Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to our guests. It's nice to see you both back here. It's like old times.
Mr. Clark and Mr. Desautels, you're both talking about performance and improving the efficiency and the effectiveness of overall government. Of course a lot of that responsibility lies with the Treasury Board as a central manager of government.
Mr. Desautels, you're talking about the head office concept. To me, head office is more than just a support mechanism: it's a leader. It's a driver, it's a motivator, it's a take-charge organization. It sets the vision and makes sure that everybody else is implementing it, or they have to explain why they're not delivering the results that are expected.
But my experience of the Treasury Board has been, as you have mentioned, that it's a monitoring organization more than a motivating leadership organization. You may recall, Mr. Desautels, when we were dealing with Y2K, that the public accounts committee wanted the Treasury Board to take a real hands-on approach and demand real accountability and performance by the departments, but they just issued the guidelines and hoped somebody took them up. Fortunately, Y2K turned out to be nothing of any consequence, but we didn't know that at the time.
I don't see much change, unfortunately. Was it yesterday or two days ago when we met? The public accounts committee, in response to the sponsorship issue, issued a report calling for an accounting officer concept. The accounting officer idea was that while ministers are responsible for policy and come and go, the deputies are the ones who have to be accountable for the administration of their departments. We took this concept from the U.K. When a deputy minister moves on, he can still be called back to account for deficiencies that happened under his watch in a particular department. He doesn't speak for the department if he's moved on, but he has to speak for any deficiencies or maladministration that happened under his watch.
That concept seems to have been unable to cross the Atlantic into Canada, where they've adopted the concept of the accounting officer, but there doesn't seem to be any accountability after they move on.
You've just been telling us about how some longevity in the job is important, given the size and the complexity of departments. What I want to hear from you is whether the Treasury Board should be more aggressive in its head office function--in demanding and expecting accountability, setting out the rules, setting out the vision, setting out the objectives, and saying to measure up and deliver, or something will happen. Do we need this type of thing?
Mr. Desautels, we've had these discussions about internal audit. I've always said it should be part of the Treasury Board. Others, including you, feel it could still remain with the departments, but I feel that if we're going to have a true accountability model, there has to be something that makes the deputy minister feel he'd better perform or there will be consequences.
Mr. Desautels, do you want to lead off? Then we'll get Mr. Clark's comments.