Public Accounts Committee on March 26th, 2007

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

—and managed to handle the job well. And then towards the end, you had a staff that quintupled to 25. I guess you spent most of your time at your spring/summer/fall residence, where there was no computer that tied you back to your office, no phone lines, no faxes. You said you did paperwork. If you did paperwork there during those three seasons of the year, how did you manage to get it back to your office? There doesn't seem to be a record of it in the offices.

[Ron Stewart]

First of all, the Auditor General says they talked to my employees. I'm not able to talk to my employees, so I don't know what they said.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Well, it's in the report.

[Ron Stewart]

But how do I know that's accurate?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

Mr. Sweet, seven minutes.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Madam Fraser, I just wanted to ask you, how long have you been the Auditor General of Canada?

[Sheila Fraser]

I've been the Auditor General for close to six years now.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Roughly how many audits have you done?

[Sheila Fraser]

Performance audits? Probably about 150.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

And in 150 audits you would have had a lot of experience at seeing what work outcomes look like--paper flows, correspondence--in the sense of work accomplished?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Stewart says he got lots of work accomplished; you're saying that in fact there's very little evidence.

[Sheila Fraser]

I can tell the committee that when we began this we heard from a lot of employees and others that Mr. Stewart was not very present at work. It is a challenge to prove. It's easy to prove that somebody worked. How do you prove that somebody wasn't present?

The team went through a very rigorous approach whereby they used cellphone records, travel logs, and all the memos, e-mails, and documents within the office. Actually, if there was a telephone call, they credited that whole day. When we say 319, it's really because we found absolutely no indication of a telephone call, a travel claim, mileage, a signature on a report, or an e-mail.

The team, in the interviews, would have asked about this. If someone said, “Well, no, I was working on this big project and I didn't keep the drafts”, I think we would have accepted that. We found no indication of work for those 319 days.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Okay. In fact, there was a lot of latitude given if there was ever even any possible evidence.

Mr. Stewart, two computer systems were purchased on your own expenses. What were they used for?

[Ron Stewart]

I had my office purchase a computer, which was initially loaned to a member of my family, and I regret doing that now. It was always my intention to learn to use the computer. I didn't purchase a second computer; I took one home from the office. I practised on it, but I found it difficult to learn how to operate it.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Stewart.

Mr. Sapers, when you took over the office in 2004, what condition did you find the office in?

[Howard Sapers]

Well, on the investigative side, in terms of the functioning and the mandate of the office, I found the office was working relatively well. Within my first week I was presented with a briefing on what was characterized at the time as an interim audit report from the Auditor General, primarily looking at human resources issues. That suggested to me that a number of areas needed to be examined and strengthened in terms of how we conducted our business and our relationship with the department. Administratively, there was work to be done, and we commenced doing it.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Maybe I'd better clarify here. You said that part of it was working well. Are you saying that both the human resources aspect of it and the administrative aspect of it were working well?

[Howard Sapers]

No. What I said was that in terms of our legislative mandate, which is to investigate and resolve offender complaints and to bring systemic issues in corrections to Parliament's attention, it was working well. During the audit period, for example, the office completed over 40,000 reviews of inmates' complaints.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

So in spite of the issues that the Auditor General was saying...the work outcomes, as far as investigations go, were okay. Do you agree with the Auditor General's observations regarding the human resource and administrative aspects of the audit?

[Howard Sapers]

I found there were many systems that needed to be improved. At the same time, there were some minor comptrollership issues that were going government-wide and that we were a part of. We set about working on those issues. There have been several improvements in terms of financial administration and human resources management.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Okay. That's great.

Ms. Hurtubise, how is it possible, with everything that we see here in this audit, that a performance award of $41,000 was given to Mr. Stewart in the midst of all this? We have absolutely no performance reviews, I believe, of his position. He said he was never trained in any of the responsibilities he was supposed to do. How would it be that he would receive this kind of bonus?

[Suzanne Hurtubise]

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Stewart was a Governor in Council appointee. I think I need to pass the question to my colleague from the Privy Council Office.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you.

[Marc O'Sullivan]

Because Mr. Stewart was heading a quasi-judicial position during the period of the audit, he was not getting performance pay. In fact, what he was getting was management pay for his management responsibilities.

There had been case law in the late 1980s that indicated there was a problem for the government to award performance pay to a person holding a quasi-judicial position or a position requiring independence, such as an ombudsman-like function. Therefore the government moved to a new regime in the early 1990s for heads of quasi-judicial bodies or bodies that had independent investigatory functions. The person, instead of receiving performance pay, was receiving management pay, which was not variable. It was basically half of the maximum performance pay available to a person in a similar non-quasi-judicial position.