Public Accounts Committee on April 29th, 2015

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Auditor General and your team, for coming and testifying at committee here today.

I will be focusing my questions on chapter 8, the Special Examinations. I note that in your report, it states that the government has 44 parent crown corporations that require a special examination once every ten years, and it has one additional corporation that is lumped into that group as well for a total of 45, employing approximately 84,000 people across Canada.

I want to make note of paragraph 8.16, where it states, “We identified no significant deficiencies in the two special examination reports”. That's a very encouraging comment in your audit.

You give the Canada Lands Company very glowing comments on the management of that crown corporation. They are very profitable with a net income during the fiscal year when you conducted your examination of about $48 million and they contributed a dividend of $20 million to the government.

You have less than glowing comments as far as their strategic planning, risk management, and performance measures and reporting goal, and you commented on amalgamation and also some significant turnover at board and senior management levels.

Could you comment a little further on that? That is paragraph 3 under Findings. Is a strategic plan coming that was identified to you?

[Michael Ferguson]

In this chapter of the audits that we've released, we're giving you that very high level overview of the two special examinations we had done. The details of those two special examinations are publicly available. The process for doing these special exams is we go in, look at the systems and practices that are in place at the organizations, present those special exams to the board of management essentially, the board of directors of the organizations, and then the special exams are made public.

Certainly further details are available in those documents. We don't present the whole document to the committee when we release our spring report, for example, but we want to make sure that you are aware that we've done those special exams, that they exist, and that the full information is available.

Certainly in terms of the Canada Lands Company, again the fundamental point is that there are no significant deficiencies in their systems and practices. But we did talk about the fact that they did not have their new strategic direction in place at that point. I don't have an update on that, whether they have that in place now or not.

Again, overall, there are no significant deficiencies, but a few things they need to resolve.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you.

I noticed under the mandate portion of the report that the mandate seems to be for repurposing and the sale of crown property. Is also part of management, from a strategic perspective, the acquisition of strategic properties?

[Michael Ferguson]

I can't speak directly to the mandate. I don't have all the information of the mandate with me, so I'm not going to try to say something from memory on the exact mandate of the organization that I would risk getting wrong. But obviously, the mandate of the organization is available.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay, very good.

From the Royal Canadian Mint aspect of that special examination, it says in paragraph 2 that there are “many elements of a good governance framework that meets the expectations of best practices in board stewardship, shareholder relations, and communications with the public”, all of those things. Yet one of the notes in the report is that you're a little concerned about the issue of travel and hospitality.

[Michael Ferguson]

Yes, and again, in terms of their overall framework for governance, we found they had many of those things in place. But we did have concerns about the way they were managing some of the travel and hospitality activities.

I can ask Ms. Cheng to give you a bit more information in terms of that corporate governance, since she was involved in that special examination.

[Nancy Cheng, Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In terms of the governance front, it is important that they have strong leadership, that they provide the oversight and that they challenge the corporation in terms of its strategic thinking.

In terms of the special examination, at the time we had talked to all the board members to get an understanding as to the kind of information they received, and they asked for the information that they needed to actually exercise their oversight duty. In the course of looking at the Mint, you can see there are challenges with respect to management's positions.

In addition to that, one of the strategic areas they were considering has to do with foreign business. The Mint is actually very profitable and has—

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I'm glad you answered that because it was a question I was hoping to get to, the profitability.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Time has expired, thank you.

[Nancy Cheng]

I am sorry.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

You guys are testing me.

Back over to Vice-Chair Jones. You have the floor, ma'am.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you.

Getting back to chapter 4 again, I have a couple of questions left. This chapter focuses on the fact that many of the nursing stations in these remote first nations communities that were looked at were not kept to acceptable standards. They didn't go through regular inspections. That is very worrisome, the fact that these particular maintenance pieces aren't even being kept to a standard that's acceptable. Then it talks about the fact that there hasn't been adequate training for some of the nursing staff.

In your opinion, or in your findings in this study, do you think many of these issues are fixable within the allocated financial resources that are in place right now?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, we didn't do a direct comparison of budget to the types of issues, but I would certainly say that many of the issues we identified are fixable. If you look at something like the training for the nurses, I think it's something that certainly can be dealt with.

I believe also that they themselves have identified a number of deficiencies with these facilities. Health Canada has had people come in to look at some of these facilities to determine what condition they're in, and have that information. Obviously, they know the types of things that need to be done.

We didn't line up how much budget they have and is there enough money to deal with all of these issues, but I think in general that a number of these issues are, in fact, fixable.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

In paragraph 4.57, it notes that, “Health Canada had not assessed whether each nursing station was capable of providing all the health services that the Department had defined as essential in 2013.”

To start with, how could a program be fulfilling its mandate in any way if the facilities are not equipped to do so? I want to get on the record as to what rationale Health Canada gave as to why they were not ensuring that the space they use is able to provide the services that they tell Canadians, and everyone else who lives in those communities, that they are intending to provide. Obviously, it's not being done.

[Michael Ferguson]

In paragraph 4.62, again, I think we try to define that a bit more.

We say, “Health Canada defined the essential health services that each of its nursing stations should provide” and what those services are in terms of “triage, emergency services, and outpatient non-urgent services”. Health Canada defined the services, but then in paragraph 4.63, we say they haven't assessed whether each of those nursing stations was capable of providing all of those essential services.

In terms of the rationale, that was simply the situation as we found it when we did the audit. They had defined what the nursing stations were supposed to be doing, but they weren't making sure that it was happening.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Did they outline any particular practices that they're prepared to put in place at this stage to ensure that happens? What was their explanation?

[Michael Ferguson]

In paragraph 4.64, we have our recommendation and we have the department's response. They say, “In collaboration with First Nations, Health Canada will review the clinical care complement in an effort to progressively move toward the creation of interprofessional teams where possible to support the culturally appropriate, safe, and effective delivery of essential services.” Then further on they say, “will provide a list of all clinical care services offered at each nursing station for communication to community members”.

In general terms, they've agreed with the two recommendations and they've made some comment about the types of things they are going to do. Certainly I think it's very important that they come up with a way of making sure that the nursing stations that they've defined as essential services to those first nations are in fact able to provide those essential services.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Do you have something very fast? Otherwise, you're done.

[Yvonne Jones, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

No, that's good.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Okay, great. Thank you.

We appreciate your cooperation.

Moving over to Mr. Woodworth, you now have the floor, sir.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses, particularly Mr. Ferguson, for coming today, and as always giving us a thorough review.

This is only a kind of first brush through a number of chapters, so I may jump around a bit, but I'll be jumping around only in chapter 6, on Corrections.

I'd like to begin in particular with an observation at paragraph 6.13, the last sentence of which reads, “During the 2013–14 fiscal year, 86 percent of CSC recommendations for early release on day parole were granted by the Parole Board.”

May I take it that of one in seven cases, or 14%, where CSC recommended early release, the Parole Board did not agree?

[Michael Ferguson]

That's the case, yes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

It seems that the Parole Board itself is even more restrictive than the CSC when it comes to early release on day parole.

Is that a correct understanding?

[Michael Ferguson]

I think it's certainly an indication that when CSC takes a case before the Parole Board that the Parole Board is looking at all of the evidence brought before them and making their own decision about whether parole should be granted.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

There were some one in seven cases where CSC wanted to give an early release but the Parole Board refused to allow it. I presume that's because of concerns about risk of reoffending, but I don't know whether you examined any reasons from the Parole Board in those cases.