Public Accounts Committee on May 7th, 2009

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Chair, you're seeking consensus here to write a letter to the deputy minister, to respond as to what has taken place since the auditor's report. So it's like his action plan: what have they done to address the issues or concerns raised? Is that what you are planning to get from him?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I think that's a fair comment. It would be a letter to the deputy minister identifying the auditor's report that was issued in May of 2007, I'd say, and asking if there are any developments or facts the deputy minister wants to share with the committee before the committee writes and tables its final report. We would allow the deputy four weeks to do that. Then we would take that into consideration.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Would that be included in a supplementary report?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

No. We would have that in front of us when we do the report.

I'm going to read recommendation 2, which is that the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade include in its annual report on plans and priorities a discussion, and so on. If the deputy says they issued their report last year and had a full discussion on that issue, then we probably wouldn't make that recommendation. That's an example.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I wouldn't agree with that, because it distorts the historical context of the report. That's new information.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Can I make a friendly suggestion? I think I understand where Mr. Kramp is coming from. These are recommendations made on a report in 2007 and life has gone on. Sometimes it doesn't go on, and sometimes the departments don't move. If we had made a recommendation that said Public Works should, by so and so.... Did they ever provide the public accounts committee with the status report that we had asked them for on December 31, 2008? I'm looking at recommendation 2, for example. If they haven't, then when they came before committee, you might have asked them for something like that. If they haven't, what is he going to tell us now?

If the deputy minister says “Yes, we have a status report”, then I think you can insert it underneath, as an update, stating that “as of this date, the deputy minister has advised us that he has done this”. So you have the recommendation, because it relates to a case in point, but then you have an update under that recommendation, which would allow us.... If that's the way, if we want to progress, I am flexible with it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

You want to know whether they provided the public accounts committee with a status report by December 31, 2008. They haven't seen that, so there's no--

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I know that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I'd be shocked if they did provide us with a report.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I just picked it out for--

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

I have to say that the more I'm thinking about it and the more we're talking about it, the less and less comfortable I am with it. We keep emphasizing the time, and I don't think that's reason enough.

There are plenty of reports--again, at least a couple come to mind--where we actually had further hearings. We had two or three follow-up hearings on Place Victoria, if you recall, one of them linking up somebody by video in Florida, and we were all over the place. But we did our work and things did change.

Some of the recommendations were stale, but if you think about it, in almost all of our recommendations where we want something done or we want a report on something that's been done, we give a deadline for when to give that report. Under the normal course of events, that would be responded to, and then we would deal with it.

The only thing that's unusual here is that the majority of the committee didn't hear the original witnesses. Really, I was just trying to be cooperative, but the more we've talked about this, I'm not sure that allowing this offsets what our problem is. They're unrelated.

I think our Liberal colleagues are making some really good points. They really are. The decision we make shouldn't change the way we do things. I was trying to find something to acknowledge that government members on both sides--because part of this is the Liberals--were willing to go ahead with the report. If you were willing to take the political heat, you probably could have forced it down, and that would be the end of it.

But it almost negates, Chair, all our recommendations. Really, if that's going to be the procedure, then we ought to have a policy statement that for anything stale-dated beyond x period of time, we go through this process where we ask for an update. But if that's not part of our usual procedures, if we're making the exception now for the reason that not everybody heard it as opposed to the reason of the time, the remedy really doesn't solve the problem.

I'm quickly hardening around the idea that the paragraph--and I'm flexible on what that might say--really is the only way we can do this and still remain true to what we do. As for the arguments about a snapshot in time and the historical record, those are all really good arguments, and they're persuading me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Shipley, and then we'll move on.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I think we need to bring it to an end one way or the other.

My point is with the paragraph...and we do this, Mr. Christopherson, in a number of reports. We say that we want to know now what has happened during six months or a year or whatever, knowing also that there's going to be another audit.

I agree with Mrs. Crombie, and I'm not asking that we change the recommendations. Those are historical. I never did suggest that. I'm just suggesting an addendum, taking the report and putting in an addendum to it, to give an update for all of us. Sure, we haven't been here.

I don't know when we've had reports that were two and a half years old. I think if we can add an addendum, a fact statement of what has changed--based on those recommendations, not changing them. Then just put that addendum to the report and we can have that discussion on it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Shipley, I'm going to interject. What the analysts, through me, proposed was not to attach any letter from the deputy minister. It was to get the letter from the deputy minister, and if there was anything relevant in the letter from the deputy minister that we might want to include to give the report context, or to say that we're pleased that since the auditor's report the government has passed legislation or has enacted policy....

But I would never want to—and again it's entirely up to the committee—just staple a report from a deputy minister.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

[Inaudible--ed]

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I think we're saying the same thing.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

It's a tenable position.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

But we'd never attach a letter from the deputy minister to the public accounts.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

However that works, in terms of taking the response that comes—

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I'm going to put it to a vote. I think we've had enough discussion. I just want direction from the committee as to whether or not the committee—

Do you have a point of clarification or an argument?

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I'm not arguing, but I think we have to agree on what we're doing.

You can't update an audit that was done three years ago with recent information. There's an historical context that is the premise of all that. To go back three years later.... Well, of course the entire world has changed in three years. They haven't responded to any of the recommendations because they haven't even gotten them yet.

It's completely revisionist. We have to take the document as it was. It's a snapshot in time based on a period of three years ago. Lots has changed since then. We'll end up rewriting the entire report.

This report has to stand. It's based on an audit. It's based on findings of the Office of the Auditor General two and a half to three years ago. Those were the findings. Those were the recommendations at the time. Anything new will have to be dealt with in a new audit.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Very briefly, Mr. Saxton.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

I just want to say that I think Mr. Christopherson makes a good point when he says perhaps the main issue is that the majority of us were not here at the time. We did not hear the hearings and the testimonies. Therefore, there is an information gap for those of us who were not present at the time.

What we're looking for is to fill that information gap. We feel this letter you suggested could help to fill that information gap for those of us who were not present at that time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Very briefly, Mrs. Crombie, 30 seconds.