Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 28th, 2022

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a question in relation to what Ms. Hogan mentioned, at the beginning of the meeting, about accountability and timelines.

Ms. Hogan, you said that we need better accountability mechanisms to be able to keep track of what is being done at Indigenous Services Canada.

Do you have any examples of new or better accountability mechanisms that you would like to share with us?

[Karen Hogan]

I have been asked this question many times, concerning a better accountability mechanism. I will admit that, if I had an ideal solution, I would recommend it to every department.

In this situation, we have seen many commitments to indigenous communities. At the beginning of the meeting, I mentioned the action plan that the department had provided to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. When the department officials and I appear before a committee after a report is tabled, we require the department to provide an action plan. It is this action plan that I referred to earlier. I felt that it was missing elements that I consider essential in an action plan.

Simply defining the actions to be taken is not enough. You also need to designate a person who will be accountable and who will be responsible for setting very clear timelines for accountability and follow‑up. Everyone needs to know exactly what the action plan is and what response we can expect from the department.

That is the context I was referring to, at the beginning.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Thank you very much, Ms. Hogan.

What I take from your response is that there needs to be accountability and a clear timeline. As we know, if no one is accountable, files can be forgotten.

Mr. Chair, I don't know how much time I have left because I forgot to time myself.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

You have 30 seconds left.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Okay.

I would like to ask you a very quick question to assess the sheer magnitude of first nations' needs that have not been identified. Do you have any idea of the number or percentage of first nations whose specific needs we don't know about?

[Karen Hogan]

I don't have a percentage for you.

However, during our audit, we determined that some communities were not included in existing plans. It should be noted, however, that many of the plans that are currently being developed did not exist at that time. In any event, many communities are not included in the plans.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mrs. Gill.

Ms. Idlout, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On page 16 of the report, sentence 8.60 says that the Peguis First Nation in Manitoba has families that have been evacuated since the year 2011, but I did not see any report related to this. Does this not require a specific recommendation?

[Karen Hogan]

We mentioned the Peguis First Nation as an example that some of these evacuations are not short term. We believe that our recommendation about ensuring that there's better preparedness and that there is a better plan by community is the best way to target that.

If we tried to make a recommendation for one specific community, we would have to do them all in order to do them all justice. We believe that Indigenous Services Canada is best placed to provide the unique needs that every community has, but it must understand what every community needs. That's why our recommendation was more targeted at the general preparedness than just on that one community.

However, I agree with you that the community needs to have a better solution. Those people need to be back on their lands with their community and be reintegrated. It's been far too long.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

[Member spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]

If I understood properly, Peguis First Nation has been in evacuation the longest. In exhibit 8.7 you also state that it doesn't clarify what's going on. Can you give us an update on the status of the Peguis First Nation some time soon regarding exhibit 8.7?

Between the years 2009-10 and 2021-22, it states there are 14 who were gone for four years from home. You do not state why they were gone from their communities for so long. Some went home earlier, but what prevented them from going home after four years? Can we get a written submission and a status report of why they are or were in evacuation for so long, for four years?

[Karen Hogan]

If you would like an update post the audit period—our audit period ended on March 31, 2022—I would have to point you to Indigenous Services Canada to provide that update as to whether any of those communities have returned. I know in some of the instances during our audit, when we looked at them it was a lack of housing that meant they couldn't return. The housing was not yet safe enough for residents to return. That's definitely the case with the Peguis community, but it would really be Indigenous Services Canada that could provide you with all that detail in a written format, not my office.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Mr. Vidal for five minutes.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to carry on a bit with the conversation that was started on Friday afternoon. It got a little contentious Friday afternoon, and that's not my intent today. It was a conversation with my colleague, Mr. McCauley, around the performance bonuses that were discussed with the ministry.

I want to put a different flavour on this. He talked about $3.1 million of bonuses to people at or above executive level, representing 95% of the people...that was 193 people. The push-back on this kind of discussion is always that individual performance pay holds executives accountable for individual results, and it's not related to departmental results, which measure strictly the organizational goals.

That's the context of the discussion. I put a little side note on my notes here. In my opinion, that's ludicrous.

That goes back to my history. I had the responsibility of managing an executive compensation system for a Crown corporation at some point in my past, and I very distinctly remember that our executive management compensation system was a combination of individual performance and corporate performance. Corporate goals had to be met as well for you to achieve these standards.

I'm coming to this place where I don't think it should surprise us sometimes that we see failures when we don't link personal performance to organizational performance. That's where this is coming from. I'm asking your opinion on whether you would agree that this significant disconnect between individual performance and organizational outcomes is potentially one of the reasons we're having this conversation. I get that it's a government-wide thing; it's not just ISC.

Do you think there would be merit in our saying that we have to connect individual performance pay to organizational goals, not just individual goals?

[Karen Hogan]

While doing this audit, we didn't look at how the department mapped its strategic objectives or organizational goals all the way down to the individual personal goals that it would have put on its executive team or other layers of the department.

What I would tell you is that, more generically, a really good approach to ensuring that everyone within an organization is aligned to help meet your strategic goals is if you hold them accountable for the achievement of them, but we didn't look at what Indigenous Services Canada did in that context.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

However, you did hear the deputy minister respond on Friday and say that's not what this is about. This is only about individual goals, so there was no recognition by the deputy minister that it's aligned. She said that individual performance pay holds executives accountable for individual results, not departmental results.

I'm going to push a little and ask, in your opinion, if we would not achieve better results if we connected these things? That's just a simple yes or no. I want confirmation that I'm not way off on this.

[Karen Hogan]

I really can't speak to the deputy minister's comments, but I can tell you that, in my organization, I hold my executive team accountable for not only personal goals but the achievement of our strategic corporate objectives, because I think it's a best practice in ensuring that your leadership drives the organization where it needs to go.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you.

I have a very short amount of time left, so I'm going to try to really shorten my preamble here.

We talked briefly on Friday about the PBO report. I talked about the executive summary saying that the increase in spending didn't lead to commensurate outcome and the ability of the organizations to meet their objectives.

There is some further information in that report that talks about spending being 48% of the time greater than what was planned. That translated into $863 million, and that report said that the department clearly spends more money than it plans. It had similar comments around the use of human resources.

One of the questions I asked you on Friday was around this idea that what gets measured gets done, and you commented back to me, and I quote, “Government is excellent at measuring outputs, but not at measuring outcomes, and that needs to be fixed.”

I know you don't have a lot of time, but can you answer the how and who? How do we fix that, and who's responsible for that?

[Karen Hogan]

Do you mean across the government or in this department?

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

It's this department specifically, for now.

[Karen Hogan]

Well, I think it starts with whoever sets up the way they're going to measure the outcomes of a project.

Here we looked at two individual programs. It would be that the strategic targets they set in those programs were not aligned to outcomes but to how many communities or how many projects had been funded. That's an output measure.

The responsibility lies with each department, as it designs a program, to set it up with the right goal in mind. I think it's just easier for many to think about outputs instead of outcomes, because it's hard to measure outcomes. It doesn't mean we shouldn't, because that's the best way to drive change.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marc Garneau]

Thank you, Mr. Vidal.

We'll now go to Mr. Powlowski for five minutes.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you.

Your report is highly relevant to my riding. I'm the MP for Thunder Bay—Rainy River, going from Thunder Bay to the Manitoba border. You may or may not know that we had considerable flooding in the western part of my riding this spring and summer. It's the Winnipeg River system, so communities like Fort Frances and Rainy River were affected, but also a number of first nations communities like Seine River, Lac La Croix and Couchiching.

In looking at how to mitigate the further risks, because this is probably going to happen again, given climate change, I've had to talk to a number of ministries about it, starting seemingly with environment, but then also emergency preparedness and also infrastructure. Trying to mitigate the risks seems to involve many other ministries, not just Indigenous Services.

Far be it for me—and these guys will tell you—to be defensive of our government, but it seems somewhat unfair for you to be criticizing Indigenous Services for not putting money into mitigating the possibility of future risks when, in fact, the government's response to such things, when you look at the whole Winnipeg River system, involves not only Indigenous Services, but also non-indigenous communities. It's really a whole-of-government response, which also includes environment, which also includes emergency preparedness, which also includes infrastructure. Really, if you're following the buck, shouldn't you have also been looking at what money they're putting into...? It's not just the Winnipeg River system. There are similar systems all across Canada, especially dealing with flooding, so shouldn't you have included that?

[Karen Hogan]

I'm not sure, Mr. Chair, if the member knows, but I lived in Thunder Bay for almost five years, so I know the community well.

We highlighted in our report, in paragraph 8.30, that “We...found that Indigenous Services Canada did not make use of data” that was available “from other sources” that could have been used to help identify those communities that are most in need. For example, we talked about an “Indigenous Emergency Management Capability Inventory” that had been “led by Public Safety Canada and the Assembly of First Nations”. It is really that approach of actually seeking out information, not only from first nations communities but from other federal partners that might have information to help identify the communities that are at higher risk and of most need. This draws us back to a recommendation we made in 2013 that has still not yet been addressed, and that's why we refocused on that, which is the leadership role that Indigenous Services Canada has to play in bringing all these parties together. I would agree with you that they should consider what other departments are doing in order to have a more global, comprehensive response.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

You've concluded that Indigenous Services ought to be taking the lead, but how do you know that? Perhaps it should be emergency preparedness, which is better placed to be the kind of umbrella group looking at the whole-of-government response rather than.... You've determined it's Indigenous Services, but I would question why them. Why not one of these other ministries?