Public Accounts Committee on March 26th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

You have 45 seconds.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Okay. That doesn't leave much for a question.

Auditor General, is there anywhere that you think we ought to be going further? There are a lot of pieces to this. Although it is one story, there are many different pieces. Is there anywhere you would recommend we focus further attention, or is it your sense that we've caught the systemic problems and we shouldn't see this again in the future?

[Sheila Fraser]

As I mentioned in my opening statement, I think there are special issues, if you will, or special concerns around many of the small agencies that perform quasi-judicial, ombudsman-type roles. In order to do that, they require independence from central agency direction of their mandate, but they still have to give appropriate accountability for their use of financial and human resources.

We have seen, unfortunately, a couple of instances where the central agencies have been hesitant to be seen to be interfering—and I suspect it would be the same thing with the Solicitor General with an ombudsman kind of person, in that the department would be hesitant to become too intrusive into management.

So we are starting what will probably be a couple of audits on the whole question of the governance of small agencies. First of all, how many are there? What kinds of roles do they fulfill, because there is a myriad of them? How do they maintain that professional independence while having proper accountability? There are a number of issues that will come up from those. We would hope to have a broad overview piece by late 2008, probably, and then have some specific audit issues that we can bring to the committee.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks.

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Christopherson.

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, for seven minutes.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Stewart, during your opening statement you said you were 72 years old and did not have an adequate memory to respond to the accusations. You also went on to say that you had destroyed most of the documentation you would have had to support your faulty memory. So we're left with a situation of having the documentation that existed within the Ottawa offices, which the Auditor General has been able to piece together. Is that correct?

[Ron Stewart]

First of all, just to clarify, I didn't say “most”, I don't think. I said there was some documentation that I kept for awhile, and then I got rid of it. But I did not receive a lot of documentation from the Auditor General to be informed of what happened. They haven't produced the documentation they're relying on.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I'd like to stop you there for one second. We've heard that before.

Ms. Fraser, is that correct, yes or no?

[Sheila Fraser]

Well, I guess I'd like to know what documentation Mr. Stewart thinks he needs. We provided him, for example, with copies of invoices, travel claims, and all of those sorts of documents on which he was interviewed and which are cited in the report.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

And he's had those for what period of time?

[Sheila Fraser]

He would have received those certainly by early 2006.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Madam Fraser, when I look at your exhibit 11.1, there is a schedule there that outlines five types of improper payments over a period of approximately six years, or less than six years, which total approximately $200,000. In the previous eight-year period you just noted one type of improper payment—the cashing out of annual leave—which would have put the total over that 14-year period up to $325,000.

For the previous eight-year period, was there any reason you did not categorize or try to put a numeric value on the other types of improper payments?

[Sheila Fraser]

Our audit really only went back to 1998. It was easy to identify the cash-out of annual leave for the preceding period. That's why we included it.

We did not go back into travel expenses or hospitality claims. We cut it off at 1998.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I see. But it seems to point out that even in the previous eight years there was a pattern in play that you were able to easily document.

[Sheila Fraser]

For the cash-out of vacation leave, yes.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

If we average that out over the whole quarter century that Mr. Stewart was there, we're potentially looking at an amount of $800,000-plus. If we took that sort of numeric value annually and we worked backwards, is—

[Sheila Fraser]

I would caution against that kind of generalization or extrapolation. We don't know what the work pattern was previously, nor the expenses.

We were able to substantiate, if you will, the amounts that are noted here.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

In your report, in paragraph 11.18, you state that the

...Correctional Investigator generated little work product in six years. Senior managers and employees who we interviewed could not recall ever receiving documents or other written information from the former Correctional Investigator about any meetings he may have attended off OCI premises during the audit period.

When you couple it with paragraph 11.38, where it states:

The former Correctional Investigator spent the majority of his time from April to October each year at his summer residence, located on an island more than one and a half hours' drive from Ottawa,

it seems to indicate that there's very little work that can be pointed to, never mind when he was at his summer residence. And it seems to be a misnomer, by the way, because it states that he was there most of the time, April to October. So I guess it was more of a spring/summer/fall residence.

You also seemed to indicate that there wasn't a great deal of work done during the rest of the year when he seemed to be in the Ottawa offices--in the winter, I guess.

[Sheila Fraser]

I guess all I can add to that is that we have come up with the 258 business days where there was, to our knowledge, no OCI business conducted. Then we add to that other times, for example, vacation times or extending trips, international trips, to arrive at the 319 days.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Stewart, how do I match up your statement--and I wrote it down when you said it--that you pretty well did everything with the statement of the employees within your offices that senior managers and employees who were interviewed could not recall ever receiving documents or other written information? How do we match up those two statements?

[Ron Stewart]

My first statement was going back to when I was appointed. Initially I did everything. I had a very small staff.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

“Small staff” meaning how many people?

[Ron Stewart]

There were probably five people in the office, including me. When I left the office, I think there were 26, give or take.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

So in those initial years you did everything—

[Ron Stewart]

Yes.