Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 5th, 2010

[Michael Wernick]

Yes, that is an opinion with which I disagree.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Madam Fraser, can you help me understand what I have just heard?

[Sheila Fraser]

I would like to say, Mr. Chair, that is the first time I hear the department disagreeing with the facts contained in the report. That greatly concerns me.

As was noted in our report, programs were established to monitor the cumulative impact of development. Some were established in 1998, and others expired in large part because of a lack of funds. Since that time, as we indicated, for example, Environment Canada was working to implement new management frameworks, but they were not yet in place. We also pointed out, as was the case in the departments' notes, that the funding was rather ad hoc and unstable. Today, despite the fact that funds were allocated as part of the latest budget, we maintain that they did not meet their commitments and obligations to monitor the cumulative impact in the north.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Ms. Jauvin, as part of CanNor's economic development mandate, do you ensure environmental sustainability, or does northern economic development still spoil the territories with various pollutants and thus reduce the quality of life of the local populations?

[Nicole Jauvin]

No. Of course, that is all a matter of balance. We cannot foster economic development without taking into account not only the environment, but also the impact of rapid economic growth on a community, for example. Economic development really has to be considered as part of a whole, and that is clearly one of our concerns.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Very well.

Do I still have some time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

You have time for one very brief question.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Shugart, in your presentation you stated earlier that: “We are committed to helping aboriginal people get the skills and training they need to take full advantage of job opportunities across Canada.”

That means that, on the one hand, not enough efforts are being made to ensure that Inuit and people living in the far north can actually remain there and, on the other, the labour force in the far north is being gutted because workers are forced to move elsewhere in Canada. Is that so?

[Ian Shugart]

In fact, Mr. Chair, as I have just said, it is our belief that the people living near economic development projects will be able to benefit from those developments. In other words, when economic development projects are carried out in a northern region, developers will first look to hire the local people to work on such projects. That is the underlying vision and motivation guiding all development programs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Thank you, Mr. Shugart.

Mr. Kramp.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome to our guests today. It's good to see you all.

I think it's both a good news and bad news story. It's just horrendous to see problems that have existed for 20, 30, 40 years still ongoing.

It reminds me of a few years ago when some of my colleagues were sitting around a table like this in the public accounts committe, and we were dealing with the aboriginal education file. Of course we spent eight or nine billion dollars over a few years and the results were even poorer than they were 20 years prior to that. So needless to say, it's just not acceptable and satisfactory to carry on with the progress that we have made, because it's been very little. However, I am encouraged now today when I see the report that there has been some progress in a number of areas and finally some activity and some action, but of course promises don't pay the bills.

We have some new arrangements that have been made. Perhaps, Mr. Wernick, first, with regard to multi-year funding, there was an obvious recognition that the present one-year funding wasn't doing the job. Of course a lot of the bills were coming in, and by the time the approval process got there--overdrafts, etc.--it was a horrendous story. Why did you not go to multi-year funding before? Why have you now agreed to, and to what extent will this be fully implemented?

[Michael Wernick]

That's an excellent set of questions. I may come back to education, if I can squeeze it into my first answer.

You can only put in multi-year agreements if you have a multi-year program. I cannot sign and commit funds for programs that are going to expire. Part of it is trying to stabilize the funding base of the programs. Part of it is the red tape around federal contribution programs, which was the subject of the blue ribbon panel on grants and contributions. Minister Toews announced the government response to it, and all departments that do grant contribution work will be implementing the new transfer payment policy on April 1. That creates some pretty exciting opportunities to have more stable, predictable funding agreements if you have a stable program base, and we will try to take advantage of that.

This chapter zeroed in on the funding that is given to people to prepare for self-government. We'd provide a set of loans or contributions. There are about a dozen recipients in the NWT. We're talking about somewhere between $8 million and $9 million a year. I'd be happy to table with the committee a list of who they are.

Part of the issue that comes up, and it's not an excuse, is that you cannot commit money to somebody who hasn't met the obligations in the previous year's agreement. Sometimes it's getting an audited financial statement or report on this or that, and we have people who have to enforce compliance. It does cause delays. That's one of the issues. It is a red tape kind of process, but if we had advanced funding early in the year to people who had not met the obligations under the previous agreement, we'd probably be discussing a different kind of audit finding.

We're going to try to find ways to speed this up, focus on the tables that are productive and look like they're going somewhere, and take advantage of that.

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

Pardon me, but the reason for non-compliance, for those that are not obviously able to give you one, what is the main reason that they can't give the information? Are they unable, unwilling, or not capable?

[Michael Wernick]

I can't generalize on that. It's often that it just takes time in their systems. We're dealing with very small organizations that have a lot of demands on them, a lot of staff turnover. We ask them to produce financial statements and reports on what they did.

I agree entirely, and I don't want to leave the impression that we have a big disagreement here. Ad hoc programming and annual funding is not a very good set of tools. We would like to have more stable programs and more stable agreements.

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

Okay, thank you.

I have a question for Madame Jauvin.

I'm really pleased, obviously, to see a source of both funding and program availability to address--but obviously the need. I have a concern, though. Are we just opening up another bureaucracy here? Take a look at the breakdown. The community economic development program, another community economic development program, community service report, the other business--all of a sudden, we have four or five subsections here. Why can't we consolidate? Economic development is economic development, whether it's for the community or an individual or a business. Why do we need all of this departmentalization? Are we creating another monolith up there, rather than simply an agency that can deal with one and all? Do they not need a one-stop shop up there?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Madame Jauvin.

[Nicole Jauvin]

I couldn't agree more, sir, and that's why we're here. We do administer a suite of programs, but what we try to do is ensure that our officers are actually able to go into the communities, see what the needs are, and work with the communities to see which of the programs are best suited to the needs of that community. After that, some project would be identified. The source of the program or the source of funding usually doesn't really matter to the recipient, so it's our responsibility to sort out which program is best suited to a particular project.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Okay. Thank you, Madame Jauvin. Thank you, Mr. Kramp.

I have a question that arose from a quasi-exchange from Mr. Kramp's question. We're just going to take a moment.

Madame Fraser, you appeared to have a different point of view from that of Mr. Wernick when he was explaining how his department was addressing some of your issues. You appeared to disagree. Would you like to say what's on your mind?

[Sheila Fraser]

Well, Mr. Chair, the deputy seemed to indicate that he disagreed with some of our conclusions around the cumulative monitoring. We indicated in the report that under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, the department received very clear responsibilities to do this cumulative impact monitoring. We note in the report as a fact that 11 years after receiving that mandate, there was no program in place to monitor cumulative impact.

We go through, as I have explained to the committee many times before, a very long process with departments to ensure that the facts that we put in the report are valid. We would have had Mr. Wernick sign a letter to the effect that he agreed with the facts in this report, so I must admit I'm somewhat taken aback today to find out that he has indicated that he disagrees with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

I'm not sure that this would the appropriate place for debate, but I thought it would be instructive for everybody to understand why there would be a difference of opinion.

Mr. Wernick, in fairness, you'll have about 10 or 15 seconds to say something.

[Michael Wernick]

That's very generous, Mr. Chair.

Just to be clear, we submitted our interpretation of the facts. And this is about interpretation, not about facts and the conclusions you draw from them. The Auditor General declined to accept our interpretation and went ahead.

We don't contest, as I said previously, that the ad hoc programs and annual funding is a problem, and we hope that we move forward. What I disagree with is that it leaves the impression that nothing happened because there wasn't a formal program. Over 160 projects were financed over the last ten years. There is a lot of activity on monitoring. It is a bit improvised and ad hoc, but I wouldn't want parliamentarians to get the impression that there has been no environmental monitoring in the Northwest Territories over the last few years.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Thank you.

In the interest of not leaving bad impressions where no malice was intended, I think all members around the table now have the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency draft report, which has attached the action plan, organizational accountability, timelines, and progress to date. So in fairness to Madame Jauvin, perhaps....

I don't know whether we'll be able to do it today, but we might be able to reference it a little later on. I realize that there was a level of discomfort around the table because we weren't able to address it earlier. But we'll go back to it in a moment.

I'm wondering if we can go now to Mr. Bevington.

Yes, madam, do you have a question?

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

I would simply like to say that it is always the same with the French version, and it does not include any comments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joe Volpe]

The instructions are to go right back out to get us the copy en française. It must be another one of those glitches. We apologize for that, and we'll make sure that it's delivered ASAP.

Let me go to Mr. Bevington. Mr. Bevington, you're going to benefit from seven minutes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I have seven minutes?