Public Accounts Committee on March 26th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I want to thank all the witnesses for their appearance here today and for taking the questions. The committee will take the matter under advisement, and we will be issuing a report in due course.

Colleagues, we're now going to proceed to the motion Mr. Wrzesnewskyj made at the last meeting that the protocol we've developed over the last number of months be adopted by the committee. I will read it:

That the Protocol for appearance of Accounting Officers before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, be adopted by this Committee as the interim protocol governing the appearance of Accounting Officers before this Committee pending the adoption of a final Protocol and that it be tabled in the House of Commons as the Thirteenth report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

I am prepared to entertain five interventions of two minutes each. Then I'd like to put the vote.

Would anybody like to comment?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Yes. I'd like to go on the speakers' list, unless Mr. Wrzesnewskyj wants to introduce his motion.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

No, I'm fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

We'll allow you, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, to go ahead first, and then we'll go to Mr. Poilievre.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I think the motion itself makes it quite clear what we're moving. We had a full discussion around this topic in accountability and a very detailed report from Mr. Franks. I would like to see this motion passed.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

Mr. Poilievre, do you have a comment?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Yes.

I don't understand why we don't entertain the motion that Mr. Sweet provided to invite discussion with the President of the Treasury Board. We are publishing a report without hearing a single solitary witness, other than the author of the report, which is very unusual for this committee. Normally we do hear from other witnesses to hear conflicting viewpoints, and then we allow the committee to be the judge of what we heard. We usually do that by reviewing clause by clause, instead of just taking the entire document, passing it whole, and sending it off to Parliament. It seems as though we've paid a consultant to do our thinking for us, and now our goal is just to get it out as quickly as possible, before it can be scrutinized in any way whatsoever. I find the process to be very unusual.

I know, Mr. Chair, that perhaps there's a desire to flex muscles and wave fists and show a sign of strength, but this is not the way to do it.

At the same time, I have always believed in ministerial responsibility. It's the cornerstone of our democratic system. It means that ministers are responsible to Parliament for their actions and that they can't scapegoat public servants for their behaviour. There are aspects of this report that would allow politicians to scapegoat public servants rather than take responsibility for their own behaviour.

Normally it's the opposition demanding that ministerial responsibility be upheld, but in this situation it's the government that's trying to defend ministerial responsibility and the opposition, through this motion, is taking it away and assigning that responsibility to bureaucrats. Mr. Chair, the reality is that the accounting officer is not accountable to this committee; the accounting officer is accountable before this committee. It is the minister who is responsible. There's nothing you can do, Mr. Chair, to--

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

We'll move to Mr. Williams.

Mr. Williams, you have the next intervention.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The only intervention I really want to make is that I have a lot of arguments in favour of the report, but I don't know that the correspondence dealing with this report has actually been tabled before the committee. You can check with the clerk.

I'm looking at a letter from C.E.S. Franks dated February 23, 2007, and I'll just quote one sentence:

Though I have had the assistance of many persons in preparing this draft, the final decisions on its contents and form are mine, and I accept full responsibility for any faults in it.

When I look at the report, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Franks is noted as the consultant, but this is his report. Now, I would have thought this report would have been a one-page report from the public accounts committee saying we're pleased to table a report from Professor Franks, who has given us advice, and we've accepted his advice--rather than in essence plagiarizing his report, because we haven't given him any credit for it. With that editorial change--if it is an editorial change--I think we should proceed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Okay.

Ms. Sgro is next, and then Mr. Christopherson. I'm sorry, David, I recognized Judy first.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

You talk in your motion about a revised draft. The report we got from Mr. Franks answers everything the committee has worked on for months when you talk about accountability. The fact that it differs from what PCO would like--well, that's just life. The report is here. I think we should move as quickly as possible and adopt it. Let's table it in the House. Let's get moving with it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Go ahead, Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I share the views of my colleague Ms. Sgro.

I look at the letter from the President of the Treasury Board, dated March 13, and it seems to me the relevant sentence is at the end of the third paragraph on page 2, where it says:

Nevertheless, the purpose of the accounting officer's appearance is to support the Minister's, and ultimately the government's, accountability for the way departments and agencies are managed.

This is not a nuanced difference. That is 180 degrees different from what we're saying. We are saying something very different.

And in terms of sending Mr. Franks, I did not agree that the notion of sending a hired consultant to meet with a politician, to negotiate, was the right way to go anyway.

It seems to me, and I agree with Ms. Sgro, based on the argument that we've been dealing with this for months and months and months.... I think this was initiated not long after the class of 2004 came in, and probably Mr. Williams can talk about times before, when this actually got its initial momentum. We're here now. This is not the time to suddenly get shy and to get caught up.

I understand where the government members are coming from. It would be interesting, if they were on this side, to hear what the arguments might be. I hear what they're saying, but I'm not hearing anything strong enough, Mr. Chair, in a non-partisan way, that suggests we should deviate from the course we've set with all-party support. All along we've been all but unanimous at every step. You've provided excellent leadership, Chair, since you've been in office, and Mr. Williams did before you.

Now is the moment of truth. Now is not the time to back away. We're there. And the fact that the executive branch of government doesn't like it--too bad. It's just too bad.

Parliament speaks on this. Parliament decides what the rules of the game are at Parliament's committees. So I think, Chair, that it's time to close this in terms of work. It's no longer a work in progress. I realize you used that term.

We can always amend any policy. On the policy that is there in front of us, today is the day we adopt it and tell the government that this is the way it's going to be. And that's not about pounding tables and trying to get headlines. That's just about making sure we don't go through the nonsense we went through earlier, which happens over and over and over, where you start to get close to where you think you're going to get, where the accountability is, and somebody says, “Oh, I wasn't there”, or they start to say, “That was government policy and that's as much as I can comment on”. Now is the time. Pass this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you.

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, and then Mr. Fitzpatrick. Then I'm going to call the question.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Chair, I move that the question be put.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chairman. I believe we had a speaker over here. Mr. Wrzesnewskyj has already spoken. Can we not hear from—

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

He's not speaking again, so we'll have Mr. Fitzpatrick, and we'll call Mr. Sweet, too, and then we'll call the question.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Right. I want to clarify a few points here.

At one point we were going to have Mr. Franks meet with the Treasury Board people and try to iron out the differences. Now we're saying on this committee that it would be terribly wrong for Mr. Franks to meet with the President of the Treasury Board. I'm a little puzzled at the logic and the rationale of that position, with all due respect. They're not consistent whatsoever in any shape or form. That was Mr. Franks' strategy. He stated he was frustrated because he wasn't getting cooperation.

We're suggesting, before we plunge into this sort of thing and make it our report, to take that one little step and try that route. But for some unknown reason this would just be terrible and wrong.

There is another point I'm going to raise. There are some flaws with the process here. I've been on this committee for a long time. I've never had a third-party consultant file a report in a committee where we endorse it as our report and file it back to Parliament without going through the study of going clause by clause before we finally approve that.

There are some things in Mr. Franks' report that I don't agree with. I've looked at the legislation. It says, “accountable before Parliament”, not “to Parliament”. And if you actually read what Mr. Franks is proposing in some sections there, he's going well beyond just being answerable to Parliament. He's saying accountable in the full scope of it, which is beyond what the legislation is saying.

Furthermore, if you get into the history of this matter, one of the most important features of accounting officers is to have a mechanism to make deputy ministers accountable if they're put in an untenable position. The legislation is enacted that the teeth are in the legislation.

That's probably the key point about this whole accounting officer matter, which is to avoid the sponsorship thing and to put deputy ministers on the spot.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Okay, Brian. We're going to move this.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I think these are all relevant points we should take seriously. I'm not going to just slam-dunk a report without changing a sentence or going through one sentence of this report without our guiding and analyzing it. I think if we endorse that, we're really becoming voting machines for third-party consultants. This is an issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Sweet has the floor.

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

Mr. Chairman, I put this motion before the committee today because I believed our pursuit was to make sure we knew how the new Federal Accountability Act and everything that had been discovered by the Gomery report would function in a new light of accountability.

Dr. Franks had previously wanted to meet on several occasions in order to have a more fulsome report himself. The people at the Treasury Board are going to be the people we deal with all the time. We're talking about having a more fulsome participation in this report so we can table it. Right now, all we have is the report prepared by the consultant that we hired, and we just put our cover on it.

So, as I did before, I'm suggesting that you send a letter directly to the President of the Treasury Board insisting that he meet with Dr. Franks. I think that, frankly, Dr. Franks has a strong enough character to not be bamboozled or persuaded, as some people suggested in the last meeting, but rather to determine areas that he may not have fully investigated, where there might be some nuances, where there might be some additional text added to this report.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sweet.

That's the end of the list, colleagues. I'm prepared to put the vote.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

A point of order, Mr. Poilievre.