Public Accounts Committee on May 16th, 2007

[Sheila Fraser]

No. This is the reporting schedule for the current year. We have a panel, and we've asked three people to serve on it to review our environmental practice. As part of that, we are going to ask them to look at how we report our audits in the environmental area. We will be discussing that with this committee as well as the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development to get parliamentarians' views.

There will be consultations and interviews with parliamentarians over the summer on this issue. We haven't decided, going forward, if we will maintain a separate commissioner's report or if we will modify that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Has there been a new commissioner appointed?

[Sheila Fraser]

There is an interim commissioner, Mr. Thompson. We are waiting for the panel report, which is expected by the end of October, in order to determine the competencies and profile required for the next commissioner. Then we will begin a search process this fall.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much.

Monsieur Laforest.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good afternoon, Ms. Fraser and gentlemen.

Ms. Fraser, part 8 of the report you are presenting today indicates that certain language objectives should have been met in March 2007. According to these objectives, all assistant auditors general and senior directors, as well as 75% of other directors, were to meet language requirements in March 2007. But the report does not indicate that these objectives were met, as the numbers are different. In fact, it is only 62% for the first group, whereas it should be 100%, and it is 58% for the second group, when it should be 75%. So there is a fairly significant gap between the objectives and the results.

Can you tell us why the objectives in the area of bilingualism were not met? When do you think they will be met?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes, Mr. Chairman. I just want to point out that for the first group, the actual result is 82%, rather than 100%. That was the gap at the end of March 2007.

It is true that we did not meet our objectives. We knew from the outset that they were ambitious, because at the time we set our objectives, the percentage was probably under 50%.

So we invested a lot in training for our staff. We spent about $500,000 per year on training, which does not include the time staff took off work. We met with a certain degree of success. Of course, we were not as successful as we would have hoped. Furthermore, we were much more selective in hiring new employees.

As far as the second group is concerned, it is unfortunate, but we lost several bilingual employees who either retired or left for other organizations. As a result, our numbers decreased.

We are maintaining the same objectives; we just have to meet them. Of course, we will continue to provide training for each group within our office. We have training plans for every employee who has not met the hoped-for results. We have not set another deadline, but we will continue to do so.

What often happens is that there is so much work that people just don't have time for language training. Intense training can last several months. What sometimes happens is that an employee who is on language training gets called back to work.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

I did not mean to shed any doubt on the efforts your office is making to meet its objectives. However, you set objectives which were not met. Are employees aware of these objectives? Are there any consequences for individuals who don't meet language requirements?

[Sheila Fraser]

In some cases, yes. Over the last few years, we hired people on the condition that they meet language requirements within a period of two years. As the employer, we are also responsible for ensuring that our staff receives the training they require. There are a few people who have these conditions attached to their jobs. Some people were also promoted on the condition that they meet certain requirements. If a person has no reasonable excuse, such as illness, to meet language requirements, they might lose their position or promotion.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

All right. That can happen. We certainly hope it doesn't. However, when there is a policy—

[Sheila Fraser]

People are very aware of the situation. Each employee has an individual training plan and there are fairly frequent progress evaluations.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

In your opening statement, you talked about the resources available to you. The Office of the Auditor General has a budget of $80.6 million. You plan on accomplishing the following: 28 management audits of departments, secondary audits and territorial performance audits such as for the Yukon territory, etc.

In your budget forecasts, do you set aside money for audits which you may be asked to do, as probably happens on a regular basis, by the Public Accounts Committee for instance, on very specific issues?

[Sheila Fraser]

If we do receive such a request, we simply shuffle the work around. For example, the government asked us to audit the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec. We expect to present the report by the end of June. But to do this, we had to move around other projects, because we had to call on people who were doing other work. It is not always easy. Sometimes we can hire people on a contract basis, but generally speaking, we just reorganize our work.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

It is not only a matter of financial resources, it is also a matter of human resources.

[Sheila Fraser]

It's a question of human resources and also of expertise. As often happens when we get that kind of request, Parliament wants to see results fairly quickly. So we have to change our planning and delay other work.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

I would like to come back to the objectives in the area of language requirements. Are there any measures which have been announced or set for employees other than those I mentioned earlier, namely assistant auditors general and senior directors?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes, we focused on those two groups, but we also provide language training to our professional staff. I would say that the vast majority of support staff are already bilingual, but we did not set the same objectives for them because government policy targets managers. However, people are smart enough to know that if they want to climb the ranks of management, it is in their interest to become bilingual first.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Monsieur Laforest.

Mr. Sweet, seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome back. I was happy to see in your remarks that your reports will line up a little better with our timing. We'll be able to be more efficient, so thank you for that.

You also mentioned in your opening remarks that one of the challenges is trying to find people with the right credentials, qualified personnel. You also have quite a high percentage of people qualifying for retirement come 2009 as well.

I guess I just want to get some comfort that the program you've set up is aggressive enough to compensate for your regular attrition, as well as this balloon that's coming, and the fact that you're in a very competitive atmosphere as well.

[Sheila Fraser]

We have been I think pretty successful over the past year or two years. We in fact have grown the office by about 40 people. When we calculated last year, we had hired something like 100 people, which is a lot in an office of 600.

We are noticing, and we don't know if it's going to be maintained, that our attrition rate is going down. It was going up; it was around 14.5%, which we found worrisome. We've noticed that it seems to be coming down, hopefully due to some of the measures we've been taking.

We went back and did a lot of work. Our human resources people did a lot of work on analysis of the employee survey and found that people were wanting more job diversity or challenge. We've actually set up a unit with two people in it, which is part of the funding request, to do better tracking of assignments, career planning for people, making sure they get the kind of experience they want.

Is that helping? We would hope so. It is still a very competitive market, though. We are having success bringing people in at the entry level, but it's then keeping them; they are very much in demand by other government departments.

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

The real balloon is at the executive level coming up to 2009. Would a substantial amount of those 100 hires have executive capability?

[Sheila Fraser]

A small number. We tend to promote from within, but a few have come in. We have one assistant auditor general, actually, who came in from a crown corporation in the last year. We had one previously who came in from a department. But we tend to promote more from within and bring people in at sort of the principal level. We've had a few come in that way. We would like to do more of that, if we could. We have people coming in on secondment for a couple of years.

We need to do more of that, but we have to make sure we get the right people in, yes.

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

Who is the select group that will do the peer review? You'd mentioned before that there won't be a performance audit but there will be a peer review. Your office is quite highly esteemed, so who actually has the credentials to do that?

[Sheila Fraser]

The last time we had it done it was by four audit offices, led by the National Audit Office of Great Britain. The audit offices of France, Norway, and the Netherlands participated.

We would go back to our colleagues to do it, just as, for example, we did a peer review of the GAO in the U.S. They have a requirement to do one every three years. They've asked us to lead it again.

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

So it was a reciprocal agreement?

[Sheila Fraser]

Actually we were the first to do it under this model of several countries participating in this. There are many countries now who have done this; there was the U.S. and Norway, and we will be participating in the one with New Zealand. Denmark has been doing it. Even the European Court of Auditors is thinking about doing one as well. So it's becoming a bit of a trend to do these peer reviews.