr. Opitz was critical of the fact that I've been posting, for seven years now, and that all NDP members actually post direct links from their websites to their expenses as members of Parliament. The reality is I've been doing it for seven years. People do talk to me about them at Tim Hortons, because they can access them. The NDP is the only party that does that. Every single NDP MP has that direct link.

I looked for that for Mr. Opitz and Mr. MacKenzie. They don't even have links to their expenses, so their constituents have no idea what they're spending. It's a little sad and a little unfortunate, so I'm certainly hoping they'll follow our lead on accessibility.

I want to come now to the issue of transition, which Mr. Scott raised.

We are really happy to have both of you back, Madam O'Brien and Mr. Watters. We really appreciate your kicking off and finishing up the study portion.

We do have the mandate to put in place independent oversight. The Auditor General says, “Bring in independent oversight”. The public is saying, “Bring in independent oversight”. Conservatives and Liberals may not be in agreement, but Parliament mandated us to do it, and, by golly, that's what we are supposed to do on behalf of Canadians. I'm wondering then what the transition to independent oversight might look like. I'd like your recommendations or comments on the model of putting in an independent oversight body, a little bit like what is done in Manitoba, which then follows up on administration that takes place through the House, or an IPSA model such as we see in the United Kingdom, which certainly has the advantage of not costing more but actually costing a little bit less than the existing House of Commons framework around finances.

Let's just move ahead with the mandate this committee was given. What is the transition period you foresee? What are the measures and the steps we need to take? What kind of model do you see for independent oversight so we can do away with the secretive, self-policing of the Board of Internal Economy once and for all?

[Audrey O'Brien]

If the decision were to be made to go from the Board of Internal Economy model to a different model—whether that be a commissioner, as in the case of Manitoba, or something like IPSA, as in the case of the United Kingdom—I think the first thing we would have to consider is the amendment to the Parliament of Canada Act, which right now vests in the House of Commons Board of Internal Economy the statutory authority for all it does.

Once that was done, and depending on which model of those two or any others you were going to proceed with, we could then begin to effect the bureaucratic changes that would be required. I think that the chief financial officer is in a better position than I to talk about those kinds of details.

[Mark G. Watters]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As the Clerk was saying, we did spend a few days speaking both to the House and to IPSA. Most of our questions for them were around the transition and the level of effort that was involved in it. The impression I came back with from those meetings was that in fact most of that £6 million to do that was new money. Rents, as you can appreciate, in the U.K. in the city of London are quite expensive. The agency had to be housed. It needed to acquire systems, administrative staff, and senior staff.

While it's true the number of clerical positions that were involved in the management of the accounts, as we have here, the 21 people I referred to in my initial testimony—

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

I apologize, Mr. Watters, but it's more the transition, because Mr. Sills testified that there was a reduction in terms of overall expenses. I am interested in the transition process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

We can be interested under Mr. Lukiwski, for four minutes, please.

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

Thanks very much.

Not to belabour a point, but again I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree with the position the NDP has, that this committee has been mandated to find a way to replace the BOIE. I don't believe that to be true. I believe we have to examine whether or not there's a need to replace the BOIE. At this point in time I'm not sure if there is. I've always been of the view that, if it ain't broken, don't fix it or don't even try to.

I go back to a number of words of caution we've heard from previous witnesses. Mr. Sills, who of course was a member of IPSA, cautioned us that in effect we should not even try to replace something unless there's a need to, unless there's a problem that exists. I haven't yet been able to identify any problems large enough that would require a replacement of the BOIE.

But I also go back to something, and I think I'd like to get a comment on this. Let's assume for a moment we determined there should be a different body constructed, an independent oversight body. One of the things Speaker Fraser cautioned us on was the fact that—and I'm sort of trying to put it in my own words I suppose—there would be almost a loss of corporate memory. In other words, one of the things that the membership of the Clerk and the chief financial officer brings to the BOIE is that knowledge of the institution. What Speaker Fraser was asking is what role the Speaker would have and what problems might occur by having members who don't have the knowledge of the institution itself when trying to determine, as examples, spending allocations on maybe a renovation of the West Block, or whether or not there was a need to enhance or beef up security services, or anything of that nature.

Starting with you Madam O'Brien, I'd like to get commentary from both of you on whether or not you feel that, if we go to independent oversight, we might be in a problem area in terms of lack of knowledge of the institution itself. Corporate memory is, I guess, the term I use.

[Audrey O'Brien]

Mr. Julian was talking about the transition period, and I think that whole business of the corporate memory becomes an issue in the transition.

We look at IPSA now, and it's been in place for three years, and by this time now they have created an informal liaison committee between members and IPSA, so that IPSA can better understand the needs of members and the various peculiarities of their constituencies and the peculiarities of their parliamentary functions and what they need to support those functions. I think that's certainly an issue we would have to take into consideration.

In the IPSA creation, because the scandal, as it was called, occurred very close to a general election, there was just an incredible haste to actually deal with that by the creation of IPSA. I think the haste with which it was created, created really a terrific burden for the people working at IPSA as well as the people at the House. So I think there would have to be, in any kind of handover, a measured approach to give the new people time to take over and take over with a better understanding, whereas IPSA was thrown off into the deep end of the pool very quickly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Four, three, two, one, you're out of time.

We will go now to Mr. Bellavance, for four minutes.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Again, thank you, Ms. O'Brien, for joining us today. You were here when the committee began its study and here you are again as we wrap things up. We have come full circle.

Since your first appearance before the committee, we have heard from other witnesses, including two former House speakers, Mr. Milliken and Mr. Fraser yesterday. Their remarks shed light on progress as it relates to the Board of Internal Economy. Mr. Milliken told us that, in 10 years, he had seen very little in the way of change with respect to how the board operated.

Something former Speaker of the House John Fraser said really struck me. I was asking him about the representation of the Board of Internal Economy. Yesterday, we also heard from someone representing the Canadian Association of Journalists. We've talked a lot about transparency as it relates to the public and the media. But we haven't really discussed what happens on the inside. As I said yesterday, during my first seven years as an MP, our representatives on the Board of Internal Economy were Michel Guimond and then Claude DeBellefeuille. We had a rough idea of what went on and we trusted our whip to look after our affairs. We didn't ask too many questions.

Today, I'm in a different boat. The NDP and the Conservatives experienced the same thing from 1993 to 1997. The members of my party are in the dark. We don't really know what goes on at the Board of Internal Economy. The minutes barely tell us anything about what's going on or how matters are progressing.

Former Speaker Fraser told me that it was definitely possible to make adjustments as far as our representation in the House of Commons was concerned. Belonging to a party that isn't recognized or being an independent doesn't make us second-class citizens. And yet that's how the Board of Internal Economy treats us. If the solution ends up being business as usual and that's how it is, I completely disagree.

The first thing we need to do is stop navel gazing and make the changes required internally to improve representation. Next, the Board of Internal Economy needs to be more transparent to the public. What's more, whether it's legislated or at the Auditor General's request, once or twice a year, he or she should conduct the necessary audits of the board's activities. The Information Commissioner mentioned some requests to that effect that could be granted.

I don't want to put words in the mouth of former Speaker Fraser, given that, in his case, we were talking only about representation. Nevertheless, I would like to know whether we could overhaul the Board of Internal Economy, rename it and transform it into a different organization, one that was more in line with what I was talking about.

[Audrey O'Brien]

Mr. Chair, I consider representation to be important, and I completely understand the dissatisfaction around that.

I was interested in what Mr. Fraser said yesterday evening. On the three issues of representation, audits and access to information, I think we could make improvements to rectify the problems you raised, Mr. Bellavance, without dismantling or eliminating the Board of Internal Economy to create a completely new entity.

I agree, improvements are needed. There is room for improvement. It might necessitate a review of the Act of Parliament, which stipulates the Board of Internal Economy's membership, but it could be done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Julian, four minutes, please.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Watters, I'd like to come back to the issue of transition. I'd like to get your thoughts, then, on how we put together the transition. Madame O'Brien spoke of a measured approach, and we certainly understand that. But we'd like to know, in terms of the transitional measures to take and in terms of the model, what suggestions you have for us.

Putting aside the debate around it, I think the motion is very clear, and I think the public has been very clear. We really need your forethought in terms of how to achieve this independent oversight, which is clearly what the Auditor General is calling for.

[Mark G. Watters]

Thank you.

Basically, Mr. Chair, the way I understand the question is, what would be the guide to proceed if we decided to go along this particular route?