Public Accounts Committee on April 15th, 2008

[Leonard Edwards]

Well, I can't speak for the seven or eight years. Let me just comment.

I think that what we have here from the Auditor General is an extremely useful evaluation and criticism of our system inside the department. It has provided us with a valuable piece of advice about what we need to fix. As a deputy, I would regard any report by the Auditor General as a starting point for fixing something.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That I appreciate, and I don't doubt the value of Ms. Fraser's work and the sincerity with which you look at it. I've seen the reports before; I've seen government, with all great sincerity, address them before. Yet the effectiveness, and not necessarily just in your department but in other departments, has been wanting. There's an initial energy and enthusiasm, but yet, whether because of silo effect or lack of funds, we return to the table four, five, eight years hence and have another deputy minister saying that this is a great auditor's report, and we're going to get right at it—here's our first step at it. And we return to the same conversation.

What I'm trying to find out is whether there is a mechanism being considered to show throughout your department the seriousness of this, and that if it's not performed and if certain markers are not hit, then the consequences are on performance reviews, on financial remuneration—something to give us assurance in the House of Commons that this thing will actually happen.

[Leonard Edwards]

First of all, I think that senior managers such as deputy ministers will take audit reports very seriously. I hope the report card we have provided today indicates that we have taken the last report very seriously.

Second, as the Auditor General has said, the ability of deputies to respond to these reports is limited by a number of factors, one of which is the availability of financial wherewithal to be able to do some of these things. There are the internal regulations and negotiations that are often required to deal with them. These may affect the speed with which some of these things are done.

Then finally, there could well be the Auditor General coming back and having another look at human resources a year or so down the road to see how we responded to that report; that's a form of sanction, I guess, if you say you're going to get a report card. There's this committee's work, which is certainly ensuring that these reports are followed up with action and so on. Finally, within the government there is what the Auditor General referred to: the performance review systems, which are pretty clear as to what public servants are expected to do when faced with a challenge like this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Cullen and Mr. Edwards.

We're going to go to Mr. Wrzesnewskyj and then Mr. Williams for three minutes each. That really is only a one-minute question and a two-minute answer, not a three-minute question.

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Edwards, coming back to the language issue, the department noted 180 positions that have a local language requirement, which seems like a strangely low number to me, but once again 16%—which anyone would, as a measure, see as a very low failing grade—actually meet those language requirements. When you extrapolate it, this means that 29 diplomats actually meet the language requirement.

We live in a country of 30 million people in which more than seven million have a first language other than English and French. There were two parts to your answer to the question previously: you said you were going to look at whether or not you should lower that number of 180, and I think that's a wrong type of approach; but you said you've reached out into our multicultural communities for recruitment.

How have you been reaching out? I've seen other government departments advertising in the multicultural press. I've never seen your department doing it. How in fact are you doing that reaching out?

[Leonard Edwards]

Actually, you're making a very good suggestion in the course of your question, because we are in the process of designing our recruitment program for the autumn, which I would certainly like to see have much broader advertisements, such as the kind you are referring to, so that we are in fact reaching into the local communities a lot.

Traditionally what we have done is, I think, rather limited. We have gone to university campuses basically and tried to recruit from some very traditional sources—the political science departments, arts departments, the law schools, commerce, and so on—to attract people. I think we need to be much more inclusive in our outreach to get people interested in working in the department.

The interesting thing is that we have no shortage of people who want to work for our department; we have thousands of applicants each year. But are we getting the right applicants? That's the question I have.

I think you've put your finger on an important point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

Mr. Williams, three minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to continue on where you cut me off, but that's okay.

Ms. Laurendeau, we unfortunately lost a foreign service officer in Afghanistan. It was identified that we had a problem with our death and dismemberment insurance policies, yet it took a whole year for the Treasury Board to give authority to the deputy minister to get the issue fixed, while we still had foreign service officers in Afghanistan doing very dangerous and difficult work on behalf of Canada. Yet it takes the Treasury Board a year to get around to delegating the authority. Why?

[Hélène Laurendeau]

There are a couple of things. The good thing is that now we have put the mechanism in place.

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

Why the year? That's my question. Why did it take a whole year?

[Hélène Laurendeau]

The biggest reason was the fact that because we already had, as I said earlier, a five-level security continuum, we needed to make sure we were not doubling existing authorities. From the moment we came to the conclusion that we were not, we freed up the authority to actually do what needed to be done.

Looking forward, the second thing we've done is keep the mechanism in place. Should we face a similar situation and need to react more quickly, we will have the capacity to do so when the need occurs.

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

Following up on that same issue, if we happen to lose a foreign service officer--and I hope we never do--in some other part of the world that has not been designated by you as a war zone, are the families going to get short-changed?

[Hélène Laurendeau]

Rest assured there are protections that currently exist.

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

So one, two, three, four, five, plus the extra bonus for the war zone. But if we lose a foreign service officer in a hot spot that later on turns out to be a war zone, it seems to me, because you're caught up in the rules, that it'll be too bad, so sad for that family, because you haven't designated it a war zone.

I'm trying to say that when we lose a foreign service officer, it is bad for Canada and absolutely tragic and horrific for their family, and they should get what they deserve. It seems to me that the Treasury Board is coming along after the fact and saying, “We'll change our policy now that we see things are going off the rails.” I want to know there's an assurance, before things happen, that we are there for our people.

[Hélène Laurendeau]

That is why we are constantly reassessing what we have in place in order to make sure that in particularly difficult areas we have the level of protection. The delegation, as it is, can be used by the deputy minister in areas where he feels it is needed, and if there are extra measures that need to be done, we have put the capacity in place to actually react more quickly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

Thank you, Madame Laurendeau.

That concludes the questions. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank all of the witnesses who appeared before us today. This is a very important and challenging issue facing not only Foreign Affairs but probably every department and agency in government.

Before we conclude, I'm going to invite the witnesses to make any concluding remarks, if they have any.

Mrs. Fraser, I'll start with you.

[Sheila Fraser]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the committee for their interest in this report. As you said, it is a very important issue. And as the deputy alluded to, at some future point we will be going back to do a follow-up audit to see what progress has been made.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Edwards, do you have any final comments?

[Leonard Edwards]

Not really. Again, I'd like to thank the committee for its interest in this very important matter. We are going to be moving forward with our transformation agenda, and this will feature as an important part of it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Madame Laurendeau, do you have anything to say?

[Hélène Laurendeau]

I would like to thank the committee members and you, Mr. Chair, for the very important questions raised today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Again, thank you very much.

There is another committee coming here at one o'clock, so I will adjourn now. We'll deal with the steering committee minutes on Thursday.

The meeting is adjourned.