Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 7th, 2006

[Wayne Wouters]

Well, we can get into a lot of terminology about accountability, answerability, being accountable before, and being accountable to. I guess all I'm saying is that under our system, ministers are accountable to Parliament. We, as accounting officers, will be accountable before Parliament, which means appearing before committees like this and answering.

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

I appreciate that. I appreciate that very much. Ministers are accountable to Parliament for the policies of their departments, and their accountability for administration has long since gone.

I pointed out the sponsorship scandal, where the deputy said, “I wasn't in the loop, don't look to me,” and we were trying to find out, and we made a recommendation saying that somebody is going to carry ongoing accountability, not answerability. You can't discipline a minister who says it didn't happen under his or her watch; it happened under somebody else's watch. But if a deputy goes on to some other department and it happened under his watch, he must still be held accountable. That is what the accounting officer model was supposed to do, and you're telling me that if a deputy gets transferred, he's out of the loop, he's no longer accountable, and nothing can be done. Is that what you're telling me?

[Wayne Wouters]

What I'm saying is that the current deputy is only accountable—

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

I'm not worried about the current deputy. I mean to say, if a deputy moves on, and a problem happened on his watch, and he is now somewhere else, is he still accountable?

[Wayne Wouters]

At the end of the day, if I could just complete my sentence, the current deputy is accountable for the operations of that department while he or she is the deputy.

Now, we know that the precedent has been the case that when issues have arisen in departments, former deputies have been asked to come and appear and answer before a parliamentary committee for activities that took place while he or she was deputy. This has taken place in a number of committees. So that precedent is there now, and you saw situations, I think in the case of the sponsorship scandal, when former deputies did come forward, and they came forward to answer before the committee.

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

Well, unfortunately, Mr. Wouters, I just can't agree with you. You cannot hold a current deputy minister accountable and discipline him for something that his predecessor did. He may even have been sent in to clean up the mess. How can you hold him accountable under these circumstances?

[Wayne Wouters]

I'm sorry if I led you to that conclusion. I said the current deputy is accountable for the operations of the department while he is the deputy. So if something happened that preceded that, of course he's not responsible for that.

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

That is my point precisely. So who do we hang out to dry when there's a problem?

[Wayne Wouters]

Well, as I said, in terms of committees, it's been the case when these situations have arisen that the committees have called previous deputies and officials to explain what happened.

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

I just have to say, Mr. Chairman, I think that when we're reviewing the roles and responsibilities of the Treasury Board, we have to address these issues, because we're not really getting any acknowledgement that there's a problem. Mr. Christopherson and Mr. Fitzpatrick are dealing with legal opinions, and now this one.

So let me move on to something else. We're talking here about the deputies being in charge and being responsible for the whole department, which is an ongoing concept, and yet internal audit is their responsibility. And we saw how internal audit worked under the sponsorship scandal. It just basically didn't. I've advocated for a long time that it should be under the Treasury Board--under your management--and under the Comptroller General.

The DPRs--the departmental performance reports--I've called self-serving fluff for years. And yet we can't seem to get the real issues that we could hold deputies accountable for.

You mentioned earlier that if they sign, for example, a contract that is outside their authority, you would deal with that at Treasury Board, but presumably through voluntary disclosure by the department. Now, that seems to be a fairly wishy-washy system of accountability here. Do you intend to strengthen it at all?

[Wayne Wouters]

Mr. Chair, we do intend to strengthen the accountability, and this is why one of the key initiatives that we've been undertaking is a review of all of our policies. There are a number of objectives that we want to achieve, but one of the key objectives is to ensure that the accountabilities between the deputy minister and the Treasury Board are clear. I would agree with you that over the last number of years, as a result of a number of events, we've added more policies and more directives and more standards, and I think that has created some confusion.

We are now going back over every one of these policies, directives, and standards, and we're beginning with the policies and we're saying, okay, in the case of IT management, clearly we're going to define what is the accountability and responsibility of the deputy minister, what is the accountability and responsibility of the chief information officer who resides in my organization, and what is the accountability of the Treasury Board Secretariat overall. That will be expressed in every policy. The same will hold with financial management policies--what is the responsibility of the chief financial officer versus the deputy head versus the Comptroller General versus the Treasury Board Secretariat.

I agree with you. I think it's absolutely critical that those policies clearly articulate the responsibilities and division of responsibilities. And from there, I think we'll be in a much better position to ensure, therefore, that we understand respective roles and follow through to ensure that those policies are adhered to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Williams.

Thank you very much, Mr. Wouters.

Mr. Wouters, I have a couple of questions, just following up with Mr. Williams' line of thinking.

I think it would assist this committee greatly if you would have your department file with us shortly your definition of the role of the accounting officer, your definition of the role of the Comptroller General, and your definition of the role of the chief financial officer. If we had that in front of us, because there is a lot of fuzzification here, I think it would help in this study terrifically.

Two areas I do want to question you on, Mr. Wouters—

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think it would also help if we had an organization chart. That would help.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

We'll get that too.

One other area I want to talk about, Mr. Wouters, is the management accountability framework, and you talked about that. Again, this is modern comptrollership. It was adopted in 2003 and it's being used presently by the Treasury Board Secretariat with the individual departments.

When that first came in, my understanding was that it was supposed to be used also by Parliament. It was supposed to be transparent. In fact, it was supposed to be on the departmental websites, and I understand it's not. Is there any plan to put it on the departmental websites or to disclose this publicly to parliamentarians?

[Wayne Wouters]

Is this the second part of the agenda? I didn't know we were going to get into MAF. But let me respond to that.

On your first point, we can look at submitting to you those respective roles. That's based on the current policy. As you know, we're undertaking a review of all the policies, including all the financial management policies, to ensure that we have clearly articulated the role of the Comptroller General.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

If I can interrupt you, I'd like the current roles, but I'd also like your draft of how you see the roles with the expected enactment of the Federal Accountability Act. I think it would be very helpful for us to get both, Mr. Wouters.

[Wayne Wouters]

The Federal Accountability Act will not affect directly those respective roles. It will be any changes that we make to the financial management policies that will do so.

But we can provide that to you, based on what the current policies are. I just want to make sure the committee is aware that those policies are now under review.

On MAF, of course, we have been undertaking the assessments for the past number of years. MAF, as a tool, has been in place now for at least three years and it has been generally accepted by departments. Our role is to undertake those assessments--I think that's what you're talking about--of overall management performance.

For us it's been very much a work in progress. It's been a learning process for us as to how we do this. We've had to establish the indicators by which we can assess. We've had to ensure that we're comfortable with that. We've had to ensure that we could get the evidence, so it's evidence-based. We've been working our way through this, so we've been somewhat reluctant to release this, because we are doing assessments in the department.

There are a number of access to information requests now that we are at the point to say that, based on the last round of assessments, which was the third year, we have moved far enough along that we could begin to make this available publicly, with the caveat that the last round of assessments was done about a year and a half ago. It's a snapshot and requires the recognition that we still have a way to go in terms of our abilities within the secretariat to undertake some assessments. There will be certain areas where we did an assessment and we said, if we did it over again, we'd probably do it somewhat differently.

I just want to make those points as we go to release this. It is a work in progress.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

If I may conclude, Mr. Wouters, my understanding at the time this was adopted, in 2003, was that this would be a tool for parliamentarians. I didn't think then that by 2007--two months from now--we wouldn't have this. Now, if there's been a change in policy, please disclose it. I think it's incumbent upon you to do that.

There is one last issue I'd like your views on, Mr. Wouters. I make this comment on the premise that 99.99% of public servants are honest and hard-working, that they give Canadian taxpayers good value for their money. However, as you're aware, we do run into problems now and then. When you have 450,000 employees, you're always going to get problems. But I've been on this committee for six years, and I have never seen a situation where any person was ever sanctioned by the government. It hasn't happened in my lifetime.

I always have asked two questions in those situations. One, was any sanctioning imposed? To that question the answer has always been no. And two, was any consideration given to sanctioning this individual? Again, the answer to that question has always been no. That includes Guité and a whole litany of individuals.

Again, I'm not trying to categorize any group of individuals, and I hope I'm not doing so, but that is not the system you see in the private sector. I know that government is not the private sector, but I would have thought there would be more policy emanating from Treasury Board imposing sanctions in certain cases. If it is there, it doesn't seem to be implemented.

I'd ask you for your response.

[Wayne Wouters]

There are personal consequences if somebody misappropriates funds or something like that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

It violates Treasury Board guidelines.

[Wayne Wouters]

I would say there are two kinds of issues when you talk about consequences. If we talk about personal consequences, under the Financial Administration Act we do have all the tools available, from writing a letter of reprimand to firing people.

I guess I take exception, Mr. Chair, to the suggestion that we've never put in place any sanctions. As a deputy minister, I know that I have fired public servants in cases where there was a misappropriation of funds.

So we have used all the tools at our disposal. In my opening statement, I did indicate what we need to do, and are doing; we've created this deputy ministers committee on discipline. One of the issues, I think, is the lack of understanding of exactly what we do and don't do. I also think there's a lack of consistency in terms of how it's done across the public service. Where one deputy may decide not to fire a certain individual, another deputy may decide, yes, it warrants firing, or it warrants other discipline.

We want to have punishment that's consistent with the crime, I guess, and we think it needs to be more consistent across the public service. But we have taken steps and we have taken action, particularly in the area of the misappropriation of funds. I personally did that when I was a deputy head.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Wouters.

Ms. Lizotte-MacPherson, did you have a comment?

[Linda Lizotte-MacPherson]

I just want to mention that in terms of the policies that we're currently renewing and that Mr. Wouters mentioned, we are also including explicit consequences as part of each policy, so looking at the institutional sanctions down to individual consequences for non-compliance. That is a big change.

[Wayne Wouters]

Can I comment on this, Mr. Chair?

Lots of concerns have been raised around the table here about the lack of clarity and accountability. I just want to point out that I think we are trying to address that through the review of our policies. There always are concerns raised about the lack of consequences if you don't comply with the policies. And some of our policies are not clear on that. That's why in our review, bringing forward to Treasury Board the new policies, we want to, one, ensure that the accountabilities are clear; two, ensure what is required of each party; and three, outline the consequences in the event those policies aren't complied with.

That is our objective in the policy review. Some of those policies are very good at that. Others, I would argue, don't meet the grade.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Wouters, and thank you as well to Mr. Moloney, Mr. Smith, and Ms. Lizotte-MacPherson.

Right now, colleagues, a new panel is coming forward. I think the best thing to do is suspend for a few minutes.