Public Accounts Committee on March 31st, 2014

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Ferguson and Ms. Sachs, I am pleased to welcome you. Thank you for your report.

You stated that the number of files studied by this committee has decreased. Unfortunately, that involves quantity. Have you done an analysis of the quality of the reports? Have the major reports, the ones the committee should look into, been studied, or is the committee wasting too much of its time studying reports for agencies where everything is fine and doesn't require the committee to look into them?

[Michael Ferguson]

In our analysis we go through each of the performance audits that we have prepared over the last number of years and look at whether they have been the subject of a hearing by either the public accounts committee or any other committee.

We feel, obviously, that all of our audits are important, so we're quite happy with the ones that have had hearings. We also feel there are a number of important chapters that we have produced that have not had hearings. Obviously, it would be our preference for a larger percentage of the reports that we produce to have hearings.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

When you present your reports, would you be opposed to the idea of advising the committee which ones it should absolutely look at?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, I think it's really up to each committee to make the decision about which reports they want to look at. We feel that all of our audits are important, but there have been a number of them that have not had hearings. We think that they have important information, but we can't make the decision.

I wouldn't say that any of our reports are not important. I think they are all important. So for me to say there should be a hearing on this chapter or that chapter, we feel they're all important.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

From your audits we see that some issues appear again and again. The best example that comes to mind is Transport Canada and self-regulation. With respect to air transport, you stated that the recommendations you made were the same as the ones you made in the previous report and the one before that.

Maybe the departments accept your recommendations, but they seem to be taking their time in implementing them.

Is this just something I'm noticing or is it something you have noted yourself?

[Michael Ferguson]

As I said in my opening statement, Mr. Chair, in the course of the work that we are presenting today there were 25 recommendations that we had made in previous performance audits that were followed up in this time period.

What we found was that the departments had made satisfactory progress on 72% of those. There is still room for improvement there, but it is part of our work to look at recommendations we've made in the past, and sometimes we do a follow-up audit that specifically looks at the same areas. Sometimes, if we are doing a performance audit in a similar area, we will look at recommendations we've made in the past to see whether the department has followed up on those satisfactorily. In this time period we found that 72% of the 25 performance audit recommendations that we made were satisfactorily followed up on.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

You have 15 seconds.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

It will be difficult for me to ask any questions with so little time left.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

You'd better give an opinion rather than a question.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Ferguson, do you have some flexibility in your budget to carry out urgent audits when something happens? Take the Canada Revenue Agency, for example. We learned before the holidays that there was a serious problem with corruption.

Can you sometimes move up an audit when something appears to be urgent?

[Michael Ferguson]

There's not a simple answer.

We obviously don't have a lot of room to make changes quickly, but when something urgent does come up, we look to see whether there are ways to incorporate it.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you. That will have to do, I'm afraid.

Moving along, Mr. Albas, you have the floor, sir.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank you, Mr. Ferguson and Ms. Sachs, for coming in today to discuss your very important roles, but also to make sure that we, as parliamentarians, have the opportunity to make sure that we're asking questions because all parliamentarians do hold the government to account. We do that primarily through the estimates process; the RPPs, reports on plans and priorities; as well, obviously, as departmental performance reports.

Mr. Ferguson, what are the trends you're seeing in the reports on plans and priorities and your departmental performance reports? Do you foresee anything new happening in the future?

[Michael Ferguson]

In terms of our own reports, we have an exercise under way right now under the direction of Ms. Sachs to look at all of our performance indicators to see whether they are still relevant, to see whether we are covering everything, and to see whether it's necessary to make any changes.

I'm not sure you will necessarily see any changes in our next series of reports, but we think it's time right now to review our performance indicators to see if they're still relevant.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Thank you for that.

I believe it was last year that you mentioned that there was a strategic visioning exercise that you were taking your organization through. Have you completed that process?

[Michael Ferguson]

It's been through that process that we have identified these four priorities, so I'm being a little careful in terms of saying whether we've completed it or not. We have completed it but to the extent that we now have to actually implement it.... During implementation there will always be changes, so it will be a never-ending process.

But we have identified 12 areas of importance, and out of those 12 areas we identified the four priorities that I talked about earlier on.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I believe Mr. Falk touched upon the core priorities. Those are the four priorities laid out in your statement on page three in section 12, I think. Is that right?

[Michael Ferguson]

That's right. I'll just make sure it's the right reference.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

It's the four concurrent priorities.

[Michael Ferguson]

Yes, that's right.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Okay. Thank you for that.

There's the old saying, Mr. Chair, that managers do things right and leaders make sure they do the right thing.

You have been in the job now for, let's say, about two and a half years. Is that correct, sir?

[Michael Ferguson]

That's right.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Given that experience, I hope you will have some perspective that you might share with the committee today. Have you, in your experience, seen many of the challenges that existed when you first took the Office of Auditor General dealt with? What are some of the new challenges that you see on the horizon for your organization? How do they fit into the strategic process that you're working on?

[Michael Ferguson]

Well, this is really what the strategic planning process was all about. We started it a little more than a year ago, I guess, going through the process of asking what the important things are that we should be focusing on.

Coming out of that, we recognized these four priorities that we need to focus on. We need to focus on our employees to make sure they feel that they can do the job they should be doing. We need to focus on being sure that the things we are doing are adding value and whether there is anything we are doing that is not adding value. We need to make sure that we are a well-run organization ourselves and that we're governing ourselves properly. As well, we need to look at the way we are conducting all of our audits, because we can conduct our audits and comply with standards and make sure that the audits are all well done, but we also need to ask whether we are doing it efficiently and economically.

Those are the four things that I think we really need to focus on. Overall, I think our end product is good, and you see that in these types of indicators. We can look at how we're getting to the end product and consider whether we can do a better job in the production mode of getting to that end product.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

We're going to have to call time, unless you can do something in three seconds.