Public Accounts Committee on May 27th, 2008

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

That's 10%.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Bélanger.

You may have a brief question, Mr. Lussier, very brief.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

I have two brief questions for Mr. Rigby.

First, is medical evacuation one of the consular services offered? To my knowledge, all of the costs of repatriating someone who is sick from Florida to Canada are billed to the person in question or to their family. This is the first time I've heard of the consulate providing this type of service.

Secondly, according to your statistics, you issued 1.5 million passports in 1995 and three million in 2007. Do you anticipate that these numbers will increase to five million? What are your projections?

[Stephen Rigby]

That would be a question for Passport Canada to ponder, but generally speaking, because of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, it is conceivable that five million passports could be issued in the future. That is only an estimate.

I will let my colleague answer the question about medical costs.

[William Crosbie]

Canadians have always been responsible for their medical costs. That is why we always encourage them to take out adequate medical insurance. In terms of arranging medical evacuations, our consular officers must take certain measures to facilitate these evacuations.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Do you bill for these services?

[William Crosbie]

No, we provide these services. For example, we may advise the staff of a local hospital or make some inquiries of the local government.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

I see. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Merci.

That concludes the questions. I want to thank you for your appearance here today. I'm going to invite any of the witnesses to make any concluding remarks or comments that they want to make at this point in time.

Mr. Timmins.

[Douglas Timmins]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, unfortunately Mr. Bélanger has left. He didn't really give me an opportunity to respond to his question. I would like to advise the committee that we do not have the information to give him the answer to his question. I think it would be speculation on our part.

But I would point out that within the chapter we strongly recommend that the fee should be reviewed on a regular basis, and I think that would start the process whereby they would be naturally going through some update or some change that would put them through the User Fees Act. If that were the case, then I think he would be more satisfied that those fees were being looked at on a regular basis.

I also would like, at this time, to respond to Mr. Lussier's question concerning the larger fees that we did not look at.

There are two categories of fees. We looked at some of the fees charged by certain departments. For instance, the fees charges by Citizenship and Immigration Canada total approximately $250 million. The fees charged by Passport Canada for consular services account for one third of the total fees collected, or for $230 million. Industry Canada collects about $300 million in fees.

The remaining fees are collected by departments and agencies that we have not yet audited, such as the CRTC, $175 million in fees, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, $50 million, the Canadian Grain Commission, $40 million, and the National Energy Board, $35 million. There are some 220 different fees in all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Timmins.

Does anybody else have a concluding remark?

Mr. Morgan—very briefly.

[John Morgan]

I just have a few points to make.

Another relevant legal case has just been.... There's an opinion in the court with CRTC on part II of the Broadcasting Act on broadcasting fees. The Federal Court of Appeal ruled on that just recently, recognizing that the fees the government charges are legitimate.

Secondly, there's been some question as to the applicability of the User Fees Act. Our approach has been that all those fees that meet the definition of a user fee under the act must be reported annually in departmental performance reports, and they are being reported; those 220 clusters of fees are all reported in terms of revenues, performance standards, and so on. Even though the act may not require that they be reported, we have achieved that in fact by issuing guidance and policies to departments. The particular aspects of accountability in the User Fees Act deal with only new and amended fees. So there are some distinctions within the User Fees Act itself.

My last point concerns the guide on costing. That is something we've been working on for a couple of years. We had it issued as a draft for more than a year, getting feedback. It's a very detailed document, with lots of tools for departments. It was only finalized recently. We will be supplementing that kind of guide with a suite of financial management policies that indicate the principles for good costing. One of those will be a policy on resource management.

So we are trying to strike the policies at an appropriate level and give more detailed guidance, which can then be used as a tool.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you.

Mr. Monette, Mr. Rigby, do you have anything?

The committee has one final issue. It has to do with a motion from one of our colleagues.

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for your appearance today. We will be writing a report and filing it with Parliament. Again, thank you very much.

Members, we are now going to deal with Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's motion. The motion has been circulated. Mr. Wrzesnewskyj has indicated to the clerk that the date “May 29” is to be replaced with “June 10” instead.

What I propose is to allow Mr. Wrzesnewskyj two minutes to present his motion, allow up to eight interventions of one minute each, thren go back to Mr. Wrzesnewskyj for the final minute, and then put the question.

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, you have two minutes.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Colleagues, we heard testimony about the issue of the contract for $122,000 to Mr. MacPhie, a gentleman with deep Conservative connections and ties. We heard from departmental officials and we saw communications that red flags were being raised through the process. We heard admissions from Mr. Flaherty that rules were not followed, that Treasury Board rules were broken.

When we tried to find out who was at fault in this particular situation, one person kept being mentioned. Unfortunately, the person did not have an opportunity to appear as a witness before this committee to give insight. But more importantly, when blame is being laid at one person's feet, it's incumbent upon the committee to provide that person with the opportunity either to say “Yes, it was me; I am the one at fault, as the minister said. I'm the one who made these decisions” or to provide added insight. But it's clearly not fair to the individual to be blamed for something as serious as this situation.

The other person who was mentioned a number of times was Mr. Bill Horrigan, the budget director in the minister's office. His name was mentioned a number of times as the coordinator, the one who set up not only Mr. MacPhie's contract but other contracts with individuals with Conservative ties. I think this gentleman could also provide additional insight into what transpired.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

Mr. Poilievre, one minute.

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

By the end of the last round of hearings we had on this, I thought we'd all agreed the committee was totally out of gas. There was nothing more to explore. We had some committee members asking questions about unrelated--although important--matters because there was nothing more to discuss on this. There was an administrative error in the issuance of one contract, and that has been acknowledged for months. We didn't learn anything new when Minister Flaherty came. All we heard was the same thing we already knew. We've already had an apology from the Liberal finance critic on this. I'm not sure there's any more to add.

But in closing, I know Mr. Wrzesnewskyj has expressed some real concern about giving Mr. McLaughlin the ability to defend his reputation. I would say, Chair, if Mr. McLaughlin asks to come to do that, then maybe we should reconsider, but to my knowledge he has not asked. So Mr. Wrzesnewskyj is seeking to grant a favour that has not been sought.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Williams, one minute.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I understand where Mr. Wrzesnewskyj is coming from, but we are an institution of accountability. We have a protocol of accounting officers. We had the Deputy Minister of Finance here. We had the Secretary of the Treasury Board here. We had the Minister of Finance here. They accepted full responsibility for the breaking of the rules. We had a clear commitment from the Minister of Finance that it's not going to happen again.

I think about the witnesses we've just had here. None of them were directly involved in the administration of the fees, but they accept responsibility.

I really don't know what Mr. Wrzesnewskyj would hope to achieve by virtue of this, but remember we're talking about a $122,000 contract. Three very senior people in the Government of Canada acknowledged responsibility. I don't think there is anything to be gained by bringing in the minister's staff to beat them over the head.

If we think of the time we spent on a $122,000 contract, we have multi-million and multi-billion-dollar issues that need to be addressed seriously, and I think we're far better to focus our efforts on that to benefit the taxpayers of Canada rather than going after a headline of something that maybe wouldn't even get a headline by virtue of the fact it's already been disposed of.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

Mr. Fitzpatrick, one minute.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I disagreed with the call to have a minister called before this committee. It's appropriate to have the minister appear in other committees, and that happens regularly. But as Mr. Williams pointed out, we deal with the department heads and what goes on in the departments and we hold them to account. Ministers have their own responsibilities and accountability measures. It's not our job; other people do that.

Last year we got behind on the RCMP thing. I think we've been fighting all year to try to get caught up, and I think we can see the end of pipe. And lo and behold, here's a motion to bring up something I think was cleared up adequately at the last meeting. The minister has accepted responsibility.

My comments on this thing are that it seems to me that somebody is looking for big game here, but they're following rabbit droppings, if I can quote a famous person. And I really don't know where we're going here with $122,000 out of a $220-billion-plus budget.

And we've got lots of work ahead of us. The Auditor General keeps us busy, and we've got reports to get sorted out. So I don't know where this thing is going, and I think it would be a waste of our time to spend another minute pursuing this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Sweet, one minute.

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

Mr. Chairman, a lot has been said. Obviously our workload is substantial. It's important that we oversee every penny in a $122,000 contract as far as taxpayers are concerned, but we also have a duty as far as the amount of time invested and all the other priorities we have.

I think we should do exactly what Mr. McCallum said, and wait for the Ethics Commissioner if we want to do anything else. Right now this is the only time I can remember in the two and a half years I've been here when we've summoned somebody to this committee and they've said they were responsible and it wouldn't happen again. And it's a $122,000 contract. We have the minister already saying he's going to take responsibility and make sure it doesn't happen again. Let's call it a day.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Sweet.

Mr. Christopherson, one minute.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Needless to say, I've been lobbied heavily by both sides, and given there's a possibility that once again I'll be the swing vote, I've given this a lot of thought.

I don't think anybody here is going to accuse me of being shy in terms of jumping on things that I believe need to be jumped on, but I have to say that discretionary call we already made when we brought in the minister was a big step. There would have been a legitimate argument for this committee to say no, we're not going to go down that road. They could have done that and stood by that with a credible argument. But instead we went the other way, in large part because the opposition controls the committee when it comes down to crunch votes. But we did it, we held the thing.

The minister did come and acknowledge that a mistake was made. Now he calls it an administrative error. I reject that as being just a little too cute by half. But the question remains, after a minister comes in and says there's been a $122,000 mistake--his chief of staff made the mistake, he didn't know about it, he's been properly admonished, he's not even in the office any more, he's gone--is this a hanging offence? Are we going to call for a minister's resignation?

Personally, I think the climate has gotten away from ministerial responsibility and needs to come back that way a little more, but in the current climate I just don't see that. To me, at best this is another fishing expedition; at worst, it's a witch hunt. I'm not comfortable. I don't think there's enough here to warrant the next step, so I will be voting against.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Monsieur Laforest, one minute.