Public Accounts Committee on June 22nd, 2006

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

That is a matter for debate, Mr. Chair. I haven't had time to think it through properly, but an assurance by the Comptroller General, who has the capacity to act rapidly and the powers as chief accountant to get the job done, may be something we want to explore.

I do want to put on the record, Mr. Chair, the issue of the Gomery inquiry recommendations. I felt that they tinkered around the edges of Parliament. They were not substantive enough. They were not central to the fact that Parliament is the highest democratic institution and that government reports to Parliament. They recommended more money for the public accounts committee and longevity for DMs and so on, but they didn't address and rebuild or emphasize the need for Parliament to be a strong, democratic institution. And we have allowed our powers--over I don't know how many years, but it may even be generations--to be eroded and frittered away, tiny bit by tiny bit, until now, in many ways, we are subservient to government, rather than the other way around.

I was hoping that the Gomery commission would be a restatement of the grand design that Parliament is the highest body and is holding government accountable. Mr. Chair, as we all know, the Federal Accountability Act largely adopted many of the recommendations of the Gomery report, and therefore, by continuation, was just tinkering around the edges, rather than reinforcing the whole institution and trying to rebuild the institution as a strong democratic force.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Those are points that I have concerns with, this whole issue of institutional accountability. It's certainly not in the Federal Accountability Act, as far as I can see. If Gomery tinkered with it, that didn't come right out.

Do you have any comments, Professor Franks or Professor Malloy?

[Prof. C.E.S. (Ned) Franks]

I'll lead off on this. Jonathan might want to follow.

In the narrative of the Gomery commission, not the recommendations, you'll find it stated that there are three fundamental principles of our parliamentary democracy: one is supremacy of Parliament, two is ministerial responsibility, and three is rule of law.

Then the report goes on to say that the government's interpretation of ministerial responsibility and its sense of ownership of that doctrine privileges ministerial responsibility above supremacy of Parliament, and that the government has not listened to what Parliament has been saying--meaning this committee--on how it wants to hold government accountable, and primarily how it wants to hold the public service and other agencies accountable to Parliament.

It's fair to say that the recommendations did not deal with that, but the narrative does. The intent was very clear. It was to strengthen Parliament. The question is that when you're strengthening an institution like Parliament--and here, particularly the public accounts committee--you have to deal with increments. You can't just say “Let the system change” and it will change. You have to say this, this, and this has to be done.

At that point, let me suggest that the thing I raised earlier, which is not expressed in any strong form in the Gomery commission report, about the need for a protocol on the responsibilities and accountability of accounting officers before this committee, is a key, and it has to be something this committee is comfortable with and agrees to.

Putting that another way, regardless of how that document is produced, it has to be one that this committee buys into, as well as the Treasury Board. It seems to me it's only at that point that this committee and the Treasury Board can work together to strengthen the Treasury Board, as well as Parliament's control over the public purse, through the accountability process.

But I do emphasize there that ultimately the terms and conditions on which accounting officers appear before this committee are up to the committee and Parliament to determine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Malloy, do you have anything to add?

[Jonathan Malloy]

I'll just add a bit to that, especially in regard to incremental change.

The Gomery recommendations may seem perhaps more timid and more tinkering than they could have potentially been.

The improvement or reform of Parliament must never rely on the idea, particularly, that there was once a golden age and it's a case of re-establishing Parliament where it was. Certainly if one looks back historically, Parliament has been struggling with certain problems for many years. I'm not sure there ever was a particularly golden age for Parliament.

Indeed, any changes, of course, are more about attitudes and our general political system as a whole. Some of the more macro-level factors of the way political parties operate, the way members are elected, the turnover of members in the House of Commons--something that, of course, voters have control over--all those, really affect the workings of Parliament. Those are changes that are beyond any committee or even Parliament itself, in many ways. They're part of our political system as a whole.

So the more incremental changes, in fact, I think, are perhaps the more important ones. If one looks back to the McGrath recommendations of 20 years ago, those were fairly expansive, at least in their ambition to try to restore Parliament--in some ways, restore it back to a so-called golden age. Those McGrath reforms did not change Parliament dramatically, but they certainly did have some important changes, particularly for committees in their work. Those were the more incremental, tinkering changes, and I think those have been very good, particularly for the House of Commons.

I'd go back to the beginning. It's incremental change that I think is more effective. The more one tries to aspire to greatly restoring Parliament or changing it in a great way, the more one is, in some ways, doomed to failure, because one is struggling against much larger factors and variables that are beyond the control, frankly, of this chamber; they are rooted in our society.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Nadeau.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I have a comment to make and it's somewhat flattering. I don't know if you're familiar with the Gaulish character Obélix, but when I listen to Mr. Williams, who is so well-versed in the basic tenets of this committee, I think of the time this cartoon character ingested a magic potion.

Your knowledge amazes me, sir, and provides ever more insight into my role on this committee. Thank you.

Secondly, over the past three months, certain information has come to my attention. The annual operating budget of the federal government is approximately $200 billion. That's a colossal sum of money. For the sake of comparison, one penny in my pocket is likely equivalent to one million dollars in the government's pocket. Therefore, we're talking about a fairly substantial sum of money. We have to remember that Canadian and Quebec taxpayers who sent their money to Ottawa in return for services are entitled to know how these dollars are spent. That's what is really boils down to.

When I was asked to serve on the committee, I gladly accepted. I equated the work that I would be doing with that of the monks -- I don't know whether it was the Franciscan or the Benedictine monks -- in Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose. I visualized myself sitting in a tower pouring over every single accounting book of this glorious nation in an effort to understand where exactly the pennies were being spent, particularly in light of the recent so-called sponsorship scandal that shed light on the rather shocking way in which the program was managed and on why the government acted as it did.

Having said that, another reality that we must endure by virtue of our association with politics is electioneering. It's mandatory for us and partisanship plays a certain role, whether large or small. Every comment made is scrutinized.

The fact remains that through the work we want to accomplish in this forum, at least as I see it, we hope to make the word “accountability” mean something to our constituents and to make things better. Whether it's the Canadian government, the Quebec government or some other level of government, there needs to be accountability.

I could go on, but I think I've said enough. Our objective is political accountability. We hear from individuals who are, or who have been, senior public servants, who are involved in some way in the study that we are doing and who are invited to answer our questions and help us find solutions or answers to troubling questions or pressing issues.

There is something very mechanical about being allotted eight minutes, plus a further five minutes, for questions and answers. Is 13 minutes really enough time to examine anything in detail? Admittedly, it helps to be familiar with an issue. However, when that's not the case, it is our duty to familiarize ourselves with the subject-matter at hand, although that can be a somewhat tedious. However, I'm up to the challenge.

This is merely my impression and you can correct me if I'm wrong. However, upon asking certain questions of witnesses, I got the feeling that they were more interested in hiding certain facts details than they were in providing informative answers. Perhaps I'm being overly critical, but it seemed to me that they would spend 30 seconds actually answering a question and four and a half minutes on prefacing their remarks. When this happened, I felt like they were pulling a fast one on me, so as to try and steer me in a different direction.

I don't know if there is a simple answer to my question as to how to address this particular problem. I've seen one tactic employed in this committee, as well as in the Government Operations and Estimates committee. For example, members are better off asking four questions right off the top, knowing that they only have five minutes. At least they get to ask four questions. Then, if a member doesn't seem to be making any headway with a witness, he can interrupt him and try and move on to another question. That's how it goes. I get the feeling that the witnesses are sometimes dismissing our concerns rather than offering up possible solutions.

In light of your study into the operation of this committee, what do you suggest we do to improve this situation? Or, is my perception really off the mark?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Malloy, would you like to respond?

[Jonathan Malloy]

There are a number of items there. You referred to some of them as more mechanical issues--the format of questioning, the rotation, and things like that. It's certainly true, I think; it's widely felt that it's not the most preferred system of getting at the heart of the issues the committee wants to discuss.

However, it's not just a mechanical issue. There certainly must be ways in which each party and each member can have a say, and I think committees have found that unfortunately it's probably the best they can do in terms of a format and there isn't necessarily a better mechanical way of solving it, because indeed, as we keep saying, this is a political committee. The members represent different perspectives, different ideologies, different parties, and unfortunately sometimes we have to have these mechanisms that are not ideal but are preferable.

The other issue you spoke about was whether things simply become more murky rather than more clear in questions, and particularly how issues like that may make inquiries more murky.

I suppose one person's murkiness is another person's actual attempt to clarify the issues, to bring in the full facts and the context. Again, that's often a matter of political disagreement: what is a problem to one side is a solution or a clarification or something like that to another side. I think it's up to this committee, in its own way, to try to work through that, to try to figure out how they can all agree on what is a problem, what is a solution, and what makes things clear. I think every time one member thinks things are becoming more murky, another might think they're simply trying to get the full facts and the full issues, even though it becomes more complicated, which is not the same as being more murky.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Professor Franks.

[Prof. C.E.S. (Ned) Franks]

I'll give a very short answer on it.

There are two options. I think there's a third that would probably be rejected, which is that you designate lead questioners for each area; give them, say, 30 minutes each; and then go on from there.

Of the two options, one is to meet in camera, because you can have a much more relaxed investigation without the attention of the press and the public. That's why your organizational meetings, discussions, reports, and other similar discussions are often in camera, but there is a disadvantage. It's observable, for example, in Britain, when the public accounts committee met in camera, that maybe four or five members, at most, participated in the questioning, and maybe 30% to 50% of the questions would be asked by one member. Once it started meeting in public, it was the same as in this committee: it has 10 minutes per member and that's it.

The other possibility is to follow the Quebec model.

The Quebec National Assembly allocates a certain amount of time to each political party, rather than to each MNA.

Each party gets an amount of time, and then it's up to the party to decide how it uses that time. That might be worth considering. I have a slight reservation about it for this committee because it emphasizes the party differences rather than the importance of the individual members.

These different possibilities can be looked at.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Professor Franks, on an experimental basis, this committee attempted to do something similar to what you suggest and have an in camera briefing on Monday dealing with the issues, with the idea that members would be better briefed and the staff would be here when the shells started on Tuesday and Thursday. It really didn't work. The fault was both on the members and on the witnesses. The members dealt with it as just another meeting and went right to the political event. The witnesses, instead of dealing with it as a briefing, came with a dozen staff and were here to sometimes muddy the issue, as Mr. Nadeau says.

We abandoned the idea after two or three weeks. It didn't suit the purpose we thought it might when we started it, and we did try. We might try something again in a different format in the fall, but that was the thought process behind it, and that's what we did. But we all felt it didn't work.

[Prof. C.E.S. (Ned) Franks]

There is one other possible way of doing it, and that would be to have the steering committee meet after some work by the staff, on the lines of questioning the committee might want to take. Then the steering committee would decide how those questions are going to be divided among members and try to encourage members of their parties to adhere to that.

I would like to make one comment in response to Monsieur Nadeau's comment that sometimes the water is muddy. Stephen Leacock, who was a great Canadian political scientist, once referred to one of his colleagues and said that every time he lit the lamp of learning he filled the room with smoke.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Prof. C.E.S. (Ned) Franks]

We all suffer from that problem.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

In the business of law we used to say sometimes bull baffled brains, and I think quite often this is what happens in these committees.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Is that a full quote?

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I left one word out. I don't want to have things coming up in Parliament on the last day.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that during the very first meeting we had, I thought the MPs tried to understand the facts and the issues. That's the way we tried to approach it. It was like an examination for discovery, which lawyers would understand. What I found was that the bureaucrats we were trying to hold accountable used that so that when they did come into the public hearing they had their game plan all figured out and they really “murked” the waters. That's the way I saw it. My experience was that this was not very helpful because they were exploiting the situation.

If I could raise one more question before I leave, I want to get this point. On the gun registry--I'm going to be more precise here. I said Treasury Board before, but I'm really thinking of the Comptroller General. I see deputy ministers trekking down to the Comptroller General to ask if they can do this. The Comptroller General tells them there are only two options; there aren't any other options. You either blow your budget or you come back for supplementary estimates. Even the Comptroller General gets a legal opinion, at some point, to say these are the options.

Lo and behold, they go off on their own, leave the Comptroller General out of the picture, get their own legal opinions, and say there's a third way they can do this and they can just ignore the Comptroller General.

To me, this is astounding. The Comptroller General actually resigned because of this situation. They brought in another Comptroller General who apparently said this was okay.

In my view, the Comptroller General is there for the deputy ministers to go to, to seek advice and guidance. They follow this advice and guidance; they shouldn't have the discretion to go off on their own and find some other creative way of getting around the rules. The Comptroller General, as a professional person, tells them these are the rules and this what you have to do. For them to go off on their own and do something else, I find astounding.

I'm really starting to think, to be more precise on this point, that we should have the Comptroller General somewhat accountable to this committee as well, and clearing the air as to who the boss is on these issues. Is the Comptroller General or the deputy minister the boss on the rules of financial management of the operation?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Fitzpatrick has said that what you do is write a report for us.

[Prof. C.E.S. (Ned) Franks]

May I respond?

Mr. Fitzpatrick, in your euphemism, the Latin that you can get away with in Parliament is stercus taurinus mentem confundet, if that's of any help to you next time you want to express your sentiment. But leaving that aside, I feel in my gut that the Comptroller General is the official in the Treasury Board with whom this committee should have a primary relationship.

The Federal Accountability Act gives the Secretary of the Treasury Board a position of offering what one might call rulings— they're not quite that—to deputy ministers when there's a dispute on an issue. It's not fair to say that the current Comptroller General agreed to that. I don't think he was even there at the time this happened. But I do think the committee has to make sure that the Treasury Board fulfills its duties.

On the issue that you're looking at in the firearms, you're legitimately entitled to ask a question of why wasn't the Treasury Board's view observed. The answer might be that only one official in the Treasury Board expressed a strong opinion on it. I'm not sure, but I do think this committee is entitled to say, we want an official of the Treasury Board to be the one who is responsible for Treasury Board oversight of accounting officers. I think the appropriate one is the comptroller of the treasury, and then that would be the one to whom your questions would be addressed. One simply hopes the Comptroller General is not on a seagull mission.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, is there a point you want to raise?

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Yes. Earlier when I raised three items, the third one wasn't dealt with, and that's holding the Auditor General to account. There was a situation where the process was broken. You had an Auditor General report being leaked to the press and a request for an RCMP investigation. The RCMP responded that an investigation of the Auditor General has to be requested by the Auditor General. I thought this was in fact a conflict of interest, and it's quite perplexing that the RCMP would make this sort of decision.

I think it's quite clear that we are the body should there be that sort of potential problem with the Auditor General's office. Or in that process we would be the body that perhaps not investigates, because we don't have the resources and there may be an appearance of conflict, but would be able to call upon a body such as the RCMP to go in. What are your thoughts on that?

[Prof. C.E.S. (Ned) Franks]

I'll offer you several remarks. First of all, every report produced by the Auditor General is available to the government beforehand and every word in it is looked at by the government. The expectation is that by the time the Auditor General produces a report in public, there are no problems of questions of fact in it. However, what this means is that there are people within government who have read the report. One must not make the assumption that the leak came from the Auditor General's side. It could have come from the other side. There's an old adage that three people can keep a secret as long as two of them are dead. My impression is that at least three ministers had seen that report, plus their deputy ministers, plus people in the ministers' offices. I make no assumption that the leak came from the Auditor General. That's point number one.

Point number two is that if I remember correctly, and I believe this is correct, the Auditor General is an accounting officer under the Financial Administration Act and hence has an accountability relationship with Parliament like every other parliamentary agent. There is room for the committee there to review the Auditor General from the accounting officer perspective.

Apart from that, I would think that the committee should stay out of that whole issue because there might be a conflict of interest in it--an informal conflict of interest. I don't think it's a legal conflict, but it would be better for another committee to look at that one.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Gentlemen, we're down to the last few minutes, so if anyone has any short snappers or any comments....

Mr. Williams.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Chairman, thank you.

We have talked a little bit about more funding for the committee, coming out of the Gomery recommendations. I'm not sure that we have any opinions on that, but we have talked about it.