Public Accounts Committee on May 7th, 2014

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

No, you have 30 seconds.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thirty seconds? Good.

I'm going to do this a little backwards. I'd like to compliment you, sir, on your French. I'm amazed at how you've learned the language. As someone who has tried to acquire the language all my life, I'm very envious of your talent.

[Michael Ferguson]

I appreciate that. I still have a lot of work to do, though.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

You're very welcome.

Moving on, Monsieur Giguère, you have the floor, sir.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to welcome Mr. Ferguson and his entire team. You do extremely important work by pointing out problems with administration, planning and mismanagement in the various departments and in the government while suggesting solutions that need to be made.

Like many Canadians, the people I represent pay their taxes, and it is important that the money be spent intelligently and not wastefully.

In the nine chapters of your report, you raise major problems with management and administration within this government. There is one chapter that seems quite troubling.

The problem comes up in chapter 2, which deals with the process for the procurement of relocation services. To jog your memory, these services are used to relocate employees, including members of the Canadian Forces, at a cost that is as reasonable as possible for the government, which spends approximately $300 million a year on this program.

What's troubling is that, in 2006, you presented a report on this problem, and you concluded that the contracts had not been awarded in a fair and equal manner. The Standing Committee on Public Accounts at the time supported your conclusions. The current government accepted your recommendations that contracts be awarded in the context of a fair, equal, competitive and, of course, economical process. The purpose was to save money.

You are back now in 2014 with another report on the same program being managed by the same department. Once again, your conclusions are that the measures taken to encourage competitiveness in awarding contracts were insufficient. In other words, there is still only one supplier. In eight years, this major problem has not yet been fixed.

For the benefit of taxpayers who pay their taxes, how do you explain that despite all of your past recommendations, the governments—be they Liberal or Conservative—have dropped the ball and that there is still no competitiveness in this area?

This time, we would like to have something with a little more punch to know how the government will finally fix the problem, because eight years to fix a problem is a long time.

[Michael Ferguson]

We have made recommendations in this report.

I think one of the reasons we certainly wanted to get this audit completed was so, if we did identify any weaknesses that existed in the process, that could help to inform the process for the next contract in this area.

Certainly, if we compare the process that was used in 2004 to the process used for the 2009 contract, we see the processes were different, and I would say that the process to award the 2009 contract was better than the process for the 2004 contract.

We did find that the departments got behind schedule, and getting behind schedule meant it had to shorten some timeframes. It took some decisions—for example, issuing only one contract and not dividing it up into three contracts—and all of those decisions led to there being only one bidder that bidder being the incumbent service provider at that time.

I think the other thing that was concerning for us was that—even after it became evident that there would only be one bidder, and Public Works decided to apply its processes to examine the cost, to examine the price that was bid, and got some information that indicated there might be some cost components that shouldn't be allowed—they stopped that work and didn't adjust the pricing in the contract.

We saw the decision points along the way; we understood that they made those decisions, made them within the framework. Those decisions then led to there being only one bidder. But I think the concern for us was that, even after it led to one bidder, they didn't apply the processes they had available to them to examine the price that was bid in a one-bidder situation.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

I'm sorry, but the time has expired.

Moving on, Mr. Woodworth, you have the floor, sir.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to Mr. Ferguson, as well as Mr. Berthelette, Mr. Affleck and Ms. Loschiuk.

Mr. Ferguson, I, too, would like to congratulate you on your French. You speak it very well. In fact, you speak it better than I do. So I will speak in English.

I didn't quite say that, but it's good enough. Clearly, my French is not so good.

I'm going to ask you about chapter 8 and to begin with the observations and recommendations starting at paragraph 8.10. I'm going to ask you some questions about the quality assurance framework and quality guidelines.

First of all, I understand that those do include good measures that ensure the accuracy of the data that Statistics Canada collects. Is that correct?

[Michael Ferguson]

Statistics Canada does have a quality assurance framework that includes six elements, as we define in paragraph 10: accuracy, timeliness, accessibility, coherence, relevance, and interpretability.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

My question was if the measures that the framework includes to ensure accuracy are reliable measures. Second, I understand that they have also been regularly employed by Statistics Canada to ensure accuracy.

[Michael Ferguson]

Yes, the quality assurance framework includes these six key elements, which are important elements of quality, and they do apply that framework to the products that they produce. We find that Statistics Canada is applying its quality framework to what it is releasing.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Good, and just to be completely clear, in addition to accuracy, that quality framework also results in Statistics Canada meeting satisfactory timelines for its data collection and release. Is that correct?

[Michael Ferguson]

Timeliness is the second of their six elements of quality, yes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Are they meeting that?

[Michael Ferguson]

They were meeting it. What they do is to say “This is the date we are going to release something”, and we only found one case where they didn't hit that projected date. It was only missed by a four-week period.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Very good. I understand that another quality in those guidelines is to ensure that data is accessible and that the guidelines define what's necessary to ensure that the data is accessible, and that Statistics Canada is also meeting those requirements. Is that correct?

[Michael Ferguson]

We did say that Statistics Canada has made data from the selected data products accessible to users. We did also point out, though, that some of their users have said things like “The website is hard to navigate”. So there are some places for improvement.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Understood.

In fact, the Internet dissemination of data is a new initiative that Statistics Canada is proposing as an improvement in its accessibility. Is that correct?

[Michael Ferguson]

Certainly they did indicate they were planning on making some further improvements to make the products more accessible.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Also, the quality guidelines require Statistics Canada to assess and ensure the coherence of its product, that is, to bring them together in a framework with consistency, and Statistics Canada is satisfactorily doing that, correct?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, we do say that they have assessed the coherence of the selected data product. For example, they routinely compare data from multiple sources and apply methods to ensure the coherence of the data. We also pointed out that because they had concerns about comparability of certain information related to the national household survey, they cautioned their users about that. They make sure their users understand the coherence of the data.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Very good.

I do want to move on then to the national household survey and just clarify a few points about that.

I understand that the national household survey resulted in data but that there was data unavailable for 3% of the population. Is that correct?

[Michael Ferguson]

That's correct.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Sorry, but we're now out of time, sir.

Moving on, Madame Jones, you now have the floor, ma'am.