Public Accounts Committee on April 16th, 2013

[Tom Scrimger]

I suspect that when the plan was being formed some six or seven years ago it just wasn't something that came across—having a consistent pan-government view of results. Most people were focused on the results that would be occurring in departments.

The observation from the Auditor General is an accurate one and one that we were aware of ahead of the observation, in the sense that it became quite obvious that we needed to have a better picture of results across government.

I don't have an answer about why it wasn't part of the action plan six years ago. Perhaps I can just put it down to it being one of the shortcomings in the action plan when it was first formed a number of years ago.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you very much.

Time has expired.

We'll move over now to Mr. Kramp. You have the floor, sir.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome, witnesses, here again today.

I think as a committee we have felt it's extremely important that we continue to develop and share best practices. That seems to be an ongoing process of government. Obviously, we can learn from many, but of course we can share a lot of our best practices.

I speak with two hats here. On public accounts we like to hold the feet to the fire in order to identify best practices, and yet I also wear another hat as chair of GOPAC, the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption. My responsibility is to share those best practices with either the developing countries that need our assistance or perhaps other countries that we can even mentor with.

That short preamble leads to a question for the Auditor General. With that in mind, sir, can you please speak to positive steps or best practices that the secretariat has taken and continues to take with respect to providing leadership, ongoing support, and consistent implementation of new and more streamlined approaches to managing and administering all of these things—in other words, the best practices of doing their job? We need to be able to build upon that, sell that, and critique that.

I'd like your observations on that, please.

[Michael Ferguson]

I think the report overall is quite positive on the steps taken by the secretariat. We refer to things like coordinating activities among departments, encouraging departments to improve their practices, supporting interdepartmental committees, supporting pilot projects, and some other things the secretariat did that were steps forward in how grants and contributions were managed.

We saw lots of good activities happening at the organizational level as they were implementing this.

Overall, the one thing that we noted in particular was that there were lots of good activities, both at the secretariat and at the departmental level, but part of the original objective was to reduce the administrative burden on recipients. Up to the point when we did the audit, that part hadn't been done, and that's a very important part.

I guess when you speak of best practices, it's one thing to sort of put changes in place and make changes, but there has to be a way of making sure those changes are going to have the impact they were intended to have at the beginning.

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

Fine. Thank you very much.

This is for the Assistant Comptroller General, Treasury Board Secretariat. Of course, in the Auditor General's report, Natural Resources, the Public Health Agency, and the Canadian International Development Agency are all expected to complete the development of their service standards. When will that be?

[Tom Scrimger]

I'll allow my colleagues to answer in their own case.

I can tell you that in 2011, with the management accountability framework exercise, 17 of the 21 departments that were to develop service standards had begun that work and had implemented some forms of service standards already. That is almost two years old. My expectation would be that when we review the status of things this summer and in the early fall, that number and the number of departments that have implemented or increased the number of service standards they're dealing with will also increase.

Earlier this year Treasury Board Secretariat itself introduced a tool kit dealing with the development of standards. Our chief information officer, who is responsible for service standards, has issued guidance in the last number of months to departments and agencies about the creation and the life cycle attached to those service standards. I think we're seeing the inculcation of this concept and this culture of service standards.

Moving forward, I will not sit here and say they're at the mature level that everyone would look for across town, but I would say that departments and agencies are consciously moving forward with implementation in their own domains.

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

Fine.

I don't have the time, Chair, obviously, to go through each and every department here, unfortunately, but what I might do is just throw a question out to all of the respective departments here.

If any of the department officials feels they have a significant problem or challenge with not meeting reasonable timelines to move forward, I'd like them to declare that to this committee now. If we're looking at this issue a year or two years down the road and you still have not been able to complete the original “ask”, then we have a problem. If you feel it's well under way and is under control and you're moving forward with the recommendations, and you feel a level of comfort with the grants and the risk assessments and all that, then so be it.

I'm just giving you an opportunity. I don't need a response, but if someone feels they have a real challenge ahead of them that might pose some unknown risks, please identify that now.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

I will afford that opportunity to our representatives. Does anyone want to take advantage of Mr. Kramp's offer?

Okay. Looks good, Mr. Kramp.

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

Fine. I have one more quick question.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

No. Sorry, sir. Next time. Your time has expired, significantly, I might note.

We go over now to Madame Blanchette-Lamothe.

You have the floor, Ma'am.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our guests for joining us.

Mr. Scrimger, I congratulate you because, generally, the Auditor General's report indicates that the government action plan is well managed.

I would still like to come back to what my colleague was saying earlier about assessing that action plan's impact.

The fundamental objective was to make the administrative process less cumbersome for recipient organizations. However, no measures have been implemented to effectively assess the impact of that action plan. You said that you didn't know why no attempt has been made to assess the impact of the plan. Who could tell me why that has not been done? Were you there when the action plan was developed? If not, who do you think is responsible for that oversight?

[Tom Scrimger]

To answer your questions, no, I was not part of the process that developed the action plan back in 2006.

I don't believe the people who developed the action plan forgot about the need to have some sense of the impact of the reforms on recipients and applications. Indeed, in previous incarnations, I spent some very uncomfortable moments in front of the official languages committee answering questions of just that nature in this House.

The issue really is that at that time we didn't identify the need to have an instrument that would allow us to consistently gather information across and aggregate it to provide that pan-government picture. I believe the initial focus was really on the departments and the work they were doing in their action plans. It's become clear that we need to have a better mechanism to gather evidence beyond anecdotes and stories to demonstrate the progress that's been made. That's what we're dealing with now.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I would like us to expand on what you just said, as it's very interesting.

You say that this was not an oversight, but that the need to assess the action plan's impact was not established. I find that a bit surprising. In addition, this is not the first time we hear about people thinking that assessing the impact is not really useful or necessary. I'm not sure if drawing this parallel is appropriate, but I am thinking of the action plan to stimulate the economy. We saw in the latest report that the plan was very well managed. However, we ultimately did not know what the real impacts of this plan were on the economy, as no measures were implemented to determine whether the plan had truly stimulated the economy, and in what way.

Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Scrimger, you could perhaps help me understand. Shouldn't effective impact assessment be an automatic action when money is invested and an important action plan is implemented, regardless of its nature?

[Tom Scrimger]

I believe the advantage of hindsight in this matter is tremendous. If in 2006 we had understood the scope of the effort required to achieve the change we were looking for, we would have been somewhat surprised.

I can only come back to the fact that the requirement to be able to demonstrate impact and success was not forgotten. The Auditor General has brought us up on the fact that we did not have a consistent way of presenting a pan-government picture. I suspect the departments and agencies can certainly provide a much richer viewpoint of what's happened inside their own organizations. But it is important that we can build that pan-government picture.

That is the same story that's coming to us—any number of enterprises. There's a greater interest as the Government of Canada in being able to talk about the entity and the impact of things on the entity. Moving forward, I cannot see the same oversight, if you wish, being made.

I can't speak to what happened seven years ago, but I would repeat there was a clear desire and interest on the part of the government to understand the impact. We may not have had the right tool in place to do so.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you.

Over now to Mr. Shipley. You, sir, now have the floor.

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

Thank you, Chair, and my thanks to the Auditor General and all the witnesses.

First of all, I just want to say thank you to the Treasury Board Secretariat. That office has taken the initiative. I find it interesting in your last remarks, Mr. Scrimger, that you didn't understand the full context of what it would take for the scope of this project.

I liken that, in my mind, to those who have had the opportunity to renovate an old house as compared with building a new house. There are always, in a renovation or with upgrades to modernize an old house, those unknowns—we see it here in these buildings—that never show up until you actually get into it. In building a new house, though, you have the plans, everything is laid out, and you start from scratch.

So we have to identify the need. I want to thank you for striking that independent blue ribbon panel in 2006. For those who may not have understood that, maybe you could help me. The independent panel, how many were on it and who was it? That may go to the Auditor General or to the Secretariat.

[Tom Scrimger]

My apologies, I don't think I have the names.

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

Did any issue ever come up, because it was an independent panel, that there was some sort of infiltration or that what they recommended was not the right way to go?

[Frank Barrett]

I can say that first of all it was an independent panel. It consisted primarily of former deputy ministers who understood government and governance very well. Certainly the recommendations they made rang true with what we had already understood. For example, in the first nations file, we had been hearing for quite a while, since our audit of 2003, that they were finding the reporting burden extremely difficult, especially the small communities. What the blue ribbon panel said was very consistent with that.

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

I think in 2006, fortunately, we did take that position, to unravel some of the complexities, what people call red tape and bureaucracy. I guess that's maybe not a good word, but unfortunately that's what it gets wrung out to be.

There is always a concern when we look for efficiencies and effectiveness that we may have limited the scope, and that what we're doing is shoving some stuff underneath just to make sure we can get through the process quicker. Mr. Auditor General, has there been any indication of that?

[Michael Ferguson]

No.

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

Okay.

In paragraph 9 of your notes, Mr. Auditor General, you talked about

...adequate guidance to ensure that risk ratings are accurate and remain current.... ... As such, we found that processes used by federal organizations we examined varied in rigor and depth.

To the Auditor General, is it that each department will use the same template?

Then to Mr. Scrimger, in your presentation, the second paragraph under “The Action Plan”, you say that “departments developed their individual plans to fundamentally improve their delivery of grants and contributions”. I still don't understand how that's going to work between those two comments. You said this was going to be a template of each for depth and rigour, but as I think I understand it, each department is individual but all have now come together. You mentioned that in terms of their working together rather than in their own silos. Maybe you could help me understand that a little bit better.

[Tom Scrimger]

Perhaps I'll take a crack at trying to provide an answer to your question.

When it comes to risk rankings, I will speak to my experience at the time in a grants and contributions department. Most departments and agencies, at least at a beginning point, develop their own risk-ranking criteria. They were the individuals who were most familiar with the business lines they were dealing with. The guidance is, of course, meant to provide some consistency in approach and methodology without tying the hands of a department to a single risk-rating approach across town.

Experiences change over a seven-year or eight-year period. One of the areas we're entering into now in the management or administration of grants and contributions is the concept of standardized business processes, to increase efficiency in deliveries, and this can apply to a number of areas. Although I don't think we will ever have a single template for risk rating across town, there is probably an opportunity for ensuring greater consistency in the risk-rating methodologies that are used by departments to ensure their completeness and their utility.

With that, I hope I've answered part of your question, and the Auditor General can certainly chip in if I've got it wrong.

[Michael Ferguson]

Your question to me was whether all of the organizations were using the same template, and I think at the time we did the audit we found that there were inconsistencies in how different organizations were assessing risks. So I think the direct answer to the question, as I understood it, is that at the time we did the audit, not everybody was using exactly the same approach.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

The time has well expired. Thank you very much.

Over now to Mr. Byrne. You have the floor, sir.