Public Accounts Committee on May 18th, 2006

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

When programs are set up — and I understand the importance of spending money rigorously, otherwise the government would not have money for any new programs — the objectives are very difficult to establish. For example, if the purpose of a program is to save lives or to reduce a type of crime, that is probably the most important factor to consider.

From that viewpoint, can you judge the need for the Canadian Firearms Program?

[Sheila Fraser]

No. As I mentioned earlier, the centre does not provide outcome measures in its report. They say that the ultimate objective is to improve public safety, and in the report, they indicate that they must produce what they call a results chain, in other words, some performance measures that lead toward public safety. There is no direct link between the two, and because of several factors, it would be very difficult to say if the registry has a direct impact on public safety, but there could be other indicators, such as use of the registry by police forces or a survey of police forces on the usefulness of the registry. They could provide examples of situations where the registry was helpful to them. Unfortunately, no such indicators were established. They recognize that they must establish some, and will start working on that. That is a major aspect that currently does not exist.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Ms. Fraser.

Mr. Lake, you have four and a half minutes.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

It seems as though we've got a little bit of a theme going on here today, whether we talk about the long-gun registry or about the leased office space and the native issues: poor planning in terms of structure, in terms of systems, combined with a total lack of any semblance of stewardship or respect for tax dollars.

I want to talk a little bit about the acquisition of leased office space. In section 7 you refer to gaps in the financial and management information systems. You refer to accrual versus cash accounting as a real problem there. The one that gets me is the blurred responsibility here, the responsibility for office accommodation shared between Public Works, client departments, and the Treasury Board. It seems to me that this would be a recipe for a lot of problems of accountability, right?

[Sheila Fraser]

We make the comment in the report that there really are no incentives in the system for departments to manage their office space well. The cost of office space is attributed to departments at the end of the year as a service provided without charge, so it doesn't really come into the budgets they manage, unless they acquire additional space over the standards of Public Works. We've recommended to government that they need to rethink how they do this sharing of responsibility, because Public Works sees itself as providing a service. So at the end of the day, who is incented to reduce office space?

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Exactly.

There's a sample used in here. I imagine this is just one of the samples you found. I imagine there are many more like this. It's 800 Place Victoria in Montreal, referred to on page 215. Apparently, there is a tendering process there. This is the building they're already in. They rank fourth in the evaluation process, and then to quote:

Two weeks after the tendering process had closed and the winning bidder had been selected, the Secretary of State for the Agency sent a letter to the Minister of PWGSC

--this is the Economic Development Agency--

asking him to renew the lease at Place Victoria. The Minister of PWGSC approved the renewal of the lease at Place Victoria.

This was the fourth-place bidder. It's obviously unacceptable, it seems to me.

Several questions arise. Who owns the building? Have you any idea who owns that building?

[Sheila Fraser]

We don't know who owns it.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Can you tell me the ministers who were involved in that?

[Sheila Fraser]

The Secretary of State was Mr. Claude Drouin, the Minister of Public Works at the time the request was made was Mr. Boudria, and the Minister of Public Works who finally approved it was Mr. Goodale.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Ultimately, in terms of the decision taken there, whose responsibility is it for what is clearly...is it Public Works? This is, I guess, what comes down to this shared decision-making.

[Sheila Fraser]

It is shared decision-making. We don't see any rationale given as to why the request was made to stay there. There may have been reasons provided verbally, but I guess it comes back to the issue that if there were valid reasons to stay there, then the government shouldn't have started a bidding process and then been committed to renting space, because they ended up having to obviously rent the space of the person who won the bid.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

That's what it says. Further to this it says that “Renewing the lease at Place Victoria cost $2.5 million more than the winning bid in the tendering process...”. So there's $2.5 million, and then it says we actually paid $2.1 million to take the other space that we didn't even have anybody to put in yet.

[Sheila Fraser]

That's correct.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Is that space fully rented yet?

[Sheila Fraser]

No. At the time of this audit it was not fully rented.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

So the total cost to taxpayers there was $4.6 million that we shouldn't have been spending.

[Sheila Fraser]

That's correct.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

This was just a random sample, was it?

[Sheila Fraser]

I'm not exactly sure how we picked them, but we would have looked at a number of leasing transactions.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lake.

Thank you, Ms. Fraser.

We'll move on now to Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I'd like to pick up where Mr. Lake left off. I just did a quick add of the four examples in here and it came to $110.9 million. It's almost 50% of the cost of the sponsorship scandal money. It seems to me, at the very least, given that we're the public accounts committee—this is where the accountability happens—this is one where we should be calling them in and asking them why: Why did you just make straight-up decisions, black and white, that cost the Canadian taxpayers $110.9 million wasted dollars that didn't need to happen? Why?

We owe it to the Canadian taxpayers to ask that question.

If I can, I would make a pitch to include the issues around first nations again, simply because this does seem to be a pattern. There are real problems here, and I can't think of anything more important than...we're dealing with the environment, the quality of life of not only Canadians but Canadian children, too, and again it's the second go-round.

If the Auditor General is to feel like her work matters...she can only take it to a certain point and bring it here. It then only really gets traction when we take it from here and make something happen—either stop bad things or start doing the right things. In this ministry it would be a shame to let this go by and send a signal that it's okay if we find out, audit after audit, that you're not dealing with things that affect first nations peoples' health. I just find that unacceptable.

I would make a pitch, Chair, respectfully to my colleagues, that we would include at least one of the other chapters that we might bring in.

If I have any time left, I have one question on the—

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Of course, you realize that those decisions are made by the steering committee, and you're a member of the steering committee, as is Mr. Fitzpatrick.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I know, but I also know that when we disagree on the steering committee, the decision is ultimately made here. So I'm trying to line up my votes now, Chair. I'll leave exposing my strategy to just that, but thank you for your assistance.

Under revenue, your report today says: “The Agency has known for many years what it needs to do to improve the collection of tax debts, but its efforts have fallen short”.

What aren't they doing that they should be doing?