Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 7th, 2006

[Wayne Wouters]

Again, I know you've made certain recommendations in this area, and as I said, we will have to look at how that all will work. Clearly the way the model works at this point is that the Comptroller General provides functional leadership. He ensures the standards are put in place. He sets the financial management policies. He also ensures we have competent chief financial officers in place, so he assists the community in that way. At the end of the day, who signs off the accounts under our model? The deputy head signs off the accounts of the department and he must seek the views of the Comptroller General.

As for what happened in previous cases--were those views sought, how that happened--I don't want to comment. But the deputy head, if he or she is doing their job, should be seeking the views of the Comptroller General when it comes to any issues pertaining to financial management that may be seen to be difficult.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Chair, with the greatest of respect—and it must be just the role you play, and I understand the line between the bureaucracy and the minister—this really is not getting us too far. At some point you have to get engaged with us and go back and forth and actually.... Maybe we need to go in camera so that you have a higher comfort level, but with the greatest of respect—and I'm not faulting you—Chair, this is not engagement. This is question and answer, and it's nice, it's helpful, but it's not what we're undertaking here.

We're trying to develop a whole new protocol. We need some ability to provide a comfort zone for the staff, so that they can interact with us in a way where we're going back and forth and working through problems and saying, “Okay, we see what you're saying. We identified that problem. The way we do it now is this, and Bill C-2 is going to affect it this way. What else can we do?” We Have to have that engagement. Otherwise, Chair, this is helpful for a Q and A, but we're not developing protocol this way.

I'm not faulting you. Please don't take it that way at all; I didn't mean that. But this is a little frustrating. We're chasing our tails here, and at some point—it may be down the road that it is built in—we have to have more give and take if this is really going to be a joint project, or we're just going to be an island unto ourselves, doing what we think is best and throwing it out there, praying like hell that somebody cares enough to do something about it.

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Christopherson, we're probably not going to develop a protocol here today. But in fairness to the witness, and I've been listening very carefully to the questions and the answers, the witness did say that the deputy minister, under the new regime, will have the final say.

You're going back to the firearms problem. That case was a specific example where the deputy minister, who in that case was Mr. Baker, for some reason didn't feel he had the final say and that his final say—his role and duty—was usurped by another deputy minister who decided to get a legal opinion. It became a very convoluted kind of situation.

But in fairness to the dialogue here today, I honestly think we're accomplishing much. That's my own view.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Okay. Well, Chair, I asked for your opinion and I got it. Time will tell. I appreciate the time.

Thank you very much for coming.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, you have seven minutes.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Wouters, you've been at Treasury Board for two years, and prior to that, at Fisheries and Oceans, you were the deputy minister for how long?

[Wayne Wouters]

I was there for five or five and a half years.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

So you had quite a level of comfort there as deputy minister?

[Wayne Wouters]

Yes. I was also deputy minister of HRDC/HRSDC in between there, for a period of two and a half years.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

So unfortunately you—not maybe to the same degree as some of the other deputy ministers, who just seemed to be revolved around and around--had the opportunity to at least stay in one position for a while. We've identified that as a problem, and the new Accountability Act would make the deputy ministers responsible.

At what point do you feel comfortable? You've been in this position. You arrive in a new department, and sometimes these departments deal with very different matters and are structured very differently—CIDA, Fisheries. How long would you estimate it would take you to establish enough comfort to sign off on reports?

[Wayne Wouters]

We have some colleagues from PCO, if you want to get into the tenure of deputy heads.

If I look back on my career as a deputy minister, I would argue that when I first became a deputy minister at Fisheries and Oceans, it took me a fair bit of time to get a good understanding of—

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I'm a rookie MP. I've been here for two and a half years and I'm still learning things. What's a “fair bit of time”? Is it six months; is it a year?

[Wayne Wouters]

I would say that when I first became a deputy, it was probably a good year to two years. I felt much more comfortable, because I knew how to ask the right questions, when I moved to the next department after five and a half years in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which was not the easiest department to manage. And so within six months I felt quite comfortable about the files I was managing. I had a fair bit of experience on social—

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I don't mean to be rude, but we are limited in our time.

When you first arrived it took two years, or two years plus; now there's a greater comfort level, so it's about six months.

How do we expect deputy ministers, if they've just arrived...? Is there going to be some sort of timeframe that says that during the first six months they will not be the person responsible to sign off?

[Wayne Wouters]

No, I think once you become a deputy, you take on the role. When I look at HRSDC.... In the Department of Fisheries, I had ADMs who had been there for 20 years in some cases. You rely on your assistant deputy ministers. In some departments there are associates who are basically equivalent to a deputy minister. I presume it would be the same, Mr. Chair, as the CEO going into a company. It takes them time, but they can't say they're not going to be responsible for six months. You take on the role.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Fortunately, companies have shareholders that they're accountable to, there are meetings, and the markets take care of things for them. Right now, what I'm worried about is that we have deputy ministers showing up in front of us here and they've only been around for a month or two. What you're basically telling me is that they're not really the ones, and their signature is symbolic in the first six months. That's worrisome when you have departments with billion-dollar budgets.

This committee has experienced that frustration. In fact, we had recommendations a couple of times saying that deputy ministers should be around for at least a period of three years. It really is fundamentally unfair to make people responsible for a department when they have no idea what's been going on in that department.

I understand that this committee's recommendations have been rejected by the Privy Council. What's the thinking there?

[Wayne Wouters]

I don't want to comment on the Privy Council Office. This is the prerogative of the Prime Minister. When it comes to the appointment of deputy ministers, under our system it's the Prime Minister who appoints deputies. I would leave you to raise those issues with the officials of the Privy Council Office.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I understand that Privy Council has said things like operational requirements—

[Wayne Wouters]

We have somebody here from PCO, if you'd like.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Okay.

I understand we've been told that operational requirements have prevented these recommendations from going forward. When I hear that phrase, “the need to be flexible”, coming from the Privy Council as to why they are rejecting our recommendations, that tells me they need to have an out so they can avoid accountability. That's what we see over and over again here.

[Wayne Wouters]

Again, I think it varies. Speaking from personal experience, after 10 years of being a deputy, it depends very much on which department you're in. Some departments are very complex, and it does take a period of time to get a good understanding and be able to lead that department. For others, much less time.

I think another key issue in this area, and one of the most important aspects of the job, is the relationship between the deputy and the minister. You could be the best deputy head in the world, but if for whatever reason the relationship isn't good with your minister, is it productive to continue to try to operate in that environment? With a fixed tenure, you are potentially taking away that option of saying this is not working as a team, what can we do about it? How do you deal with that under a system of fixed tenure?

Again, I think you should talk to the PCO officials about all the issues around it. They are much better positioned to talk about that than I am.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

Thank you, Mr. Wouters.

Mr. Williams, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I share Mr. Christopherson's feelings about the obfuscation that we're getting here this afternoon. This is not an investigation into some serious problem at the Treasury Board. This is time for us to understand the roles and responsibilities of the Treasury Board Secretariat and review them. Yet we seem to find this lack of direct dialogue that we thought would be helpful in this particular situation.

Talking about the accounting officers, which is this new thing we have brought into the Canadian model, the ninth report of the public accounts committee in the last Parliament said that the accounting officers would be responsible for the administration of the department on an ongoing basis. We brought that from the U.K., which I understand has had it for about 125 years. Yet I've heard nothing from you telling us that the accounting officers are going to have ongoing accountability for problems that arise in the department after they're long gone. Am I correct in saying that there is no ongoing accountability?

I think of our investigation into the sponsorship scandal, where the deputy said “I wasn't in the loop, don't look to me for the answer.” Then the minster saying, “I only handle policy, don't look to me, it wasn't my problem.” We were left with a huge gap and we couldn't point the finger at anybody. Now, it seems to me there's a huge hole in this model where, if the minister moves on and the deputy moves on, that's it, nothing. We can't point a finger or hold anybody accountable.

Am I correct? If so, why is that?

[Wayne Wouters]

Well, I think under our system, the minister of the day.... If a minister moves to another portfolio and another minister becomes minister of that department, then the minister overall is accountable to Parliament.

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

No, ministers are not accountable; they're only answerable.