Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 13th, 2007

[Sheila Fraser]

I would say it's pretty generally the case that they don't have good information systems. They don't have information systems, for example, on the results of secondary inspections. When someone is sent for further inspection, they don't capture what happened. It's difficult to know if you're targeting the right people if you aren't tracing that and then using that information to improve your risk targeting. That information is not being captured.

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

Okay.

Moving along to the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, from page 17, you mentioned some encumbrances that are on these 13 parcels. Could you tell me the nature of the encumbrances involved here? Are they just on title, or are there actual physical encumbrances as well?

[Sheila Fraser]

Mr. Chair, I'll ask Mr. Campbell to respond to that question.

[Ronnie Campbell, Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, there were a variety of old assets belonging to the Government of the Northwest Territories. One of them included part of an airport apron. They hadn't drawn the line where they thought they had. So there was part of an airport that was included in what they thought was land with no encumbrances.

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

All right. But they are both title and physical, in many cases?

[Ronnie Campbell]

Yes.

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

Okay.

Just on the same agreement, page 18, there's a statement about INAC in here that I find astonishing, that, “In fact, officials stated that they do not view this as the Department's responsibility.”

Was it really that blatant, that they just said it wasn't their responsibility to bring about the completion of this agreement?

[Sheila Fraser]

This is an interesting issue that we've had actually, as I mentioned, since 2003, when we looked at another agreement where we believed the department had a responsibility in helping to meet the objective of the agreement, and department officials who were actually working on the agreement told us, no, no, they only had to meet the specific requirements in the agreement. For example, if there was a requirement to hold a meeting, they would hold a meeting, but whether that meant the agreement was doing anything to meet the objectives was not their responsibility.

The department actually responded like that in 2003. Subsequent to that, the minister at the time said no, they did have an obligation, and certainly discussions with very senior officials have indicated that they believe the department has an obligation to help achieve the objectives of the agreement and not just the specific obligations. But it certainly does not seem to be the attitude throughout the department, and I think that might be worth a good discussion here in a parliamentary committee.

The other troubling thing in this report, actually, is that even though they say they believe they have a responsibility to meet the obligations, when we asked them what their obligations were under this agreement, they were unable to tell us. This agreement has been around for 23 years and they were not able to say to us specifically what the obligations were. So it shows that government does not pay enough attention to implementation. It's as if everyone thinks that when it's signed it's somehow finished, and in fact the work is just beginning.

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

Moving back to the military, on page 20 of your summary you mention that the expense per member of the military for health care is $8,600, almost double that for the public sector. I was wondering if, in your investigation, you have discovered any reasons why that was the case.

[Sheila Fraser]

We do note in the report some reasons that we believe lead to this increased cost. One is certainly just the availability of service. The department does not want its members to have to wait a very long time.

In paragraph 4.36 we have certain elements, such as numbers of physicians, the availability of physicians, the workload of the physicians, the costs to train military staff, and then the cost of physicians on contract, which are higher. So there are a number of elements, but we would have expected the department to be able to give us a rationale as to why the costs are at the level they're at and to indicate that that was an appropriate level.

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

The physicians on contract are from the public sector? They come in on a case-by-case basis, is that it?

[Sheila Fraser]

There's a contract with a third party to provide physicians to various clinics through the system.

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

Would these include the costs for psychiatric care, as far as PTSD goes, as well?

[Sheila Fraser]

Possibly. There can be physicians on contract to provide those services, but there are members referred to the public health care system as well.

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

My final question is this. Regarding this Prescription 2000, have you seen noticeable improvement from the time that was implemented in 2000 to this October 2007 date?

[Sheila Fraser]

I think the main issue we would have there is that we really didn't have the information. There were serious concerns about accessibility, and we've seen that they have put a lot of effort into trying to make the services more accessible to people.

The other issue that was brought up is continuity of care, that the member would see the same group of health care practitioners. We've seen that there has been work done there as well to try to improve that, but again, the information systems didn't provide a lot of concrete data on that.

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

So even if the work was done, there wasn't reliable access to the information to see what the follow-up work was.

[Sheila Fraser]

That's right.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Sweet.

Mr. Christopherson, eight minutes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you again for an excellent report. If anything, it's too good a report this time. There's an embarrassment of riches in here. Some are stronger than others.

I'm not going to go into the merits of each of the chapters. I felt I had adequate time to ask questions when you tabled it the last time, so I would just immediately go to commenting on the dilemma we're going to face in terms of what we want to pick here.

The difficulty is going to be that two of them deal directly with national security, which is very difficult for us to ignore--nor would we want to--and then the other one deals with the health of soldiers, which, again, is just a motherhood, top priority issue.

I hear the Auditor General's recommendations around three and seven. I don't know whether there's some way we can do truncated versions on those too, so that they don't get left off--assuming others feel the same way I do, which they may not. But that's our dilemma. I'd like to see at least those three. Those would be my choices: one, four, and five. I know we'll do that at steering committee, but perhaps we could come to some agreement to do something with three and seven, if only for the reason that it's not often the Auditor General underscores and emphasizes that we should take a look at something because there are messages inherent in the process, and not just in the findings. We want to take that to heart. Somehow, given the fact that we're probably six months behind as it is, that's not an easy undertaking.

That would be my goal--that we could in some way take a solid approach to those three and at least a relatively quick one to those two to make sure they don't get left off.

Beyond that, Chair, everything else I have to say has either been said or I'll wait for the people to be brought in.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Christopherson.

I want to remind you, Mr. Christopherson, that there are probably about eight chapters on which we've already decided to have hearings, and we haven't had the hearings on them, so we are quite a bit behind, as you know.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

There are eight from before?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I think so, yes, around that.

Just before we go to Mr. Hubbard, I have a couple quick questions for the auditor.

On the audit of small agencies, each of these small agencies would have an accounting officer designated. Is that correct?

[Sheila Fraser]

That's correct.