Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 14th, 2007

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I find that absolutely stunning.

From my understanding, they're also issuing approximately 1.5 million new cards per year. If we take a look at youths who are entering the labour force, potentially we're looking at 200,000, but let's even exaggerate those numbers and say 400,000 or 500,000. We know we have 200,000 immigrants per year. That's a total of 700,000, but we're issuing 1.5 million cards per year. So not only do we have a serious problem with the existing data, it appears that as we've streamlined and become more security conscious in our passport regime, in our birth certificate regimes provincially, this may in fact be the weak link that's causing this perplexingly large number of social insurance numbers being issued.

[Sheila Fraser]

We attempted to see if we had any information on the numbers being issued. We don't. I know we went back to our audit of a couple of years ago, and at that point it was about 1.2 million. The department may have more information that they can provide to the committee.

I would just add, though, that we note in the report that there have been significant improvements in the controls over the issuance of new numbers, especially on the proof of identity. That has improved quite a bit since our 2002 audit.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

One of the improvements that has taken place is in the 900-series numbers. They now have an expiry date. From my understanding, it is an improvement, but let's say a card expires immediately after the biannual review that's done by the department. The department reviews these cards, as I understand it—and I believe it was Ms. Cheng who had previously noted this—once every two years. Is that when they review the files on those?

[Sheila Fraser]

The cards have an expiry date that corresponds to the temporary permit that someone has received to be in Canada. In the briefing yesterday I think it was also mentioned that all of the cards issued were given an expiry date of 2004, so they were all to be expired within a year of that audit. Obviously, if there's a reason that they need to be extended, then there would have to be proof given as to why the cards should be extended and not expired.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

Mr. Williams, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Staying on the social insurance numbers, Madam Auditor General, again, congratulations on a fine report. We do appreciate the information that you bring to Parliament.

I'm looking at “Recommendations of the Standing Committee”, on page 40 of chapter 6. The first three recommendations of the public accounts committee were, one, that the new act should be tabled in Parliament no later than September 30, 2003; two, that the new action plan should be tabled in Parliament no later than September 30, 2003; and three, that the department should provide semi-annual reports to the public accounts committee starting September 30, 2003. Do you know if they follow through on these types of things?

[Sheila Fraser]

Let me ask Ms. Cheng, as I don't have the specifics on that.

[Nancy Cheng]

There certainly has been better reporting since that time, but the efforts in terms of the reporting have gone into less detail as time has passed. In the end, I believe we had to rate the performance reporting aspect as less satisfactory overall.

What is of concern is that the results-based measurements and performance reporting on that front were not sufficient. You'll see that in the current recommendation, we again urge that they provide clear and concrete performance expectations and better timeframes, because the information that was provided was more open-ended, without a specific timeframe in terms of when action would be completed. Those remain to be concerns in this particular follow-up audit. You would be able to find the reference in the section dealing with results-based performance and the recommendation under paragraph 6.85 on page 43.

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

Mr. Chairman, I think we should be looking at these requests we have for the departments to report to Parliament.

With the Gomery inquiry report asking for more resources to committees, maybe one of the things we should be looking at is having resources so that we can follow up on whether or not departments are reporting to Parliament, as Parliament has requested. If they ignore us, thinking we'll go away, then we should have news for them that we're not going to be ignored or go away.

On the conservation of federally built heritage, Madam Auditor General, you may recall that the Treasury Board had a new thing called “a logic model” a few weeks ago, which I was a little critical of.

I'm quoting chapter 2.23:

The Treasury Board Heritage Buildings Policy offers protection only to buildings, and not to the national historic sites owned by federal departments or agencies. It thus offers no protection to the other elements that may be included on a national historic site, such as archaeological sites, canals, structures, or cultural landscapes.

Is this a logic model we should be investigating, or does it stand on its own?

[Sheila Fraser]

I think it's quite clear that the conservation regime needs to be strengthened. We actually show here the example of two buildings in Kingston that are designated as national historic sites with a park in the middle, which is an important component of that, and the park is not protected.

There needs to be much more consideration given to the conservation regime for assets held by departments other than Parks Canada.

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

Yes, as I said, the logic sometimes defies me as to how they can actually write a policy that would ignore some of the important things. It escapes me.

Of course, we have our friends at the coast guard. The last time we looked at the coast guard, I seem to recall they could only go to sea for about 10 months of the year because they didn't have operating funds to be at sea for 12 months of the year.

We now find out that they can't repair the engines because they don't have the manuals. When they do repair the engines, it should cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and they end up doing about $2 million worth of damage.

Is this some other kind of logic we are not really aware of that we should be apprised of, or is there a reason for this type of thing?

[Sheila Fraser]

I'm not sure there's a reason for it. I think part of the problem is they don't have up-to-date standard policies and procedures across the country. They tend to operate regionally. It is one of the challenges facing them.

You're right that the examples we note are not examples of good management.

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

Yes. I can't understand why. The last time they appeared before the public accounts committee, we told them to get their act together. But I see you have a whole section on problems within human resource management at the coast guard.

Why is it so difficult for them when presumably other departments are managing reasonably well?

[Sheila Fraser]

Mr. Chair, I think it's a question that should be addressed to the Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard and the deputy minister. They may have further explanations, other than the ones we've given.

Perhaps they've tried to do too much at once. They quite frankly did not succeed at doing anything to address the recommendations we have made in the past.

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

It seems to me that the last time they were here, they said they relied on the honour system. If ships were coming to our shores illegally, Mr. Chairman, they were honour bound to report their arrival so that we could actually inspect them.

Is that type of concept still going on?

[Sheila Fraser]

I believe it has changed, but I'm not sure about that.

I don't think we looked at that specifically, but they certainly received extra funding, security-related funding. We note in the report that it's not clear what activities were specifically carried out through the funding. The tracking wasn't done as one would expect.

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

On this thing with social insurance numbers, they didn't bother to track the vital statistics registers of the provinces to find people who were dying and to automatically remove them from the list. Are they doing it now?

[Sheila Fraser]

As was mentioned, they have links with one province. It's New Brunswick, I believe. The others are planned but are not in effect yet.

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

How many years have we been doing this?

[Sheila Fraser]

We have been reporting on this since 1998. This will be the fourth audit.

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

They finally have one province on board. I suppose it's P.E.I.

[Sheila Fraser]

It's New Brunswick.

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

New Brunswick, yes. It's not Ontario, where tens of thousands of people have to be removed every year.

For example, what about people filing final tax returns? Does it trigger a removal of the social insurance number?

[Sheila Fraser]

Not to my knowledge. I believe those are probably issues about matching and how the numbers are being used within government, and confidentiality of data.