Public Accounts Committee on May 14th, 2009

[Sheila Fraser]

Allow me first to comment on the $300 million. I think it's important for the committee to realize that National Defence does not have the same capacity as other departments to carry over amounts from one year to the next. As a rule, the departments can carry over up to 5% of amounts, but National Defence is limited to an absolute amount of $200 million, which accounts for about 1% of its budget.

So very rigorous financial planning and management must be exercised in order to remain within the 1%, which the department cannot exceed. This is why we say that National Defence should have a more sophisticated system, especially since more money is granted to this department, its capital projects are going to last for several years and large amounts are involved.

As far as planning is concerned, there are operational plans for operations, but there isn't a plan that integrates all these operational plans and is linked with the defence strategy. This follow-up of strategy through to operational plans is what is missing, and more attention must be given to the assessment of risk in achieving plan objectives.

If these evaluations are done individually, then maybe not all risks are taken into account, such as the risk of not having enough human resources to do everything. So it's important for there to be an overall plan that is quite consistent with the strategy.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

So what you're saying is that the 1994 White Paper on Defence, the 2020 Strategy published in 1999, the Defence Policy Statement of April 2005, the separate announcements by the government since 2006, none of that can be found in a single consolidated plan in which all activities are listed.

[Sheila Fraser]

There is the "Canada First" strategy, which was produced in 2005, but we expect that this strategy should be linked to operational plans for each of the various parts of National Defence, that there should be an overall plan encompassing the whole thing.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Right. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Madame Faille.

Mr. Christopherson, you have seven minutes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you again for coming today.

I'd like to begin with chapter 1. There are two parts to it. I'll deal with the substantive matter first and then maybe go to the process one.

If I'm understanding the trail properly, there was a commitment made by the federal government of the day to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, in 1995, that we were going to move to gender-based analysis. We made that commitment in 2005.

Then in 2007 and 2008, we were making reports and comments in front of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, bragging about the fact that this was one of the elements we were initiating as a government and as a country to help Canadian women. Yet you found that it's not happening anywhere near the degree it should; those are my words.

So we have a commitment made in 1995. We have bragging going on in 2007 and 2008. Yet when we look in between, it's not happening.

I'm pretty sure that this will be one that we'll call in. I can't imagine that we will let this go by without bringing it in for a hearing.

I'm a little confused about this; it looked as though they started out well, with the justice department. When I read that I thought, wow, this is serious. They're getting the training in place and everything else.

Then they dissolved it. Now we're back to....

Can you flesh that out a little? What did they do? Why did it work? Do you have any notion of why it disappeared?

Did they replace it with...obviously they didn't, but what were they thinking they were replacing it with that was going to do as good a job?

[Sheila Fraser]

Thank you, Chair.

Many of the comments the member has made are obviously reflected in our text and are correct. There was a commitment made in 1995. There have been reports given over the years by the federal government noting the implementation of gender-based analysis.

We note in here the progress, or some of the actions, that some departments took over the years. And you're correct that the Department of Justice was one of the first to actually start implementing gender-based analysis and similar practices in their work. They had a special unit, actually. I think we indicate here that there were over 50 specialists in the department and an advisory committee.

What we note is that they disbanded those units with the belief that this should be integrated throughout the department's work and should become part of ongoing, normal operations. Yet it seems that, because of that happening, it has lost momentum. Even if there were a lot of tools and things developed, without that perhaps more specialized group that perhaps kept attention on it, the tools are not being used and people are not being trained as much as we would expect. So it really has lost momentum.

I don't know that we can really point to any other reason except the fact that it was to be rolled out across the department, and perhaps there was nobody actually still promoting it and ensuring that it continued to be done.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I know that this is a tough question, but did you get a sense, or did your investigators get a sense, that they really believed they could let go with the one hand because they had it in hand with the other? Or was there a sense that they let go and there really wasn't a sort of legitimate attempt to replace it? It was impressive, what they had put in place, and it broke my heart to read that they had dissolved it.

I quote further from page 12, section 1.27 of your report.:

However, since the Department’s adoption of its integrated model in 2004, GBA training is no longer provided. Employees who joined the Department after 2004 may not have the knowledge or support to perform GBA. The Department has not appointed a GBA champion or monitored if employees are applying the policy consistently.

It looked like the dissolution of that unit meant the beginning of the end of this actually happening in a meaningful way in the department that was out in the lead.

Hopefully colleagues will agree that we can bring that in.

The second part of this one is the whole issue of your ability to get material, and we talked about this when we had the in camera initial presentation, when you tabled it earlier this week. We know that we've adjusted your mandate in the past to avoid these kinds of things, and I think a lot of us believed, okay, the final hurdle has been overcome. Yet again we're hearing that you're not able to get the information.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're still not trying to see documents that governments of all political stripes don't want you to see--private cabinet documents--which is fair ball under our system. That's cool. But you do believe there is a way of providing a template, a form, that would allow you to see the analysis that's been done and to extrapolate from that without damaging confidentiality. That would allow you to analyze and determine whether this analysis is taking place.

Is that correct?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes.

I think it would be perhaps worthwhile, Chair, to have a discussion with the committee on this issue.

In the gender-based analysis, particularly, we were looking at the process that these analyses go through. An important part of the process, to us, is the challenge function that is done by the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Privy Council Office. There's an analyst somewhere in either one of those departments who challenges to see the following: Has the analysis been done? Has it been done rigorously? Has it been considered in the policy? Is it built into the policy options?

We were told that those analyses take place, but that the only documentation or evidence that they do is in the recommendation to ministers, which, of course, we don't see. We believe there should be some documentation of that challenge function within those departments. Quite frankly, how do people know that it's ever occurred if it's not...?

We're not asking for a tome. We're not asking for 50 pages. But there isn't even an e-mail on this. It's a little astounding.

The government is quite adamant that they disagree with us. They believe it would be too onerous to do this documentation. They indicated in certain periods, for example, in budget proposals, that the timelines were very short, they might not have the time. We can probably understand in certain circumstances that may occur, but I just can't believe there can't be some documentation of this challenge function.

That's where the issue is: they indicate to us that it is largely verbal, and that the only indication it is done at all is in the recommendation to the ministers.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Thanks, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Christopherson.

Mr. Saxton, seven minutes.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Madam Auditor General, and your colleagues, for coming in here again today.

I would also like to focus on chapter 1, dealing with gender-based analysis. First of all, under the section, “Why it’s important”, I want to commend you on using, as an example, cardiovascular disease, as it's the number one killer of women, yet it's not recognized as such.

As a director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of B.C. and Yukon, this is an issue that I am familiar with. I'm happy to say that the president of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of B.C. and Yukon, Bobbe Wood, introduced the Heart Truth program, which in fact is bringing this to people's attention: the concern over why, despite the fact that heart and stroke disease is a major killer in women, it's not recognized as such, and therefore not enough resources have been dedicated to that. So I appreciate your using that example.

Now, I notice, as my colleague Mr. Christopherson mentioned, the Government of Canada at the time, in 1995, first committed to a gender-based analysis system, yet, for example, in the Department of Finance, nothing was done until 2005--or at least that's the impression I got.

I just want to ask you, what did happen during those 10 years--mostly under the previous government, I should add--to this gender-based analysis, in particular with the Department of Finance? Did anything happen?

[Sheila Fraser]

Thank you, Chair.

We only looked at the actions of the certain departments that we had picked for this particular audit. I can't talk generally about what happened in government.

But it is correct, and we note in the report, that the Department of Finance started to implement a gender-based framework only in 2005. We note in the report, in exhibit 1.3, that they now have actually most of the elements of the framework in place.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Okay. Is there anything more you want to add about what the Department of Finance has done in the last three and a half years to put those in place?

[Sheila Fraser]

As we noted in the report, they do have a policy and a commitment in place. They have defined roles and responsibilities of the various people involved in this. They've appointed a champion at the assistant deputy minister level, and provided training.

So they have taken many of the actions that we would have expected the department to put in place. The only element that is left to do is sort of an evaluation of that, to see if it is actually working as effectively as would be expected.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Okay.

Do you know what triggered the change in 2005? Nothing's been done for 10 years. All of sudden, something gets done. What precipitated that? What was the catalyst? Do you know?

[Sheila Fraser]

I don't know, I'm sorry.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

All of a sudden it just happened in 2005.

[Sheila Fraser]

I'm sure government would be happy to tell you what precipitated that, but I don't know.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

You don't know. Okay, thank you.

You also state in your report that Transport Canada doesn't have a GBA system because they consider their work neutral. Could you give us an example of when Transport Canada would need to have a GBA system, or would need to consider GBA?

[Sheila Fraser]

Mr. Chair, I'm not an expert in this area, but I could think of things like regulations over seat belts. There could be differences between men and women in size and how they're installed.

I'm sure there would be other ones. It's just that we would have at least expected in the department, if they don't have a framework in place, that there would be some documentation as to why not. If they really felt that it wasn't appropriate for various policy initiatives, there could be just a note. In the Treasury Board submissions and all the rest of it, that is now supposed to be there.

So we would have expected some recognition of that and we didn't see that in the Department of Transport.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

On page 28, paragraph 1.71, you write, and I quote, “The central agencies have training initiatives for their analysts, but these were introduced 10 years after the 1995 commitments.”

This is in regard to the central agencies. Again, what happened in those 10 years under the previous Liberal government in this agency? Did anything happen at all?

[Sheila Fraser]

I really can't talk about what happened over that period of time. But as noted, Finance began in 2005, the Treasury Board Secretariat began the training in 2005-06, and the Privy Council Office did as well. Obviously, there has been more activity since 2005 in the central agencies at that level.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

How are things today in the central agencies? Have they improved a lot since 2005?

[Sheila Fraser]

We do sort of an audit at a point in time, so we don't do a lot of comparison over time. But we certainly note in the exhibit that the central agencies do have many of the elements in place. Like many of the issues that we've raised, the evaluation has not been done.

Again, we come back to the issue of the challenge function. We are not able to assess if that challenge function is being done and how well it's being done. So that to us is a bit of a question mark at this point because of the way the challenge isn't documented. But for their own activities, many of the elements of the framework we would expect to see are in place.