Public Accounts Committee on May 25th, 2010

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have no more questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Saxton.

We're going to go to the second round. It's going to be four minutes each.

Just before we go, I just want to address an issue, Ms. Biggs. When you review the performance report, it's obvious that CIDA has had some serious problems, which have been identified by the Office of the Auditor General. I think you're taking very earnest, sincere efforts to correct this, as indicated in your performance report. But CIDA, in the last eight or nine years, has had five ministers and it's had at least four presidents. It's always been the view of this committee that the tenure ought to be much longer. Imperial Oil can't operate with a new president every two years, Penn West Energy can't operate on that basis, and we don't think CIDA can either. Do you have any opinion on that point, which we've raised on a number of occasions?

The point I'm making is that you've churned the presidents every two or two and a half years, and as a result you do not have the corporate capacity or the corporate memory to really effectively and efficiently operate the agency's business.

[Margaret Biggs]

I take your point, Chair. I would also add that I think what the Auditor General's report indicated was that no matter who was at the helm, there were some weaknesses in terms of the management processes within the agency.

Although I would personally hope to stay and be able to see a lot of this through, that's not my decision. But it is my responsibility to make sure that the management processes inside the agency are sound and that the directions that are set out will stand the test of time. The kinds of things we're doing now are not really contingent upon who's the president or the minister; these are just good management practices. A government always has the right to make policy decisions about where it wants to put its effort and its emphasis, etc., and the agency would follow through on the political direction it is given. But the agency can take charge of the management issues underneath the policy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to go to the second round.

Mr. Lee, four minutes.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for opening up the envelope I actually wanted to discuss.

This has to do with who really leads the agency: who develops the strategic goals, and how do they get communicated? Because CIDA is an agency, it has a president, and there is a minister. Is there a deputy minister?

[Margaret Biggs]

Yes, that's me.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

But you are the president of an agency.

[Margaret Biggs]

It's a nomenclature issue. We are an agency, but we have a minister; we are within the portfolio of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. For your purposes at this committee, I am the deputy head, as would be the Deputy Minister of Transport or....

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

You're the accounting officer.

[Margaret Biggs]

Yes, I am the accounting officer.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

I'm just trying to establish where parliamentarians would look for the strategic direction. Normally we look to a minister, but in this case I'm getting the sense that we would look to the president of the agency, or others in management.

I commend the agency for responding to the Auditor General's report. It shows you how far you can come with a good performance audit. It can help. But you've mentioned that there's some decentralization of some functions, so I'm seeing this whole organizational flow chart mutate, and I wonder where the authority actually is. Do you feel it's on your desk, or is it your minister, or is this decentralization going to delegate the thing further away from the minister?

[Margaret Biggs]

CIDA is like another government department, and I'm the deputy head and the accounting officer. The minister and the cabinet set the policy directions for the agency, through cabinet, so the thematic priorities were approved by cabinet. As you would expect, the countries of focus were approved by cabinet. If they were to change, that would be a cabinet decision as well. Our minister has indicated that.

In our role, we would advise on those priorities and directions, but the government would make the decisions and we would implement them. The other issues are management issues. They are the follow-through on the directions we're given from the minister and from the government, so we would develop the follow-through strategies on how to implement the directions the government has given us.

On decentralization, as I indicated, we are moving forward in waves, in five countries beginning this summer, to fully decentralize our operations into the field. Those decisions have gone to our minister, but the implementation would be done by me with David and through the agency. That would be our responsibility.

The further question you asked has to do with delegations of authority. That, as with other departments, is the decision of the minister in terms of the minister's prerogative, in terms of the extent to which the delegations of authority for approvals would be delegated into the department. That's a ministerial decision.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

That is approvals for writing cheques. Have I got that right?

[Margaret Biggs]

Yes, to take the decision. The actual administration of those would be done by our officers in compliance with the FAA.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Okay. What about learning from mistakes?

It looks from the Auditor General's report as if the agency wasn't really good at doing an analysis of the effectiveness of its aid programs. What methodology has the agency generated itself or imported? I'm asking if you have imported it or have generated this yourself for the purpose of analyzing the agency's work and learning from mistakes.

[Margaret Biggs]

The Auditor General's report didn't actually look at our evaluation and performance function. The Auditor General's report looked at the extent to which the agency had followed through on its aid effectiveness plan from early 2000 or 2002 and whether or not that had been followed through in terms of actually embedding into our planning documents and our programming documents, etc.

I think the Auditor General's report shows that, although there was good work going on the ground, there were some weak links in the chain of command. We have remedied that. In terms of its evaluation performance, the agency actually has an extremely strong evaluation function, as recognized in its management accountability framework results. We do 100% evaluation of our programs. We are leaders within the OECD DAC in terms of our evaluation function, and we are trying to get joint evaluations with other donors so that we can aggregate and magnify our results and also have less transaction costs on our donor countries.

CIDA has also been very strong in terms of performance management and results-based management. Again, it's an area of strength for the agency. The Auditor General wanted to see more evidence that this is integrated into all of our planning documents, which is a very fair comment. As a function, however, we are very strong.

I would also like to add that CIDA has an independent evaluation committee drawn from people outside the agency—which is, I think, novel inside the Government of Canada—so that we can better challenge and critique ourselves and learn from our results.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Kramp, you have four minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome to all.

Like most Canadians and people around the world, we're encouraged with the government's approach to clearly establishing a priority for maternal health at the upcoming international group of meetings. You mentioned in your earlier comment, Ms. Biggs, the priorities in dealing with improvements in maternal health, be they from the various agencies or from the government itself.

Particularly from CIDA, you mentioned that you had five priorities in dealing with maternal health. Would you happen to know or could you tell this committee what those five priorities are?

[Margaret Biggs]

I'm not sure, Mr. Chair, if I said five priorities.

Maybe I'll just amplify. In terms of maternal and under-five health, if you take under-five health in terms of the leading causes of mortality, first and foremost, it's with newborns. Many of them don't survive the first 24 hours or the first 28 days, and that often is a function of not having the kind of care needed at birth.

Babies die because of—

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

Are you talking about clean water and sanitary conditions?

[Margaret Biggs]

At birth, it's really to do with having obstetrical care and that kind of care in terms of making sure that the baby survives.

In terms of under-five health, there are five leading disease--malaria, infectious diseases like pneumonia, and those kinds of things. We know what they are and we also know how to address them. The best way to address them is to do them in an integrated fashion so that all children get access to the bundle of interventions that are needed. They're very cost effective and they can be bundled together. You need a primary care worker to be able to deliver them to the children.

In terms of maternal health, we do know what the main causes of maternal mortality are, and the majority are in and around birth, again because of the lack of obstetrical care that is required to ensure there's a safe birth and safe delivery in the treatment for mothers. You can't do that with a bed net. You need to have a proper health system and the local backup for the health system so that mothers can get the kind of care they need at birth. Those are some of the main factors. Across a continuum of care it's well known internationally what the main areas of intervention are. There's a broad set of areas there. We do know what the diseases are that kill children. We do know what the main causes of maternal mortality are.

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

So you have some expertise that you're bringing to the fore to make solid suggestions as to how we should move forward.

[Margaret Biggs]

Yes, we are.

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

Fine. Thank you.

I'm going to ask you to grade yourself in layman's terms for us very quickly on a few points--A of course being excellent and D meaning failure.

The organizational weaknesses that had been identified in the Auditor General's report, in particular the one about there being “little...direction and no...targets to country desks on how and when to use program-based approaches.” How successful have you been with that?

[Margaret Biggs]

We have a program-based PBA policy now. It gives very clear direction to our agency as to when and how to use PBAs and when to stop them. I would give us a “good” because I think we have to make sure we follow through and it actually takes place--